When You Only Want One: A Single Orchestral Test Disc

tmallin

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Classical orchestral is the best music for making fine discriminations in the quality of reproduction. It is best because it makes it easy to quickly hear what is wrong with the reproduction. That is, IF you know what it is supposed to sound like to begin with.

Unfortunately, like pink noise (the other best tool for making frequency balance judgments), many if not most listeners these days don't really know what it should sound like since they don't hear such music performed unamplified in a decent hall much, if at all. Two major reasons for this are (1) shifts in musical taste toward pop, rock, and everything else but classical, both at concerts and in churches and (2) the fact that much of the classical music that people can hear these days in concert is amplified at the performing venue. You hear the orchestra through electronics and speakers of unknown quality mixed by someone who may have little desire to present as true a picture of the unamplified sound as possible.


It's not very difficult to hunt down the good, unamplified stuff in a major city like New York, LA, or Chicago, at least as long as you are willing to pay the price of admission. But if you don't live near a major city, it may be much more difficult to regularly or even occasionally hear a good orchestra in a decent hall. And if you don't really like classical orchestral music, the price of admission to many events may be off-putting.

I hear unamplified classical music at least weekly, both as a performer on stage and as a listener in the audience. No, I don't attend classical concerts that often. But I do attend church every week and sing in the choir there. My church is one of the few in the Chicago area that has classical music vocal and orchestral ensembles or orchestras every week and it is never amplified in any way. The church's sanctuary has truly astounding acoustics. Musicians who play or sing there for the first time fall instantly in love with the venue because they sound so good there, both to themselves on stage and when they walk out in the audience to hear the other performers. They also can hear all the other performers on stage and get great "feedback" from the room as they perform--they can hear their sound projected and reflected back and thus have a great feel for how they are driving the room as they perform. Ask musicians about this and they will tell you how rare such an experience is.

This is all just a long way of saying that I think I know what orchestral music should sound like and can thus judge when a recording and playback system gets it right. The single most useful recording I've found for judging home audio system quality is, in fact, a recording of classical orchestral music. It is an old 1993 Pro Arte recording of Rachmanioff's Symphonic Dances with Eduardo Mata leading the Dallas Symphony. A few copies are usually still available from various sources, including Amazon. Here's one.

If you are both one who can hear classical music performed regularly in a good venue and are an audiophile/music lover, this disk will lead you on your quest for better, more accurate home reproduction. To the extent that playback of this disc does not sound like a live unamplified orchestra in a good hall from a good audience seat, my experience over the years tells me that your system is wrong to that extent. Work to maximize the realism of this recording and you will be thrilled with the results on other recordings as well.

If you can't hear or don't care to hear live unamplified classical music in a good hall, well. . . never mind. This recording will be useless to you.
 

LL21

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Thanks for this. Great read. have got it in my Amazon basket. look forward to hearing it. ;)
 

puroagave

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Tom, thanks for the reco i'll check it out. the gold standard for many audiophiles has been the Johanos/DSO of Rachmanioff's Symphonic Dances from way back in 1967. It was released by Athena as an audiophile reissue and then by APO as 45 rpm LP. Its now available from chad as hires download.
 

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RogerD

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astrotoy

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Tom, thanks for the reco i'll check it out. the gold standard for many audiophiles has been the Johanos/DSO of Rachmanioff's Symphonic Dances from way back in 1967. It was released by Athena as an audiophile reissue and then by APO as 45 rpm LP. Its now available from chad as hires download.

Excellent recommendation. Both in the original Vox recording and the Athena reissue (both were on the The Absolute Sound Super Disc list). Haven't heard the digital version. Another recommendation is the Malcolm Arnold English, Scottish and Cornish Dances on Lyrita SRCS109, another TAS Super Disc. Arnold conducted the London Phil. It was engineered by my friend John Dunkerley, one of the great Decca engineers and a protege of Kenneth 'Wilkie' Wilkinson.

(John gave me copies of the studio sheets he used for the recording in Kingsway Hall. Shameless plug - they are reproduced in my Decca Book, Decca:Supreme Stereophonic Legacy, just released by First Impression Music and being sold by Acoustic Sound and Elusive Disc. This weekend is the debut of the book at the Hong Kong Audio Show - available in the US on August 15th.)

I am fortunate in being able to attend about 90 classical music concerts a year. About 20 or so are during our annual month in London, and the rest in the SF Bay Area. This year was very special, hearing three concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic during their US tour in the Spring.

