Is it possible to really know what you're doing?

@lanx0003 

I agree that a reference / standard needs to be established.  ... This includes precise imaging—where each sound source is rendered with a clear, stable, and locational presence within the soundstage

Those of us who mainly listen to ’classical’ music do indeed have a reference / standard in live, unamplified performances in concert hall acoustics. 

These concert hall acoustics however do not offer a clear locational presence within a soundstage especially if several performers are playing simultaneously.

Try a large-scale Mahler symphony where at times over 100 musicians are playing simultaneously, often loudly.  Even when Mahler throttles back to say, a mandolin solo, the hall acoustics still dominate directivity!  See the MBL reference in my previous post ...

@devinplombier 

I would say that the first step is for a person to determine what type of speakers they prefer. That is, not brand or model; but rather speaker architecture. 

Is it open baffle? Planar? Stand-mount with subs? Active or passive?

Agree 100% - speakers are the most important component because of their inherent colourations and interference effects of drivers with each other and with the room.  But you missed a very important consideration - are they designed to emulate a point source of sound?

Answering this simple question can eliminate 99% of speakers!  Not to mention, antagonising the 99% of audiophiles who own those speakers. 

There is an interesting viewpoint on MBL's website: Company

@lanx0003 

In Grammy-nominated or Grammy-winning recordings, the recording engineering approach is almost always multi-microphone technique, not One Mic.  Multi-mic tech. enables precise control over indi. instruments, vocals, room acoustics, direct sound, image, SS depth, etc. We are talking about reference / standard here in lieu of something based on someone's ad hoc opinion

My favourite Grammy recordings are by the Norwegian label 2L - see 2L - the Nordic Sound.  They are not just multi-microphone, they are multi-channel delivered on SACD, Blu-ray and Dolby Atmos.  Many are of classical music and get rave reviews from, for example, the Gramophone magazine, which has been going for over 100 years.  In my opinion, for classical music, Gramophone carries more weight than a Grammy committee.

Note that 2L recordings do however follow the principle of 'one microphone' to capture the original performance in its recording space.  So the 'one microphone' becomes a central, fixed microphone 'tree'.  My understanding is that, apart from mixing down, for example to reduce the number of channels for SACD and vinyl, no further processing is performed.  These days 2L uses DSD files sampled at a very high frequency for archiving.  All lesser digital formats can be precisely computed from the archive data.

The producer Morten Lindberg also turns the question of microphone positioning on its head.  Instead of "where should the microphones be placed?" he asks "where should the players be?".  His rather surprising answer is in an approximate circle around the microphones, but away from the walls of the venue.  He believes all recordings are an illusion and his illusions are better than most!

Admittedly he tends to record with smaller forces than a full symphony orchestra of over 100 instruments!  Despite that, one of his towering achievements, in my opinion, is his recording of Grieg's Piano Concerto.  The pianist is the Australian Percy Grainger who was born in 1882 and would be 143 if alive today, so obviously there is some trickery!

Percy made piano roll recordings in 1921 and here they are replayed on a modern Steinway piano with the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in full multichannel.  Simply stunning!

@devinplombier 

I say this as someone who’s always loved the transparency and speed of planar speakers. I was this close to buying a set of Sanders 10e, but merely standing up from your chair felt as if someone had put a motorcycle helmet over your ears. They are amazing-sounding speakers that I warmly recommend to anyone who doesn’t mind their beaminess, but at the end of the day I’m glad I didn’t buy them

For forty years or so I have listened to Quad electrostatic ’planar’ loudspeakers, the ESL-63 and ESL 2905 to be precise, backed by subwoofers from Duntech and then Velodyne.

In my opinion, these electrostatics are amongst the most misunderstood designs of all time (ha, back on topic!).

Peter Walker, the designer, certainly knew about the ’beaminess’ issue displayed by almost all planar designs.  He also knew from his original electrostatics, now known as the 57, about cross-over issues with multiple drivers.

