Live unamplified music v home audio, another thread/perspective

spiritofmusic

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I know this subject crops up every so often, I don't have any clever views, just another perspective
But it's a topic always worth garnering opinions on
In London I didn't get out to much live classical music, but w my recent move to The Sticks has opened up my opportunities
I'm attending a fortnight festival half a dozen times, will go on to at least a weekly concert thereafter
On Monday saw an Oboe Group (2 Oboes, 2 Bassoons, 2 Tailles, period instruments) playing Philidor and Purcell amongst others in a beautiful old building (part Norman/gothic) sympathetic acoustic, and then piano recital in the big Minster, slightly harder very reverberant space, program incl Chopin, Schumann and Tchaikovsky
None of this was my usual music of choice, but it was 200% super enjoyable
What I take away from my comparison to music played at home, a sound I'm totally happy with
First, live unamplified dynamics are just plain scary! In a domestic like environment 50x25x20 w plenty of soft furnishings, the Oboe Group just effortlessly scaled the heights
I've never experienced any home system come even close
Acceleration from a standing start just puts all our systems to the sword
Where I felt my system could hold its head up was in the area of tonal density and timbre to some extent
My system w tubes and full range drivers, zero crossovers, makes a pretty decent stab at replicating what I heard from the Oboe Group ie a texture and density I don't hear from more tipped up, treble spotlit uber resolution super brand systems (no names, no criticism)
I remain totally vindicated my choices here are proven to be good ones by what I heard
Also the other conclusions are that despite a superficial similarity to hi Rez digital, live classical IMHO more analogous to the best vinyl replay, esp in the areas of tone, timbre, density, flow and energy
And no doubt the absence of listening thru the mic feed a couple of generations down from the master reveals the massive bottleneck on dynamics, energy and flow we put up w at home
To hear such unrestricted flooding of the space w energy and dense information gives real pause for thought in the comparison to what we experience at home
Just my two cents
 
Last edited:

PeterA

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Also the other conclusions are that despite a superficial similarity to hi Rez digital, live classical IMHO more analogous to the best vinyl replay, esp in the areas of tone, timbre, density, flow and energy
And no doubt the absence of listening thru the mic feed a couple of generations down from the master reveals the massive bottleneck on dynamics, energy and flow we put up w at hone
To hear such unrestricted flooding of the space w energy and dense information gives real pause for thought in the comparison to what we experience at home
Just my two cents

My Boston Group of audiophiles - MadFloyd, Ack, Al M., PeterA - all use unamplified live music as a reference, both small and large scale. We use that reference to inform ourselves of the success or failure of changes in our systems. For me, it is not the only reference, but it is the critical and most important one. Live music is our common reference, priority, and experience, and despite having fairly different systems, I think it is why we respect each other's opinions.

I completely agree that analog sounds more like live classical music, though I have heard very good examples of digital recently. I'm not sure a lack of dynamics, energy and flow is necessarily the result of distance from the mic feed. I have heard incredible examples of those attributes in systems with both standard vinyl and bluebook CDs. Direct to Disk vinyl does tend to offer this more consistently though.

Regarding your last observation, by contrast, I have actually heard what seems like the "unrestricted flooding of the space with energy and dense information" in some systems, and this is relative, and in reference to, live music. I have often paused to think, "wow, that is incredible, convincing, and so realistic sounding" and tried to understand how and why it is possible to achieve in a home system. I think in this sense, perhaps our experience is different. Or it may be a subject interpretation of relative similarities. I have not quite heard the full resonating energy of a cello from fifteen feet away in a home system, but I have heard some systems come pretty close, and I have been mighty impressed.

The live music is important to keep things in perspective and our judgements and assessments grounded in reality. It also gives us some common basis on which to discuss things. I tend to appreciate and value posts more if I know the author has an appreciation for, and spends time listening to, live unamplified music.
 

marty

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My Boston Group of audiophiles - MadFloyd, Ack, Al M., PeterA - all use unamplified live music as a reference, both small and large scale. We use that reference to inform ourselves of the success or failure of changes in our systems. For me, it is not the only reference, but it is the critical and most important one. Live music is our common reference, priority, and experience, and despite having fairly different systems, I think it is why we respect each other's opinions.

