Sat front row at the symphony...

Mahler123 is correct that violin recordings with orchestra are just about always overmiked. Unfortunately, the live reality is that the 1 violin soloist is competing with at least 20 players in a small chamber orchestra in Mozart concertos, e.g. For big concertos like Brahms, the orchestra has 100 players, so the ratio is even worse. In addition, the violin SPL is fairly soft, and winds and brass are much louder. The orchestra is told to play softer in order to let the violin soloist be heard better, but it is still a losing battle for the soloist who is vastly overpowered. I have been frustrated by how the violinist often has to play louder than he wants in order to just be heard over the orchestra. This live experience is certainly natural, but so are rotten apples that taste bad and poison mushrooms that kill you. Piano concertos with orchestra have much better live balance, since the piano has very loud natural capability, and its unique percussive character enables much better natural balance with the orchestra. The bottom line for hearing violin concertos with orchestra live, is that only the first few rows let you hear the violin soloist’s details at reasonable volume, say 60 dB. Further away, at 40-50 dB, the live violin is certainly natural, but micro details and nuances are mostly missing, compared to the 1st row.

This is one reason I gravitate towards chamber music such as string quartets where there are only 4 string players and they are easy to balance. Recordings mike all the players equally, so these better balanced recordings are a much better likeness to live reality than violin or flute concertos with orchestra.

There are many examples of small orchestra pieces that have been performed by string quartet (SQ). Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusic is very popular for orchestra, but have you heard it played live or on recordings as a string quartet? I love my Budapest SQ recording from about 1960. In the SQ, the details and individuality of each player are showcased and the ensemble has great balance--the best of everything, and not too loud, which prevents fatigue. Whereas in a string orchestra, all the players in each section are blended together so you can’t hear the true greatness of each musician.

There are perverse examples of the other way around--string quartets arranged for orchestra. Mahler did this, but all he did was multiply the string quartet with many players on each part. Leonard Bernstein was a great artist conductor who made a recording of late Beethoven quartets on DG. I like his interpretations, but there is still more sensitivity and detail heard with almost any professional quartet playing these works.

I suggest to music lovers who love sound that they pursue whatever means is needed to get more knowledge and appreciation of the music. Live unamplified sound is the most natural, but there are compromises with that. Far away balcony sound has good balance, but there is so much detail missing compared to the close seats. Very close seats have much more detail but some balance is sacrificed. The gold standard on an intellectual level is the score, which contains details that almost nobody in the hall hears. A reasonable combination of good attributes is the 5th row. I make a personal choice to emphasize the details, which gets me closest to the score, which is why I get the most thrills from performing on stage. Another poster told of his thrills hearing Gidon Kremer the violinist from the 1st row, compared to his usual more distant seat.  So enjoy those violin and other recordings that are close miked with unnatural balance.  At least you get the details with the fullest appreciation of the sensitive nuances of the soloist.

If I get to age 100, I expect to be nearly deaf. I might still be able to perceive live natural balance from a distant seat, but it will be so faint as to not matter much. At age 105 with total deafness, I will seek musical pleasure from reading scores and "hearing" it in my mind. I believe this is possible, even when the hair cells in the ear cochlea are gone. Even now, I can elicit tears from my memory of great music I know, when it is silent in the room. Beethoven "heard" his late music when he was totally deaf, and these are among his great masterpieces. I fantasize that one day we will have media that electronically stimulate the auditory cortex of the brain, so we can play a recording direct to brain and hear it that way. Maybe some offspring of the producers of direct-to-disc.

The best position in the hall for any ensemble is the conductor on the podium, front stage center.  That is, for maximum detail which is the basis of tone and other characteristics of music.  As an experienced performer in orchestra, chamber groups, I know the facts.  Next best is the 1st row center.  By the 2nd row, there is already significant loss of high freq detail.  Remember that microphones are very close, so an accurate audio system will approximate the close sound of the mikes.  More distant seats further away than the 2nd row will give more spatiality, of course, but at the big sacrifice of vocal/instrumental detail, esp HF rolloff.

There was an ignorant early 80's review of great concert halls in TAS.  #1 was the Musikverein in Vienna.  The author said that any seat in that hall was great.  Well, I went to Vienna shortly after.  I sat in the 25th row--utter garbage reverberant mud.  The 12th row was much better, but nothing like the 3rd row.  

Get a good, natural recording of a piece you want to hear at a concert hall.  Go to a student concert where there will be plenty of open seats so you can try different distances.  Then go home and listen to your audio system which is hopefully accurate, and devoid of euphonic electronics and sources.  My accurate electrostatics and components have the detail of the 1st row, although the live 1st row still has the ultimate naturalness.  By the 3rd row, the beauty of the live sound is still wonderful, but HF brilliance is already significantly gone.

Petaluman,

You said, "It's not about the sound."  Half true.  The live experience combines sound and visuals.  But the next time you attend a live concert, close your eyes and listen honestly to the sound.  The sound is the main subject of this discussion thread.  Many people here have addressed the comparison between the live concert sound and the home audio sound.  Although live unamplified sound is more natural than that of any audio system, at a location far away from the performers  so much detail is lost compared to any decent audio system playing a relatively unprocessed recording.  As a performing violinist, I listen carefully to my colleagues performing, and as a listener I seek to hear as much detail as possible to appreciate the music. To appreciate full details and nuances, no live location far away can compete with a good audio system.  But front row center always beats any audio system for detail and naturalness.

At a recent concert I heard the Prelude to Act 1 of Lohengrin by Wagner.  From front row center, the sound of the front stage string section was superb.  But the cymbal crash from the back of the stage was AWFUL--muddy from excessive distance and too much reverberation.  It sounded like the tweeter was blown on a bad speaker.  Even an intact low-fi audio system is better for clarity than that mess.

juanmanuelfangioli,

One of my favorite recordings is Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, Dallas Symphony, conducted by Donald Johanos, 1967.  The companion recording of Copland works (Rodeo, Fanfare for the common man) shares the same recording technique.  They were done in the auditorium of Southern Methodist University.  These recordings were audiophile demo spectaculars in the mid 70's when I got started as an audiophile.  The recordings are close miked with minimal hall sound.  They sound like front row center.  Most other recordings of these pieces are distant with more ambience.  Musical clarity and detail are nearly completely lost in the soup of ambient smearing.  That's what you get with 20th row seating.  

mahler123,

The best listening position is the conductor's head on the podium.  He is closest to all the instruments and gets maximum detail.  He hears the best balance, so all the instruments are maximally revealed.  All instruments are more or less directional in their radiation patterns, and they are all facing him with nearly full toe-in.  (Incidentally, nearly all loudspeakers are directional, so to get the full frequency range, toe-in is desirable.  The only question is whether you beam the speakers to each ear, or the nose.) 

