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Re: The answer lies in the nature of the thing

Posted by Dr. S (R) on March 10, 2007 at 19:23:03

In Reply to: I have a question: why is it so difficult to record piano? posted by Joel_Waterman on March 10, 2007 at 16:06:34:

Arguably pianos are the hardest, but I think the one we most always recognize as "recorded" is the human voice.

Pianos are this hellish combination of primary percussion (hammer hitting string), with brutal transients and dynamics, and all of this harmonic interplay across all of those octaves. Then there are all of these pieces and parts vibrating their little hearts out.

Analog, whatever your feelings about the attractiveness of its euphonies, simply lacks the huevos. It never gets the leading edge right and 60db of dynamic range is simply inadequate to the task.

Clearly superior to the best analog, 44.1k and 96k PCM digital, DSD - Direct Stream Digital (SACD) offers a flat frequency response from essentially DC to 100,000k, and a usable dynamic range of over 110db (compared to about 60db for the best analog). If you want to know what that means, ask a recording engineer about compression of solo piano recordings.

Using a short path (no more than 50' of microphone cable to preamplifiers, no mixing board, and appropriate microphony (such as the Sennheiser MKH-800) ... feeding a DSD recorder, the results of the actual recording and live microphone feed are indistinguishable.

I have been there, and heard that, in analog and PCM, and many times with DSD. Talk to someone who has actually heard the microphone feed/master recording relationship (as opposed to someone who simply has an opinion, uninformed by empirical fact) and they will tell you the same thing; DSD done correctly is indistinguishable from the microphone feed.

And yet, here we are, nearly a decade later, nattering away about recording distribution formats, I-pods and other such complete nonsense, and perhaps pissing away the best chance we have ever had for being able to record pianos (and everything else) properly.

And don’t even bother to try to bait me in to a “mine is bigger than yours,” flame war. When you have actually had the experience, you will have a reason to speak.

The Good (if frustrated) Doctor

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