Most of the time when a band sounds exactly like the recording it’s a good thing — a compliment of perfection even.

The live sound Tycho can produce outweighs the studio sound twice over.

At the Georgia Theatre on Jan. 30, Tycho combined both graphic visuals and beat-heavy music to engross and entertain its audience. SEAN TAYLOR/Staff

The three-man band’s performance last night at the Georgia Theatre was a stark contrast to its recorded sound: Tycho brought its music down to Earth.

We knew it was there because we could feel it in the vibrating base beats gluing our feet to the floor.

No surprise: the key to the live sound for Tycho is the drum kit. The sharp background beats pounding through the speakers helped by crisp attacks on the drums drew in the crowd; and the huge beats drew attention towards and heightened each emotional wail on the synthesizer or electric guitar.

The definitive pounding helped bring the sound of the band out of the sky with its stereo harmonies and down to earth with the bass beating.

And, also in a surprising turn from the band’s recorded music, the most exciting part of it lie was not the clean breaks, absent of any overpowering beat: the best parts of the night were when all three members piled as many beats, loops and sounds on top of each other as they could to create complex heaps of noise.

Good noise, infectious noise. The kind you can’t help but bang your head to.

But the most obvious benefit of seeing Tycho live is the constant stream of images and designs rolling behind the band created by lead Scott Hansen: the graphics span from eclectic swirling colorful design reminiscent of kaleidoscopes to hand-held video camera style home movies.

And each visual, as it flows together throughout the show, adds a story, a color, an emotion never realized before to the songs.

At first the video might distract from the music, surprising in its always changing flow. Then, in the middle of the show, it begins to add to each song with a passing glance — so that, by the end of the night, the music and visual become one.

Without separating concentration on one or the other, they come together to create a mesmerizing memory.

From memory, Tycho played mostly songs from its newest album “Dive,” with a few odd ones out of new material, including a special treat for the encore.

“You guys are the first people to see this,” Hansen said, returning on stage alone to cheers from the audience. Pulling up the visuals on his laptop, he added, “We’ve been working on this on the road, we’re still working on it. That’s how raw this is — you guys have to see the desktop.”

The finale did not disappoint. Even though the song was apparently new, the delivery was as impeccably perfect as every one of the previous songs last night.

So was Tycho: perfect — loud and alive.