If the stage is high, like 4 feet in Carnegie Hall, then the first few rows will be below the axis of direct radiation from the instruments.  At about rows 7-10,  the radiation pattern will be more direct.  Unfortunately, at 40 feet distance, the 10th row will lose a lot of HF especially, compared to the 10 feet distance in the 1st row.  In my experience, the HF rolloff with the distant 10th row destroys the clarity and detail of HF overtones more than the benefit from the better projection.  In the front balcony about 100-150 feet away, there is SEVERE HF rolloff, much multipath acoustic smearing of the midrange.  The only benefit of front balcony seating is better visuals.  Although there is more spatiality in the balcony, the large distance turns the whole presentation into almost mono.  Ideal stereo separation might be the 10th row, but my paramount interest is to hear full freq harmonic detail.  Front row center is best for that, 

My most thrilling orchestral experiences have been when performing solo violin concertos standing on the front stage next to the conductor.  All the brass instruments blasted into my ears and body.  Subtle nuances from all instruments were unparalleled.  The front row in the hall was the next best thing.  Anything further back was boring DULLSVILLE by comparison.

mahler123,

You're right.  I have known a few professional musicians who aren't interested in an audiophile home system.  They get plenty of exposure to live natural sound in their work, so for recreation they are content with run of the mill sound.  I even met an elderly brass player who gave up playing his instrument soon after he retired.  He wanted to pursue other interests outside of music.  

But I have also known other pros who have good audio systems.  A pro violinist friend owned Maggie speakers with modest electronics and agreed with me about the uncolored tone of those speakers compared to dynamic speakers.  He cared about both live and audio system sound.  He played and owned an expensive Ruggieri 17th century violin, but didn't care to spend significant money on better audio electronics.  Later, he got a modern violin by a maker he met.  I played this modern violin, and it was quite good for its tone.  It would be valued today at $30-50K and offered more sonic pleasure than any uber expensive set of audio electronics.  As an excellent amateur violinist, I share the priorities of my pro violinist friend.

It seems that you have good ears for objectively describing sound, and know that close distances offer maximum detail.  I don't deliberately listen for extraneous nonmusical sounds that are only heard close up, but merely tune out the extraneous sounds because I am too busy enjoying the musical details.  It is still a fact of nature that mechanical sounds are part of any instrumental or vocal sound.  The first row (better yet, the stage) reveals everything, warts and all, but the balcony only a shadow remnant of the total tone.  The only thing the balcony offers is an interesting visualization of the instruments, which I admit is hidden from the 1st row.

As for fatigue, I listen at soft levels, so I have no fatigue.  Extraordinary clarity in my audio system enables me to be satisfied at soft levels, whereas people with less revealing dynamic speakers and euphonic electronics need much higher SPL's to get reasonable detail.  String quartets from the 1st row naturally are at 40-50 dB with peaks of maybe 75 dB.  A Mozart orchestra is about 60-70 dB mezzoforte.  Of course, Mahler can yield 100+ dB with all the brass blasting away.  But there are plenty of soft passages in Mahler.  The long opening of the 1st symphony is about 20-30 dB, before the buildup to the first cymbal crash.  In the balcony, the impact is considerably diluted and muddied.  

terraplane8bob,

See if you can find the Absolute Sound article on top 10 concert halls, about 1985.  Earlier I wrote about how the 25th row of the Musikverein (#1) was pure reverberant muddy garbage, but the 5th row was quite good.  I never got the opportunity to sit front row center.  I envy your pro experience of having played on that stage.  For listening, I would choose a close seat in any high school lecture hall over the 25th row in the Musikverein or any other esteemed hall.  There is a lot of ignorant hype from audio writers with limited musical experience.

While in Vienna, the host of my group let us organize several string quartets.  We each played for 5 min in an Esterhazy palace.  I have no idea of how much furniture was in the palace 300 years before I played there.  Listening fairly close to other groups, the sound was reverberant garbage.  The high society people 300 years ago were not sound critics, but were there to hobnob with each other and chatter without paying much attention to the music, just like today.

drbarney1, right.  Low mass planar drivers. like Magnepans are uncolored compared to expensive dynamic speakers.  Dynamic speakers can play louder than Maggies, however their coloration and veiling at 100 dB aren't worth listening even below 80 dB where Maggies and electrostatics shine.

davidvicek,  yes, classical music is very complex.  That's why it is important to obtain as much detail as possible in order to fully appreciate the music.  Playing opera or pieces like Russian Easter Overture by Rimsky Korsakov, the violin parts contain hidden passages that are only audible by the violinist.  When I listen to recordings or at a concert, these passages are totally hidden.  That's why only a close seat has any chance of revealing the full complexity.  Despite the visual advantages of more distant seats, the basic laws of physics say that details are absorbed by greater distances, esp at high freq.  To illustrate, the wavelength of a 10 kHz note is about 1 inch, while the wavelength of 20-100 Hz is 10-50 feet.  At a distance of 100 feet in the front balcony, there is much greater absorptive loss at 10 kHz compared to 20-100 Hz.  The perceived tonal balance in the balcony is therefore akin to a speaker without a tweeter, compared to close seats.

fleschler,

I agree with nearly everything you said, but differ only about very close rows.  Like you, as a performer, there is nothing like stage sound for detail, direct immediacy.  Using that criteria, only the 1st row is the next best thing to the stage.  Even the 2nd row is veiled by comparison.  Another reason is the absorption of sound from anyone sitting in front of you.  If I were a sitting giraffe with my head way over people, then the 2nd row might be nice.  

At the last concert I attended, I was sitting in the 1st row center.  The first piece was a piano concerto.  The orchestra was moved back, with the 1st violins and cello section at an equivalent 3rd row distance.  The next piece was pure orchestra, with the 1st violins and cello section moved forward to the usual 1st row distance.  There was a tremendous increase in detail from violins and cellos.  Many audiophiles change cables and find worthwhile differences, but the difference in direct brilliance between rows 1 and 3 is orders of magnitude greater.  That's why I can't stand the loss of brilliance further back than row 1, despite the visual advantage of greater distances.

