I too want to hear music the way it was intended to be heard.
I go to many live shows. I have experienced when artists played live and heard people in the crowd say that they did not play it like on the album...in my opinion,the studio version was made by the accountants instead of the artists
That made me think of a thing I have a problem with at live shows:
When bands have recorded studio tracks that they can't play live exactly like the studio version, so instead of taking the time to work out a live arrangement, they just use backing tracks to play the bits they can't play live.
I saw a band recently that had a flute solo in a song - but no flautist! And a couple of the most impressive were backing tracks, too. At one point I was questioning why I was even taking the time to watch them, when the majority of what I was hearing was pre-recorded. The four band members were actually playing stuff live, but there was a lot more going on in the mix than what they were actually playing. This sort of thing irritates me - I like to be able to see what I'm hearing in a live band. Obviously, not everyone can afford to hire a load of backup musicians on tour to play the studio arrangements live, but resorting backing tracks is just a lazy way of doing things.
record company accountants have nothing to do with the studio albums though, and if they did I would imagine they'd expect artists to be a bit more economical with the time they spend and the session musicians they hire, etc. in order to cut production costs as much as possible! Bands tend to be more extravagant with their studio arrangements because they have access to the tools necessary to do so. I have no problem with this, you can do some neat stuff in the studio, but the more complex studio arrangements don't necessarily translate to a live environment particularly well. Unfortunately, it seems like lots of bands nowadays don't really consider this, and just use backing tracks which end up muddying the clarity of the performance, instead of working on different arrangements to perform live which actually sound good.
This also forces the drummer to play to a metronome which in my opinion eliminates a great deal of the human element of a live performance - drummers naturally speed up and slow down subtlely and some do it very tastefully and can really bring a lot of dynamics to a live performance by doing so. The same drummer can end up sounding very flat and boring if you make them play to a metronome. Of course, there are also some drummers who actually do play better when they are keeping in time to a metronome, too, but I don't think that should be something that is required of a drummer - I believe that you are supposed to find ways of making the equipment work for you, not making yourself work for the equipment... I'm getting myself a synthesizer soon and I have every intention of using the arpeggiator function, however, I am really going to great lengths to find a way of getting the arpeggiator to be synchronized with a drummer, not the other way around. If it means I have to tap my foot on a "tap tempo" button in time for the entire length of a song, then so be it!
...And that almost turned into a rant, for which I apologise
