“You Are There” Absolute Sound: Can We Get There From Here? Part One

tmallin

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Over on REG's Audio Forum, Robert E. Greene has recently been making the case that the problems blocking progress toward realism in home music reproduction come down to just two things: (1) how commercial recordings are made, and (2) how speakers radiate energy into the room and how the room reflects/absorbs that energy.

To understand how it all could come down to these factors, you need to understand the goals of music reproduction in the home. Then we can look at why the above two factors are so important to realistic music reproduction at home and why they are such obstacles to realistic reproduction.

"You are there" v. "they are here"

The Goal

This is a non-issue for anyone who pursues "the absolute sound" as defined in The Absolute Sound (TAS) and by purists like me. Surely the goal of accurate reproduction is "you are there," not "they are here."

Interpreting the Goal

The problems arise in (1) interpreting what "you are there" means in terms of perspective and (2) in mapping from the soundfield captured by the mikes to the soundfield heard by our ears when reproduced by the listening room speakers. This “reciprocity” problem is the biggest stumbling block remaining in achieving “you are there” realism at home.

First, opinions differ over whether the goal is to reproduce some idealized listener perspective in the concert hall, or "what the mikes heard." The first is somewhat arbitrary, but can perhaps be agreed upon (say, 10th row center). The second is unknowable in certain absolute ways (spatial perspective, for instance, with widely separated mikes and more than two mikes in any configuration), but clearly deducible in others (frequency response, amount of small details audible, etc.). But "concert hall sound" is the goal of both camps, even though they may disagree on exactly the perspective from which the reproduced result should be judged.

Problems in Getting There

Second, assuming "you are there" is the goal, and we adopt the "10th row center" idealized perspective as the proper interpretation of the goal, it is apparent that the recording/playback system would have to introduce some distortions of perspective (distortions of both space and frequency response) in order to achieve this goal for most commercial recordings, given where microphones are typically located. Compared to 10th row center, the mikes are usually placed very close to the musicians and very high up. Certainly the sound captured by the mikes will have considerably more high frequency content than any audience perspective, both due to the fact that high frequencies diminish with distance and due to the upward beaming of many orchestral instruments, both because of the construction of the instrument, and the reflective floor under the musicians’ chairs.

Why is such a technique almost universally used? One reason has to do with the apparent spatial perspective captured by most stereo arrays of microphones compared to what the human ear/brain hears from any given position. Most stereo mike arrays, no matter whether you listen through headphones or monitor speakers, make things sound farther away than our ears do in a given position. Thus, most stereo mike arrays exaggerate both the absolute distance from the mikes and the relative distances of first row v. last row musicians from the mikes: if you aren't careful in how you set up the mikes, the first row musicians will sound like they are in your lap and the last row will sound like they are in the next county. Positioning the mikes near the front of the stage and high up, through simple geometry, tends to reduce the differences in mike-to-musician distances between the front row and the back row. If done artfully, such positioning can yield a much more lifelike perspective, getting the front row folks out of your lap and increasing the presence of the back of the orchestra, while still yielding a good feeling of front-to-back depth of the group.

But you can never really know how such recordings are supposed to sound from either a tonal balance perspective OR a spatial perspective. As to tonal balance, if the engineer does not include some high frequency roll off, the sound captured by mikes with flat frequency response will be far too bright, compared to any audience perspective. And even if the engineer specifies an exact roll off curve in the recording notes, this is still just his judgment about what makes that recording sound balanced on some arbitrary monitoring system. The home listener, unless using the same room, speakers, speaker and listener positioning, acoustical treatment, etc., will not hear what the engineer heard, and, even if he does match the engineer’s set up as closely as possible, the listener’s tastes may not match those of the engineer.

And as to spatial perspective, experiments such as cupping your hands behind your ears suggest rather strongly that increasing the space between the stereo mikes will tend to exaggerate the spatial qualities of a group of instruments through some sort of auditory parallax or triangulation effect. Compared to normal listening, if you effectively increase the distance between your ears by cupping your hands behind them, front-to-back depth is exaggerated, side-to-side perspective is unnaturally focused, and individually instruments acquire an exaggerated sense of palpability or three-dimensionality. Such exaggerated spatial effects are probably actually on recordings of orchestras using widely separated stereo mikes.

Whether he knew it or not, HP, through TAS, by using such Mercury and RCA orchestral recordings as touchstones, and then trying to reproduce something like an audience perspective from such recordings played back at home without actual tone controls or other overt equalization, pushed the high-end audio industry in directions from which it has never recovered. The tonal balance problems caused by the non-flat mikes and up-high/in-close positioning used for such recordings favor electronics which greatly soften the highs (think traditional tube sound) and speakers which exaggerate the bass and slope off the highs (think big Infinity and Genesis products). And the fact that exaggerated spatial effects are in fact present on the recordings led to an obsession with the ability of equipment to reproduce three dimensional soundstaging and even three dimensional images of individual instruments.