The overarching brilliance of his design was to make a planar panel behave like a virtual point source of sound.  The point source is about a foot (30 cms) behind the diaphragm.  You can envisage the sound waves radiating in spherical wavefronts from the point source.  When these imaginary waves reach the panel, the first bit to move is the centre.  Then the wavefront expands outwards in a circle.

Peter emulated this behaviour by arranging eight annular rings to be fed the signal with increasing delay towards the outside.  Note that the delay need only factor in the speed of sound from the virtual point source.

When you add in the lack of cabinet colouration (there isn’t one) and the speed of a diaphragm almost as light as air, y0u can see why the Gramophone equipped its main reviewers with ESL-63 speakers.  I found I could walk round my FREDs (Full Range Electrostatic Dipoles) and the sound was consistent even in the plane of the panel, where there should be no output at all!  I put that down to coherent wall reflections and the ear-brain’s ability.

Alas, nothing is perfect and the protection circuits in the ESLs are more easily triggered by the peaks in digital source material - like Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story.

These days I mainly use another speaker designed to emulate a point source, the KEF Reference 1.  Like you, I bought a pair secondhand as stop gaps while repairing my Quads.  The KEFs play so much louder!

@lanx0003 

Are you motivated to invest a multichannel stereo or you have it already? 

I've combined my video and audio playback capabilities for almost as long as I can remember, although it took me a long time to add rear speakers and even longer to cut holes in the ceiling for height speakers.

My main source is now a Reavon universal disk player, which inherits much of the technology from the high-end Oppo players but with much inferior Burr-Brown DACs.  So I just use it as a transport feeding out HDMI audio and separately HDMI video.  It natively handles SACD and many Blu-Ray audio formats including Dolby Atmos.

I use a Marantz AV8802 pre-processor feeding a 2-channel Krell KSA80 Class A amplifier for the main speakers, and a six-channel Perreaux amplifier for the rest.  No centre channel by design!

The Marantz has an array of eight identical Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AMD) 2-channel DACs, which each handle Direct Stream Digital natively, as well as PCM up to 192-kHz at 24-bits.  They are far superior to the Reavon's Burr-Brown DACs.

So quite a different setup compared to the 2-channel streaming 'norm' many here use.

I'm not sure how Rex interpreted Grainger’s use of the foot pedals — By ear I would guess

I will re-read the technical details on how Percy Grainger's piano rolls were recorded, and report back shortly.  Percy did a lot of editing work fixing errors - the result was how "he would have liked to have played"!

@lanx0003 

I'm not sure how Rex interpreted Grainger’s use of the foot pedals — By ear I would guess

There's not as much information in the 2L booklet as I remembered, so I must have read this too - Duo-Art Reproducing Piano - The Pianola Institute.

For the original recording, Grainger used a Duo-Art reproducing piano which punched holes in paper rolls.  Editing was done with razor blades and sticky tape, just like my early computer programming - this was cut and paste for real! 

By 1921 recordings were made on full 88-key instruments with the roll running at constant speed,  Dynamics and rubato were encoded into the rolls, which had four 'bits' reserved for volume.  This theoretically allowed 16 volume levels and was probably set by a second person, usually the producer, using pedals or dials at the time of recording.  Because the volume holes controlled analoge vacuum, which was also affected by the number of notes being played and their duration, much greater dynamic variation could be achieved.

Percy Grainger was heavily involved in editing the rolls.  He observed that "the Duo-Art represented him not as he actually played, but as he would like to have played".

Originally, the orchestral parts were added to the rolls, and these had to be removed, hole by hole, with sticky tape.

For 2L's recording, a major issue was synchronising the orchestral entry at the end of each piano solo.  Microprocessor control allowed the roll to stop after each solo, and the pianolist to restart using a remote control.

So Rex Lawson did not have to interpret for the Piano Concerto, though he did for earlier rolls made by Grieg included on this recording