I did some recordings.  My best work was with small ensembles on a shallow stage where my close mike placement could still yield good balances.  Even my cardioid Neumann KM 184 mikes picked up enough ambience to let the sound breathe.  I realized that why I disliked many commercial recordings was because of the addition of distant mikes to pick up more ambience.  I found that this excessive ambience mixed with the close mikes was responsible for smearing of details.

Yes, performance first, sound second.  I would rather listen to 1928 recordings of legendary violin masters like Fritz Kreisler on youtube, than today's violinists in pristine sound.  

fleschler and terraplane8bob,

I love the sound of my violin under my ear (fortunately I play well) which I admit isn't applicable to most listeners.  There is a vast difference between inches away and even only a few feet away.  I used to go to major auctions of violins and try out many violins.  I listened to good violinists playing a few feet away.  I was shocked when I then tried the same violin under my ear--I could hear many tonal flaws in the violin which I had no idea from listening to them just a few feet away.  So for ultimate listening pleasure, only the stage sound will do for me.  Sitting at a music stand listening to my partner, his/her precision of execution is way beyond even sitting in the 1st row as a listener.  These days I play in a small orchestra connected to a choral group.  I hear several types of instruments and choral soloists at very close range.  There is no elevated stage, so the line of sight is pure, and there is no problem as in a typical hall where the first few rows have obstructed line of sight.  The tonal purity and detail are way beyond what a typical listener in a hall can get.  What I value as exciting, crisp tonality, most listeners think it as too bright/thin.  What I consider as dull and veiled, they think is just right.  That is unfortunate, because they didn't grow up with intimate contact with real instruments.  It is a major factor in why most audio manufacturers produce mediocre veiled speakers and euphonic electronics, all designed to produce a facsimile of this laid back sound that most listeners are familiar with.

In addition to the Turnabout LP's of Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, the 1950's Mercury Living Presence recordings are some of the few examples of close perspectives that deliver clarity and impact.  In mono and stereo, the few main mikes were placed 10 feet over the conductor's head to deliver detail and enough but not too much spatiality which would muddy the sound.  My recordings were inspired by the Turnabout and Mercury recordings.  I used two Neumann KM184 cardioids near the conductor's head angled 90-110 degrees according to the width of the ensemble, with the diaphragms separated about 10 inches.  I got pinpoint imaging and top clarity, better than Mercury because I didn't need additional spaced omnis.  My recordings have less depth than commercial recordings.  I have found that you cannot have high clarity and lots of depth at the same time.  You have to make a choice.  Close distance is associated with less depth.  Far distance yields more depth but poor clarity.  Medium distance gives some clarity and some depth, which is what almost all recording engineers strive for.  But it is an unacceptable compromise to me.  As an aside, go on vacation to European towns where there is lots of music on the street.  Turn the corner, and allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised at new sounds like streetcar bells, random street musicians.  You don't say, "oh what depth"--but you marvel at the clarity and sudden impact.  I don't care WHERE the sound comes from, but I want to be stunned by the clarity.

In a room, 15-20 feet away is still close enough for good detail and impact.  The 1st row in a hall might be 10-15 feet away.  But the front of the balcony is at least 100 feet away, and the sound is markedly rolled off in HF.  The midrange is veiled from all the multipath time delayed arrival from hall reflections.  Terrible sound, like a speaker stuffed with drivers in every direction.  A total mess.

The violin and accordion at an intimate place in Budapest.  That's a better place to hear these instruments than a prestigious concert hall.  I had a similar experience at Preservation Hall in New Orleans in 2005.  P Hall was a small cave of a room with walls of rocks and 3 benches for about 20 people. The unamplified brass and piano were exciting. All for $6 for 30 min of music, including audience requests.  Now $40, still a great deal, in comparison to a concert hall where most seats are distant.  For small ensembles, cafes are the best.  They have small ensembles in large halls just as a matter of economics, not for the optimum way to hear them.

In NYC subways, good musicians perform on the platform between the noise of trains coming.  Get close, and throw them some change for 1-2 minutes of music.  You'll learn more than from going to audio shows, dealers or concert halls.

vitussl101,

As you said, "When we heard that Gidon Kremer was performing at Orchestra Hall we made a last minute dash to get seats and we did;  front row, just left of the center seat.  Can't count all the performances I've seen there but it was my first time in the front row and it was fun, to say the least.  Drunk and sitting right below Kremer and Barenboim, recliners would have been better suited but we certainly got an in your face performance.  It was so loud,  rosin and horse hairs were drifting down on us, plus Gidon gets excited and stomps his feet during the performance and even subtle voice cues from Daniel.  It was a performance to remember and I'd do it again."

You said it best, better than myself.  Your vivid writing style communicates the vivid sound and performer antics.  There is nothing like the front row for all that.  Rows 5-8 are merely polite dilutions of that.  Rows 5-8 are better for balance, but which performance will you remember--in your face excitement, or polite balance?  You've been seated further back many times, but THIS ONE you will remember and you will do it again.  

Conductors like Solti know they get the most excitement from their stage position on the podium.  But they listen further back for different purposes.  They want to hear how the large orchestra projects to distant locations, so they can judge how a typical distant listener hears all the instruments.  They learn about acoustics and balance of various instrumental groups, so they can modify their conducting approach to suit the thousands of audience members.  

A few times I couldn't get front row center, and had to choose extreme right or extreme left.  If I got left, then the violin section's backs blocked the sound, and it was veiled.  Most soloists are to the left of the conductor, so strictly speaking, my best seat is front row, 1 or 2 seats to the left of center so I will be closest to the soloist.

terraplane8bob,

Another point to consider.  Trumpets project the most of all the brass.  They project in a very directional manner, maximum straight to the audience.  The conductor may be off axis and may not get the full beamy energy of the trumpet.  That's the reason the podium could be softer than the direct beam to a significant audience distance.  It is the loudest instrument, esp in the upper midrange 3-4 kHz where the human ear is most sensitive.  When I heard the trumpet beaming to me at midhall center, it was loud and brilliant.  But softer instruments like strings and woodwinds are lost in midhall compared to the stage or 1st row.  Even the other brass instruments are way softer than the trumpet--the trombone projects at a lower angle than the trumpet, the French horn projects behind to the floor, and the tuba vertically.  All these softer instruments get diffused away the more distance their sound has to travel.  But the trumpet is like a directional megaphone.

