jerome69 said:
Yes ! It 'a a critical point. I can remove your doubts
A tall story I heard, a blind test was done with a critic to find a record cello and an unamplified play. The result, he preferred the record one...
Here in Tokyo I have a fortunate situation in that I am able to attend live orchestral recording sessions in an outstanding hall, and I am always struck by the large difference in the sound heard at the "best seat in the orchestra house" and "the best seat in the listening room." It might be somewhat different with purist "single stereo microphone" recordings -- which in the nature of the case could not be closely miked when recording an orchestra -- but with standard close miking techniques you end up with FAR MORE instrumental detail in the recording than you would ever get from listening to the live performance normally. Now that I am accustomed to the difference, I am quite happy listening to either type of recording, but I bet most people who heard a recording that realistically recreated the live listening experience of a symphony orchestra would consider that to be an inferior recording, and would prefer the sound of the closely miked (multi-miked) recording, even though objectively speaking such a recording will tend to take you further away from the live listening experience. In my view, there is nothing wrong with that at all, because if people are happy with the sound coming out of their speakers, that's what counts, and most people are understandably of the view that the more information delivered, the better.
-- Chris
Its the conceptual difference between documenting life or arbitrary ''enhancing'' it.
Sign of the times or not, its a matter of aesthetics. The bad point is that most audiophiles don't know the real life version intimately enough so to really chose.
P.S. Personally I prefer the more authentic spatial information of an event than the intimate instrumental detail. Music is not written with the latter in mind or heard as that by the composer and/or conductor.
Sign of the times or not, its a matter of aesthetics. The bad point is that most audiophiles don't know the real life version intimately enough so to really chose.
P.S. Personally I prefer the more authentic spatial information of an event than the intimate instrumental detail. Music is not written with the latter in mind or heard as that by the composer and/or conductor.
salas said:
I quite agree -- for me a sense of space in the musical playback is one of the most enjoyable features, and there is a lot of integrity in a well-done minimalist recording when compared with the more usual approach. (Direct comparisons are almost never possible, of course.) It's too bad there are not more such recordings. On the other hand -- and this may be due to my relative dullness and lack of discernment as a listener -- it takes a pretty bad recording for me to be unable to enjoy a technically skillful and artistically gifted realization of a great composition. I guess you could say I'm easy to please but difficult to entirely satisfy.
-- Chris
wchick said:
wchick said:
nice to see that the Plutos placement in the room was exactly as I advocate for omni speakers here on the forum:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1484811#post1484811
(scroll down to see the attached image)
no wonder they were so well accepted by so many people
speaker-room interface is the one most important thing
best regards!
graaf
Elias said:
Are we sure the placement of plutos on the picture is the same position as when used to actually listen the music, or they were just lifted aside to make room for the orions as we see in the picture?
That would make a lot of difference
o yeah surely it would make!
but I seriously doubt that it could be the case
where could they be placed for listening in such a narrow room? with a lot of listening chairs in the middle?
besides "lifted aside" or "lifted aside and back" I would understand but "lifted aside and towards listeners"?
I don't think so
but perhaps anyone who actually has been there can help?
best regards!
graaf
I think that Chris makes a very good point- If the recording is close miked and reproduced accurately, it is going to sound different than what you hear in the concert hall. Usually even when a symphony is recorded with just a few mics , they are pretty close to the players- closer than almost everyone in the audience.(am I wrong on this last? It seems to me that a system that reproduces this recording accurately isn't going to sound like being in the middle of the audience.
closed Mic - now nicely off topic
Heres my take on it all. And I think Chris makes the point accurately, assuming I understand it.
Audiophile recordings or not -
A decent system with closed mic recordings IMO -
thinking Diana Krall, even Willie Nelson - will often sound like they are 12 feet tall and 4 feet wide in the listening area.
No - doesn't seem realistic at all to me, often interesting though. Good for freaking out the dog. I figure if he barks or runs - it sounds real enough.
The point for me is an attempt to mellow out and enjoy it, and try not to overanalyze it. It is nice though to pick put low level spatial information.
My take is the 80/20 rule. A good system is fairly easy to do and enjoy. Trying to get the last 20 percent will cost you too much time on the boards, with the credit card and in the workshop than much else.
Variac, best of luck at Burning AMP. Wish I could be there.
Heres my take on it all. And I think Chris makes the point accurately, assuming I understand it.
Audiophile recordings or not -
A decent system with closed mic recordings IMO -
thinking Diana Krall, even Willie Nelson - will often sound like they are 12 feet tall and 4 feet wide in the listening area.
No - doesn't seem realistic at all to me, often interesting though. Good for freaking out the dog. I figure if he barks or runs - it sounds real enough.
The point for me is an attempt to mellow out and enjoy it, and try not to overanalyze it. It is nice though to pick put low level spatial information.
My take is the 80/20 rule. A good system is fairly easy to do and enjoy. Trying to get the last 20 percent will cost you too much time on the boards, with the credit card and in the workshop than much else.
Variac, best of luck at Burning AMP. Wish I could be there.