Two-Channel Movements Toward the Goal

In a letter published in Issue 77 of TAS, I argued that even such recordings (i.e., ones made with widely spaced in-close/up-high mike arrays) could be used as references if only they were made with some sort of “Rosetta Stone” technique which would thoroughly document the differences between the live sound in the hall as heard from a preferred audience perspective and the live mike feed and tape recording when played back on a known standard monitoring system. Certainly this would be a giant step in the right direction, but such a method is still beset with difficulties stemming from uncontrolled variables, including those related to the acoustics of the listening room v. those of the studio. What is really needed is a stereo microphone arrangement which delivers tonal balance and spatiality using two loudspeakers in the listening room which is quite similar to what a listener would have heard in the recording hall when listening from the physical position where the microphones are placed, the “reciprocity” I'm talking about.

Single-point (e.g., Blumlein, M-S, X-Y) and quasi-single-point (e.g., ORTF) set ups seem to yield less of the perspective distortion effect and can therefore be placed further from the musicians with good results. Blumlein does this best of all and if the microphone response is subjectively correct can produce a believable facsimile of a 10th-row-center perspective simply by placing the stereo mike array in the 10th-row-center physical position. Nevertheless, most practitioners still mount even Blumlein mike arrays fairly high up to reduce the spatial distortion. We are left still wondering what such recordings should really sound like. Also, Blumlein only works its spatial magic for the front quadrant of 90 degrees; the hall ambience coming from angles outside that quadrant is not well mapped in the sense of reciprocity between concert hall and listening room.

[Continued in Part Two . . . .]
 

MylesBAstor

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Not sure that I agree with all your assumptions Tom.

1) How can one mike position be good for all types of music eg. orchestral vs. chamber music. I'm not going to sit in the 10th row for chamber, much less harpsichord music.

2) Why should flat mike response be any more desirable than flat speaker response?

3) My experience with Blumlein techniques is that they distort distance off axis to the microphone.

Now I know REG (and I assume you do too) claim that you have to set you speakers up specifically to reproduce a Blumlein recording. I have to assume this is the case since most of Kavi's recordings leave me cold esp. his classical recordings done in Russia. IMHO, the best of Kavi's efforts were simple duets such as Martin Simpson and Wu Mann. But I've yet to hear a large scale, Blumlein encoded recording sound right.
 

tmallin

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Hi, Myles.

1) I was using "10th row center" as a mere example of an ideal perspective on the music making. Of course, for different size groups, or different instrumental/vocal combinations, the "ideal" listening spot in a given hall may well vary. The "ideal" spot will probably also vary with individual taste. My point was, once you identify a subjectively "ideal" spot for listening to a particular ensemble playing particular music in a particular hall, what kind of microphone array would you need to capture what you hear and where would it have to be placed. Blumlein works best in terms of being able to be placed where your ears would be in that "ideal" spot and capturing what you would hear.

Yes, for best effect on playback of Blumlein recordings you need to listen in the near field with the speakers subtending a 90-degree angle as viewed from your listening position. That 90-degree angle corresponds to the 90-degree angle of the two figure-of-eight mike capsules making up the Blumlein stereo array. If you haven't arranged your speakers and listening position thus, you have not really heard what Blumlein can do. Most audiophiles use an angle of 60 degrees or less. 'Tis a pity. With the listening set up correctly arranged the positional reality is striking indeed, in my experience.

2) I don't think I said the mikes have to have flat frequency response. I said that if they do, and if the recording is not made with any or sufficient high frequency equalization, then if the mikes are placed up high and close in, the resulting recording played back on speakers which also have flat frequency response will usually sound too bright. With most commercial recordings of classical music, to match the type of response one normally hears from an audience position in a good hall, some high frequency rolloff of the home reproduction system will be one of the necessary steps. This is why most of widely used target curves for DSP devices like my TacT RCS 2.2XP have considerable high-frequency roll off.

3) You are correct in that if the music sources being recorded do not fall well within the 90-degree included frontal angle of the Blumlein microphone array, the imaging positions will not be accurately mapped. The Blumlein array should be positioned far enough back from the ensemble so that the ensemble subtends no more than about a 75-degree angle from the perspective of the Blumlein array.

The James Boyk test disk discussed once upon a time by REG in TAS provides strong evidence that the Blumlein technique is uniquely capable of accurately mapping the placement of sounds on a recorded stage. The test disk uses a moving clicker recorded with different microphone arrays. Only the Blumlein technique produces smooth left to right movement of the sound source when reproduced with a proper home system set up. See: http://www.regonaudio.com/MICROPHONE%20THEORY%20word.htm
 

RBFC

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Tom,

All three parts were very interesting reading. Could you please suggest some commercial recordings that best demonstrate what Blumlein setup can achieve in playback?

Lee
 

tmallin

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There are very few commercially released Blumlein recordings. Some of the Doug Sax recordings on Sheffield Lab are the most famous. Early Chesky jazz CDs were Blumlein. The BBC has done some. While purists like me and REG like them, apparently many others, like Myles, do not. Either that, or they don't set up their playback systems in a maximally compatible way, with 90-degrees of subtended separation between the speakers as viewed from the listening position.

