Testing bass is not testing a deep frequency but a lot of band range interacting...
If an audio system/room do not reproduce well a piano you had lost your money....
To test bass i use preferably piano, tuba, and organ ..
Why not the piano as a reference for bass
I see a lot of commentary/reviews on a systems bass response that all seem to hinge on the 41 hz double bass and such range. At 27.5 the A0 note on a piano seems a better point to judge. Lots of piano in normal music vs say an organ note. I know when I feel that deep chord played it is one of things I enjoy about listening the most! Was listening to Wish you were here live and the piano was sublime.
So is it more of how much musical energy is perceived in the 40 hz range or what that makes this more of a reproduction benchmark?
I welcome your input!
New Joe Bonamassa out BTW!
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Re piano. I rediscovered an album from long ago that I found in the cut-out bin of a long-forgotten record store. The title is "audio symphony", Check up your sounds Vol, 1. It was produced by RCA Japan in 1976 and distributed by Audio Technica. It has a 14 page insert describing all the equipment used and even includes the music score sheets. Although it goes into minute detail of the equipment used it does not describe the piano. Notable is the use of an Ampex 440c and Studer A-80MK II reel to reel. Both running at 30 ips. The sound quality is astoundingly good with dynamic range and quit background even on my modest system, The bass quality of the piano is remarkably good but I would agree that it is not the best test of a systems bass agility and depth. Also, as someone else mentioned bowed string bass (in this case a trio playing in unison) is also a pretty good measure, |
Could you name the artist in this album ? Effectively the viol is also an instrument useful to test bass rendition...
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All I can tell you is what my ears tell me. For reference in my own listening room I have recently replaced a Yamaha C7 with a Clavinova. I did this because to my ears the difference when the C7 is in tune was indistinguishable from the Clavinova and more importantly for me, the latter is always in tune. I am not a pianist, however, but rather a drummer for whom the piano is a means to an end. YRMV. |
This is a most interesting discussion. Ruminating further about past experiences is pertinent. First a disclaimer. I can hear the difference between any two pianos. Let me explain. When I have gone to the Steinway studio, something I have done in Seattle, San Francisco, and NYC in years go by, I have easily been able to distinguish the sound of not only say a B from a D, but B1 from B2 from B3, and D1 from D2 etc. Or in another setting, upon entering a hall, without looking I have been able over the years to tell if the piano is a Mason & Hamlin (a favorite of mine) or a Baldwin etc. With that as a back drop, in my misspent youth I tried (and failed miserably) to record pianos. Choice of mics, mic placement, mic distance, room acoustics, all muck things up. These factors make good piano recordings a rare and precious commodity. But if you find a good one, and there are good ones, IMHO, there is no finer recording to judge your system than a good piano recording. From top to bottom. Bass included. |
Amazing post! and truthful for me... Could you please name one or two even three albums of piano very well recorded...i want to buy them... It is very important because as you i think piano sound is a judge in my system/room... Thanks for your time...
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@mahgister wrote: "Could you please name one or two even three albums of piano very well recorded...i want to buy them... "It is very important because as you i think piano sound is a judge in my system/room..." You might consider "Red Descending" by solo artist Seth Kaufman. Seth was a medical student in New Orleans when I first heard him play at a Barnes & Noble. He blew me away so I bought his album, "Circling Noon". When his new (at the time) album came out, "Red Descending", I bought it because I was already enjoying "Circling Noon" immensely. Loved it, still do. Then I got a chance to hear him live again in a real venue, and the Yamaha grand piano he was playing sounded to me just like the one on "Red Descending" (I had been listening to the album over Sound Lab electrostats). After the performance I asked him about it, and he said YES, it WAS the same piano! He'd gone to the trouble and expense of having his piano crated and trucked from New Orleans to the recording studio in Los Angeles for recording the album. Not that I am any expert on piano recordings, but apparently "Red Descending" is a good enough recording that a non-piano-player could tell with pretty high confidence when he heard that same piano again. Duke |
You were right if i even listen to it from youtube... It is well recorded to say the least... I will buy it thanks .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0KJ1QqfJjY&list=RDr0KJ1QqfJjY&start_radio=1 |
@mahgister , I particularly like "Repercussion". At one point about halfway through Seth stands up and leans forward and plucks the strings with his fingers. I didn’t realize that’s what was going on until I saw him perform it live. It had never occurred to me that plucking the strings of a piano is a thing. Aside from that, "Repercussion" gives me chills every time I listen to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMI_SsJN6Zg (In case it's not obvious, yes I absolutely use solo piano music for evaluating speakers and for showing them off... but I'm showing off "see, that sounds like a real piano" instead of "listen to that amazing bass".) Duke |
it is probably the best piano recording i heard but because it is only on youtube i cannot be sure but in fact i think even through youtube i am pretty sure it will be my best piano recording ..... Amazing.. I also use piano as the best instrument to test my system/room not just bass alone but the relation between bass and the other frequencies... The piano timbre is in a way more complex more multidimensional more hard to get right in recording process as in playback process in a room ... I like the music of Seth Kaufman a lot...Not only the sound ... Thanks.... Among my three favorite pianists only one is well recorded... ( Sofronitsky and Nyiregyházi are badly recorded , they are my two best only the third Ivan Moravec is relatively well recorded but nothing like this recording of Kaufman)
