Violin Moves All Over the Sound Stage

Does anyone know which version of this performance is the best engineered recording? 

Depends. The original recording is by definition the best engineered. All anyone can do from that point on is monkey around with that master tape. A really good engineer might be able to remaster the master and have it sound better. But not likely. Because this is a very old recording. You get into the whole thing of the original master tape quality.   

This is why almost always the best you will ever get of these is to play the vinyl. Almost always the original vinyl pressings were made with the best tape source available at the time. Usually the master tape. This was before music got to be such big business the suits started making them make a copy of the master and lock it away, so everything is a copy of a copy. Back in the day everyone was actually concerned with fidelity. This was a big deal. I know. What a concept. Crazy thing, crept into all kinds of other areas too, musicianship, songwriting, lyrics. Sinatra, Torme, those guys could actually sing.   

Where was I? Oh yeah. So you come along today asking what version of this performance was the best engineered? The question literally makes no sense. First, there is only one performance on tape. There are no other versions of this performance. The performance is by definition one of a kind. Never to be repeated.  

Possibly you mean what is the best performance of this piece of music? Which is fine. But also completely different than recording, which is different than engineering.  

We were talking about this piece of music being reissued, and mastered from mono to stereo. So a lot of different things going on and hard to tell which of them you are talking about.

Okay so the real question, when things move around like this how to tell if it is the recording or your system setup?

We get our sense of imaging from arrival times and also relative volume. When speakers are too close to reflective surfaces the reflected sound can reach us soon enough and with enough volume to make us think it came from the reflection not the source. Different speakers have different dispersion characteristics at different frequencies, and so do our room surfaces. Sorry it is such a big mess all we can do is explain, hopefully with enough detail you are able to find the answer yourself.

Pretend for a moment no one has this one recording but you. How would you know? One way is to listen for clues. If the recording has it there then it will be there with palpable presence. Every aspect of the instrument will appear to be there. Not just the high notes but the whole body of the instrument.

But what if your system isn’t up to that level of resolution? Well the next thing you can do is listen to the same recording in mono. This way you will know for certain everything should be front and center. Anything at all moves off to one side or another you will know it has to be due to setup. If you can’t play this one in mono there is always the XLO Test CD that has Michael Ruff playing Poor Boy in mono. Although honestly any mono record will do the trick. In mono everything should be all together in a sort of sphere. Anything moves around you know you got problems.

Out of phase is another similar test. With mono everything should seem to come from one location. Out of phase everything should seem to come from everywhere, and nowhere. Out of phase is crazy spooky weird with a really nicely setup system, the sound really does seem to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. By everywhere I mean including inside your head. Just the most mind-blowing thing. But again, only when really nicely setup! Anything out of sorts, anything at all, the sound will appear to be coming from somewhere and totally blow the effect.

Since you are able to hear the violin in certain definite locations then clearly it is not an out of phase situation. But it does seem to move around when probably it shouldn’t. So most likely you just need to review speaker setup paying close attention to absolute symmetry. Experiment with toe in. Having a lot of toe in is probably the easiest most likely fix. This will also improve whatever imaging you now have. Speakers pointed pretty much straight ahead are an open invitation to this kind of problem.   

But maybe they already are toed in a lot, or more toe in doesn’t eliminate it. Then it is most likely a room reflection. Sound is probably coming off one speaker bouncing off a wall or something on its way to your ears. Look at the first reflection angles, try moving reflective things around or covering them up. All you can do. Situation normal, by the way. Happens all the time. Great systems never just appear by accident. Takes a lot of work just like this to make it happen.