Below I've copied the reviews I wrote for REG's Audio Forum:

Clark Terry: Live at the Village Gate (Chesky Records JD-49). Live at the Village Gate is another single-point Blumlein stereo recording. This one is very focused, but is anything but dry or astringent. It is one of those rare recordings which, on properly set up system (speakers at a 90-degree subtended angle again), can yield a remarkable feel of a live jazz club venue. Tonally, it is very neutral, from the swish of brushes on drum skins to the impact of the bass drum, to the blaring of Clark's instrument. You should be easily able to hear the change in Terry's sound as he turns or adds or subtracts various mutes. Here, you are "seeing" and hearing the musicians from right in front of the stage. The proper volume for this one is loud, as it would sound close to the stage. You also should be constantly conscious of the audience and room around you, as well as the banter among the musicians. The more of this you can hear and understand, the more true detail your system can reveal. But the detail should not be at the expense of added brightness, even when Terry's trumpet goes through the incredible dynamic swings captured here. If anything sounds too bright, don't blame the recording.

Clark Terry: Portraits; Chesky JD2 (1989)The second original jazz recording Chesky released on CD, I think this was a breakthrough of sorts in terms of recorded sound. First, it is a Blumlein recording of a jazz quartet miked from a believable, though quite close distance. On their first effort, they recorded Johnny Frigo and his group from much too close up, with the result that even the Blumlein technique produced what amounted to a “hole in the middle” when Frigo was not playing. Frigo was also out of phase with the rest of the group since he stood on one side of the mike array with the band on the other. Here, the Chesky brothers got the Blumlein perspective basically right for the first of many times to come. To get the best sound, reverse absolute polarity. On most cuts, Terry’s trumpet is close up in the right channel, his scat singing a bit further back, drums in the middle back, piano left front and bass left center. The clarity and dynamics captured on his trumpet were also a breakthrough. The focus and body of the trumpet sound, together with its wide-ranging, super-clean dynamics, has to be heard to be believed. The proper playback volume is for forte passages on Terry’s unmuted trumpet to be as loud as you and your system can stand. Remember, although this is a studio recording, the perspective is as if you are at the first table in front of the stage at a club with the bell of the trumpet pointing at you much of the time; it will be loud. The midbass is a bit thin, a problem Chesky would correct a little later on, such as on the Live at the Village Gate recording. Otherwise, the sound is still state-o’-the-art.

Mahler 8 Horenstein BBC The Mahler 8 is a much more distant sounding recording than the Beecham Scheherazade and has an abundance of hall ambiance. I would prefer less apparent distance and ambiance for home music listening, but perhaps this was necessary given the size of the ensemble, which tops 700. It is a live recording and there is a lot of coughing audible in the soft parts, with some of the coughs seeming at least as loud as what is going on stage at that point. This doesn't bother me, but for those who don't like recordings with a lot of audience noise, be aware that this audience of 6,000 seems to have at least as many upper-respiratory problems as the Russian audience in the Water Lily Mahler 5. This recording has extraordinarily low hiss for this vintage--I'm sure some modern processing was used. Again, the mikes sound fairly flat and wide range compared to what Mercury was producing at this time and distortion seems low. This recording has even sharper focus than the Scheherazade and is unmistakably a single-point stereo recording. This recording also has an unusually present height illusion from the choruses--the third dimension is definitely there. I don't hear any obvious gain riding and dynamics are quite wide; the climaxes are thrilling and both raise my hackles and send shivers down my spine.

Mahler Symphony #5 on Water Lily. For my review of this recording, see: http://tmallin.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2E9B8218A1747C9D!511.entry

Rimsky K Scheherazade Beecham, cond EMI. The Scheherazade is a wonderful interpretation and the sound is great, also, for a 1959 recording. I don't hear any of the HF emphasis of US Mercury recordings of that period, so either the mikes lack such peaks or they were EQed out. The woodwinds are particularly lifelike and differentiated from each other. Hiss is present, but, again, not nearly to the extent of Mercury, recordings of this vintage. The only flies in the ointment are a bit of pitch unsteadiness in the horns and, more unfortunately, more than a bit of pitch instability in the first violin solos. Not the pitch flatness one frequently hears from amateur high-string players, but a wavering up and down around the proper pitch. Not the rock solid playing of the Chicago Symphony under Reiner on this piece, but I find the interpretation more pleasingly "romantic." The overall sound is even better than the Reiner recording on RCA (that no slouch), both because of the Blumlein pickup and because of the naturally wide dynamics, natural frequency balance, even better low frequency solidity, and lower apparent distortion. The apparent distance from the ensemble seems just about right to me, but I'm sure some will find it too close up. Depth of field is large, from just in front of the speakers to way beyond the back wall.

The Harry James Sheffield Labs Recordings. I used to own the LP versions of these recordings, but replaced them with the CD versions. These are the three Harry James big band swing jazz recordings made by Doug Sax and Sheffield Lab during the 1970s and 80s: "The King James Version," "Coming From a Good Place," and "Still Harry After All These Years." These are all single-point Blumlein stereo recordings made in a large but very dry sounding studio. The first two mentioned were originally recorded direct-to-disk. The CD versions are taken from analog tapes made at the same time. The last recording was recorded live direct to tape with no overdubbing as a single take. That "Still Harry . . ." recording was the last commercial recording Harry James ever made. All capture the live feel of a big jazz band as few studio recordings ever have, both because of the recording technique and because of the way they were recorded in single takes. And if you like big band jazz, as I do, these are musically very fine examples of the genre. The first, "The King James Version," is generally acknowledged (and I agree) to be the musically finest of the three, and is a truly great swing jazz recording. You will want to dance, at least if your system has the requisite PRAT. :) These recordings are now all out of print, in the United States at least. The ones I acquired are the original 16-bit digital transfers. There are also 20-to-16 bit versions made later when that technology became available. The recordings, at least the versions I have, are not state of the art, but still hold up very well because of the single-point stereo recording method. There is a really coherent, very stable soundstage in front of you and you are back a reasonable distance--no players in your lap. There is space, but, as I said, it is a dry-sounding venue. Unlike some Blumlein recordings, no one will say that these are overly reverberant, despite the apparent appropriate distance between the listener and the band. The recordings are shy on mid-bass warmth, which robs the trombones of the heft they should have, even though the bass extension and impact is quite fine. The last recording is the best in terms of mid-bass heft, but is, I think, the musically weakest. The treble on all of them is a little bristly, given the early digital vintage of these transfers, but not bad at all. Alan Shaw has praised these highly; REG doesn't like them overmuch as recordings.

