OK. I checked out the Nomos Alpha on the Qobuz link and it is, indeed, much clearer and more satisfying than the one I had heard before. Still, despite the clarity, it was quite close and airless. I could say the same for the file of Schlingen-Blängen that you sent. What characterizes these is that they are single instruments that are closely-miked. I note that the L/R meter levels track each other so closely that I suspect there is little difference between the channels and that implies that there's little stereo effect.
Let me suggest the Cantate Dominus recording that was suggested; it is simply awash with ambiance. For something that might be closer to your taste, I also suggest Magnus Lindberg's "Action - Situation - Signification" (Toimii Ensemble on Finlandia Records – 1576-53372-2). Let me know.
1. Nomos Alpha. I have a different impression. The cello sounds natural in a real space and the instrument sounds terrific. There's plenty of room reverberation. It's a recording that guides me to concentrate on the music and the performance.
2. Schlingen-Blängen. To call an organ comprising so many pipes a single instrument seems a stretch. Yes, technically i guess that's true but the various sound producing parts of the instrument are so many and spread out in the modest church space. And I can't imagine how it could you'd get a mic close to it. Nor does it sound like that. It sounds to me like there was a stereo pair somewhere in the church. Listening has a strong, complex, swirling stereo effect that's deeply engrossing. With a good church organ, the audience is effectively sitting inside the instrument. This recording captures some of that, except in the real experienceeven small movements of the head would alter the effect. This is the sort of thing that makes stereo worth the trouble.
3. Pop Sicle. This is wonderful and unusual in part because of the way it has been recorded. I think it's genius. It sounds like the instrument amps and drums are in a real space. And it delivers the sense of the power of a really loud rock group comes over.
4. The more recent version of Nomos Alpha you found on Youtube. ffmpeg says "aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 96 kb/s (default)". There's a lot of nouse at the start (air?) and then it improves after a while as though the recording engineer adjusted something. There are ambient noises throughout like coughing. The cello doesn't sound nice. It's harsh. And sometimes during double-stop playing it sounds like the instrument has been a bit separated left-right, which is weird/unnatural. Perhaps it was recorded with two mics fairly close?
5. Cantate Domino, Oscars Motettkör, etc. It's good. Sounds very fine. The composition is new to me, a weighty expression of ecclesiastical authority. I didn't notice anything unusual w.r.t. spacial effects. The chorus is quite widely distributed L-R but it's not disturbing.
6. The Magnus Lindburg composition is also new to me. It's cool music. I don't perceive the sounds as coming from anywhere in front of, behind or wider than the speaker separation. But the separation L-R is extreme and the nature of sounds, especially early on with a lot of mid-high noise, makes that separation very clear. Honestly, it's excessive for me. I'd have to have my head pretty much
in the piano to get such a wide separation effect. For example, around 20 seconds into the second track there's a tremolo on one high note on the piano that actually moves from left to right as its damping is changed - bizarre. And the balance among the instruments doesn't make sense. If my head is in the piano, how do the cello and voice get to be where they are? The cello sounds like it's right in front of me but really close and the singer is even closer. And so on. So it doesn't add up coherently for me.
7. Ali Farka Toure Talking Timbuktu is a lovely album. But it sounds like a multi-track studio effort and the mix represents the aesthetic choices of the engineer and/or producer (including the electric guitar's stereo chorus effect). That's normal and perfetly ok in my opinion but it's hard to know in such cases what should be the reference in our concept of fidelity.
I'll leave it at that for now. Out of time.
