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In Reply to: RE: Audio seeking excitement instead of accuracy. posted by ruxtonvet on May 03, 2015 at 08:46:53
It's a real problem not only for listeners but also for recording engineers.
In order to capture the kind of information (amplitude, arrival time, and phase) that is needed to create a convincing illusion of individual instruments in a stereo soundfield, the microphones have to be so close that the timbral balance they pick up is not natural when compared to what you hear at a live recital or concert.
David Hancock once rhetorically asked me, "When you walk into a church and there's a string quartet playing, do you hear any high frequencies separately as such? Of course not!" The problem of course is that while most of the audience is seated past the "critical distance" where direct and ambient sound is equal in intensity, if you record from there or even farther out, to the middle of the hall, the result will be either "wide mono" or "just plain mono."
So if we record a string quartet from six feet back, the timbres are going to be exaggerated. But we get used to it.
Listen to some of the Nimbus piano recordings, such as Perlemuter's Chopin Nocturnes. Compare that to a "modern" big-label, big-star recording... . The Nimbus is more natural, so it sounds: Dull.
A puzzlement, says the King of Siam.
JM
Follow Ups:
People who are used to the sound of a piano as recorded most of the time find when they here a piano recitel in a concert hall the piano sounds rolled of to them. The recorded sound many times especially in pop music is done with mikes actually stuck into the sound holes of the piano. This is to get a highly detailed sound with a lot of presence. It is not the real sound of a piano
Alan
If you are listening to live solo piano music you should be listening in a large living room or moderate recital hall, not a concert hall. The sounds will be different. Actually, the musical performance itself will probably be different if the musician is a great artist.I know from personal experience it is possible to capture the tonal quality of a live piano extremely accurately, and that with microphones only a few inches from the edge of the piano, i.e. not quite under the upright lid. (AKG C-451 cardiods)
I spent quite a few hours finding the location where the tonal capture exactly matched the live sound of the playback matched the live sound of the piano at my usual listening position. It was not bright, nor was it rolled off. Other recordings (off some of the same music by the same artist) were made at live concerts and were not so "in the room present" bright.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Edits: 05/04/15
why does every reviewer praise a component that is able to "unravel individual lines" in music (or some variant language to that effect)? Should not the ability of a component to sound "coherent" (or whatever the audiophile terminology) be the better virtue?
Politics is not necessarily a dirty word. In the broadest sense, politics is what enables us to live together in relative civility and not "Omnes in bellum contra omnium."
(Each one at war against everyone.)
Reviewers have to listen to recordings, subjectively to evaluate loudspeakers. To evaluate loudspeakers, you have to make do with what is on recordings--that's the politics of getting along.
Recordings range from acoustical-horn recordings to 20 or more channels, and even with more than one mic per channel. So, the critic puts on a recording and tries in good faith to convey his impressions--we hope, impressions formed by years of experience, study, and self-criticism.
It is tempting to say that a loudspeaker cannot reproduce something that is not on the recording, but, I think that is a wish, rather than a statement of fact.
A loudspeaker's design can on the one hand add a greater sense of reverberant field that most other loudspeakers do; that is easy to prove.
And I would not rule out that a radically different loudsespeaker design might exaggerate initial transients while damping reverb tails sufficiently to give "edge enhancement" (to borrow a video term) to a recording, thereby soaking up some wetness. Wetness that is on the recording, but, now you don't hear it. I can envision that.
On some recordings, the inner lines are laid bare--there are 20 or more different microphones to thank for that--but you might not hear authentic blend.
On other recordings, the orchestra speaks with one voice, but, whether that line is a low clarinet part or a high bassoon part might leave most of us guessing.
What to praise? What to damn?
My peak formative musical experience was the first time that a student orchestra I had just joined tuned up, and I was sitting as the new principal second violin. I was immersed (perhaps Baptized is a better term?) in sound, and I have been trying to understand how THAT works ever since. So this is not at all the first time I have grappled with these issues.
How's this for an interim remedy?
Every audio critic should have one orchestral recording that is unquestionably multi-miked up the wazoo (what ever that means--wazoo that is). I nominate Leopold Stokowski's London Phase 4 "Pictures at an Exhibition" for that.
And every audio critic should also have an iconic Decca Tree three-channel recording, and for that I nominate the Charles Munch BSO Debussy "La Mer."
Play them both, and then try to explain in each case, what the Device Under Test adds or subtracts.
Howdja like them apples?
jm
Very nice Mr. Marks
Alan
jm
I thought that picture looked familiar. I got it out and am playing it now, very nice. I wouldn't call it dull by any means. Good illusion of a piano playing in a recital hall, though I doubt it would pass a live vs. reproduced test. Lovely, nuanced performances.
Some people seem to think Nimbus recordings are too reverberant. This one used what they called the Soundfield microphone, not really described in the notes to this CD.
-----
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
if you are sitting close to the musicians in the concert. Try chamber music sometime in a room it was designed for...ie. a chamber rather than a cathedral.
I made some recordings of my ex playing solo violin in my 20 m2 living room (small apartment I had at that time) standing right between my Acoustat 1+1s I had at the time. I had a single condenser mic, a tube mic pre and a TEAC R2R tape deck from the late 70s. It sounds raw but LIVE...just like I heard it in the room...just slightly drier (small room has fast decay times and you are hearing that twice.). That is how a lot of modern instruments will sound in a live setting in a small room.
I also had the opportunity to hear Schubert quintet (2 violins, viola and 2 cellos) played in the home of a rich doctor in London as part of a Schubert festival. It had a similar, ultra present and a bit bright presentation. It was fantastically exciting. We were sitting not more than 3 meters from the performers.