Water Lily Liszt Dvorak Tone Poems, W. Sawallisch cond. Philadelphia Orchestra. This was reputed to be the first all-tube, all analog recording of a major orchestra in 20 years. You have to go all the way back to the Sheffield Lab direct-to-disk recordings of Leinsdorf and the Los Angeles Philharmonic to hear the likes of this. More importantly, however, (1) it was recorded using the classic Blumlein single-point stereo miking technique and the mikes were placed at a typical audience location, (2) Kavi Alexander was the engineer and used his very fine custom mikes, and (3) Robert E. Greene of TAS was involved in the production and loaned his personal Harbeth Monitor 40 speakers for use as monitors for the recording. As a result, this recording has the potential of yielding accurate live tonality and as accurate a soundstage and imaging portrayal of the sound of a symphony orchestra as any commercially available recording. To get the best from this recording, however, you will need to position your speakers so that the subtended angle between them is 90 degrees as heard from your listening position. Even so, be aware that accurate speakers will reveal the not-ideal, rather dry acoustics of the recording venue, the Philadelphia's then-home hall, the Academy of Music. If your speakers exaggerate the high end, this dryness will become brightness or astringency, as some reviewers have commented. With the speakers I've tried (Legacy Whispers, Harbeth Monitor 40s, Linkwitz Orions, Ohm Walsh 5 Series 3) set up as specified, it sounds quite realistic indeed. The SACD version sounds better in my system than the CD, but both are very fine. I have not heard the DVD-A version, but REG once stated it to be the most accurate.
 

MylesBAstor

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Hi, Myles.

1) I was using "10th row center" as a mere example of an ideal perspective on the music making. Of course, for different size groups, or different instrumental/vocal combinations, the "ideal" listening spot in a given hall may well vary. The "ideal" spot will probably also vary with individual taste. My point was, once you identify a subjectively "ideal" spot for listening to a particular ensemble playing particular music in a particular hall, what kind of microphone array would you need to capture what you hear and where would it have to be placed. Blumlein works best in terms of being able to be placed where your ears would be in that "ideal" spot and capturing what you would hear.

Yes, for best effect on playback of Blumlein recordings you need to listen in the near field with the speakers subtending a 90-degree angle as viewed from your listening position. That 90-degree angle corresponds to the 90-degree angle of the two figure-of-eight mike capsules making up the Blumlein stereo array. If you haven't arranged your speakers and listening position thus, you have not really heard what Blumlein can do. Most audiophiles use an angle of 60 degrees or less. 'Tis a pity. With the listening set up correctly arranged the positional reality is striking indeed, in my experience.

2) I don't think I said the mikes have to have flat frequency response. I said that if they do, and if the recording is not made with any or sufficient high frequency equalization, then if the mikes are placed up high and close in, the resulting recording played back on speakers which also have flat frequency response will usually sound too bright. With most commercial recordings of classical music, to match the type of response one normally hears from an audience position in a good hall, some high frequency rolloff of the home reproduction system will be one of the necessary steps. This is why most of widely used target curves for DSP devices like my TacT RCS 2.2XP have considerable high-frequency roll off.

3) You are correct in that if the music sources being recorded do not fall well within the 90-degree included frontal angle of the Blumlein microphone array, the imaging positions will not be accurately mapped. The Blumlein array should be positioned far enough back from the ensemble so that the ensemble subtends no more than about a 75-degree angle from the perspective of the Blumlein array.

The James Boyk test disk discussed once upon a time by REG in TAS provides strong evidence that the Blumlein technique is uniquely capable of accurately mapping the placement of sounds on a recorded stage. The test disk uses a moving clicker recorded with different microphone arrays. Only the Blumlein technique produces smooth left to right movement of the sound source when reproduced with a proper home system set up. See: http://www.regonaudio.com/MICROPHONE%20THEORY%20word.htm

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your response.

One other thing that comes to mind. Based on your background, I assume that when you talk about mike non-linearities, you're referring in part to your own experience using those mikes. The reason that I say this is that one can not necessarily judge the sound/frequency response, etc. of the master tape by the final commerical product (LP/CD). To wit, I've heard master tapes of several of the companies you've referred to, new 15 ips productions as well as the production/safety/mastering tapes sent for production. In many cases, the production tapes bear little resemblance to the real recording because the engineers of those days re-equalized the tapes so as to in their mind, make up for the cutting deficiencies of the lathes at that time (we might also add that some labels purposely boosted say the highs because they thought that was what the American market wanted). So in the end, I've found the Mercuries to be boosted, other labels to have the low frequencies severely rolled off, etc. Take the awesome Mark Aubort Weavers at Carnegie Hall! Here Vanguard totally emasculated the lows; on the tape, you can hear them stomping around on the stage and as one might expect, just a huge increase in information without the peakiness of the later pressing (say from the orange labels on).

