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The best reference is live music

For those of you who love classical music and care about imaging in your audio system, I recommend that you check out a San Francisco area group called Voices of Music.

They video record all of their performances and have most all of it on YouTube and free to access.  They are extremely well engineered recordings and more than worthy for the very finest audio systems.  What makes these recordings especially *useful*, as well as enjoyable, is that being video, you can see where all of the musicians are.  The best reference in audio is live performance.  Does  your system do an honest job of recreating the live performance?  Does your system give an image that at all matches what you see on the video?

Beyond this issue, Voices of Music is worthy to experience because they are very different from the large symphonic performances that most classical listeners hear.  Instead of the SF Symphony with 100 musicians, Voices of Music will typically have about 8 to 12 players.  There are some larger ensembles and some smaller.

They are an "early music" ensemble.  Just as rock 'n roll evolved from the early 1950's to what we have today, what we call classical music evolved as well.  The instruments evolved too.  A 19th century violin (what the musicians call "modern") has a neck pulled back, has steel strings and is engineered to be louder than an 18th or 17th century violin, which has a straighter neck and gut strings.  They are in fact, different instruments.

An 18th century instrument will articulate better.  The bow is lighter and faster than a 19th century bow.  Trumpets of that period had no valves.  Neither did French horns.  Flutes were typically wooden and had open holes.  That period also had instruments completely absent from "modern" orchestras.  If you haven't listened to a 1st rate early music ensemble, you're in for a totally new experience.

russbutton
stuartk
3,598 posts
 

Here we have the usual divide on display. We're all different, with different hearing, different rooms, different budgets, different tastes, different priorities and different experiences of live music. Seems to me the most important thing is understanding one's priorities. By this, I mean, what one finds most personally rewarding. I spend zero percent of my time thinking about whether my system accurately replicates live music. 

viber6
2,457 posts
 

@Stuartk Live music from a distant seat in the hall is radically different from where the mikes are.  The best position for full clarity and balance is the conductor's head--close up and centered.  I can enjoy music on youtube of 1930 recordings of my favorite musicians, forgetting about the sound, although even with those recordings, close mike sound is more musically enjoyable than more distant, muddy recordings.  Whether live or recorded, for me the priority is to hear the music with the greatest detail.  Often youtube has videos of solo piano with the score.  The piano score reveals lots of notes that are best revealed by recordings with greater clarity.  Most musicians strive to present interpretations with the greatest clarity and purity.  Even if his style is more vague, whatever it is, the recording should faithfully capture all his intentions.  Most of this is lost from a hall seat further away.  Try different seats--close and various rows back--to see what I mean.

stuartk
3,598 posts
 

@viber6 

I mean no disrespect but detail has never and will never be my top priority. But then, I don’t listen to big band or orchestral music, where the density of massed instruments presents much more of a challenge than small groups. 

nsh123
4 posts
 

This post reminds me of the profound effect of performing with an orchestra and then later confronting the recordings of the event! When I was in a fancy choir in college we got to perform on live TV with the Chicago symphony orchestra. The event was well put together. But I couldn't find a TV system back in 2004 that would replicate half of the experience. It was  a blur, and although you could tell it was a nice concert, the detail of the sound was just not there compared to my memory of being on stage.

 

This formative experience showed me the challenge of trying to squeeze the sound of something big into any kind of video playback system meant just to sound the evening news.

 

When I am doing my own mixes now, I think not so much of 'capturing the moment' as much as 'presenting something excellent' - Even if the recording does not match the room, as long as it sounds good, it generally keeps people happy.

viber6
2,457 posts
 

nsh123, 

Exactly!  The thrill of immersion in an orchestra/choir dwarfs the home audio system.  You were close to the action which no audience member can get.  Even the 1st row isn't acceptable to me, compared to the stage.  I admit I am spoiled.

Detail is the entire musical content enabled by full frequency extension.  This applies to a solo instrument or singer as well as the large ensemble.  I really don't understand why a music lover would not want to hear as much detail as he could perceive.  Whatever music he enjoys, full appreciation comes with more information retrieval.  Nuances of dynamic gradation and tonal subtlety come from detail.  The goal of every performer is to present the music in a balanced, pure and detailed way which always lets the listener learn more about the music.  The 16 first violinists must all play precisely together for best clarity.  Less skilled amateurs lack the clarity of pros.  The cohesive detail suffers and some of the music is buried  in the extraneous distortions, akin to muddy audio reproduction.

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