My Audiostatic 240 electrostatic panel is straight and highly directional.  Heard straight on axis, it transmits the purest sound that way, without HF rolloff.  I don't mind keeping my head aligned straight, to get the beamed sound from the left and right with full toe-in.  All other electrostatics have curved panels, and give flawed off axis sound in a multitude of directions, with resultant time smearing.  This is what happens with all distant seats in the hall.  Only the trumpet survives the distance-induced time smearing.

frogman,,

You're right that instrumental sounds have different colors, textures, tonal balance at close vs further distance.  But look into the mind of the composer.  He/she thinks of a melody in the mind, tries it on the piano, then writes it down.  Often the first complete work is solo piano, or piano 4 hands, or 2 or 3 pianos.  Later the piano work is arranged for orchestra.  A good example is Mussorgsky's original solo piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition.  Later, Ravel orchestrated it, which is the most popular version heard, but there were other composers who had different orchestrations.  

On youtube, there are recordings with simultaneous views of the complete score (written music).  As a musician, I want to know what the score contains.  Even a solo piano score contains details that I didn't realize were there even after thinking I knew the work well.  As for more complex orchestra works with many different instrumental groups, the score shows that a typical audience listener is missing the majority of what the composer had in mind.  An example is the prelude to Act 1 of Wagner's Lohengrin.  The score shows EIGHT violin parts.  I had thought there were only 2-4 after 50 years of thinking that I knew the piece well.  Only a 1st row listener (better yet, a stage performer) can hear much more of the details in the score.  From the 1st row at a performance, I could appreciate much more of the truth, which is in the score.  From greater distances, it is hopeless if you want to hear all the detail.  But the stage is best.  Mercury Living Presence recordings have the main mikes 10 feet over the conductor's head, to capture the most detail, with a good amount of space.  Most other commercial recordings are far inferior.

fleschler,

The most accurate and natural speaker is plasma. Totally massless, small driver the size of a tweeter, very efficient. Unfortunately, they are dangerous for ozone and other noxious gases, fire hazard from the burning flame from high voltages. Nelson Pass was hospitalized for an asthma attack after using a plasma speaker.

The next best transducer is the electrostatic principle. The lowest moving mass, total control from the membrane/stator sandwich. But all commercial stat speakers have severe flaws. To make up for the inefficiency and need to be near full range, large panels are needed. Even STRAIGHT large panels deliver smearing, due to the different distances to the listener ears from thousands of locations on the large panel. In this regard, the WORST speaker I ever heard was the Dayton Wright XG8 (10?) I heard in 1980. It was a 4 foot square panel.

The next meaningful experience was with Art Dudley when he worked for Edison Price. I heard the small Stax F81 and F83 speakers there. The F83 was a double stacked F81. I loved the midrange/HF purity of the F81 which was less than 3 feet tall. I had hoped the larger F83 would overcome the severely low 73 dB efficiency of the F81. It did, but unfortunately the 6 foot height caused severe rolloff of HF compared to the F81. I later figured out that the larger panel area, the more multipath time smearing occurs--worse time alignment. The best stat for tonal purity remains the original Quad 57 whose tweeter panel is very skinny and only about 30" tall. Later Quads are veiled by comparison, utilizing the flawed concept of time delay and much larger panels.

Putting all this together, I have a concept for the best possible stat speaker. If I were a famous audio designer, I could charge $ 1 million for this concept. But there is no market for accurate stat speakers in an a-phile market that cares more for boom boom loud dynamics and deep bass. So I reveal it here, in the hopes that some manufacturer who cares more for sonic accuracy and purity takes notice. Here goes--a large enough panel handles a wide freq range with reasonable SPL capability. But the panel is curved concave to the listener instead of convex like ML, Soundlab. The panel is a slice of a sphere whose radius of curvature is the listener distance. Say the distance is 8 feet. The slice might be 1 foot wide and 4 feet tall. The circumference of an 8 foot radius sphere is 8 x 2 pi = 26 feet. So this is like the curved edge of a 55 degree pie slice vertically, and a nearly straight 1 foot horizontally. The only listener requirement is to sit at the exact focal center of this spherical slice. That way, the direct radiation path which has the most HF extension reaches the listener from all parts of the panel with perfect time alignment. There is still a flaw from off axis parts of the panel reaching the listener with different freq balances, similar to a cardioid mike with rolled off HF off axis. This design is still better for accuracy than any large stat ever made. The smaller, the better, as in the Stat F81 and original Quad, if your music requirements are up to 80 dB. For me, I don’t want to hear junk from today’s speakers designed for loud SPL’s. I’m not impressed by 100 dB of junk when those speakers are badly veiled at 20-60 dB.

Another big problem with large panels is the bloated image, totally unnatural. A singer delivers sound from a mouth about 1-2 inches in diameter. A trumpet is like a 1 inch diameter tube whose horn flares to only a few inches, etc. So a wide range dynamic tweeter that goes down to 1 kHz can do a reasonable job for accuracy and proper image size. Dynamic tweeters are reasonably low mass and much more accurate than dynamic midrange and LF drivers. But all current panel speakers deliver bloated images. In my focused design, the image would be more true to life. The only instruments that are properly reproduced by current panel designs are large ones like pianos and pipe organs.

My Audiostatic 240 from 1980 is 2 straight panels mounted on a dummy support, so you can angle the 2 panels any way you want. The best results are from concave angling, with both panels beaming to each ear. I got the most bass, HF and SPL with this arrangement. But for best focus and purity in midrange/HF with admitted sacrifice of bass, I only use 1 panel which is 5" wide x 48" tall. Beamed right to my ear, it is the closest to my concept of a better design. On audiostatic.com, the MDi is shown for 3000 euros, although there is no opportunity to hear it before you buy, unless you travel to his suburb of Amsterdam, Netherlands.  The designer, Ben Peters is old, so I don’t know the delivery details. The panel is 11" x 44" so it looks like a smart design with the least compromises.

