The definitive discussion: are all music shows' performances either fully lipsynced or using otherwise non-live audio?

Quote from Zenning

if the artists are using handheld mics and standing or sitting, assume they're singing live, if they're dancing and not using handhelds, assume they're lipsyncing.

I'm pretty sure I've seen idols with handheld mics lipsyncing, while headsets are often used by dancers/idols who can't use a handheld due to the choreography. Maybe headset quality tends to correlate a tiny bit more with the liveness of a performance, but it's far from a sure indicator either, I've seen numerous lipsynced performances with the bigger headsets, and live ones with the cheaper type.

As for the actual question:

Honestly I'm not sure about objectively how common live performances nowadays are, because I usually only watch individual stages and nowhere near from all groups; I only watch music shows themselves when Stray Kids are promoting, and even then I often mute that tab until they come on. (And SKZ are not really the group to be an indicator for lipsyncing, as they're adamant on singing live all the time.) But there are definitely live performances on each show. While a lot of them are indeed lipsynced, it's a massive stretch to claim all of them are.

i see some people here are posting LAR performances thinking they are live, this is exactly the problem with this discourse. most of the time, the people discussing it don't even seem to be able to tell the difference between live and lipsynching anymore themselves.

anyway, like what ISaidISaid would say, the mere fact of singing live shouldn't be treated as an achievement, it has to be good first but people are not ready for that discussion. And performances with the live singing can NOT be heard above the deafening backtrack shouldn't even enter this discussion, who cares whether you were singing live or not if you can't even be heard anyway?

this

is what real and decent live singing sounds like

Even the lives ones are edited

There's the issue of mics being turned on or not, and then there's the issue of audio editing in post prod. So even when you can hear the live voices, it's hard to say whether it's been tweaked for a better sounding result.

In general the music shows set the rules and therefore decide whether lip syncing is allowed or not. However I‘m pretty sure most music shows do allow the companies to choose between lip syncing or singing live with a backing track.

Personally I think some companies prefer lip syncing over actual live vocals. (SM, JYP for Twice, etc.). They‘re just trying to mask the fact that their groups are lip syncing by using pre recorded vocals that aren‘t highly edited. That‘s why some peopld think idols are singing live cause you could hear their breath when the breath is actually part of the pre recorded vocals.

The other way round some people accuse kpop groups of lip syncing when they‘re actually singing live. That‘s just due to the increased volume of the backing track. If a groups decides to sing live they actually choose the volume of the backing track. Most music shows offer backing tracks with 30, 40, 50 or 60 percent of volume. Stable singers only use backing vocals of 30 percent while someone with unstable vocals may try to the mask the issue with a backing track of 60 percent.

Apart from all these things audio editing, post production or even live pitch correcting softwares exist. So you‘re probably never getting raw live vocals. Not even at encore stages

I be posting videos of my faves, but then you will see people coming in and be like "but they are a band and don't have to dance of course they sing live"

Quote from icyruios

I be posting videos of my faves, but then you will see people coming in and be like "but they are a band and don't have to dance of course they sing live"

I noticed bands use to sing live more often, but as for the instruments... No comment.

Quote from tetetete

this is the first time i saw someone sing live at m countdown

I have shared it in another thread but I think this one had live vocals too:

But yes, performances with live vocals are more common at Music Bank or Music Core.

Quote from Alex_Murphy

I noticed bands use to sing live more often, but as for the instruments... No comment.

Kinda sucks about the instruments part, because they play them live it's just music shows don't plug them in.

Like they don't "act like they are playing the instruments" they actually do play it correctly, it's just ..... not plugged in