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Thank you, @mahgister! Very glad to hear Seth Kaufman's music speaks to you too! |
Looking at Yamaha's website, it seems at least some Clavinova electronic pianos use actual recordings of single piano notes, played at varying intensities. The actual recordings are taken from a Bosendorfer and a Yamaha Concert Grand. During play, the notes are mixed and reverberations from the other strings are calculated, along with reverberations from the soundboard and the body of the piano. For headphone output, this is done in stereo. Yamaha has been a leader in digital signal processing with its AV Receivers, and its NS-5000 speaker family has been a classic for decades. Not to mention motorbikes and jet-skis |
I am a professional pianist/ organist, and was an agent for Bosendorfer piano many years ago. I use the 97 key Imperial at my church, and have my favorite Bosendorfer 7 foot, 4 inch model at home. The lowest notes on the Imperial contain so little fundamental frequency energy, that even the most skilled piano technicians are very challenged to tune those pitches properly! The reason for the extra nine notes was for scaling and tone. Strings close to the rim do not resonate as well because the soundboard best resonates in the middle area. This is true of any vibrating membrane on any musical instrument! On the Imperial Grand, now the string of the lowest A on a regular piano crosses almost down the middle of the soundboard, creating its beautiful singing quality with almost organ like sustain! On a Steinway, one can achieve power, but with much quicker attenuation than the Bosendorfer, because the string is much closer to the rim. BUT, there still is no comparison to an organ pipe as a bass reference because of the sheer physics of the pipe itself, creating the true fundamental bass frequency! So yes, the piano is a great instrument for testing speaker accuracy, but for a variety of other reasons, not for bass! And no, I’ve never heard a speaker sound like a live Bosendorfer, but the closer they can get is a great evaluation tool for quality audio reproduction. |
While I can agree that no speaker system can fully capture the sound of an acoustic piano, at least within the context of what I have heard from sound systems, Yamaha has carved out something different with their top level Clavinova instruments. These are not trying to reproduce the sound of a piano recording in the context that is normally contemplated. Rather they were conceived to produce (as opposed to reproduce) the sound of a piano. I have heard the result compared to Yamaha's C7 and C9 and the result is remarkable. How a Bosendorfer would compare I cannot say. The standard was Yamaha, not Bosendorfer, so presumably the difference would be obvious. |
With all due respect to billstevenson, there have been so many attempts for decades to come up with a substitute for the acoustic piano that doesn’t need tuning, etc., and Yamaha has been at the forefront with their hybrid, Clavinova, and other models. Yes, they have made improvements in the sampled piano, but it is still a canned sound, not an acoustic instrument. As in a sampled electronic pipe organ, despite the increased resolution, etc., there is still no way to recreate the multiplicity of so many sound sources, no matter how many audio channels and samples are used to create the random complexity of the acoustic instrument. A professional musician can tell you that you can take the highest quality string samples for instance, and that in a simple example may sound good, as soon as you layer more and more, the result homogenizes and sounds less convincing. But if for example, you keep adding more acoustic string instruments, the sound gets more and more complex, and is easily recognized as far superior to the canned samples. It has to do with the infinite number of variables in individual bowings, vibratos, intonation, and many other factors. Also, we are trying to convert this enormous complexity into an electronic signal, reproduced by audio transducers. The fact is that we’re conditioned to believe that the sample is the real deal in live performance, Broadway shows, and recordings. I maintain that I can take a child and sit them in front of a real cello, and there will be no question of how they will respond to the physical affect of that instrument as opposed to a recorded sample. |
Well timstella, I would never presume to tell you or anyone else what you can hear. I can tell you that in one iteration of my life I was in fact a professional musician. Although I joke about it: How many musicians are there in a 15 piece band? Answer: 14 and a drummer. I was the drummer. Anyway I always had, and even though with age my hearing has diminished, still am blessed with pretty good hearing. If you have the opportunity, I encourage to try to listen to, and to play if possible, one of the new Clavinova pianos in comparison to either a C7 or a C9. You will be astonished. To change the subject, have you heard a demonstration of the excellent modern stringed instruments compared to the best of the traditional ones such as Stradivarius or Guarneri? To my ears the only real miss is the viola and even they are really excellent. Given the astronomical prices of the traditional ones it is a real breakthrough that such wonderful instruments being made again. And now back to pianos, sorry my mind wanders, Beethoven was limited by the piano technology available during his lifetime. It is interesting to speculate that perhaps with advances in technology perhaps a future composer will expand the possibilities of piano music yet to come. |
It is evident that nothing beat the organ if we want to test the bass depth. But there is other dimensions of bass we can test best with a piano. Bass is a multidimensional band registers set related to timbre in acoustical normal conditions, for this a piano cannot replace an organ, nor the reverse and the tuba is as the viol an indispensable tool. Music is rooted in timbre perception not in frequencies per se ( as a source of information communicated by the vibrating sound source). I am not a musician nor an acoustician. It is only what i learned tuning my system/room ...