I remember the good sounding Koss 1A electrostatic speaker.  It was a large panel stat, but it included a dynamic tweeter.  At the time, I wondered why a dynamic tweeter was used, when everyone knows that electrostatic membranes are better than dynamic drivers for low mass and control.  But that's true in the midrange only.  Dynamic bass drivers are clearly superior to electrostatic panels for dynamic power in the bass.  A full range stat panel has too many problems for time smear at HF which I discussed above.  I have the horn loaded Enigmacoustics Sopranino electrostatic tweeter which I use time aligned with my main Audiostatic speaker.  The throat of the Enigmacoustics is quite small, probably comparable in size to a dynamic tweeter but with lower mass, so I get stat delicacy with the focus missed by all large stat designs.  But I now see the wisdom of that well designed Koss 1A.

frogman,

Good points for discussion on several levels.  As musicians, we strive to blend our sounds and play together.  For orchestral playing, a 1st violin section in a large orchestra has 16 violinists who are told by the conductor to suppress individuality and play as 1 violinist.  However in small chamber groups, there is a single player on each part, so the quirky individuality can be heard.  In a string quartet, sometimes the viola and cello are in exact unison, so they try to blend and play as 1 instrument.  But the viola and cello have different tonal character even when playing the same note.  It is more interesting to hear the tonal differences so that even though the same note is being played, there is more color from the overlay of differences on top of the sameness.  One of my favorite old string quartets, the Budapest, had two violinists who had very different sounds and temperaments.  The 1st violinist, Joseph Roisman, had a dark, sensitive, introverted sound and personality.  The 2nd violinist, Alexander Schneider, had a more forward sound and extroverted personality and playing style.  Schneider told a story of how an audience member said the quartet was marvelous because they sounded like 1 instrument.  But Schneider thought if that was true, it was a lousy concert.  He wanted good ensemble, but with a recognition of the differences, with each of the four players contributing his own individuality.  I agree with the Schneider view, although there are plenty of quartet groups that strive for more blended ensemble and less individuality.

For orchestral music, each composer seems to have their tonal signature to produce a unique timbre when 2 very different instruments are playing unison.  Flute combines well with violin in their similar freq range.  Bassoon may combine with French horn for that unique timbre.   I can recognize the identity of a composer by the timbre of the combination, even if I don't quickly name the particular piece.  So how does the audience listener appreciate the spectrum of separateness vs total blending?  For a distant listener, the blending predominates.  For a close listener, there is more separateness.  If the musicians are skillful, they blend well no matter how far away the listener is.

Analogy with food.  You can have 3 types of food on the same plate in separate locations, each carefully flavored.  Alternatively, you can mix them and make a tasty soup.  Both are enjoyable experiences, but it is unlikely that the mixture, well homogenized, would be as tasty as the separate foods.  Steak and salad don't mix well, but separately each would be delicious.  

The wine connoisseur enjoys the total blended taste, but he goes further and tastes the various flavors as they may appear at different times during the savory tasting.  He wants to separate the flavors and in that way get more appreciation of the fine character of the wine.  Years ago, I tried a liqeur blend called "43."  It was said that there were 43 individual components, but I could only perceive a few.  A more trained connoisseur could taste many more than I could, and I will say he could get more out of that tasting than I.

All this is my roundabout way of saying that the more distant hall sound is more blended and homogenized, and the closer seat still has some blend but more detailed colors and distinct individuality.  Someone may like the blended, homogenized sound, but it is NOT more detailed.  Rather, the details of the differences are like homogenized soup, much less identifiable.  Distant sound is the product of acoustical multipath bouncing around of various instruments in the journey from the stage to the distant location.  These are the laws of physics, like it or not.  Blending yields less information.  The conductor on the podium has it all--good blending with the maximum detail and appreciation of all the instruments.

Composers (and performing musicians) both create their art for all types of listeners with different musical knowledge and different seating preferences.  Music is a business which needs to serve as many customers (listeners, performers, concert halls, etc.) as possible.  The hall needs to be filled for maximum revenue.  Even if most of the seats are unacceptable to me, someone has to sit in those seats and get some enjoyment.  The general public who sits in distant locations hears the balanced, but homogenized sound.  They are not detail oriented a-philes.  They don't analyze the sound, but are content to enjoy the music as part of a social outing.  If they are happy with that, fine.  The composer wants to please these listeners.

Composers also want to please discerning musicians and a-philes like myself. Composers carefully craft the score in great detail.  Composers are perfectionists who edit and revise their work out of pride in making a finished product.  I have studied violin seriously my entire life with 100's of coaches and played with numerous groups, so I know the importance of precision and detail in the service of better competency in performance and learning more about the composer's similar goals.  

I don't know if you have studied scores of music you know.  In my experience, distant seats have no chance of capturing more than a small fraction of the detail that is in the score, which is much better captured by a close listener.  The conductor is in an enviable position of hearing more of this detail and the best balance than anyone else on stage or in the audience.  To see the score and hear this detail from an optimum close position has increased my appreciation of the genius of the composer.  The detail oriented a-phile also puts lots of effort and money into hearing more detail which increases his appreciation of his music at home. "Wow, I never heard that detail before.  This music sounds even better."

As an aside, I'm sure that if you got new eyeglasses that enabled better vision, you appreciated more details in familiar objects.  More details enable more perception of beauty.  Isn't it nice to find a woman's eyes beautiful at 50 feet away with better visual acuity whereas with the old glasses it was a blur and not as beautiful.

I wonder if any of the people who disagree with my preference for close musical encounters have had enough experience comparing seats at various distances.  When an event was popular, I could never get a close audience seat.  From the 10th row or so, I would suffer through the first piece, realizing that my home system of Audiostatic 240 electrostatic speakers, excellent solid state electronics, my fast, neutral Denon 305 MC cartridge on Alphason tonearm and Goldmund Studio turntable offered much more musical detail and resolution than the 10th row.  On a detailed Mercury Living Presence recording with close recorded perspective, my audio system was about as revealing as the 1st or 2nd row, although the live sound was more natural with that detail.  But the most highly rated concert hall, the Musikverein in Vienna was a sonic dog from the 25th row, nothing but a bloated echo chamber.  The solo cello sounded like a 40 foot blown up character in a street fair.  As the most famous hall in the world, with New Years Day concerts broadcast worldwide, it was always nearly sold out, so I went back 3 times to hear the same orchestra, migrating closer each time.  Of course, my best seat was the 5th row, but I couldn't get closer.  The hall had a big advantage of having a stage that wasn't elevated, so the line of sight and sound was good.  You didn't have to be a giraffe to have a height advantage.  Admittedly, the 1st row in most halls is way below the stage, so the line of sight is poor from the 1st row.  (The Carnegie Hall stage is a full 4 ft high).  So the 5th row in Vienna was pretty good.  But I would have paid good money to perform on that stage and be thrilled with that crisp sound with neutral tonality that was hinted at from the 5th row.

