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In Reply to: Re: It's quite possible. Chamber works are slow sellers in any format but they usually cost less to produce. posted by dbphd on March 31, 2007 at 11:36:06:
in your own living room or music room.But regardless of the above, to me the essential heart and soul of classical music.
Harry
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No matter how good the recording, no matter how wonderful the performance, no matter what format or how expensive and accurate your system, you will never come more than close to reproducing the sound of a symphony orchestra in your listening room. There is no way you can capture the sound of 60 or 80 musicians playing in a multi-thousand cubic foot space and shrink it down to fit inside your living room, playing out of two or five or twenty-five speakers.However, it is comparatively easy to put a chamber ensemble smack dab in between a pair of stereo speakers with such eerie presence and depth that you can close your eyes and swear they're there. I have fooled myself many times with a good recording of a string quartet or piano trio, but I have never fallen for the ultimate lie when listening to a recorded orchestra. I tell myself: "My, this sounds similar to what I heard the other night in Overture Hall." But then, sometimes, I tell myself: "Holy shit, where did that cello and piano come from?"
...transport the home listener to the recording space, not to bring the musicians into your home. In that sense, it is clearly possible to create a suitable experience of hearing both orchestras and chamber groups realistically at home. Isn't this the very reason why multichannel audio is moving forward? Multichannel done well will create the recording space more effectively than simple two-channel, bringing the listener there. I use a Hafler ambience arrangement to get this type of experience in my home. On the best recordings, I experience a credible illusion of being at the concert hall/recording space, whether it is an orchestra going full bore on Mahler or a Bach cello suite.If you are expecting the musicians to be in your home you will be sadly disappointed because it is simply not a realistic expectation.
Mark
I have had classical musicians in my living room. They are used to playing in concert halls. Even small halls are vastly bigger than my rather big living room. They were simply too loud. They preferred to play at near the volume they usually play, and their instruments are designed to fill a concert hall. They simply overwhelmed my room. Once I heard a very good professional opera singer sing some arias in the living room. The volume was amazing. I think I would have liked it better if I went several rooms away. I agree with you. My goal with my systems has been been to transport myself to the concert hall, and MCH sound can be an enormous asset for this. All this said, maybe this discussion is really about how words are being used, and there is no real disagreement.
HowdyI've got to wonder how much of this depends on how your system is set up. I like using absorption with no explicit diffusion for my system. The room is just about as dead as I can get it without giving that "full ear" feeling you get in an anechoic chamber. This way I essentially hear everything from the speakers on the first pass a get as little room interaction as possible. IMO this gives me a fighting chance of experiencing the venue where the music was recorded and with the better surround recordings I sure don't feel like I'm listening in my own room.
For decades I have sought to recreate the feeling I am at the venue where the music was recorded. Since I listen primarily to classical music, this is a real challenge. About 30 years ago I was thinking somewhat along the lines you describe. I had speakers with relatively low dispersion and a fairly dead room, so that the ambiance information on the recording could come straight to me without modification by the room reflections. However, 2-ch stereo just couldn't do it. I became very interested in time-delay units and bought an Advent 5000. This added a lot of the concert hall experience, but it wasn't right; it added ambiance to ambiance.I think the ideal system would be a fairly dead room, low-dispersion front speakers, side speakers, and rear speakers with recordings properly encoded to feed the right information to the right speakers. Thus the room would drop out of the equation, and all ambiance information would be carefully created and controlled. We're not there yet, but a well set-up MCH SACD system goes a long way in this direction.
HowdyEven tho for two channel I have to admit that vinyl can beat SACD, for MC in my experience it's just not a fair contest. SACD MC often transports me to other places... even contrived ones :)
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