Finally, my ex often played home concerts for her rich benefactor in Zürich. Their main room was pretty large but they had a Bosendorfer concert grand piano in there and she would play violin sonatas with piano accompianment. The sound was slightly softer as the first reflections were pretty far away but still far more present than a moderate sized concert hall or church.
Of course if you attend a string quartet concert at the Barbican and sit near the back it will sound a bit lacking in air and lacking in dynamic punch. But I heard Lang Lang, Vadim Repin and Mishka Maisky in Barbican in the third row and it was plenty dynamic and present...and lit up.
Finally, I heard a concert at Tonhalle in Zürich with Saxaphone and piano (Kenny Barron on piano...can't remember the sax guy he was not as famous). We sat in the 2nd row and the presence of the Sax was stunning and breathing.
I do have one recording where I know how it was made, that doesn't have this close up, Deutsche Grammophone, kind of sound. It was made with a single ribbon stereo microphone (blumlein config) and about 6 meters from the front of the stage. THe performance is Prokovfiev's Romeo and Juliet and it is amazingly accurate for how a concert would sound live at about that distance. I was fortunate enough to hear a performance of it live a couple of years later from nearly the right position in the hall and the overall balance and presence was very similar to this SOTA recording.
Which recording of the Prokovfiev are you referring to?
Alan
To the best of my knowledge it is not commercially available but the recording engineer was a guy named Russell Dawkins.
.
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
In an audience listening position, standard recording techniques give a signal, which when reproduced with standard stereo, sounds far too muddy, wet and reflective.
Your brain is very clever and does sophisticated source estimation and of course has trained itself against the reflections from your outer ear, so the perceived psychological experience is surprisingly not what the physical sound pressure, reduced to two scalar signals.
So, stereo is an enormously engineered illusion that is a weak simulation of the actual experience.
Microphones are closer to the source than typical listening position, and thus they experience less high frequency dissipation than a natural live listening position would.
Also, many microphones are well above a orchestra or live acoustic band. I've heard that violins sound screechy from above, but normal from ground level. They're directional.
As gordon holt said, Down With Flat!!!!
I love wide mono. It is what I experience at the symphony, middle section 30 rows back. I get that "modern" recordings want more information on them for the thrill seeker but, which labels go for the "dull" sound with wide mono as I like it? Old Decca records are a treat but, generally so old and beat that I can't enjoy them too much as I get tired of the noise.
What you said certainly explains a real problem with digital recordings. It is upsetting to buy a new digital recording of classical music (IMO with pop you get what you get) and discover that it is bright, hard and very unnatural because it is so closely mic'd. No violin at a concert has ever sounded anyway near as awful as they all seem to in a recording.
> > In order to capture the kind of information (amplitude, arrival time, and phase) that is needed to create a convincing illusion of individual instruments in a stereo soundfield, the microphones have to be so close that the timbral balance they pick up is not natural when compared to what you hear at a live recital or concert. < <
I'm certainly not a recording engineer, but based purely on my long-time listening to both live and recorded performances, I don't believe I have ever read any analysis that matches this one in terms of defining the problem concisely, cogently and persuasively. Thank you, John! I'm very glad you hang out here.
-Bob
"Twilight Zone" allusion.
Thanks,
John
That's for me! Most of them these days have "praise bands".
The only times (rarely) I have heard of (not "heard"--"heard of") a string quartet liturgically in a church was for the Seven Last Words of Christ.
ATB,
JM
"Why hast thou forsaken me, you jerk?"
Were these the words he uttered?
-RW-
Does the string quartet that played processional/recessional music at my wedding count? ")
Cerebrate!
Your listening position kept changing (well, yours, on the way out not in).
jm
I wonder what was going through the bride's mind as she passed the critical distance. "The sound is becoming much clearer with each step. The soundstage is broadening. I must be within the critical distance. No, wait, I'm hyper-ventilating.":)
Edits: 05/04/15
And as the father of the bride crossed that threshold, he said to himself, "When they said 'string-quartet music,' I never imagined I would be paying for four real live musicians! Sheesh!"
jm
Good ones!In this case, truth is funnier than fiction.
What was actually going thru the bride's head at that moment was:"I can't believe I've kept the bishop waiting 45 minutes..."
What was going thru my father-in-law's head had little to do with the cost of the quartet.
Fortunately, he had raised a violist who had married a violinist; they had many musician friends, and the quartet was part of their gift to us. Our guests received quite the concert while waiting.
I, on the other hand, had spent the time prior to the scheduled start of the wedding being told funny stories by the bishop. These stories revolved around stuff that had happened at previous weddings, like the time the bride was very, very late, and what he had done. These stories were funny when people were just arriving.
The whole day really was a comedy of errors in many ways (there is much more to the story, like the Limo Driver From Hell who was the cause of all the delay). But we weathered it together, and twenty-six years later, we're still happily married.
And *everyone* remembers *our* wedding. :)
Cerebrate!
Edits: 05/05/15
the waves caressing or crashing upon the shore, waterfalls, birds singing, etc. Okay -- urban sounds...not so much :-)
"In order to capture the kind of information (amplitude, arrival time, and phase) that is needed to create a convincing illusion of individual instruments in a stereo soundfield, the microphones have to be so close that the timbral balance they pick up is not natural when compared to what you hear at a live recital or concert."
This mic technique can furnish cues -- for the absent visual cues -- used to help establish location in a recording. Anyway, that's what I'm positing :-) I agree, unfortunately, when one balances for sound in a given sweet spot -- it may result in a stereo recording considered...distant.
Vbr,
Sam
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