And don't get me wrong. I like the idea of "purity." I just, and I was there when David did some of his Blumlein work, didn't ever feel it worked as well as theory. I think that was in part why David went away from the Blumlein miking.
 
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RBFC

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Tom,

I have both Chesky recordings and have posted about them before, especially Live at the Village Gate. I find them wonderful. Don't have the others, but will keep my eyes open.

Lee
 

tmallin

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I agree that one cannot tell about microphone frequency response curves from the sound of commercial recordings made with those microphones. The best source of such information is manufacturers' published response curves.

As you say, audio engineers usually apply equalization to the microphone signals at some point or points in the recording and production process. This is done for a variety of reasons including personal taste, perceived marketability, perceived masterability (of LPs since big bass would cause groove pinch on the master and hot treble could burn out the cutter head), perceived trackability (of LPs in the old days--big bass would cause early cartridges to mistrack), compensating for the in close and up high positioning of the mikes in an attempt to produce a sound closer to what an audience might have heard, compensating for supposed actual irregularities in the published frequency response of the microphone, etc.
 

marty

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I think the Boyk disc is convincing in that Blumlein appears to work quite well for solo piano. Then again, almost any technique can work well for solo piano. The biggest factor in getting either "you are there v. they are here", is simply whether you are playing the piano or listening to one. A player clearly hears bass on the left and treble on the right. But that is never the case for the typical listener. A listener, sitting in front of the piano, depending on the microphone technique, would be lucky to hear realistic sound with bass "in the rear", coming off the sound board and off the wide part lid and treble "in the front" off the narrow part of the lid. Studio recordings of pianos are often made with two mics placed somewhere over the soundboard and the L/R effect is totally artificial compared to a realistic listening environment for piano. Good examples of "bass in back, treble in front" can be found on most of Murray Perahia's Sony recordings. Damned if I know the microphone technique used for those but I'd love to find out. The piano sound is exquisite and as "real" (i.e. you are there) as it gets.

On works for major orchestration, I'm less convinced about Blumlein, but admittedly do not have my speakers at the requisite 90 degrees that you suggest will convey the effect at its best. On the other hand, I have heard Ray Kimber's IsoMike technique work to spectacular effect on my present set-up. If I understand IsoMike correctly, it appears similar to ORTF and Blumlein, but with slightly wider spacing between the capsules and off course, that big ugly baffle in between the capsules to prevent bleed through.

For my money, the best recordings today are made for Keith Johnson at RR, and I suspect he does not use Blumlein but rather a variant of multiple microphones. The trick of course is that somehow his mutli-miked technique does not sound like one, but rather, like an "organic" Decca tree or even a simpler two mic technique. If all classical recordings were RR recordings, we would have far less to complain about! I find his technique to be a modern variant of the great sound of the Wilkerson RCA Living Stereo or Decca recordings of yesteryear. Will we ever stop being amazed at the content found in those grooves? I do like the fact that REG has pointed out many times, that those recordings were not mades with cables that had 6 nines, network boxes,or any esoteric stuff at all, but rather, good solid, humble wire. 50+ year old wire at that! Definitely some food for thought there.
 
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MylesBAstor

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I think the Boyk disc is convincing in that Blumlein appears to work quite well for solo piano. Then again, almost any technique can work well for solo piano. The biggest factor in getting either "you are there v. they are hear", is simply whether you are playing the piano or listening to one. A player clearly hears bass on the left and treble on the right. But that is never the case for the typical listener. A listener, sitting in front of the piano, depending on the microphone technique, would be lucky to hear realistic sound with bass "in the rear", coming off the sound board and off the wide part lid and treble "in the front" off the narrow part of the lid. Studio recordings of pianos are often made with two mics placed somewhere over the soundboard and the L/R effect is totally artificial compared to a realistic listening environment for piano. Good examples of "bass in back, treble in front" can be found on most of Murray Perahia's Sony recordings. Damned if I know the microphone technique used for those but I'd love to find out. The piano sound is exquisite and as "real" (i.e. you are there) as it gets.

On works for major orchestration, I'm less convinced about Blumlein, but admittedly do not have my speakers at the requisite 90 degrees that you suggest will convey the effect at its best. On the other hand, I have heard Ray Kimber's IsoMike technique work to spectacular effect on my present set-up. If I understand IsoMike correctly, it appears similar to ORTF and Blumlein, but with slightly wider spacing between the capsules and off course, that big ugly baffle in between the capsules to prevent bleed through.

For my money, the best recordings today are made for Keith Johnson at RR, and I suspect he does not use Blumlein but rather a variant of multiple microphones. The trick of course is that somehow his mutli-miked technique does not sound like one, but rather, like an "organic" Decca tree or even a simpler two mic technique. If all classical recordings were RR recordings, we would have far less to complain about! I find his technique to be a modern variant of the great sound of the Wilkerson RCA Living Stereo or Decca recordings of yesteryear. Will we ever stop being amazed at the content found in those grooves? I do like the fact that REG has pointed out many times, that those recordings were not mades with cables that had 6 nines, network boxes,or any esoteric stuff at all, but rather, good solid, humble wire. 50+ year old wire at that! Definitely some food for thought there.

