The Sound of Live Music

[geickmei]

The Sound of Live Music

Doing a recording of our local symphony orchestra - I just wanted to relate my impressions of the sound of the live music last night before I master a disc of it and listen to the playback. I tried to close my eyes and determine a little more exactly – describably – what I was hearing. I have found that only by putting it into words can we relate these subjective experiences.

If you keep your eyes open, it is very difficult to isolate the sound of the experience. It messes with your brain when you see them playing. So closed it is. I find that there is not so much all of this hi fi “pinpointed” localization or holographic imaging that is described in the subjective reviews of hi fi equipment, especially speakers. The main impression is spaciousness, or open-ness of the sound. At a certain distance – and not very far at all – the instruments are far enough and submerged enough into the reverberant field that the direct sound is such a small part of it that only the highest of frequencies make their way through the rich reverberant field to do whatever localization is left. The splash of the cymbals – kind of over on the left side; the bowing of the deep strings of the double bass, on the right; the kettle drums – back there somewhere near the center. Each instrument just sounds bigger than it really is and its sound blends with the rest in a way that enriches the total experience. It is just the opposite of a group of separate sounds playing in an anechoic chamber. The full sound power output of each instrument reaches your ears and enables you to hear all of its overtones and radiation into the room. The room itself is unrestricted; you do not hear the size of the room specifically, nor do you detect where the walls and other physical reflections are – it is just “big.” I wish I could have measured the reverb time in the church. It was a fairly large church with good acoustics. Not a long reverb that I could detect. I think that in spaces with long reverb times in the right seats you will hear a “stereophonic” reverberance that differs on the two sides from the different instruments on the right and left, and if the early reflected trails off smoothly it will not be noticed as “echo” but rather as additional spaciousness.

I will now make a CD of the music and play it in the listening room and close my eyes once again. I will try and hear if there are any hotspots in the sound field in front of me. There shouldn’t be; the music should just be huge and spacious and not limited to a 21 ft wide room but rather spread widely in an arc about 130 to 150 degrees in front and around me. The early reflected plus the surround speakers should help get me there – it was recorded in MS with a +2 setting for the side mike.

Has anyone else performed this experiment with “the absolute sound” – especially you recording engineers? What do you hear with live music?

Gary Eickmeier

 

[Petrushka]

The Sound of Live Music

Doing a recording of our local symphony orchestra - I just wanted to relate my impressions of the sound of the live music last night before I master a disc of it and listen to the playback. I tried to close my eyes and determine a little more exactly – describably – what I was hearing. I have found that only by putting it into words can we relate these subjective experiences.

If you keep your eyes open, it is very difficult to isolate the sound of the experience. It messes with your brain when you see them playing. So closed it is. I find that there is not so much all of this hi fi “pinpointed” localization or holographic imaging that is described in the subjective reviews of hi fi equipment, especially speakers. The main impression is spaciousness, or open-ness of the sound. At a certain distance – and not very far at all – the instruments are far enough and submerged enough into the reverberant field that the direct sound is such a small part of it that only the highest of frequencies make their way through the rich reverberant field to do whatever localization is left. The splash of the cymbals – kind of over on the left side; the bowing of the deep strings of the double bass, on the right; the kettle drums – back there somewhere near the center. Each instrument just sounds bigger than it really is and its sound blends with the rest in a way that enriches the total experience. It is just the opposite of a group of separate sounds playing in an anechoic chamber. The full sound power output of each instrument reaches your ears and enables you to hear all of its overtones and radiation into the room. The room itself is unrestricted; you do not hear the size of the room specifically, nor do you detect where the walls and other physical reflections are – it is just “big.” I wish I could have measured the reverb time in the church. It was a fairly large church with good acoustics. Not a long reverb that I could detect. I think that in spaces with long reverb times in the right seats you will hear a “stereophonic” reverberance that differs on the two sides from the different instruments on the right and left, and if the early reflected trails off smoothly it will not be noticed as “echo” but rather as additional spaciousness.

I will now make a CD of the music and play it in the listening room and close my eyes once again. I will try and hear if there are any hotspots in the sound field in front of me. There shouldn’t be; the music should just be huge and spacious and not limited to a 21 ft wide room but rather spread widely in an arc about 130 to 150 degrees in front and around me. The early reflected plus the surround speakers should help get me there – it was recorded in MS with a +2 setting for the side mike.

Has anyone else performed this experiment with “the absolute sound” – especially you recording engineers? What do you hear with live music?

Gary Eickmeier

My first real speakers were Bose 901s. They were heavily criticized for smearing the soundstage.

