The Worlds Best Listening Room?

Fellow WBF members, I found this video earlier today outlining the building and design of the Elbphilharmoni concert hall in Hamburg. I was blown away by the architecture, yet more importantly, the painstaking efforts to create the world's most awesome listening room.

We often debate on WBF what constitutes the most faithful reproduction of sound. Undoubtedly, the room is our most significant component. The Elphilharmoni is a space I hope to experience someday soon for the sheer joy of it but also to better inform my work in the field.

It's a YouTube, so please skip the commercial

 

100 days of the Elbphilharmonie

Will the Elbphilharmonie go down in history as an acoustic debacle?

"Bruckner's Eighth comes across as a frontal acoustic assault. Quiet works better. A comparative journey through European concert halls, accompanied by experts like Kent Nagano.

The building erected by the architect duo Herzog & de Meuron on an old brick warehouse in Hamburg harbor looks spectacular, and the bright concert hall appealed to everyone. The acoustics, a clever media campaign claimed, were supposed to be just as grandiose.

What a disappointment, however, when on the opening night Thomas Hengelbrock and his NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra thundered the first chord in Ludwig van Beethoven's "Coriolan" overture into the room - and it immediately disappeared. As if nothing had happened. The longer the evening lasted, the greater the disappointment and doubt. Everything sounded mysterious, intrusive, direct.

The low winds dominated in a broadband sound, high string tones seem puny in comparison. A room-filling fortissimo seems impossible here because the sound does not rise to the last rank. Every inaccuracy is grotesquely magnified, quiet and chamber music, on the other hand, are exquisitely audible. And a reverberation that could soften the direct sound is hardly discernible.

Kent Nagano talks about Plácido Domingo. He always looks for the spot on stage from which his voice sounds best. Nagano and his musicians also looked for a "hot spot" in Hamburg. The usual seating arrangement was changed. Now they sit on fewer podiums and closer to the back wall. This creates more reflections, the sound becomes warmer and more homogeneous. Above all, they now play much differently than in other halls. The first violins have to consciously produce the warmth in the low register, the lack of reverberation is compensated by tone prolongations, the decay of the phrases is countered by an exaggerated "sticking together" of the notes. They rehearsed the first three measures of the slow movement alone for half an hour. Such exaggerated playing might seem artificial in other places, but in Hamburg it is necessary.

But although Nagano and his orchestra deliver a much better and more precise sound result in concert after these preparations than Thomas Hengelbrock and his troupe managed the day before with Beethoven's Seventh, Bruckner's Eighth still comes across as an acoustic frontal assault. For an hour and a half, the listener is almost physically attacked by clearly structured but all too violent cascades of sound. The sound of the hall, which should actually serve the music, asserts itself against the music. Kent Nagano and his orchestra will have a lot of work to do before they get a handle on the acoustics of this space.

The large Klais organ, endowed with magnificent timbres, sounds completely naked, bare and cold in this space. In the long reverberation of a church, Iveta Apkalna and Christian Schmitt would have astonished with their Poulenc, Bach and Messiaen playing. In the Elbphilharmonie, however, every nuance and every imprecision is magnified, the fortissimo chords break off abruptly, and the pieces shatter into disconnected sonic atolls. The troubled listener suddenly longs for a reverberation system like the one in Berlin's Lindenoper."

 

Ouch, an $800mm failure! So much for acoustic models. Good thing it's not one of our audio systems!

 

...surely, not everyone thinks the room is a bust? Interestingly, I have heard comments from musician friends that perform in the Eastman venues, that the modern g-wiz design of the small venue Hatch Hall is not universally loved. This was also designed and built at great expense. And is tunable. It does seem at times, mathematically measured designs, while theoretically optimal, do not always result in optimal real-world results. At least to some listeners. I have heard excellent sound here, and very "dim" music, sonically.

Explore Hatch Recital Hall in 3D

Matterport 3D Showcase.

my.matterport.com

 

I remember when they remodeled Carnegie Hall, folks universally felt the sound was abysmal. Over time I believe they were able to make improvements but at great expense since the redesign was not as modular "aka" tunable as Elbphilharmonie. Marty would know best how Carnegie Hall sounds these days.

 

The generally recognized acoustically great old halls have been the Musikverein in Vienna (home to the Vienna Philharmonic), the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (home to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra) and Symphony Hall in Boston (home to the Boston Symphony). They all have a general shoebox design. Both the Musikverein and Concertgebouw have a capacity of under 2000 seats, while Symphony Hall has about 2600 seats. They all date from the late 1800's to very early 1900's.

There are other newer halls which also are generally recognized for great sonics like the Philharmonie in Berlin, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, both of which have seating capacity in the low mid 2000's. Disney is also a shoebox design.

I have attended concerts at all but the Philharmonie, and was impressed by the sonics of each of the four.