Hi Marty:

It's been a while since I listened to them but don't you find the Boyk recordings very dry sounding?

Now while these co's didn't use 6-9s wires, they did many other things right that today's non-audiophile labels don't. For one, mixing boards and consoles. Then the r2rs were certainly modded; take for example, what someone like Alan Silver and David Jones did on Connoisseur Society with their 30 ips tape machine. The CS recordings (and performance too) of Ivan Moravec, Manitas de Plata and Ali Akbar Khan are as good as it gets! In fact, the recordings of Moravec playing a Bosendorfer piano are nothing short of sensational! Then you don't have all this overdubbing.

But probably the most important factor is that these recordings were made by people with musical backgrounds who knew what musical instruments sounded like, not some graduate from some recording school who couldn't tell a violin from a tuba. And, these great labels started with good recording venues -- rather than trying to fix the issues after. I'd say that having the right hall is 80% of the battle.

So in the end, the 90% they got right to start with overshadows the much smaller gains attributable to the cables. And who knows how much better they might have been with better wiring. But we might also make an argument that they were probably running in balanced configuration that might obviate some of the cable concerns. OTOH, labels you've mentioned such as Chesky certainly pay attention to everything from the mike to the hard drive.
 

tmallin

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For my money, the best recordings today are made for Keith Johnson at RR, and I suspect he does not use Blumlein but rather a variant of multiple microphones. The trick of course is that somehow his mutli-miked technique does not sound like one, but rather, like an "organic" Decca tree or even a simpler two mic technique. If all classical recordings were RR recordings, we would have far less to complain about! I find his technique to be a modern variant of the great sound of the Wilkerson RCA Living Stereo or Decca recordings of yesteryear.

Reference Recordings are indeed some of the best around, in my opinion. If I am picking nits, however, compared to Blumlein recordings their imaging precision is a weak spot. And while they are very expansive sounding in terms of space, this space is not focused the way space on a coincidently miked stereo recording usually is.

Also, most all RRs since the Testament recording, RR-49, are HDCD recordings. Unless you decode the HDCD processing, what you hear will be overly bright, have a bit or more high frequency grain, and will suffer dynamic compression, particularly in the highs. HDCD decoding is becoming more and more rare in D/A converters. That's the main reason I keep the Oppo BDP-83SE in my system--for playing back HDCD disks with the decoding.

Also, more recent RR symphonic recordings seem to be a bit "phasey" sounding to me, meaning having very wide separation with a bit of ear tugging to the sound. They seem aimed at audiophile set ups which have narrow angular separation between the speakers. They will thus sound more spatially expansive on such systems than other recordings and, with typical stereo separation, will thus be more impressive.

Finally, the most recent RR releases, the HRx 176/24 WAV file recordings are quite odd sounding. Yes, in some ways thay are better than the original CDs and HDCDs. But the bass is way too strong to be realistic. The dynamic range is actually too wide for comfortable home listening, an effect I never get at a live concert. Also, small sounds audible on the original releases of these recordings are absent. The music often seems to be coming out of a black hole. No recording stage is that quiet and in fact the original versions of these recordings had much better capture of small sounds (e.g., breath intakes of musicians, chair movement, air handling noise, etc.) than the HRx versions.

But, these nits aside--and they ARE just nits--I agree that RRs are among the best available commercial recordings. I have most of them and don't plan on giving them away anytime. The list of problems with other commercial recordings is much longer and more serious when judged against my standard of the sound of live unamplified music heard from a favorable audience position in a good concert hall.
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
81
1,725
New York City
Reference Recordings are indeed some of the best around, in my opinion. If I am picking nits, however, compared to Blumlein recordings their imaging precision is a weak spot. And while they are very expansive sounding in terms of space, this space is not focused the way space on a coincidently miked stereo recording usually is.

Also, most all RRs since the Testament recording, RR-49, are HDCD recordings. Unless you decode the HDCD processing, what you hear will be overly bright, have a bit or more high frequency grain, and will suffer dynamic compression, particularly in the highs. HDCD decoding is becoming more and more rare in D/A converters. That's the main reason I keep the Oppo BDP-83SE in my system--for playing back HDCD disks with the decoding.

Also, more recent RR symphonic recordings seem to be a bit "phasey" sounding to me, meaning having very wide separation with a bit of ear tugging to the sound. They seem aimed at audiophile set ups which have narrow angular separation between the speakers. They will thus sound more spatially expansive on such systems than other recordings and, with typical stereo separation, will thus be more impressive.

Finally, the most recent RR releases, the HRx 176/24 WAV file recordings are quite odd sounding. Yes, in some ways thay are better than the original CDs and HDCDs. But the bass is way too strong to be realistic. The dynamic range is actually too wide for comfortable home listening, an effect I never get at a live concert. Also, small sounds audible on the original releases of these recordings are absent. The music often seems to be coming out of a black hole. No recording stage is that quiet and in fact the original versions of these recordings had much better capture of small sounds (e.g., breath intakes of musicians, chair movement, air handling noise, etc.) than the HRx versions.