But that was the point. At the time, I was able to A/B them with AR3as, and thought the frequency response profile was close.

My wife really liked the spacious sound, so that was it for 30 years.

 

[geickmei]

My first real speakers were Bose 901s. They were heavily criticized for smearing the soundstage.

But that was the point. At the time, I was able to A/B them with AR3as, and thought the frequency response profile was close.

My wife really liked the spacious sound, so that was it for 30 years.

The story of my life Petrushka - I have moved on from the 901s but have been trying to duplicate or improve upon their sound ever since.

Gary

 

[Pretorious]

This is the great circle of confusion, in my opinion, even more so than from recording booth to home listening. So called hi-fi listening is almost nothing like how we hear instruments and concerts in real life.

As you hear, listening to an orchestra in a traditional setting is a totally different experience than listening to one in a recording. A recording is such a privileged experience of being able to sit in an ideal center to the musician and hear each instrument or group of instruments in a specific space. Sitting and listening in a crowd or in a balcony is nothing like that. The sound is reflected and blended, much more open; what we lose in pinpoint separation we gain in spaciousness and breadth of sound, for lack of a better word.

In the hi-fi world these qualities are usually derided because they do not provide the acute stereo image that we get in a recording. The recording is all we can reproduce, hence the circle of confusion. So, we look for the qualities that enhance or accurately reproduce the stereo sound field. But, the sound field we hear is usually quite different, so is the experience.

This is not to say one is better than the other. There are different goals involved; and a recording does provide one with the privilege of something they cannot experience in real life. I only state all this because listening to music for hundreds of years has been vastly different than what we've had since the advent of stereo. Hearing a "smeared" sound field shouldn't be as ridiculed as it is, I say, especially if someone enjoys it.

What you're doing sounds interesting, and I would love to hear the results.

 

[geickmei]

This is the great circle of confusion, in my opinion, even more so than from recording booth to home listening. So called hi-fi listening is almost nothing like how we hear instruments and concerts in real life.

As you hear, listening to an orchestra in a traditional setting is a totally different experience than listening to one in a recording. A recording is such a privileged experience of being able to sit in an ideal center to the musician and hear each instrument or group of instruments in a specific space. Sitting and listening in a crowd or in a balcony is nothing like that. The sound is reflected and blended, much more open; what we lose in pinpoint separation we gain in spaciousness and breadth of sound, for lack of a better word.

In the hi-fi world these qualities are usually derided because they do not provide the acute stereo image that we get in a recording. The recording is all we can reproduce, hence the circle of confusion. So, we look for the qualities that enhance or accurately reproduce the stereo sound field. But, the sound field we hear is usually quite different, so is the experience.

This is not to say one is better than the other. There are different goals involved; and a recording does provide one with the privilege of something they cannot experience in real life. I only state all this because listening to music for hundreds of years has been vastly different than what we've had since the advent of stereo. Hearing a "smeared" sound field shouldn't be as ridiculed as it is, I say, especially if someone enjoys it.

What you're doing sounds interesting, and I would love to hear the results.

Great answer Pretorious - agree. So have we contracted an audiophile disease that keeps us from understanding what the real goal is? Are we more interested in the pinpoint imaging in our home rooms sculpting out a miniature orchestra like a Kabuki theater? Has anyone experienced a recording that sounds more like the live experience? I may try it next season but so far my recordings are not much different than the rest of them. My mikes are right behind the conductor by about 6 feet. I get an image of about 160 degrees in front of me. I am playing it in surround mode of an MS recording with about equal amounts of M and S in the mix. My brain tells me that I am disappointed in not being able to pinpoint individual instruments.

It would be a damn good test to record the same sound from abouit 3 different distances, holding everything else the same. John Atkinson has done some similar ideas but I think with just a few sound effects, not a symphony.

A binaural recording from the same spots would be instructive.

Gary

 

[tengiz]

This is fascinating - I’m interested in this topic not as an engineer, but as a consumer. I wonder if you’ve heard the recordings of some performances directed by Teodor Currentzis, who, as he himself claimed, specifically designed the sessions to capture symphony and opera “as it was intended” - more intimate, more extreme close-up.

The result was unusual, to say the least. In my opinion, it works a bit better for opera, but if you listen to his recordings of Beethoven’s 7th or 5th, I’d say they’re actually unpleasant to listen to.

There’s too much detail - like the mechanical sounds that classical instruments make, or other subtle effects that I can best describe as evanescent waves - which, at a normal distance, would be masked by the music and natural reverb, or simply wouldn’t make it to the listener at all. It’s interesting at first, but then you realize it becomes quite distracting.

