Disturbing "Sonic Trend" showing up on SOTA audio

@Bdp24 - your comments are not surprising at all to me. Your priority as a musician is to get as "real" a sound as possible. This is simply not the priority of the vast majority of recording engineers. Also, you were using just a couple of mikes with analog tape. Engineers never do this with digital recording nowadays, even if they know better- they would be fired by people who don't know any better, unfortunately.

@ Newbee - I must admit that I am very confused about where you are calling "ear-bleeding" seats?? This is not a term I have ever encountered before - usually the term "nose-bleed" is used for the highest balcony, but I don't think that is what you are referring to here. Are you referring to the closest seats? Davies Hall in SF never sounded particularly good, and I have heard that the last remodel didn't help much either. MTT definitely loves his louds, that is for sure, LOL!

@Schubert - my understanding of the audiophile term "imaging" is to pinpoint exactly where instruments are located in the "soundstage." Contrary to what you seem to be implying, unless I am misunderstanding you, it should be much easier to do this listening to live music in a concert hall, and I don't mean because you can see the instruments - you should be able to tell, if you close your eyes, where individual sections are on the stage even in a very large orchestra - if not, you would have no hope to ever do so on a recording, assuming it was a recording where this would be audible. With modern digital recording and mixing, though, this is almost impossible to tell anymore - everything is blandly washed together, usually with absolutely no attempt to recreate what the hall actually sounds like. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the way audiophiles use the term "imaging" though - correct me if I am wrong, guys. But here is an example of how I interpret that term. There is an Oscar Peterson record put out by Pablo entitled Peterson 6 at Montreux. This is a very well recorded album, with fantastic "imaging" - you can indeed pinpoint exactly where each individual performer is on the stage, and the "soundstage" of the recording replicates very faithfully the actual live sound - to me, you can't have "imaging" if you don't have a decent "soundstage" in the first place - which, again, is almost non-existent in current recording. This is my understanding, anyway, of what audiophiles mean by these terms. Please correct me if you guys think my use of these terms is different from how most audiophiles use them.

Thanks for the clarification, Newbee. As I said in my previous post, in a concert hall, you should be able to close your eyes and still listen and be able to tell where different instruments are located on the stage. It may be slightly easier to do this in some places in the hall than others, but honestly I have never thought about this- one should be able to tell that regardless of where one sits in the hall. An inability to do this would say much more about one's ears than the design of the hall, reflections, etc.

Very well put, Frogman!

Very interesting thread. I think Schubert and Frogman have the best posts. Most people simply do not listen to live, unamplified music anymore. This does NOT invalidate that as the best standard, however, for the reasons they state.

IMO, the most distorted view is that of the bass. Many audiophiles demand what is a very overpowering bass compared to what live, un-amplified bass actually sounds like. This is because they are used to hearing cranked up, electronically produced, un-natural sounding bass, both at rock concerts and in their audio systems. This is quite easily proven at any audio show, which I have done several times, to the chagrin of someone pushing a subwoofer.....but I digress.

@Tgrisham - I would agree with most of what you said, with one huge exception. In this sentence - "the vast majority of music is studio recorded with the engineer's idea of what it should sound like live in person.", I would strike the last three words. Most recording engineers nowadays have absolutely no interest in having their result sound like live - they LOVE the control the dead studio gives them so they can make the music sound however they want, period, without being limited by a specific room.

@Newbee - Your last post is a good one, again with one correction. Rows D or E in a concert hall would be WAY too close to listen to an orchestra as large as that of a Mahler symphony!! A very great deal would be lost sitting that close! Even in the very best concert halls, sound travels back and also up. So the best floor seats are more like 2/3 to 3/4 of the way back - as long as they are not under the overhang of the balconies. The very best sets in the house for listening to a gigantic orchestra, however, would be center, higher up, on what is usually called a mezzanine level in many halls (not the very top level).