In building halls, there is often a fight between large seating capacity to maximize revenues and acoustical quality. The best example that I have experienced is Royal Albert Hall in London which holds over 5000. I have attended several concerts there, both classical and popular. The summer Proms concerts are given there (we saw Bruckner's Sixth Symphony one summer, so they are not "pops" concerts) and there are all sorts of events (we saw Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake performed with ice skates) and pops concerts. At best the sonics were passable to my ears, at worst, pretty bad. We had expensive tickets to see Joan Baez on her farewell tour in 2018, amplified, of course, but we were still very far away and should have brought binoculars. Sonics were mediocre. The hall was full and this was one of maybe three concerts scheduled for Baez.

Larry

 

Hamburg Elbphilharmonie is a multifunctional building. The great concert hall has undergone several changes in its dimensions within the building, because they wanted to make this building profitable and therefore added more beds to the hotel, which is integrated in this building. I have to admit, the building looks spectacular. It has long escalators like the moscow underground railway, you step in and don't see the end of it. This will lead to the visitor platform, which was build at half of the total height, around the building. And from there it goes downways into the concert hall, like going into a mine just from above.

New concert halls are almost silent, allowing musicians to draw listeners in with incredibly quiet playing. The breathing and fidgeting of the audience actually creates more sound than other background noises. Only in intense moments where the audience collectively hold its breath, can this deep silence be heard. Take a backstage tour of the Bridgewater Hall (Manchester, UK), and you will be told the story of the IRA bomb that on 15 June 1996 broke virtually every window in the city centre. The hall is so well isolated that construction workers inside the auditorium did not hear the explosion.

The Musikverein, on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, is often referred to as the best concert hall in the world. The auditorium is home to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with past famous conductors including Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. When the Philharmonic plays a sweeping crescendo, it is as though the hall springs into life. At its quietest the music seems to be coming from the stage, but as notes get louder the whole orchestra appears to physically broaden, and you perceive a tsunami of sound that washes over you from all directions.

The Berlin Philharmonie, which opened in 1963 and is noted for its distinctive tent-like exterior, was developed in line with architect Hans Scharoun’s socialist views and, by a combination of skill and accident, revealed a new way forward for architectural acoustics: vineyard terracing. By breaking the audience into blocks, the intervening walls can be used to reflect more sound to the audience from the sides. Scharoun noted that “people always gather in circles when listening to music informally”, and this inspired the radical concept of music in the round. About a third of the audience is behind the orchestra. The rear seats have great views, but some find the orchestral balance odd.

Btw, the Philharmonie de Paris, France does look inside nearly identical to the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, just without the computer generated acoustic treatment of the wall structures. But otherwise, no straight lines can be found in there and its a vineyard design, too

 

The Magico listening room is probably the best room I have been in so far.

 

The Magico listening room is probably the best room I have been in so far.

Lee, how does it compare to Hugh’s new room?

 

Quad musikwiedergabe gmbh in Gehring, germany.
the demonstration of their stacked quads was impressive. I sat there with my mouth open, unbelievable. I must have looked totally stupid at the moment.



P.S Best concert a german band in burgtheather in vienna unplugged.

 

Lee, how does it compare to Hugh’s new room?

It’s better but both are at the very top.

 

It’s better but both are at the very top.

You mean the Magico room and system (M9) sounds better to you than Hugh's room and system (Gryphon)?

Or are you saying you are able to abstract and discern what the room on it's own is able to sound?

 

What are the speakers? They look like planars.

 

Quad ESL63.2 QA with motorlift feets can be adjusted to the listening distance.

QUAD ESL63.2 QA electrostatics

www.quad-musik.de

 

You mean the Magico room and system (M9) sounds better to you than Hugh's room and system (Gryphon)?

Or are you saying you are able to abstract and discern what the room on it's own is able to sound?

No one can really tell exactly how a room is contributing or not contributing to the sound. But given the fine level of playback in both Alon and Hugh’s rooms, there is clearly some excellent acoustic design occurring. You just have a sense of it. The normal room nodes and problems are gone and the music just pops out from the speakers.

There is no way to A/B this so that’s as good as we can do.

 

Lee, did the sound in both rooms remain more or less the same as you walked around the rooms listening to music, or was it definitely better at the sweet spot/listening seat? Also, how did speaking voices sound when talking in the room without music playing.

When I visited the first Magico room, it was eerily quiet and did not seem like I was in a normal room with reflections, etc. Not really a huge difference, but noticeable, kid of like being in a really big, silent space.

 

Not too bad for a tuned listening room.

 

Lee, did the sound in both rooms remain more or less the same as you walked around the rooms listening to music, or was it definitely better at the sweet spot/listening seat? Also, how did speaking voices sound when talking in the room without music playing.

When I visited the first Magico room, it was eerily quiet and did not seem like I was in a normal room with reflections, etc. Not really a huge difference, but noticeable, kid of like being in a really big, silent space.

In my opinion, the sweet spot was better in both rooms. Your description of the room being eerily quiet is dead on for both Alon and Hugh's rooms.

 

Not too bad for a tuned listening room.
View attachment 98382

That's pretty cool. Where is this?

 

That is a listening room at Shenzhen/ China.
Another superb one.