2. music
  3. 182335-171283

Solving the "complex music problem"?

I have noticed that, regardless of the system, simple music (i.e. music with only a few sounds at the same time, such as a solo instrument) sounds way better than what I'll call here "complex music", meaning music like symphony that has a lot of instruments all playing different sounds at the same time. I'm assuming that this is an inherent problem for audio equipment. In a live symphony, you might have, say, 15 different unique instruments (i.e. counting all the violins as 1 unique instrument), each of which is vibrating in a different way; but in a speaker, each driver might be trying to reproduce 10 of those sounds at the same time. So each driver is a single physical object trying to vibrate in 10 different ways at the same time. The result is that the music sounds muddy, all the different parts blend together and you lose a lot of the detail.

I have a number of questions about this that I'm hoping all you experts can help me with.

1. Is there an established name or term for this issue? 

2. Do you think my diagnosis of the problem above is correct? Or is something else going on?

3. Although this is always a problem, it's a much bigger problem on some systems than others. Are there some types of components, or some brands, that are particularly good (or bad) when it comes to this issue?

4. To what extent is this issue related to the components you have as compared to speaker placement and room acoustics?

5. To me, this is a huge issue. But I don't see it discussed all that often. Why do you think that is? Or, perhaps, it is being discussed all the time, but people are using a term I don't recognize? (hence question 1).  

 

Full disclosure, I asked a related question under the heading "need amp recommendations for more separation of instruments" and got a lot of super helpful responses. I'm very grateful to everyone who took the time to respond there. That discussion was focused on a solution to my particular problem. Here I'm hoping to have a more general discussion of the issue. I know it's bad form to post the same question twice, but in my mind, this is a significantly different question. Thanks.

ahuvia

Showing 1 response by singingg

singingg
115 posts
 

@ahuvia The conductor has the best seat in the house standing 6-7’ above the musicians inside the string section. The high priced seats are mid-hall center where a blend is achieved. My favorite seat is front row center which is as close to being on stage as possible. I love the instrumental separation from that perspective.

Since you are asking about large groups, I assume you have a good collection of symphonic recordings, hopefully from all stereophonic eras, 1960 to the present. Is your system resolving enough to parse out the engineering of each recording? You should be able to hear how close the mikes are to the group by hall reverberations and instrumental separation, and whether there was spot mikeing and mixing board shenanigans. Early stereo often was not natural. Today anything goes.

One of the most revealing recordings I have recently encountered is the SACD of the Cleveland Orchestra playing Schnittke Piano Concerto. It is a live performance with the mikes directly over the group. The separation is uncanny. Hopefully you are not afraid of contemporary music. The piece is a blast!

If you cannot hear these differences, then address your room and system. Don’t forget to do ALL the TWEAKS>

More to discover