Larry
 

puroagave

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Excellent recommendation. Both in the original Vox recording and the Athena reissue (both were on the The Absolute Sound Super Disc list). Haven't heard the digital version. Another recommendation is the Malcolm Arnold English, Scottish and Cornish Dances on Lyrita SRCS109, another TAS Super Disc. Arnold conducted the London Phil. It was engineered by my friend John Dunkerley, one of the great Decca engineers and a protege of Kenneth 'Wilkie' Wilkinson.

(John gave me copies of the studio sheets he used for the recording in Kingsway Hall. Shameless plug - they are reproduced in my Decca Book, Decca:Supreme Stereophonic Legacy, just released by First Impression Music and being sold by Acoustic Sound and Elusive Disc. This weekend is the debut of the book at the Hong Kong Audio Show - available in the US on August 15th.)

I am fortunate in being able to attend about 90 classical music concerts a year. About 20 or so are during our annual month in London, and the rest in the SF Bay Area. This year was very special, hearing three concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic during their US tour in the Spring.

Larry

Arnold's Scottish and Cornish Dances was the one lyrita you had to own in part b/c the music was some of the most accessible in the entire catalog and the sound is demo quality, but the wrong pressing can sound bright (the later, paper thin pressing).
 

astrotoy

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Rob, that is my experience,too. I have both a Decca pressing and Nimbus pressing. Would recommend either one. The last EMI pressing (never have seen one in any of my other Lyritas - and I have copies of all stereo Lyritas) was very thin and not worth the $10 or so I paid for it new at Tower, years after the original record was issued.

Larry
 

tmallin

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Tom, thanks for the reco i'll check it out. the gold standard for many audiophiles has been the Johanos/DSO of Rachmanioff's Symphonic Dances from way back in 1967. It was released by Athena as an audiophile reissue and then by APO as 45 rpm LP. Its now available from chad as hires download.
Yes, I know about that recording and owned it for many years. But, in my opinion, the one I mentioned is a better guide to refining your system performance. The Johanos recording is very "dry" sounding, as in not having enough recorded hall ambiance.
 

GSOphile

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Tom, Eiji Oue's Minnesota Orchestra rendition of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, 2001 HDCD recording on Reference Recordings label has received a lot of acclaim over what an orchestral recording done right should sound like. I suspect you've heard this one too. Thoughts?
 
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NorthStar

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I concur, it sounds good to me @ home.

* I do have several devices with an HDCD decoder chip, so no sweat to get the full expanded dynamic range and the power & the glory...with extra clarity and extra low/tight registers.
 
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microstrip

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Five years later, it is now too late to question to question the first sentence of the original post - although I know since long that there are no "bests" in this hobby, including methods.

But I also know since long that there is enough variation is stereo recording to prevent us from having a single recording to be used for checking sound quality. In such case IMHO many times you will not be checking the system quality, but mostly the matching between the recording and the system. I enjoy carrying some of my preferred recordings to listen in other systems, but I know fairly well that the limitations of short time listening only a few recordings - usually I carry about ten, but seldom I can play more than three or four in such sessions.

BTW, I list my preferred recordings for evaluation in the "About" section - I think this way people will understand better the specifics and limitations of my opinions on stereo sound quality.
 

tmallin

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Yes, I have the RR Oue one, too, and it's available for streaming on Tidal, as are most RR recordings. Tidal playback correctly decodes the HDCD encoding.

In order to use the Oue Symphonic Dances recording at an audio store or show to judge system quality, you'd need to make sure you are playing it on a system capable of HDCD decoding (most disc players today do not decode HDCD, that function having been left out of most modern chipsets) or make sure the file from which you play that recording has been ripped or is being played back in such a way as to decode the HDCD encoding. With dBPoweramp rips, for instance, you toggle on the HDCD DSP function when ripping. Tidal is one way to automatically play it back properly, but otherwise you have to be careful. Without decoding, the sound will be too bright and have high frequency distortion artifacts, have compressed dynamics, and higher background noise than it should.

Even if you can make sure the HDCD encoding is decoded, I think the Mata is the better choice for the purposes of judging equipment. The Oue recording, like many Reference Recordings HDCD classical orchestral issues, errs in the opposite direction from the Johanos, I think. That is, it has at least a bit too much recorded hall ambiance, plus too much stereo separation. It seems to have been recorded so as to sound optimal on systems which have relatively small subtended angular separation between the two speakers as viewed from the listening position. As such, it caters to the audiophile tendency to sit far back from the speakers, with the speakers firing down the long dimension of the room and with the speakers far from the side walls. Many audiophile systems thus are set up with only 30 to 45 degrees of angular separation between the speakers as viewed from the listening position. With such set ups, this kind of recording will sound a lot more impressively spacious than most.