The most revealing and exciting ensemble experience comes from a being in a small chamber group on the stage or a good room where everyone is sitting intimately close to each other.  Close contact like this minimizes the bouncing around reverberations which smear musical detail.  OK, there are some nonmusical extraneous sounds.  But the greatly increased musical detail predominates by far, and even the nonmusical sounds are part of the total sound of the instruments.  Anybody who prefers not to hear the instrument noises by sitting further away is also throwing away much of the musical overtones, like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.    

Many years ago, I was privileged to play string quartets sitting next to an esteemed violinist.  It was a soft slow movement from a Haydn quartet.  All of a sudden, he played an accented sforzando that wasn't loud at all, but the transient impact and his detailed control blew me away.  I will remember this for many years to come. At concerts listening to other great performers from the 1st row, the impact was markedly lost in my 1st row seat.  Any further back, forget about it--POLITE BOREDOM.  

One of my favorite violinists, Henryk Szeryng, I heard in concert many years ago from about 100 feet away.  I couldn't get closer.  I'm ashamed to admit that I fell asleep from the muddy sound I heard.  What a letdown by comparison to his exciting RCA recordings with fairly close microphone placement.

mahler123,

Good observations.  The short wavelengths of high freq (HF) mean that HF are more absorbed than lower freq (LF) at greater distance.  So the tonal balance at greater distance is skewed toward LF.  At close distances, the natural HF predominance of the violin lets it sail above the orchestra, but in the balcony HF are relatively subdued, so the violin doesn't sail above.  Recordings offer a close perspective with the close miking, and thus there is more detail than from the balcony.  Despite the live naturalness in the balcony, I dislike the greatly reduced detail there.  Move to the 5th row and you will be happy with everything--the naturalness, detail, visual line of sight, sound spatiality.  In the 1st row, I get even more detail and HF, but sacrifice the visuals and spatiality.  See for yourself.  

I used to hear the Juilliard orchestra Fri nights in Alice Tully Hall.  I haven't been in the renovated Alice Tully.  Excellent professional quality student orch for free.  You can try all locations.  Try the Wed at One free concerts at Alice Tully.  Paul Hall in the J School is great for chamber music--free concerts several times a week.  There's a small hall in the J School for more student recitals.  Check the J website.

Where do you live?

You have a wealth of concert hall experience.  I love the mono recordings on Mercury of Rafael Kubelik + Chicago SO in Orchestra Hall (I guess renamed Symphony Center).  Have you tried a few locations there to compare the recordings with what you hear live?  Boston Symphony Hall was great in the 4th row center when I was there 2016.  I heard the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orch conducted by Benjamin Zander.  Zander is a world class conductor, so the best deal is hearing an excellent student orch at their best with a great conductor.  White fluorescent lighting was used.  The tonality was clear, cool and neutral, unlike the warm, HF rolled off quality in Carnegie.  Sensory perception overlaps with sound and vision.  I wonder if Carnegie used cool white light, whether the tone would then be cooler and less warm than it is.

In the Concertgebouw, I sat in about the 10th row center.  Muddy, syrupy warm sound.  This correlates with what I hear on recordings from European halls--distant and muddy.

Prices are insane in major famous halls with famous orchestras and soloists.  People who are willing to pay $700 for the balcony in Chicago have no idea what details they are missing vs much closer to the stage.  My strategy is to get a modestly priced seat on the main floor as close as I can get.  5 min before the start, I survey empty seats, and then 1 min before the lights dim, I dash for the empty center seats much closer.  Acoustics don't matter much to me, since I want the maximum detail of the 1st row.

Mischa Mischakoff was the most esteemed concertmaster of the 20th century.  He was with the NBC Symphony under Toscanini, and I love his solos on those recordings.  When he retired, he was with the Detroit Symphony.  I visited him in Detroit in 1975.  He invited me to hear him at a small private quartet concert.  He preferred his Belgian violin to his Strad.  I declared him the greatest violinist I had heard.  But the socially minded dean of my medical school said, no, Heifetz was the greatest violinist of the 20th century.  Well, everyone sorta knows that, but to really appreciate the finer, subtle qualities of a great artist, you have to be a real connoisseur.  

The Musikverein in Vienna is considered to be the #1 hall, but kudos to you for discovering Detroit as #1.

frogman,

Violin concertos are carefully scored for orchestra realizing the inherent SPL limitations of a solo violin.  For the great concertos, the orch is reduced to pianissimo when the solo violin is playing.  When the violin soloist takes a break, the orchestra plays in all its loud glory.  But the violin is rarely playing when the orch is playing with full sound.  The violin and orch are kinda like respectful politicians letting the other speak while the other only listens.  When politicians are trying to yell at the same time, there is chaos.  It is a legitimate tactic of the recording engineer to boost the SPL of the violin by close miking in order to get more equality between the soloist and orch, even if the natural balance is altered.

Piano concertos live have more satisfactory balance, since the piano is a much larger, louder instrument than the violin, and often the piano joins the orchestra in the full glory of both.

What instrument(s) do you play professionally?

Also, do you know the 1967 Turnabout LP of the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, Dallas Symphony conducted by Donald Johanos?  The 3rd movement highlight is the crackling brass fanfare near the end, culminating in cymbal and tympani crashes.  This was done with close miking on a shallow stage.  All other recordings have a distant, reverberant perspective which dilutes and confuses the impact from excessive ambience.  Boring garbage sonically.

frogman,

Ah, now I understand you better.  Your references are bass clarinet, saxes which are middle and lower midrange/midbass instruments, as opposed to the violin, which is midrange/HF.  Lower freq instruments gel at greater distance, and are more focused at greater distance.  But the violin has severe HF loss with distance, due to the physics of the air medium's preferential absorption of HF.  As a result, the limited SPL of the violin is severely lost at HF.  Still, the sax has HF transients which can be lost at greater distance.  I once played on a shallow stage, seated in an inner violin seat close to the French horn.  For the first time, I heard the midrange/HF tactile edges of the horn, part of its natural tone, whereas when heard from greater distance it has only a smooth, amorphous legato type sound.  James Boyk wrote an article about "life after 20 kHz" to show that even the old smoothie F horn has significant output at 9 kHz.