I completely agree that analog sounds more like live classical music, though I have heard very good examples of digital recently. I'm not sure a lack of dynamics, energy and flow is necessarily the result of distance from the mic feed. I have heard incredible examples of those attributes in systems with both standard vinyl and bluebook CDs. Direct to Disk vinyl does tend to offer this more consistently though.

Regarding your last observation, by contrast, I have actually heard what seems like the "unrestricted flooding of the space with energy and dense information" in some systems, and this is relative, and in reference to, live music. I have often paused to think, "wow, that is incredible, convincing, and so realistic sounding" and tried to understand how and why it is possible to achieve in a home system. I think in this sense, perhaps our experience is different. Or it may be a subject interpretation of relative similarities. I have not quite heard the full resonating energy of a cello from fifteen feet away in a home system, but I have heard some systems come pretty close, and I have been mighty impressed.

The live music is important to keep things in perspective and our judgements and assessments grounded in reality. It also gives us some common basis on which to discuss things. I tend to appreciate and value posts more if I know the author has an appreciation for, and spends time listening to, live unamplified music.

+1 Well stated, Peter.
 

spiritofmusic

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Peter, don't get me wrong, I've heard a lot of things in a variety of systems that get in the vicinity of live unamplified
But the truly mesmeric very soft to very loud I heard on Monday is an impossible struggle to emulate
IMHO, YMMV etc
What I'm v pleased at from a personal perspective is that the yardsticks I find crucial and can be approximated at home I'm having a good deal of success with ie tonal density and timbre
I find these lacking in quite a few of the big spkrs/SS amps combos I've heard over the years
However these latter systems do the dynamics shift thing better than my system
Shifts and roundabouts LOL
The piano recital in the big Minster was a harder one to judge
It's a massive space, stone w soaring height, nothing soft to absorb undue reflections, and we were sitting a bit too far back
Here I felt the sound had massive flow and encompassing, but the domination of reverberant sound over direct sound was enough to keep me out of the moment, and all that stone resulted in a bit of a hard, upper midrangey dominance
Fascinatingly it really reminded me of my old hard and unforgiving loft apartment
Here, I much preferred my system at home in my new impvd space
Of course it couldn't replicate the bigness if the sound, but was comparable in other aspects
 

Joe Whip

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Sit next to a drum kit which I did last week at Ron Carter's show at the Blue Note and you hear how woeful home audio and recordings really are. I was so close no amplication was needed. Live music is much better for me hence why I attend as many concerts as I do. Now, I attend way more jazz concerts than classical, but all are in small clubs, three in the last week at different clubs in NYC. Nothing like it. I love listening at home and have a darn fine sounding room which I enjoy very much. With the best sounding recordings, mostly live, I get close, but the dynamics, no. Still awesome but short of live. I don't share the love of vinyl that many do here as I enjoy digital more, especially with my Yggy. I can bring recordings home after my son records and hear exactly what I heard from the live mic feed. Not to open a can of worms. :cool: whatever floats your boat.
 

Al M.

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Sit next to a drum kit which I did last week at Ron Carter's show at the Blue Note and you hear how woeful home audio and recordings really are. I was so close no amplication was needed. Live music is much better for me hence why I attend as many concerts as I do. Now, I attend way more jazz concerts than classical, but all are in small clubs, three in the last week at different clubs in NYC. Nothing like it. I love listening at home and have a darn fine sounding room which I enjoy very much. With the best sounding recordings, mostly live, I get close, but the dynamics, no. Still awesome but short of live. I don't share the love of vinyl that many do here as I enjoy digital more, especially with my Yggy. I can bring recordings home after my son records and hear exactly what I heard from the live mic feed. Not to open a can of worms. :cool: whatever floats your boat.

Yes, a drum kit is completely impossible to replicate by a system in terms of explosive transients, dynamics -- if you hear it from close-up. Super-large scale orchestral is also problematic. But a lot of music in between is less problematic, as also Peter A. suggested. I was surprised that my system comes rather close to reproducing the sound, including dynamics, that I heard sitting about 15 feet away from a solo piano in Killian Hall, MIT, Cambridge, MA, a medium-small hall of roughly perhaps 60 x 80 feet x 20 feet dimensions. Can I get the dynamics and impact at home from a piano playing in a much smaller venue, a large living room, like Peter A. and I heard in the Ayer Mansion, Boston, sitting maybe 10 feet away? No.
 

