High expectations when listening to an orchestra


If you listen to an orchestra and expect to hear the real thing, you’re certain to be disappointed.
There’s no way you can come close to that experience  with your equipment.  An orchestra in your listening space is an impossibility. Therefore you have to adopt a “suspension of disbelief.”  In other words, trick yourself into believing it’s the real  thing.  You have to bring your imagination to the equation.
The degree to which you can suspend your disbelief, will determine how much enjoyment you get.
Of course, the better the quality of your equipment, the closer you will come.
With lesser forces than an orchestra, such as a few instruments or solo instrument or voice, the easier it becomes to approach reality.
rvpiano

Showing 1 response by dynacohum

Orchestral sound is perceived by each of us at each performance from the seat we have purchased, not from the location where the mics are suspended from the ceiling, so acheiving a facsimile of our memory on playback is a work of imagination, not a realistic possibility.  Even if your seat is directly below the mics, (which puts you in the front rows of the orchestra seating), you are hearing a different sound than the mics are getting suspended in space away from all boundaries, without the sound dispersing influence of the concertgoers all around you.  And that ideal assumes the recording is a live to 2-track, unedited take of the concert using "set and forget" recording levels and spaced omnis or something approximating that.
That said, it's still fun to try, and if you get a result that transports you back to the venue in your mind, you have reason to be a happy audiophile!  Whether this system will be an equally effective "time/space transport apparatus" for other genres of music is another question altogether. It's always been my belief that the true measure of a system's "faithfulness" is its ability to expose the recording as it is, not to sound like you think it should.