My experience has been limited to one orchestra in one music hall, but I have quite a few recordings made where I was present (and they are considered to be good recordings -- some have won recommendations from local magazines that review classical music recordings) but the listening experience is quite a bit different between "live" and "played back." The recordings have a lot more detailed information in them than the life performance did. I suppose that if you were front row and center there would be a bit less dissimilarity. But it sure doesn't sound like sitting in the middle of the 15th row . . . not that I mind, of course: I get to experience the music in two different ways.
-- Chris
-- Chris
jerome69 said:
I think that this discussion is OT, but I'd like to add some experineces.
Once in a well published test on the perception of distortion we wanted to test the differences in perception between the general public and a group of "trained listeners". The trained listeners took, on the average twice as long to do the test. The test was designed to test the subjects ability to repeatably judge the same trials over and over. The "trained" group was far LESS stable in their judgments than the general public, but both groups agreed "on average". It appears that the trained subjects keep trying to "second guess" the distortions - knowing that there always were some - and didn't do a very good job.
In a very elaborate test at a major car company the "expert listening panel" of 12 subjects were tested for they "guage capability" - how well they could repeatedly rate the same sound system over and over. Of the twelve only two were found to be "capable". The other ten could not be relied upon to give the same rating to the same system over and over. These were all trained audiophiles.
gedlee said:
Yeah, well you can definitely rely on me -- to be unreliable. I bet if they were audiophiles who were also highly trained musicians -- especially players of instruments in the violin family, whose players probably develop the best ears for pitch -- they could do a much better job on average, and most especially if they knew the music being played well enough to be able to play it themselves. I'm guessing that if you could get the listeners to that level, then they could really zero in on a lot of different things. My kids are not all that interested in audio but they are trained musicians and I'm always amazed by all the things they pick up on that tends to go right by me on a single listening.
It also occurs to me that perhaps part of the "problem" is that our brains keep repairing or deleting the "broken" parts so that we don't readily notice them as defective. Perhaps one might only notice it gradually, as fatigue or the inability to listen to something for a long time, and then we have to go back and start analyzing why the system leaves us feeling that way.
-- Chris
The thing that I would caution about is that music appreciation and sound reproduction appreciation are not the same things. One can be very good at one and poor at the other and visa-versa. I have, in general, not seen a strong correlation between the two, although there might be a tendancy for a weak positive correlation. However, I would never bet on a good musician being a good listener. I've seen far too many counter examples.
gedlee said:
Absolutely -- the musicians are often so much into the music that they could almost care less about the audio fidelity. That's why I fudged my answer by specifying that participants should be selected from that rare group who are both musicians and audiophiles . . .
Of course, one of the main reasons why there are few audiophiles among classical musicians is that usually the classical musicians would rather put what little money they have toward their next instrument purchase . . . it seems like most of them have four or five instruments that range from "expensive" to "Oh my God that's expensive" . . .
-- Chris
cdwitmer said:
Yes indeedy! And why is it done this way? Not for you, or me, or the other guys here - for Joe Q. Public.
For the vast majority of sound systems, car stereos, radios, etc. that the music is played on. If you start out with all that detail, you might just end up somewhere near reality in the end.
And that's what's going to sound "good" to most of the buying public. I'll include myself in there, if using a less than great system.Funny thing: When I first got into high end Hi-Fi back in my school days, I never liked those far miked, lot's of concert hall sound recordings. I thought they were rubbish and didn't understand why the engineer did that. "Doesn't sound real. - Too muffled, too far away" I liked much closer miked stuff, whatever the genre. Until it dawned on me - duh - that in those days I was sitting in the orchesta! High school band, youth orchestras, etc. Put a stereo pair in the woodwind section and you'd get an idea of what was "right" to me.
It all goes back to what Lynn said in an earlier post in this thread. Most systems just can't get the feel of a real, live event. It's not easy to do...
On the other hand:
There was a gentleman who stupped by our room at RMAF last year. "Log Cabin Recordings." He asked to play a few of his CD and they were wonderfull.
Just the right mix of direct and ambient sound. The piano was missing none of its detail, but you could here the room very well too.
I asked how it was done and he said "one stereo microphone."
Obviously, he knew right were to place that mic!
There was a gentleman who stupped by our room at RMAF last year. "Log Cabin Recordings." He asked to play a few of his CD and they were wonderfull.
Just the right mix of direct and ambient sound. The piano was missing none of its detail, but you could here the room very well too.
I asked how it was done and he said "one stereo microphone."
Obviously, he knew right were to place that mic!
wchick said:
Jeffbook and Eric Weitzman are correct in their posts about how the Orion speakers are wired to the AT-6012 amplifier. I made the speakers and also connected the amplifier at the show. Only 8 channels are used with the Orion+.
I did appreciate those who brought music to the show as it is easier to get a sense of comparisons when you listen to the same piece of music and something you know. We did have some samples requested that did not sound very live as some studio recordings seemed very compressed.
What was not obvious at the show I suspect most members of this forum know. The Orion is not only a DIY project, it is also available as a kit or as a custom turn key system in the woods of your choice. If you are planning the DIY version, please study the pictures to see some differences in the DIY version and the completed version. There are some subtle changes that one might want to consider.
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