There’s also a different experience of dynamic range. I’m not sure if it’s actually wider, but it certainly sounds that way. Maybe it just takes some getting used to, but it definitely feels different from what you’d experience in a real music venue.

I think experiments like this are totally valid, but it seems like the centuries of fine-tuning in the craft of classical instrument building and performance - all intended to project sound into large, reverberant spaces with listeners at a distance - can’t just be ignored. The classical music really does sound better that way.

 

[Pretorious]

So have we contracted an audiophile disease that keeps us from understanding what the real goal is? Are we more interested in the pinpoint imaging in our home rooms sculpting out a miniature orchestra like a Kabuki theater? Has anyone experienced a recording that sounds more like the live experience?

To an extent. I wouldn't call it a disease though, more of an expectation. There is another side of this perspective and we can ask the question that perhaps many early engineers did: why record a symphony orchestra any old way when we can take advantage of the new medium and give the home listener a real brand new experience that puts them in the midst of the orchestra where they can hear where everything is? It's a fascinating topic when approached like this, I think, although there is no true answer since it's all about intentions. But I've never gone to a concert expecting to hear it that way as if it were a stereo or multichannel recording; nor have I sat listening to a live concert and ever once thought to myself how I can't hear the separation and that it's all too "blended". I just enjoy the music.

My thinking is that with all the new technological advances with wireless and Atmos and so on that we can get closer to an interpretation of "being there". It would start with the recordings, of course.

I wonder if you’ve heard the recordings of some performances directed by Teodor Currentzis, who, as he himself claimed, specifically designed the sessions to capture symphony and opera “as it was intended” - more intimate, more extreme close-up.

Can't say I agree with his mode of thinking. I've only heard Currentzis and his band perform some Tchaikovsky but I never was very fond of the performance in the recording nor do I remember how it actually sounded.

There’s too much detail - like the mechanical sounds that classical instruments make, or other subtle effects that I can best describe as evanescent waves - which, at a normal distance, would be masked by the music and natural reverb, or simply wouldn’t make it to the listener at all. It’s interesting at first, but then you realize it becomes quite distracting

And this is precisely why I disagree with what his intentions are. There's such a thing as too much of a good thing, and if a recording is that egregious that you can hear detail you would never hear in any reasonable way in real life then it's not really capturing any sort of meaningful musical essence, in my opinion.

I always use the example of classical piano recordings which almost universally sound artificial to me. Almost every single recording I've heard of solo piano music is so unlike the real thing as to be distracting, at least to the point that I'm thinking about it. The left hand notes come from the right channel and the right hand notes from the left, so you can immediately imagine how the microphone was aligned to record it. If the pianist plays from low to high in one go you can hear the image pan across the stereo image. Stereo creates from a single instrument what sounds like 2-3 within the image. When does anyone ever listen to a piano with their head stuck that close to the soundboard? That also means the mic picks up the mechanical noises of the instrument along with incidentals like the pianist breathing or their fingers tapping on the keys. Stuff that you would never hear at a recital.

I'm trying to recall off the top of my head, but I think it was Richard Goode's recordings of Beethoven sonatas where it was one of the few that did not mic the piano like this. Instead all the sound seemed to come from the right or left channel (can't remember which) and the rest of the image was reverb or ambiance. It was also jarring because the image didn't feel filled in to me, so even though the instrument wasn't hard panned to one side it still gave me the feeling it was. It was as if there wasn't enough ambiance so the instrument still sounded pinpoint instead of broad or projecting. So even this way of capturing isn't a panacea.

Recording is a wonderful art.

 

[geickmei]

To an extent. I wouldn't call it a disease though, more of an expectation. There is another side of this perspective and we can ask the question that perhaps many early engineers did: why record a symphony orchestra any old way when we can take advantage of the new medium and give the home listener a real brand new experience that puts them in the midst of the orchestra where they can hear where everything is? It's a fascinating topic when approached like this, I think, although there is no true answer since it's all about intentions. But I've never gone to a concert expecting to hear it that way as if it were a stereo or multichannel recording; nor have I sat listening to a live concert and ever once thought to myself how I can't hear the separation and that it's all too "blended". I just enjoy the music.

My thinking is that with all the new technological advances with wireless and Atmos and so on that we can get closer to an interpretation of "being there". It would start with the recordings, of course.


Can't say I agree with his mode of thinking. I've only heard Currentzis and his band perform some Tchaikovsky but I never was very fond of the performance in the recording nor do I remember how it actually sounded.


