A decade ago, I used to go to a local jazz club, ask the performers if they are ok with me recording their performance for my personal use, and if they were ok,

A decade ago, I used to go to a local jazz club, ask the performers if they are ok with me recording their performance for my personal use, and if they were ok, I took out my trusty Zoom H4n, put it on a stand, and recorded away. On a good day, I could use an additional pair of Samson C1 mics as well. The musicians I met there were a friendly bunch, and usually were totally ok, provided I sent them a copy, too. I cherish these recordings a lot to this day. Not only because I was 10 years younger back then, although that too, but also because the performance sounded more authentic precisely because it wasn't overproduced, thoroughly compressed, denoised, and equalized to hell. There are people talking in the background, the floor boards may squeak sometimes, and it's a very immersive experience. I like hearing the air hissing quietly into the microphones. When it's not there, the sound is uncanny. When it's there but there's a lot of editing, you can hear it change, and that's uncanny too. When it had been there and got subsequently removed, often a noticeable portion of "signal" is removed too, and the sound becomes very "artificial". Sometimes I like a good studio recording, too. It's just that I like it for different things: mostly it's to hear what the musicians really intended to convey, provided, of course, that the album had been mastered to their preferences.