I appreciate that the bass clarinet and cello are separated more at close distances than from further away.  Now we get into the issues of different seating arrangements on stage.  The standard American seating is 1st and 2nd violins together on the left, cellos in front right.  I admit that onstage, playing 1st violin, I love this position where I can hear the 2nd violins playing the lower octave close to me.  But in the audience, this rear 2nd violin position severely rolls off the HF and brilliance of that section.  The composer wrote the 2nd violin part to be less brilliant than the 1st violin part, so it is a shame to further handicap the 2nds.  An exception is the Rossini string sonatas where the 1st and 2nd violin parts are almost identical, and he wanted a ping pong effect from the European seating (see below).  You probably enjoy the recessed usual 2nd violin positioning, so when the 1sts and 2nds alternate, you get an echo effect, a spatiality game from the upfront 1sts and recessed 2nds.  I just hate the obvious muddied sound of the poor 2nds compared to the 1sts.  

The European style is to have the 2nd violins in the front row on the right.  Toscanini described the 1st violins as his left shoulder and the 2nds as his right shoulder.  As a player on the stage, I dislike this arrangement the way you dislike the separation of the bass clarinet and cello.  But in the audience, it is nice to have the separation that Toscanini liked.  Still, the 2nds are handicapped because their soundboard projects to the rear of the stage, and the 1sts project front to the audience.

My most enjoyable recordings have been with small chamber groups spread out like a crescent.  Relatively close miking lets everyone shine.  Even if there is more separation which has the risk of poor blending, good musicians play together to get good blending even in this situation.  But if the stage is wide and deep, the separation impedes the ensemble.  An example was when I heard the Prelude to Act 1 of Lohengrin.  The front string section was brilliant and clear, but the two cymbal crashes at the climax were a DISASTER sonically.  The cymbals were at the rear of the deep stage.  The reverberation from the deep stage caused smearing of the HF brilliance of the cymbals.  The cymbal is the most brilliant instrument, with lots of energy up to 200 kHz, but this sounded worse than a terrible home speaker with the tweeters blown.

You may like the sound in the balcony and from your speakers, but this is a bit of an apples/oranges comparison.  Depending on the music, Telarc recordings employ a mix of close mikes and distant hall mikes to capture hall ambience.  Some recordings use several spaced omni mikes at the front of the stage.  The omnis reveal more hall ambience and less specificity of instrument placement than cardioid mikes.  The net perspective of the Telarc is about row 10, which is much closer than balcony perspective.  This correlates with my experience auditioning large stat panels such as Martin Logan, SoundLab.  Bass is powerful from the large panel area, but the large panel area radiates sound in a multitude of directions which causes high freq time smear and rolloff due to different time arrivals from all points on the panel.  

Even a balcony lover like mahler123 found that a recent concert of a Shostakovich violin concerto showed less detail in the balcony than his experience at home with an old recording of Oistrakh with Mitropoulos conducting the NYP.  If you want to judge the overall accuracy of your audio system, experiment with rows 5-15 and compare to the Telarc recording, or sit much closer near the stage for Mercury Living Presence recordings, or my favorite 1967 Turnabout LP of Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances with Donald Johanos conducting the Dallas Symphony.  A great companion Turnabout LP from 1967 is Copland, Fanfare for the Common Man, and Rodeo.  Very dynamic in your face Fanfare with brass and percussion, which I like better than a much more laid back audiophile recording of Fanfare on either Telarc or Reference Recordings (I forgot which).  Some pieces are appropriate for laid back recordings, like subtle Debussy, but Fanfare deserves more immediacy.

For accuracy, the original Quad 57 electrostatic is tops, although it is deficient in bass and loud dynamics. 

Interesting points about the Sibelius violin concerto.  The opening minute or two is very soft and dreamy for the orchestra, with the soloist a little louder so it is still dominant.  Orchestra and soloist are playing together in the appropriate balance.  Even later when playing together louder, the soloist is spotlighted over the generally softer fabric of the orchestra.  The popular violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky show more of the protagonist duels between the loud orchestra and the silent violin, and the soloist dominating over the very soft orchestra.  Thus, the popular concertos are more showoff pieces for the soloist, while the Sibelius has better balance.

Even for the soft, atmospheric opening of the Sibelius, while the balcony offers the ultimate in balance, its markedly reduced HF content vs close seats reduces the actual atmospheric and spatial appreciation.  Audiophiles call this "air".  In your home audio, you can try adding super tweeters to your main speaker to demonstrate and enjoy this.  I use the Enigmacoustics Sopranino in parallel with my main Audiostatic 240 speaker.  Another method which I find essential is careful HF boost with my Rane ME60 EQ, which I use in place of a preamp.  Boost the extreme HF only, so the midrange tonality is little affected.  This is particularly valuable with recordings done with a distant perspective, which I transform into a closer perspective.  What do I gain and lose by doing this?  Truthfully, the midrange tonality IS affected, but in a positive way by revealing the upper midrange/HF bite of the cello, trumpet, etc.  The purist will say that I am distorting the natural tonality.  But I regard the muddy veiling of distant sounds as the equivalent of the natural bland taste of aging fruit.  Everyone has tasted the more intense flavor of fresh corn vs bland weeks old corn.  It takes judicious practice to gain the benefits of revealing the full freq detail of any natural instrument while minimizing the changes in midrange tonality.  I consider my methods taking 10 steps forward and 1 step backward.

For learning the benefits of close seating without spending much money, find concerts with good music students, such as youth orchestras or semi-pro events.  Get a ticket on the main floor.  Start in row 15-20, the approximate equivalent in freq balance to the front balcony.  For the next piece, move to row 10, then row 5, etc.  For most listeners, row 5 offers the best of everything--full freq detail, balance, spatiality, ensemble.  Row 1 offers me THE best detail, although other areas are sacrificed.

It is telling to come back to the original poster who started this thread, mikeydee.  From the front row of Heinz Hall, he still was mesmerized by the acoustics and dynamics.  So the front row offered so much, not just the details of the front violin section and piano.  The raw excitement of the 1st row is unmatched further back.

If there are extraneous noises, I easily ignore them, just as I ignore the HF hiss on Odyssey reissues of Columbia (now Sony) records.  Part of the HF hiss is due to the EQ which boosts HF content of all the info on the recording.  Yes, this is often overdone and unnatural, but intelligent EQ brings out much more detail which is worth a little sacrifice of the original blend.  Musicians also make valid emphases of various details.  An example is a voicing a piano chord where boosting an upper note of a triad brings out more brilliance.  A piano such as Steinway generally has more crispness than a Baldwin, Bosendorfer or Yamaha.  They are all natural pianos, and individual pianists prefer one over the other.  Vladimir Horowitz tweaked his own Steinway piano for brilliance, and he actually went through the hassle of moving his piano from his apartment in NY to the concert hall for every concert.

