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PlayClassics TRT v2.0 master file giveaway for ASR members

Mario Martinez

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We will be happy to share our music with all ASR members who would be willing to try the Truthful Recording Technology (calibration v2.0) sound on their systems. All we want in exchange is to get as much feedback as possible. It would be great if we could get your testimonials to include them on our web page.

The purpose of the Truthful Recording Technology is to achieve transparency (that would be to produce a facsimile image of the actual concert hall sound). To go about this, we developed a fixed setup. We only use two mics always placed on the same exact spot of our auditorium (outside of the stage area). We do not use any mixing or mastering. Our technology is all about calibrating the hall and the recording chain to be transparent. The better the calibration, the more transparent the setup will be.

This is the product of an 8 year research project. The project started in 2009. By April 1st 2013 we had finished working on the physical side of things (fixing the problems presented by the acoustic relationships between hall, stage and pickup point). We then spent the next four years working on the calibration of the recording chain. We worked on many different calibrations and developed methods to test and verify the results. By August 1st 2016 we had reached the transparency point.

I do not think this has ever been tried before (at least not to my knowledge). This type of project is not commercially viable (we did not know how long it was going to take or if we were ever going to be able to complete our project) so I can see why. The good thing is we did get there, and now that it is done it can be used to record basically anything always with the same results. From a large piano, to a flamenco guitar, a drum set or a rock band. I can think of many applications for this technology but right know we are just trying to let people know about it.

Here is a link to our page where we explain why we did this:
http://www.playclassics.com/about

And here is a link to our catalogue so you can choose your albums:
http://www.playclassics.com/catalogue

All our recordings are made exactly the same way. The same piano, with the same tuning, sitting on the same spot of the stage. The hall, the recording gear and the calibration are the same. In fact the only thing that is different would be the performer himself. So if you listen to two recordings of two different pianists you should get a sense of how those pianists use the same instrument to produce sound in a different way just like you would if you were to listen to those pianists in a real concert situation. This is actually an important part of this Truthful Recording Technology.

So we should all get two albums. The "Albéniz Iberia" by Luis Grané and one of the other three albums by Cabrera: "Cabrera plays Debussy", "Chopin Polish Songs" or "Songs of Paolo Tosti".

The Debussy Preludes by Enrique Bernaldo de Quirós was recorded before we finished building our physical setup. Calibration v2.0 cannot be applied to that album. That is why I have taken it out of the list.

Just post the albums of your choice and we will send you a Gift Code to download the full dynamic range 24bit 96kHz Truthful Masters.
 

Thomas savage

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Hi Mario welcome to ASR:) the work you have been doing looks really Intresting, I hope you obtain some useful feedback from our membership.

Thanks for taking the time to post on our little corner of the Internet:)
 
OP
Mario Martinez

Mario Martinez

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Hi Thomas,

Thanks for hosting, it is wonderful to have a place to share :)

Would you like to be the first one to try? I am sending you a PM with the Gift Codes for both "Albéniz Iberia" and "Cabrera plays Debussy"

You can use the Gift Codes to download the albums directly from our web page.
 

Thomas savage

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I still spin disc's Mario ( the autocorrect on my iPad seems to insist your name is Marino :D) I have not got the technology for computer playback through my main system but I can stream the tracks from my phone to my JBL extreme. Will give that a go but it's not a good enough system for critical listening.

I am a little backward with my cd's :D
 
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Mario Martinez

Mario Martinez

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We offer our albums in four different formats
- Flac 24bit 96kHz (that would be the copy of the master)
- Flac 24bit 48kHz
- Flac 16bit 44.1kHz
- Lame mp3 variable bit rate

Once you redeem your Gift Code you can download any of these formats.

I do not know if this will be to much of a hassle but, if you want to, you could download the 16bit 44.1kHz version and burn a disc with it so you could hear it though your main system.

It might take some extra time to burn the disc, but I am sure you will enjoy the results :)
 

Thomas savage

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I got to get me a MacBook Mario, there is no avoiding it. When I do the first thing I will download will be your music. The master copies 24/96:)

Can't say I am a huge classical music fan but I do enjoy Chopin:)
 
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Mario Martinez

Mario Martinez

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I know, the albums are all classical...

Down the line we will be listening to some flamenco, drums solos and instrumental rock.

But those are not albums, they are just straight takes from some sessions we did to see how our technology would work with different genres.
 

NorthSky

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I'd like to listen to "Songs of Paolo Tosti".

Awesome!
 

amirm

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Thank you so much for this great offer for our forum members Mario.

Folks, this is amazing sounding music and new approach to producing it. With no cost to you, I hope you take advantage of Mario's generosity and work here and listen to some fantastic music.
 
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Mario Martinez

Mario Martinez

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The music is very smooth, peaceful and soul's soothing. The recording quality is excellent, with real presence and amazing imaging. ...Natural clean.

Hi NorthSky, thanks for taking the time to listen. Your feedback is really important to us :)

The purpose of this technology is to produce a facsimile image of the concert space. We use the same setup for every recording. It does not matter if it is just piano, or any other chamber music arrangement. We only use two mics and they are always placed on the same exact spot of our auditorium outside of the stage area. There is no mixing or mastering involved, left mic is left speaker and right mic is right speaker. We have obtained this sound by working the acoustics of the auditorium itself.

This is an accurate picture of our setup. It might not be pretty, but the measurements are correct. The person at the bottom of the picture represents the actual position of the mics (that would be your listening position). They really are outside of the stage area, and they are sitting at that same spot for all five albums.

voice.png
 

iridium

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Hello Mario,
Looking forward to all your insights for the forum
Best to you,
iridium.
 

RayDunzl

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The high-res classical (sic) listeners might prefer multichannel to stereo.