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What synthesizer can we hear, preferably on record, that can compare and exceed the rich harmonics of a pipe organ? Why is fast attack preferrable to slow? Does something that is below the threshold of human hearing add to the enjoyment of the musical experience in some subliminal way? Just wondering. |
Artificially generated sound hurt my soul... Generally... Why ?
Because a Natural vibrating sound source, a pipe organ for example or a piano string transmit an acoustical information about its physical state... An electronical sound do not... Sound is not a subjective experience only it is an objective takes on some aspect of the physical world (timbre) informing us....
It is why i hate A.I. invasion so useful it could be on some specfic case... I dont listen electronica....
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You are well ahead of me, I can't even play the drums. But I did not make up the bit about Yamaha using sound recorded from a Bosendorfer Imperial! From Yamaha's Australian website: CLP-765GP - Features - Clavinova - Pianos - Musical Instruments - Products - Yamaha - Music - Australia
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I recently bought Hyperion’s CD (no SACD available) of Marc-Andre Hamelin playing the opus 106 Hammerklavier Sonata. According to the notes, during its composition Beethoven was given a Broadwood piano from London. Like Viennese pianos of the time, these had a six octave range, but started half an octave lower at CC compared to FF. The first two movements of the sonata use the higher range, the last two the lower one. So it would seem that Beethoven did indeed compose for a future instrument, since no single piano he was aware of could manage all the notes in the Hammerklavier Sonata. Similar thinking is behind the Stuart and Sons extended keyboard instruments, which have some other revolutionary features including a fourth pedal, which moves the hammer closer to the strings for really soft playing. The strings couple to the soundboard vertically rather than horizontally, and transmit more sound energy than conventional pianos. They are deliberately designed for a livelier sound than say Steinways or Bosendorfers. |
The attack on a pipe organ on a really deep note takes time for the pipe/chamber to fill so the note comes on more gradually. A synthesizer can play basically any waveform all the way down to subharmonic. A subharmonic square wave with an instantaneous rise time is harder on the speakers that have to make the transition more quickly. |
I privately messaged Bill Stevenson, respecting his opinion on the latest Clavinova. |
I cannot thank enough the person here ( i dont remember who) who recommended to use this small organ interpretation of the Bach Klavier which is truly astounding : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyGMg1GcqkU&list=PLaK8vS3Zo1ShbeZE1EZZi-6z6V3C0eRY6 |
An infrasonic square wave, and in fact any square wave, theoretically contains every higher harmonic right up to infinity. As such every driver in a conventional dynamic speaker will contribute, and the tweeter in principle will be fed infinite power. Fortunately, the slew rate of any real-world amplifier is not infinitely fast. My favourite digital format, Direct Stream Digital, cannot even represent a square wave, any more than a vinyl groove can. I cannot think of any natural phenomenon that produces a true square wave. |
@timstella Even Yamaha only claims that their Clavinovas approach the sound quality of the best concert grand pianos.
On the other hand, they have all the benefits of digital including being affordable enough and small enough for home use |
It's not limited to square waves. A sawtooth wave also has an instantaneous rise or fall time, as the case may be. In the real world of music, a square wave would most sound like a clarinet, a sawtooth wave like a string, with bow spikes, a sine wave like a flute, and a triangular wave "flute-like" though none of these instruments are "pure of wave". |
Well Tim, I already related the story of the local Yamaha dealer renting the Kravits Center here in West Palm Beach where the Clavinova was definitely on stage. So the only part of not in your lifetime that you can cling to is the relative standing of the Kravits Center among the world's better venues. On that score you can relax. But there us no question that this instrument is for home use, not for world class performance. With that said, it would not surprise me if world class performers are using them for practice. If my local dealer is to be trusted that is a fact. For me the over riding consideration is that mine sounds exactly like a C7 to my ears and is always in tune. |
Dear Bill, yes, I’ve conducted productions in my career at the Kravis, it is a very nice arts center. I should have been more specific in saying for a concert pianist in recital or concerto. That you won’t see. And trust me, no serious classical pianist uses a Clavinova to practice. I’m sorry the discussion has gotten off its original topic. The difference is that between a very good sampled piano keyboard and a concert grand. Please enjoy yours! Best, Tim |