But, these nits aside--and they ARE just nits--I agree that RRs are among the best available commercial recordings. I have most of them and don't plan on giving them away anytime. The list of problems with other commercial recordings is much longer and more serious when judged against my standard of the sound of live unamplified music heard from a favorable audience position in a good concert hall.

Tom:

You should take it upon yourself the 15 ips/2 track The Tape Prouect Arnold Overtures before drawing any conclusions about RR's imaging precision (maybe a trip to Steve's would prove useful :) ). I'm not a huge fan of their LPs with the exception of a few. I find them amorphous sounding, thinly veiled and the upper octaves are plain weird at times (that might be what you call phasey.

Not so with the tapes. There is a focus and transparency that is to behold. The low octaves are exposive. There is a sense of space like thebest of the old Deccas, not a chance coincidence since KOJ admired the old Decca tree and Wilkie.

I wold give my right arm to hear the RR master tapes played back on KOJ system! Now that would be special.
'
Perhaps Steve or some other members have heard the master tape or 1/2 copy of Arnold Overtures at Paul's studio and could comment further.
 
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Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Perhaps Steve or some other members have heard the master tape or 1/2 copy of Arnold Overtures at Paul's studio and could comment further.

Paul played for me the 1/2" running master of Arnold Overtures and although I am not a huge fan of classical music this one was quite spectacular.
 

tmallin

WBF Technical Expert
May 19, 2010
966
375
1,625
71
Chicagoland
Tom:

You should take it upon yourself the 15 ips/2 track The Tape Prouect Arnold Overtures before drawing any conclusions about RR's imaging precision (maybe a trip to Steve's would prove useful :) ). I'm not a huge fan of their LPs with the exception of a few. I find them amorphous sounding, thinly veiled and the upper octaves are plain weird at times (that might be what you call phasey.

Not so with the tapes. There is a focus and transparency that is to behold. The low octaves are exposive. There is a sense of space like thebest of the old Deccas, not a chance coincidence since KOJ admired the old Decca tree and Wilkie.

I wold give my right arm to hear the RR master tapes played back on KOJ system! Now that would be special.
'
Perhaps Steve or some other members have heard the master tape or 1/2 copy of Arnold Overtures at Paul's studio and could comment further.


The CD of the Arnold Overtures program says it was sourced from KOJ's modified digital recorder of 1991, a Sony 701ES. That recorder was strictly a 44/16 resolutiom machine. During this period, RR was usually making both analog and digital masters of its projects, usually using the digital one for its CD releases and the analog one for its LP releases. The Tape Project tape is sourced from the analog master tape. The HRx version does not really say what it's source is, but implies that it contains a 176/24 file. If so, this file was either made by samping the analog master or by upsampling the digital master.

I have no recent experience with RR LPs. I had only a few and haven't had them for many years.

The Arnold Overtures recording is, in my opinion, one of the best RR symphonic recordings ever. I had few issues with the CD sound and even fewer with the HRx. Another great early one is the Fiesta recording. These both predate the HDCD era.

I agree that RR recordings have great low end. "Explosive" as you say, and more defined than the typical Telarc low end. But with the HRx versions that low end has become "hi-fi" or maybe I should say "home theater" explosive. It is scary-surreal in its impact and level, not realistic from any audience perspective in any hall I've ever been in. The HRx versions could be dead accurate as far as what is encoded, but the low end of the earlier versions of these recordings are, in my opinion, more realistic.
 

Nicholas Bedworth

WBF Founding Member
May 7, 2010
312
0
0
Maui, where else?
I'm just starting to dig into the RR high resolution releases, and so far, am very pleased. There's a sense of total effortlessness, compared to the 44/16, which are of course very good to start. The high res titles definitely do sound quite differently; they're (I believe) mixed and mastered quite differently. Their new Britten disc (also available in SACD) is something else.
 

FrantzM

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
6,455
29
405
Hi

Hi

Was away fo a while (a much needed break, a few days in wonderful Key West, Cell Phone disconnected, did not purposefully access the Internet, just the scenery, the people, the food, the sun and the surf ... Man! I needed that)... Very interesting discussions here in the forum.
I must say a few things about some posts. How much "better" today's wiring are compared to yesteryear. Applications much, much , more rigorous do very well with "standard" wire from Belden , Canare and other cable manufacturers .. but I digress. I . also find some of the RR the best I have heard in term of classical music reproduction. The strong Bass Tom alluded to , I have actually begin to notice that the best halls do have that , often "big" bass reproduction. I can't talk much about the HRx but the few I have heard struck as the best I have heard from a recording.
I do not fully understand the "thin" epithet to the highs of RR last efforts. I sincerely can't find them lacking in body. True the imaging is not as precise as audiophiles may want it , then again ,it could be a matter of perspective as different listening positions in the hall result in different "imaging" characteristics. Up -Close one does have a good sense of "imaging" but at a certain distance from the center of a good hall. The sound is much more blended, homogenized and the hall ambiance dominates, making thing more diffuse,more of a musical mass than single , individually delineated instruments in space. That could be a valid perspective as well as some people may find that, enjoyable... and some music, may profit for that. I like my Wagner to be that big river of sound rather than what I would have liked in a Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto, where I want to listen to the instrument (the Piano) and its protagonist/conversant the orchestra.
We need to sort out a few tings also before they become blanket statements. The Mercury and RCA recordings were very good, some extraordinary... Some also utterly trivial (not in the quality of the music, that few if any were) but in the recording itself which could have been better. The good ones were very good but there were also some duds IOW. Same with RR or Lyrita or ... To label RR LPs as
amorphous sounding, thinly veiled
is to me an exaggeration.. One may not like them of that I have no problem with, but such description of the RR LPs sound is at best inaccurate . It could be true that the tapes are that much better... When one pauses one should realize that he LP process is deeply flawed and it is a miracle that the best LP managed to sound that good ... The LP process can hardly be called transparent.