Is that part of your future plan?
 

Vincent Kars

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Mario,

Had a look at your website
upload_2016-8-22_20-33-16.png

If one clicks "Donate" or "Get a gift code" the result is exactly the same.
Is this intentional or a bug in the website?

Downloaded the Albéniz demo-track (El Corpus en Sevilla) in 24/96
Maybe the bass is a slightly heavy (unless the piano is a Bösendorfer)
Like the image, the problem with a lot af piano recordings is to much stereo, requiring a pianist with a 5m wing span.
This one sounds concert hall like, no L/R but all is there clearly articulated as a whole.
A bit to much reverb in the opening to my likening.
Excellent recording.
 
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Mario Martinez

Mario Martinez

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Mario,

Had a look at your website
If one clicks "Donate" or "Get a gift code" the result is exactly the same.
Is this intentional or a bug in the website?

Downloaded the Albéniz demo-track (El Corpus en Sevilla) in 24/96
Maybe the bass is a slightly heavy (unless the piano is a Bösendorfer)
Like the image, the problem with a lot af piano recordings is to much stereo, requiring a pianist with a 5m wing span.
This one sounds concert hall like, no L/R but all is there clearly articulated as a whole.
A bit to much reverb in the opening to my likening.
Excellent recording.

Hi Vincent,

Thank you very much for your feedback. I really appreciate it :)

You do not have to get a Gift Code from the web page. Tell me which albums you would like to hear and I will send you a PM with the Gift Codes so you can download the albums for free.

The "Get a Gift Code" button on the page is there so that people can donate to get a Gift Code that they can latter use to give as a gift to some one else (for example)
 

Vincent Kars

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The Albéniz would be nice.
Thanks in advance.
Vincent
 

Sal1950

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Hi Mario, Welcome to ASR!!
I never have had the opportunity to hear the final results of all the tuning tests we worked on together over at CA. If you would be so kind I would very much like a listen to the Albéniz and Cabrera recordings.
I'll post up my ole deaf thoughts or whatever you need when I get them sorted.
TIA,
Sal
 
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Mario Martinez

Mario Martinez

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Hi Mario, Welcome to ASR!!
I never have had the opportunity to hear the final results of all the tuning tests we worked on together over at CA. If you would be so kind I would very much like a listen to the Albéniz and Cabrera recordings.
I'll post up my ole deaf thoughts or whatever you need when I get them sorted.
TIA,
Sal


Hi Sal, I am happy to find you here at ASR too :)

Just so that everyone knows where this is coming from:

Nine months ago we started a thread called: PlayClassics master file giveaway for CA members. The purpose of that thread was to have CA members try the sound of the Truthful Recording Technology on their systems. What we shared with them back then was the most transparent sound we had so far (that was calibration version 1.0). That truly was a great experience. It was a lot of fun being able to share all that with them.

Up to that point we had only used our setup with classical music instruments, but thanks to that thread we started trying new things out. One of the things we tried was a drums set and a rock band. The recorded sound of those instruments was not as transparent as we would have expected. That made us realize there was still some room for improvement on our calibration. We tried to do some fixes over calibration v1.0 but that approach did not seem to work. (Here is the thread where we published those results: PlayClassics Truthful Recording Technology v1.1)

We then knew we would have to re-calibrate from scratch:

Quote Originally Posted by Mario Martinez View Post
I would like to try something new.

I think fixing this minor problems by applying little patches over calibration v1.0 is not going to work.

In order to get good results we might have to re-calibrate from scratch. Do not worry, we are not going to change the sound. We are always aiming at transparency, so even if we do the calibration 100 times we will always end up at almost the same identical place. But this time, I am aware of this little problems, so I will try to deal with them from the beginning.

I might take me a few days, but I will report back as soon as I have something that I am convince of

It finally took 5 months, but I think it was all worth it. We developed this new calibration (v2.0) that we are now sharing with you.
 
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Mario Martinez

Mario Martinez

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The high-res classical (sic) listeners might prefer multichannel to stereo.

Is that part of your future plan?

I do not know what the future will bring. We have been working on this project for so long...

Calibration v2.0 is the end product of an 8 year research project. The main goal of the project was to develop a recording setup that would solve the problems artists face when recording their work.

To get an understanding of what these problems are you can read this paper "The performer's place in the process and product of recording" published by Professor Amy Blier Carruthers (Royal College of Music, London) over the 2nd PSN Conference on 2013.
The performer's place in the process and product of recording

We started working on our setup on 2009 long before that paper was published. Here you can read about our solution:
About - PlayClassics, the art of true music

As you can see, there are many aspects to these problems. The quality of recorded sound itself is one of the biggest issues. Our solution to this respect is based on transparency: "In our studios the recording hall is configured so that the sound of the hall is exactly the same as the sound of the take"

The purpose of the Truthful Recording Technology is to achieve this transparency. To go about this, we only use two mics always placed on the same exact spot of our auditorium (we do not use any mixing or mastering). Our technology is all about calibrating the hall and the recording chain to be transparent. The better the calibration, the more transparent the setup will be and the more control the artists will have over the recorded sound.
 

amirm

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Just finished downloading two new tracks that Mario was kind enough to share (third one still download).

First was the rock track (guitar, drums, etc.). This may be too much of a good thing! I am so used to dry recording and individual level and manipulation of the instruments that the ambient recording of this sounded too distant to me and the room reverbs a negative. During the slow segments though of just one instrument playing, the method shone. But as a whole, it did not do it for me.

Next one was the Flamenco. This is absolutely a stunner! The ambience adds so much to the recording. And the fidelity truly superb. I can't stop listening to it. As a matter of fact it is still playing as I type this. The music is also very, very nice. Send a PM to Mario to get this track. Do it now!
 
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