And this is precisely why I disagree with what his intentions are. There's such a thing as too much of a good thing, and if a recording is that egregious that you can hear detail you would never hear in any reasonable way in real life then it's not really capturing any sort of meaningful musical essence, in my opinion.

I always use the example of classical piano recordings which almost universally sound artificial to me. Almost every single recording I've heard of solo piano music is so unlike the real thing as to be distracting, at least to the point that I'm thinking about it. The left hand notes come from the right channel and the right hand notes from the left, so you can immediately imagine how the microphone was aligned to record it. If the pianist plays from low to high in one go you can hear the image pan across the stereo image. Stereo creates from a single instrument what sounds like 2-3 within the image. When does anyone ever listen to a piano with their head stuck that close to the soundboard? That also means the mic picks up the mechanical noises of the instrument along with incidentals like the pianist breathing or their fingers tapping on the keys. Stuff that you would never hear at a recital.

I'm trying to recall off the top of my head, but I think it was Richard Goode's recordings of Beethoven sonatas where it was one of the few that did not mic the piano like this. Instead all the sound seemed to come from the right or left channel (can't remember which) and the rest of the image was reverb or ambiance. It was also jarring because the image didn't feel filled in to me, so even though the instrument wasn't hard panned to one side it still gave me the feeling it was. It was as if there wasn't enough ambiance so the instrument still sounded pinpoint instead of broad or projecting. So even this way of capturing isn't a panacea.

Recording is a wonderful art.

Yes it's quite comical how they mike the piano from bass to high notes in a stereo spread that is about 15 feet wide. I just recorded the Swan City Piano Festival (Lakeland, Florida) and there was no performance where the keyboard was sitting horizontally. The top is open to the crowd and the pianist sits on the left with the keyboard perpendicular to us.

 

[Custard]

Interesting topic and observations, thanks to all.

No question - recorded sound is nothing like the live experience for all the reasons that OP mentioned, although I'm not sure I agree that 'eyes open' messes with our perception. Not mine, anyway, but then we're all different. I suspect that we tend to like a tightly localised recorded audio image precisely because it acts as a surrogate for the missing visual image. Modern recorded music presentation is largely artifice anyway, even with orchestras and the like, but I think the artificial localisation is justifiable. Or, at least, I prefer it.

WRT piano recordings, as a player I quite like the player perspective so low to high from left to right is okay with me (though the other way round feels very wrong...) but it's plainly absurd when the piano image in a concerto recording is wider than the orchestra. But then the rest of the orchestra is likely to be multi-mic'd with all the perspective skewing that inevitably follows.

 

[boot.leg]

A real interesting thing about most live show experiences is that, the audience is not actually listening to the instruments - instead they're listening to the speakers of the venue.

 

[goat76]

No question - recorded sound is nothing like the live experience for all the reasons that OP mentioned, although I'm not sure I agree that 'eyes open' messes with our perception. Not mine, anyway, but then we're all different. I suspect that we tend to like a tightly localised recorded audio image precisely because it acts as a surrogate for the missing visual image. Modern recorded music presentation is largely artifice anyway, even with orchestras and the like, but I think the artificial localisation is justifiable. Or, at least, I prefer it

That's the thing: the hyperrealistic pinpointing of different sound objects in most audio productions is, in a sense, a substitute for the missing visual cues.

When watching a live show, we as listeners can, thanks to the "cocktail party effect", focus our attention on a specific instrument by just looking at, say, the bass player. And by seeing him/her playing the instrument, we will get the sense of hearing that instrument more isolated from the rest of the instruments, even if the bass is barely heard over the rest of the instruments when closing our eyes.

The same phenomenon often occurs when watching a live video recording of a band, and this can make us think that the sound quality of the recording is way better-sounding than it actually is, but when shutting our eyes, we will often realize that the sound quality isn't that great as we thought it was.

Most listeners of reproduced music would likely find the music without the visual cues to sound pretty "bland" if the audio were missing the hyperrealistic aspects found in most audio productions.

 

[gags]

Many fans of vinyl records say they like having something to hold, cover art to look at, or sleeve notes to read.

Could these things be a proxy for missing visual cues?

(Edited for grammar)

 

[boot.leg]

Many fans of vinyl records say they like having something to hold, cover art to look at, or sleeve notes to read.

Could these things be a proxy for missing visual cues?

(Edited for grammar)

CDs and cassettes too.

And now for streaming music services, Apple Music has made a lot of album covers animated.