I find also the quasi-refusal of acknowledging the quality of digital recordings with respect to analog, perplexing. I have heard the SACD and CDs of several Mercurys and they are sublime in most aspects, Different than the LP but in no way inferior and in some one could say the CD is more satisfying with respect to the portrayal of a real orchestra. That stance on [the lack of quality} Digital borders on dogma rather than any provable facts be these observational or theoretical.
I know the discussion is not about Digital vs analog. For capturing a real orchestra in a realistic fashion .. Both digital and analog can do a marvelous job with digital holding the promise of better accuracy and greater realism.


Frantz
 

Mark (Basspig) Weiss

Well-Known Member
Aug 3, 2010
682
36
940
New Milford, CT
www.basspig.com
I've developed a solution to this problem in 2007. My first experimental recordings were with the Bridgeport Symphony at Kline Memorial Auditorium, a 1400-seat facility.

The solution was a five microphone setup, suspended 18' over the 4th row center. But the unique aspect is it parts with traditional recording industry norms: it doesn't employ omni pattern mics at all. What I did was select microphones with unusually flat off-axis response and position them at the same angles as ORTF, but further apart, with the space between filled by a center channel mic. For the hall acoustic, two spaced mics facing upward at 30° pick up the surround information.

I have played the recordings for many musicians and audiophiles. The comments were the same: perfect balance between instruments. Intimate. Sounds like each instrument had its own mic. Peter Aczel at The Audio Critic wrote this:

[FONT=&quot]“I played your Beethoven CD through my reference system and heard truly excellent sound. The bass/midrange/treble balance is much better than on nearly all commercial CDs; the low-frequency impact without any actual boost is particularly noticeable. The hall ambience is not excessive, as it often is; it's right on the money. ... I'd love to hear what you could do with the Philadelphia Orchestra, or the Cleveland Orchestra, or the Berlin Philharmonic in their native habitats.”

[/FONT]
The sound is the closest replica, as played on my custom built sound system, to the rehearsal performance where I sat in 4th row center the night before. I would often use the rehearsals to tweak the microphone setup and take the masters home that evening and play them while my auditory memory was still fresh. What I achieved was the same sense of being able to close my eyes and point out different sections of the orchestra, just as I did sitting in the auditorium earlier that evening.

I have not been able to get that experience with commercial recordings. They all sound too sterile, lack depth and positional information, and sound over emphasized. And the neat thing about my recording is you can crank the volume on soft passages and hear all the incidental sounds, like pages being turned, clothing rustling, etc, in addition to the texture of the violin strings, brass and woodwinds. Particularly noticeable is the snare drum rolls, where, instead of a vague rattling sound, each vibration of the snare is clearly defined. Applause definition is the first sign that a pleasing audio experience lies ahead. Instead of sounding like white noise, the individual sounds of hands clapping can clearly be heard, as with one sitting in the audience. Why this is so muddle on commercial recordings is beyond me.

When I really want to amaze people at how accurate my system is, I play these recordings that I made between 2007 and 2011 of various concerts made with the orchestras from Bridgeport to the Boston area. They are astonished at how a system that can shake the earth can also provide a palpable sense of 'being there' in the concert hall.
 

Eliezer

New Member
Jan 31, 2017
1
0
0
Cutting bass

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your response.

One other thing that comes to mind. Based on your background, I assume that when you talk about mike non-linearities, you're referring in part to your own experience using those mikes. The reason that I say this is that one can not necessarily judge the sound/frequency response, etc. of the master tape by the final commerical product (LP/CD). To wit, I've heard master tapes of several of the companies you've referred to, new 15 ips productions as well as the production/safety/mastering tapes sent for production. In many cases, the production tapes bear little resemblance to the real recording because the engineers of those days re-equalized the tapes so as to in their mind, make up for the cutting deficiencies of the lathes at that time (we might also add that some labels purposely boosted say the highs because they thought that was what the American market wanted). So in the end, I've found the Mercuries to be boosted, other labels to have the low frequencies severely rolled off, etc. Take the awesome Mark Aubort Weavers at Carnegie Hall! Here Vanguard totally emasculated the lows; on the tape, you can hear them stomping around on the stage and as one might expect, just a huge increase in information without the peakiness of the later pressing (say from the orange labels on).

And don't get me wrong. I like the idea of "purity." I just, and I was there when David did some of his Blumlein work, didn't ever feel it worked as well as theory. I think that was in part why David went away from the Blumlein miking.

Not only were there serious deficiencies with cutting lathes, but - if you didn't cut out foot-stompin' bass, you would end up with a lot less disc time.
 

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