By “Physicality” I mean the sense of the sound coming from a solid, physical body and this is not the same as “soundstage” or “weight”. As I said, a triangle has “physicality” without having “weight”.
I perceive it differently. A live triangle to me mostly, or at least often, has lots of weight, just like high-pitched percussion in general has lots of weight live. The "thickness", weight and energy of the treble frequencies from these instruments is among the things that sets the live experience apart from a lot of hi-fi.
As long as the illusion that the sound is coming from something you could touch it’s “physical”. And this closely aligns with the demarcation between “live” and “reproduced”. We immediately know without analyzing it that something is live and vice versa. And it has very little to do with many of the traditional desiderata of “hi-fi”. In fact, the pursuit of some of these may even detract from our feeling of “that sounds live!”. Hi-fi, despite what many people say, is invariably a matter of trade-offs.
By “Physicality” I mean the sense of the sound coming from a solid, physical body and this is not the same as “soundstage” or “weight”. As I said, a triangle has “physicality” without having “weight”. As long as the illusion that the sound is coming from something you could touch it’s “physical”. And this closely aligns with the demarcation between “live” and “reproduced”.
You are addressing the difference between a physical sound stage - reality, where vector sound waves come from points, and the stereo illusionary sound stage, created from two sources and its reflections. Fortunately with adequate manipulations, based in psycho acoustics, we can sometimes be fooled to enhance this sense of "physicality" .
We immediately know without analyzing it that something is live and vice versa. And it has very little to do with many of the traditional desiderata of “hi-fi”. In fact, the pursuit of some of these may even detract from our feeling of “that sounds live!”. Hi-fi, despite what many people say, is invariably a matter of trade-offs.
Surely. IMO one consequence of trade-off is that due to the diversity or recording techniques and systems we can't have a system that optimizes all recordings according to all preferences.
I perceive it differently. A live triangle to me mostly, or at least often, has lots of weight, just like high-pitched percussion in general has lots of weight live. The "thickness", weight and energy of the treble frequencies from these instruments is among the things that sets the live experience apart from a lot of hi-fi.
I perceive it differently. A live triangle to me mostly, or at least often, has lots of weight, just like high-pitched percussion in general has lots of weight live.
Now we are entering in semantics and statistics.Just focusing on triangle, as referred in the post, I found in a text book "A light to moderate touch is the norm. Because the instrument is metal and very resonant, even a gentle strike produces a clear, penetrating sound. Hitting it too hard can make the sound harsh, uncontrolled, or clangy, and it can overwhelm the ensemble."
Now we are entering in semantics and statistics.Just focusing on triangle, as referred in the post, I found in a text book "A light to moderate touch is the norm. Because the instrument is metal and very resonant, even a gentle strike produces a clear, penetrating sound. Hitting it too hard can make the sound harsh, uncontrolled, or clangy, and it can overwhelm the ensemble."
The toughest one so far is Moravec Chopin Nocturnes on Supraphon…those upper keys (Track 1, 2 for example) have been very tricky to get to have the right weight of a an actual keyboard…they can sound like an electronic keyboard (or no physical hammer weight) in certain systems.
I assume we can agree that a trumpet played from a balcony up in a stone church does not have the weight of sound as when it is played closer to the listener in a warm acoustic or even in an intimate jazz club. Yet while in the latter situations there is weight to the sound, especially in the lower registers, I would never associate the sound of a trumpet with a character of "heaviness". Perhaps a tuba might have a "heavy" sound sometimes, but a trumpet? No.
