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RE: Makes sense

Posted by Paul Eizik (A) on September 18, 2016 at 10:03:21

In Reply to: "they are there and you at some distance" vs "they are in your room" dynamic range requirements posted by freddyi on September 17, 2016 at 11:52:59:

Freddy

The first time I saw this effect discussed was in Sound Practices where Herb Reichert was describing the difference between direct radiator speakers compared to horns as the difference between "you are there" and "they (the performers) are here".

I don't have any of the recordings you mention here, but a favorite for extreme dynamic range demos is Jean Guillou's pipe organ recording of Pictures at an Exhibition on Dorian CD from the 90's. My wife loved it. She commandeered my copy to her work, so another "home copy" had to be obtained, and she also requested a cassette version for the car too. When I made the cassette I was careful to adjust the levels to one of the louder passages. In the car the cassette was pretty much unlistenable, because if you turned up the quieter parts so you could hear them over the road noise, the louder parts would then push the dinky Sparkomatic amp into hard distortion! Seems kinda funny now though. I still have that tape, I should try it on the 500 Watt Monsoon in my Camaro, but I think the results won't be all that much better. My big horn rig at home with 30 Watts has no problem with it.

Another favorite is the soundtrack from The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen on vinyl. Some years ago I did some stuff to my Ampex 402 preamp and played this record as a first test. There are orchestral sections plus other sections with solo instruments close mic'd, and it's all mixed together amazingly well. The solo instruments sounded amazingly life like after the mods, like the instruments were right there in the room! However all the other recordings I played sounded terrible, very screechy! I later found out that I had inadvertently broken the rudimentary "loudness" cap off the volume pot. This is not switchable on this preamp and the phono RIAA filter was engineered with it in place. The audiophile term "revealing" comes to mind, and what this frequently reveals is there is a peak in the treble somewhere, and this peak was a whopper! It's odd that this recording still sounds good with a treble peak that makes most everything else sound screechy. Other recordings by the same composer sound good, but are not as outstanding as the Munchausen, and I often wondered what equipment they used. The CD and cassette versions have become collectible last I heard, but the vinyl is still reasonably available.

"It's a rocky road to Dublin": The Chieftains
but "...lots of fun at Finnigan's Wake": James Joyce

Paul

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