It is not true that there is the same detail revealed at further distance vs close.  The laws of physics are against this claim.  Increased HF absorption with distance, more reverberation with distance, causing tonal smearing and loss of clarity.  Someone may like the distant sound, but facts are facts.

A mathematical definition of detail is the sum total of information at all freq.  Musically speaking, it is perception of the note fundamental with all the added harmonics, or multiples of the fundamental freq.  Since further distance has the main effect of reducing the higher freq from absorption and reverberation smearing, there is less total harmonic info, esp at higher freq.  

The one effect you validly mention is the gelling effect of the bass clarinet and cello to make a blended tone color.  While this is an interesting synthesis of the individual clarinet and cello tones to make a new blended tone, it is debatable whether we can call that "new" detail.  Suppose you have complete blending so you hear the mixture as a new color, but you can't separate the two different instruments.  You gain the blend, but lose the information as what the two components are.  Example--Grieg and other Scandinavian composers create unique tone colors from certain instrument combinations, but it bothers me if I am listening to a low resolution audio system or distant live sound and I cannot identify the individual instruments that make up the blended tone.  Wine analogy--I am not a connoisseur, so while I might enjoy the overall taste, I cannot perceive or I have never had the training to appreciate the many individual tastes.  If I got a wine tasting education, I would enjoy more aspects of the wine than I am presently able to.  So the wine connoisseur perceives more details of the individual flavors, and is analogous to the front row listener.  My taste perceptions are analogous to the distant listener, only able to perceive the blend.  

Good musicians can blend well enough so that even up close, the perception is a good blend.  Further away, there is more blend, but at a severe price of much less individual detail.  This effect mainly concerns HF detail, since HF are quantitatively lost much more at distance than lower freq detail.  Since you play midrange and lower freq dominated instruments, I see why you are less concerned with HF detail than I.  I don't ignore low freq and midrange detail, either.  The fact is that all instruments have significant wideband freq energy.  The string bass has a uniquely wide freq range from deep bass to the HF from bow scraping and strong plucking of the string when it slaps the fingerboard.  I get much more of the total wide freq range string bass sound (more detail) by listening close vs further away.

At Tarisio/Sotheby/Christie auctions, I have listened to good violinists comparing different violins.  Even from 5 feet away, there may not be much difference that I hear.  But then I compare these violins under my ear when I play them.  The differences are magnified by orders of magnitude.  I hear shortcomings under my ear that I totally missed from only a few feet away.  That's due to the tremendous increase in detail up very close.  However, close listening doesn't just reveal more flaws.  It can reveal more power and beauty.  In a string quartet, I once played with another violinist who had a Nicolo Gagliano.  I liked what I heard in her playing.  When she let me try her instrument, I was shocked and bowled over by its power and multicolored beauty under my ear.  More details PLUS more beauty.

frogman,

Your analogy of pointillistic artists actually makes my case, haha.  The semi-random points provide lots of detail at close viewing, but they don't make much sense until you move away and then can see what the real picture is.  The distant blend is the real message, but the details are lost, assuming you have normal visual acuity of 20/20 or so.  (But I have met some teenagers who have fantastic acuity of 20/10, so at 10 feet away where the normal vision people see only the whole, the teenager still sees the details of the small points, and he might need to move 20 feet away to appreciate the real message).  

My point is that the pointillistic artistic message is the blend, but it is not a detailed message.  We all enjoy the message, but it is a mistake to consider it as a DETAIL missing from the close viewing.  It's just a different message, not a detailed message.  I enjoy blends in other sensory forms, such as the unique ice cream blends you can create at Thomas Sweet in Princeton, NJ.  My favorite blend that I choose is sweet cream ice cream with malt balls and Reece's peanut butter cups, fully blended to fine particles in their machine.  They do it better than any other place.  It's an enjoyable blend, but the enjoyment doesn't derive from appreciation of details.  In contrast, a gourmet assortment of separate dishes of various meats, vegetables is best enjoyed tasting each item individually where all the details can be perceived.  Chinese dimsum is such an assortment of 10-20 small savory items, each enjoyed as a single entity.  It would be foolish to dump all the dimsum items together in a blended soup.  Yes, you might create an interesting hodge-podge blended taste, but it is smarter to enjoy the details of each item separately.

I love to hear some atmospheric distant orchestra recordings, such as in the Tchaikovsky Suite #3 in the 1973 EMI recording with Adrian Boult and the London Phllharmonic.  In one of the variations, the oboe shines above the soft entire string section.  (Or is it the English horn?  If the details were better captured with closer miking, I would have less doubt).  The recorded ambience is gorgeous.  This is a beautiful blend, but nothing thrills me more than to play in the orchestra close to many of the instruments.  I revel in the fine tone colors of different winds.  But from far away, the ambience, although beautiful, causes tonal smearing so that most of the delicate tone colors are markedly lost.

Your job as a pro is to please most of your paying customers, the audience, who mostly sit far away.  That's why you seek advice from your colleagues about how your instrument sounds 30-150 feet away.  The mass audience wants the blend, but they don't realize how much beauty there is in the details only heard close.

I haven't had much opportunity to enjoy a band of the sax family.  I might enjoy a performance from a distance, but I wouldn't learn as much than if I heard them close where the subtle differences in tonality would be better heard.  For a relatively quiet instrument like the violin, I need to be much closer to hear more of the differences between violins.  I could appreciate that for the much larger winds with more bass content, it would be important to sit further away to fully allow the blend to develop.  Let's say that the optimum distance might be 30 feet to get the ideal combination of detail and blend.  Moving to 60 feet would get more blend but sacrifice fine detail of tonal nuance.

Have you been to Preservation Hall in New Orleans?  I was there in 2005, a few months before Hurricane Katrina.  Before going, I had visions of some big concert hall, but I laughed when I saw that it was the inside of a cave with walls of rocks.  Only 3 benches for about 20 listeners.  The hard surfaces of the rocks gave a bright, brilliant exciting sound to the brass jazz band and piano.  30 min of excitement for only $6.  Now it is about $40, still a great value.  Who needs large big name concert halls where most listeners pay big money to musically worship in these hyped temples for laid back, boring sound?  In NY, for sonic thrills I enjoy the subway for 1-2 min of close encounters with good platform musicians before the noisy trains arrive.