@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.
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.
- ...
- 19 posts total
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. |
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. |
After reading the comments here, it seems to me that the ideal differs among audiophiles. @ronboco stated: "I just want the songs I loved growing up to sound great on my system. Studio recordings almost always sound better than live music ." This is a valid objective. What he wants is to enjoy the studio recordings he grew up listening to. Accuracy is not the measure, but rather his personal enjoyment. Why should he sacrifice his enjoyment for someone elseʻs standard of performance? The original ideal of stereo reproduction back in the late 1950s was exemplified by Mercury Records and their space omni recordings, which are still held in very high regard today, tape hiss and all. Iʻm an old Big Band trumpet player and my wife is a mostly retired professional classical violinist. Iʻm a good musician and sheʻs the serious musician in the family. The things I look for are a correct tonal balance first and imaging second. Does that acoustic piano recording sound like a live piano in my home? I run a custom set of open baffle Linkwitz Orion loudspeakers that really nail it for me. Voices and ascoustic instruments are delivered with a clarity that to my ear, Iʻve never enjoyed more anywhere. Other systems do image better, though the Orions do very well. I very much admire what Iʻve heard from the Dutch & Dutch 8c. I feel that the Voices of Music videos are helpful in comparing the imaging I hear with where the actual performers were located relative to the microphone array in the middle. Itʻs a standard that speaks to my own ideals, and feel it would be useful for others who have a similar opinion.
|
- 19 posts total