I walked into a building and I could hear a piano way in the distance. Even in the distance I could tell it was a live piano and not just a recording being played through speakers?
Why is this distinguishable?
In: Technology
Recording acoustic instruments well is very difficult. There are always some losses and distortions in both the recording and the reproduction which mean that the recorded sound is not identical to the original.
I don’t think either of the current answers really answer your question.
Music coming out of a speaker generally has only two sound sources, or directions, since it’s stereo (left side and right side). Music coming out of a live instrument like a piano comes out of the piano in all directions. Humans are incredibly good at identifying the positions of objects by ear, and this is why you could tell it was a live piano. The same is not true of things that require amplification, like electric guitars, because in that case you’re once again only hearing it from a few distinct sound sources (the speakers).
Interestingly, as the technology to do really high quality reverb gets better, it is less and less easy to tell the difference. A single person singing in a room, versus a recording of them with good reverb are pretty tough to tell apart, as the reverb fools your ears.
A general rule of thumb is that because bass travels much further than treble, you can usually tell when something far away is “real” by how natural the bass sounds. If it sounds too heavy, you’re probably listening to a recording. You can use this trick to tell when drumming is live, too, because different textures/objects/materials inside the building will resonate along with real drums in a way that they won’t do in a recording.
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