But speakers should be set up with at least 60 degrees of angular separation. With a proper set up, you will hear the exaggerated left/right and front/back separation and exaggerated hall sound from this recording. I suppose too much hall sound is better than the usual too little when it comes to classical orchestral recordings, but too much is still too much. Yes, the recording is "impressive" sounding, but it's just unnaturally reverberant and "pulled apart", even a bit "swimmy," on a well-set-up system, in my opinion.
 
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NorthStar

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• HDCD decoder chip: check.
• 45° speaker angle: check (good for movies too in a multichannel setup).

* For other stereo audiophile music recordings where a 60-70° angle is ideal I simply move my chair forward: check.

All angles checked.

** Reference Recordings ... Channel Classics (SACD): check (the best).

Best,
 

miniguy

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Tom, Eiji Oue's Minnesota Orchestra rendition of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, 2001 HDCD recording on Reference Recordings label has received a lot of acclaim over what an orchestral recording done right should sound like. I suspect you've heard this one too. Thoughts?

Disagree. This is the worst KOJ orchestral recording, so distant it sounds like the orchestra is at the end of a large cave. Certainly far from one knows how an orchestra really sounds like mid-hall. A much better one is the Malcolm Arnold which was reissued not too long ago by RR.
 
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NorthStar

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The worst? Maybe not the best, but the worst? ...Malcolm here I come. :)

This one:

 
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GSOphile

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Yes, I have the RR Oue one, too, and it's available for streaming on Tidal, as are most RR recordings. Tidal playback correctly decodes the HDCD encoding.

In order to use the Oue Symphonic Dances recording at an audio store or show to judge system quality, you'd need to make sure you are playing it on a system capable of HDCD decoding (most disc players today do not decode HDCD, that function having been left out of most modern chipsets) or make sure the file from which you play that recording has been ripped or is being played back in such a way as to decode the HDCD encoding. With dBPoweramp rips, for instance, you toggle on the HDCD DSP function when ripping. Tidal is one way to automatically play it back properly, but otherwise you have to be careful. Without decoding, the sound will be too bright and have high frequency distortion artifacts, have compressed dynamics, and higher background noise than it should.

Even if you can make sure the HDCD encoding is decoded, I think the Mata is the better choice for the purposes of judging equipment. The Oue recording, like many Reference Recordings HDCD classical orchestral issues, errs in the opposite direction from the Johanos, I think. That is, it has at least a bit too much recorded hall ambiance, plus too much stereo separation. It seems to have been recorded so as to sound optimal on systems which have relatively small subtended angular separation between the two speakers as viewed from the listening position. As such, it caters to the audiophile tendency to sit far back from the speakers, with the speakers firing down the long dimension of the room and with the speakers far from the side walls. Many audiophile systems thus are set up with only 30 to 45 degrees of angular separation between the speakers as viewed from the listening position. With such set ups, this kind of recording will sound a lot more impressively spacious than most.

But speakers should be set up with at least 60 degrees of angular separation. With a proper set up, you will hear the exaggerated left/right and front/back separation and exaggerated hall sound from this recording. I suppose too much hall sound is better than the usual too little when it comes to classical orchestral recordings, but too much is still too much. Yes, the recording is "impressive" sounding, but it's just unnaturally reverberant and "pulled apart", even a bit "swimmy," on a well-set-up system, in my opinion.
Tom, thanks for taking the time to review this recording. I agree with your final summary: “Yes, the recording is ‘impressive’ sounding, but it’s just unnaturally reverberant and ‘pulled apart’, even a bit ’swimmy,’ on a well set-up system, in my opinion.”
My impressions are from playing the HDCD on a one-generation back player that doesn’t support HDCD playback (Esoteric K-03X). I am sensitive to “too bright,” but for an orchestral recording I wouldn’t put this one in that category. In general, I find instrumental timbres and dynamic range to be excellent for a CD. They seem to separate out various instrumental groupings for highlighting throughout the piece, which to me makes it interesting but a bit less authentic. If that’s what’s meant by “too much stereo separation,” I agree. I don’t listen with “only 30 to 45 degrees of angular separation between the speakers as viewed from the listening position,” but I don’t listen from within the near field either. “A bit too much recorded ambience” - I definitely agree.
The Oue recording is not a favorite piece of mine, but it seems to be somewhat popular as an audiophile orchestral demo recording. I have not used it as a test recording. However, your comments make me want to hear the Mata version on my system.
 
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