DaveC

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Yes, a drum kit is completely impossible to replicate by a system in terms of explosive transients, dynamics -- if you hear it from close-up. Super-large scale orchestral is also problematic. But a lot of music in between is less problematic, as also Peter A. suggested. I was surprised that my system comes rather close to reproducing the sound, including dynamics, that I heard sitting about 15 feet away from a solo piano in Killian Hall, MIT, Cambridge, MA, a medium-small hall of roughly perhaps 60 x 80 feet x 20 feet dimensions. Can I get the dynamics and impact at home from a piano playing in a much smaller venue, a large living room, like Peter A. and I heard in the Ayer Mansion, Boston, sitting maybe 10 feet away? No.

Most systems require the recording to be compressed so we can't experience the true dynamics of instruments like drums at home. If the recording wasn't as compressed and the system was capable enough... lots of driver surface area or horns... it's possible to come much closer. In this case, experiencing the dynamics of drums, it is the recording that is the issue most of the time. The less capable the system the more compression is required, hence the lack of dynamics in much modern music. Dynamics also make listening to music as "background" more difficult. It would be nice if there were more "audiophile" masters made with increased dynamic range for those with systems that can handle it...
 

Al M.

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Most systems require the recording to be compressed so we can't experience the true dynamics of instruments like drums at home. If the recording wasn't as compressed and the system was capable enough... lots of driver surface area or horns... it's possible to come much closer. In this case, experiencing the dynamics of drums, it is the recording that is the issue most of the time. The less capable the system the more compression is required, hence the lack of dynamics in much modern music. Dynamics also make listening to music as "background" more difficult. It would be nice if there were more "audiophile" masters made with increased dynamic range for those with systems that can handle it...

The problem seems to persist also when playing back audiophile drum recordings.
 

DaveC

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The problem seems to persist also when playing back audiophile drum recordings.

I agree. Many years ago at RMAF I heard an uncompressed drum kit recording played through some huge GR line arrays, it sounded larger than life but the dynamics were very realistic.
 

cjfrbw

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I still don't understand why audiophiles who say they like live music don't use surround systems more. The surround gives a living, breathing space that swells and recedes with the music, and enriches tone, especially with classical pieces. That breathing sense of large space is something that I would miss and just can't be created by a two channel system.

It's one of the ironies of high end audio that the adamantine devotion to two channel reproduction makes the ostensible goals even more elusive, but there it is, year after year, post after post. Multi channel surround still won't be "live", but it is a lot closer, IF it is set up correctly. Guys will squiggle their cartridges, mess with cables and tweak rooms ad infinitum, but think surround is "artificial" and seek the goal of ever greater razor blade definition, instead.

I have to saw on about it from time to time, but realize that it is a pretty pointless to sway two channel guys from their notion that two channels can emulate a performance space.
 

ack

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My Boston Group of audiophiles - MadFloyd, Ack, Al M., PeterA - all use unamplified live music as a reference, both small and large scale. We use that reference to inform ourselves of the success or failure of changes in our systems. For me, it is not the only reference, but it is the critical and most important one. Live music is our common reference, priority, and experience, and despite having fairly different systems, I think it is why we respect each other's opinions.

I completely agree that analog sounds more like live classical music, though I have heard very good examples of digital recently. I'm not sure a lack of dynamics, energy and flow is necessarily the result of distance from the mic feed. I have heard incredible examples of those attributes in systems with both standard vinyl and bluebook CDs. Direct to Disk vinyl does tend to offer this more consistently though.

Regarding your last observation, by contrast, I have actually heard what seems like the "unrestricted flooding of the space with energy and dense information" in some systems, and this is relative, and in reference to, live music. I have often paused to think, "wow, that is incredible, convincing, and so realistic sounding" and tried to understand how and why it is possible to achieve in a home system. I think in this sense, perhaps our experience is different. Or it may be a subject interpretation of relative similarities. I have not quite heard the full resonating energy of a cello from fifteen feet away in a home system, but I have heard some systems come pretty close, and I have been mighty impressed.

The live music is important to keep things in perspective and our judgements and assessments grounded in reality. It also gives us some common basis on which to discuss things. I tend to appreciate and value posts more if I know the author has an appreciation for, and spends time listening to, live unamplified music.

