Grammy-nominated recordings typically reflect the highest standards of recording engineering and fidelity. 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.
Is it possible to really know what you're doing?
Somehow I managed to select components that are getting along and feel comfortable with how things are sounding after many upgrades. I rely on others to advise along the way. I'm very good at asking questions.
Every facet of a set up is quite complicated. Even power cord's can be challenging. Name recognition is very important and there are so many names.
The technical aspects of everything involved is clearly overwhelming and requires a lot to barely understand. I've learned enough to know that I really don't understand a lot. At least I'm able to appreciate what I'm listening to which is all that really matters, and know if something sounds good.
Just my thoughts for what they are worth.
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Swapping, mixing and matching high fidelity components and cables is a long cherished audiophile activity which undoubtedly has produced countless hours of audio enjoyment. The drawback to this process is the amount of time and expense that it consumes. Today with digital signal processing (DSP) you can tune and optimize your system real time. First start by combining excellent speakers, modern power amplifiers with a digital source which will leverage Dirac or other DSP System / Room correction algorithms Once you have your speakers positioned, the next step is to optimize your system using tools like REW and Dirac Live room correction. Now you can make adjustments, listen to the results and measure the results rapidly. It’s enlightening to be able to make adjustments to your system and measure them in real time. https://deercreekaudio.com/tech-blog Here are some examples of Dirac Live correction
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You’re absolutely correct. It’s interesting that MBL’s founder was motivated by the desire to move about the listening room without loss of sound quality. I completely empathize with that approach. I find the idea of sitting at length in a single chair in a windowless, mausoleum-like room triangulated as if by a land surveyor, unappealing. I can move around my room, including in the 15 ft-deep space behind my speakers, without experiencing a major deterioration in sound quality. Which actually makes sense, since they have 3 open-baffle mids, arranged in a modest line array; front- and rear-firing ribbon tweeters; and two 10" woofers in sealed, divided enclosures. I wish I could say that extensive research and countless auditions led me to a speaker architecture that works in my room and is right for me, but I got them off craigslist because they were cheap and they looked good. They were intended as interim speakers while I looked for my "real" speakers, but a funny thing happened: I grew to really like them. 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.
Worthwhile outcomes both! 😂
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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! |
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! |
@richardbrand I agree that Time Machine's performance is amazing. I'm not sure how Rex interpreted Grainger’s use of the foot pedals — By ear I would guess. Thank you for reminding me about L2. I was astonished to learn how productive they've been in recent years since I last visited their website. That got me thinking again about multichannel streamers and DACs, which are still quite rare. I suppose both we and the market have been largely two-channel driven. Now I realize that when playing these multichannel formats on a 2-channel system, the original spatial (surround) placement gets lost in translation. My 2-channel setup — and perhaps no 2-channel system — can truly reproduce that 3D effect, especially the instruments or vocals that are originally placed behind the listener. Even my soundstage isn’t wide enough to fully cover side vocals. Clearly, a multichannel system is needed to reproduce that experience accurately. That’s why I’ve never used "3D holographic" as one of my system metrics — only "depth" or "layering" — due to the inherent limitations of two-channel playback. 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 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"! |
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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 |
@richardbrand Thank you. That answers my question. Since the picture shows him playing the pedals, I was curious why pedaling could also be entirely encoded onto the rolls. I read that the Duo-Art was invented in 1913–14, and it’s amazing that the machine could even simulate ’flutter’ pedaling performed by a pianist—though only to a certain degree and heavily dependent on how the rolls were prepared or edited. It’s remarkable that it achieved all this not digitally, but purely through pneumatic control of mechanical parts. I enjoy talking with you about these detailed nuances. While listening to music on a refined system, the intellectual enrichment is equally refreshing and rewarding.
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Similar experience/journey. what really helped educate my ears was being part of a small group of fellow audiophiles and regular listening sessions at each others houses and we were all going thru different gear as upgrades or just on loan to listen to. we also played a lot with speaker positions and room treatments in each of our rooms. being able to listen to a lot of gear and with mags like the absolute sound and stereophile as our guides was a great experience.
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