Another +1 from me, especially on the highlighted sentence. I like what I hear at home, but when it's time to go to the BSO, well, that's a ritual and an experience I will never have at home. Like they say, there is no substitute for the real thing, and it applies here as well.
 

bonzo75

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I still don't understand why audiophiles who say they like live music don't use surround systems more. The surround gives a living, breathing space that swells and recedes with the music, and enriches tone, especially with classical pieces. That breathing sense of large space is something that I would miss and just can't be created by a two channel system.

It's one of the ironies of high end audio that the adamantine devotion to two channel reproduction makes the ostensible goals even more elusive, but there it is, year after year, post after post. Multi channel surround still won't be "live", but it is a lot closer, IF it is set up correctly. Guys will squiggle their cartridges, mess with cables and tweak rooms ad infinitum, but think surround is "artificial" and seek the goal of ever greater razor blade definition, instead.

I have to saw on about it from time to time, but realize that it is a pretty pointless to sway two channel guys from their notion that two channels can emulate a performance space.

+1 on MCH. The only reason to have 2-ch over MCH is to use Vinyl. If I was digital only cone speaker, I would have gone MCH. And you can still add vinyl to the set up and play both. I have never heard Mahler 2 played like Channel Classics did on a 14.4 Datasat surround system using B&Ws. To go 2-ch to beat a normal MCH you have to go really, really high up with uber room and exotic speaker not being capable of being used in MCH
 

Mike Lavigne

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+1 on MCH. The only reason to have 2-ch over MCH is to use Vinyl. If I was digital only cone speaker, I would have gone MCH. And you can still add vinyl to the set up and play both. I have never heard Mahler 2 played like Channel Classics did on a 14.4 Datasat surround system using B&Ws. To go 2-ch to beat a normal MCH you have to go really, really high up with uber room and exotic speaker not being capable of being used in MCH

top level vinyl + right system/room > 5.1 dsd digital multi-channel.

best multi-channel I have heard is 4 track analog tape.

more channels does not overcome more information present in the analog media. especially listening to lots of music over a period of time. the presentation of MC gets old, the essence of the music in the analog endures and satisfies.

maybe some day.....but not soon. maybe 8 channels of quad dsd or dxd might get closer. but there is no delivery system for it....yet.

in the here and now vinyl rules.
 

microstrip

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+1 on MCH. The only reason to have 2-ch over MCH is to use Vinyl. If I was digital only cone speaker, I would have gone MCH. And you can still add vinyl to the set up and play both. I have never heard Mahler 2 played like Channel Classics did on a 14.4 Datasat surround system using B&Ws. To go 2-ch to beat a normal MCH you have to go really, really high up with uber room and exotic speaker not being capable of being used in MCH

IMHO experience with a Mahler 2 is insufficient to support such claim. I agree symphonic music is particularly well served with MCH, but IMHO is not the unique type of reference music for standard format comparisons and BTW, is not the most exigent sound reproduction in every aspect.

More channels surely means more and better quality direct directional information, but all chamber/ancient music I listened through MCH sounded artificial and less natural compared to SOTA stereo.
 

PeterA

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I still don't understand why audiophiles who say they like live music don't use surround systems more. The surround gives a living, breathing space that swells and recedes with the music, and enriches tone, especially with classical pieces. That breathing sense of large space is something that I would miss and just can't be created by a two channel system.

It's one of the ironies of high end audio that the adamantine devotion to two channel reproduction makes the ostensible goals even more elusive, but there it is, year after year, post after post. Multi channel surround still won't be "live", but it is a lot closer, IF it is set up correctly. Guys will squiggle their cartridges, mess with cables and tweak rooms ad infinitum, but think surround is "artificial" and seek the goal of ever greater razor blade definition, instead.

I have to saw on about it from time to time, but realize that it is a pretty pointless to sway two channel guys from their notion that two channels can emulate a performance space.

I guess I don't really understand how you do this with your SME turntable. Do you mostly listen to digital Multi Channel and does it sound better/more realistic than your 2 channel vinyl? If you don't like squiggling with your cartridge, IMO, you are not optimizing your vinyl setup and hearing its full potential.
 

Kal Rubinson

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IMHO experience with a Mahler 2 is insufficient to support such claim. I agree symphonic music is particularly well served with MCH, but IMHO is not the unique type of reference music for standard format comparisons and BTW, is not the most exigent sound reproduction in every aspect.
If not, why not and what is?
 

treitz3

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treitz3

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:cool:

Tom
 

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