The Truth about many "Audiophile" Piano Recordings

[Robin L]

For me, this recording comes pretty close to how I would like a piano to sound on a recording...

Some Other Time: The Lost Session From The Black Forest
Bill Evans

https://play.qobuz.com/album/0096802280276

Qobuz didn't work for me, fortunately YouTube does:

Of course, being as it's Bill Evans, it's not a fair comparison to anything else.

Very much the perspective of either being the pianist or in his lap. This situation is much like that of orchestral recording, where the best position for an ORTF pair is about five feet back and five feet above the conductor, a very hard seat to get in real life. But, yes, this is lovely. Better than real life, in its way.

 

[LightninBoy]

Maybeck Hall wasn't all of 30' feet wide. Concord Jazz made this very close up recording of a Yamaha Grand at Maybeck:

FWIW, Maybeck was the perfect size for piano recitals, a room just big enough to not be overwhelmed by the sound of a big instrument. All seats [50ish?] had good sound.

A recording I made in a very big church of a very nice Yamaha 9' concert grand. I was attempting something like proper perspective, like first row in a big room, but was more concerned with tone:

I was attempting to get a clear, focused sound without too much of the mechanical action audible. I also enjoy the Hank Jones recording, though it's the audio equivalent of a macro photo.

Your recording (the second video) is what I consider an accurate piano sound. That's super nice.

 

[Robin L]

One of my all time favorite piano recordings, this is from the early 1960's for Philips. The instrument is a Bechstein, Schnabel's instrument on his first complete recording of Beethoven's 32 sonatas. Both pianists preferred this instrument for its wide tonal range and color, more varied than that of a Steinway or Yamaha. There's a very wide range of color in this instrument, everything is perfectly audible, but nothing is exaggerated. And this is one of the best performances of one of Beethoven's quirkier conceptions:

 

[agiletiger]

My observations:
1) I don't find solo piano recordings to vary so much that I am wanting more in many instances. In fact, I find piano and acoustic guitar to be the instruments that come off the best via recordings.
2) I have been a musician and music lover for most of my life. In all the live piano performances I've every attended, be it small recital halls or large concert halls, I never heard the piano coming from one side of the stage or the other. The only instances where I could hear the piano coming from one side or the other is a classroom or to a much much much lesser extent, when the piano is used in a large ensemble setting such as part of an orchestra.

The sound in a hall is a blend of attacks, sustains and reverb with all of the above blending into each other to varying degrees. Even my trained ears has trouble dividing up those aspects of the piano sounds. The magic and artistry comes from that blended sound. Any recording or sound system clearly delineating the attacks, sustains and reverb as separate entities may sound impressive but I assure you that it does not reflect what you would hear in a live setting.

 

[puppet]

Some of the best piano recordings I've heard are Jacques Loussier Jazz Trio. His "Some of my personal favorites" album is pretty good.

 

[Robin L]

One thing is the veracity of the recording - like I said to begin with, capturing the amazing range and true tonality of a piano is challenging.

There is the full range, but there also is the consideration of its placement in a stage to get a truly authentic feel. I know the piano player sits on top of the instrument. As does everybody else in the ensemble with their own instrument. But that's not how I hear it as an audience. I don't want to sit right next to where the piano virtuoso sits, I want to ear the performance.

Listen to Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby... is it a flawed recording? You hear the clinking of cocktail glasses and people chatting and laughing instead of being stunned into silence. Oh, and Bill Evans sounds amazing despite the fact his piano does not play all the way over the bass and drums and dominate the stage end to end. If I had to guess that amazing recording -to me- was simply recording with the good old fashioned 2 microphone approach?

PS: I am not a recording engineer, I am audience and know what I hear in good venues, and compare it to what I hear in good recordings, even thiose that have the 30ft piano and I thoroughly enjoy.

Wouldn't say it's a flawed recording. The microphone really likes Bill Evans, he has a restraint that allows for relatively close miking. This doesn't sound to these ears like 2 microphones, that snap on the bass sounds mighty close to me, and there's a hard localization of the piano on the right that suggests a mono spot microphone. But not a problem, Bill Evans made a sound that just about any microphone would like. I'd put Dave Brubeck at the other end of that kind of scale, really big, loud sounds. Everything here appears to have a microphone, and the piano microphone sounds more distant from the piano's hammers than in the Bill Evans Waltz:

 

[Robin L]

I remember hearing this at some big audio show, probably a Stereophile show back in the 1990s, reproduced from CD over big floorstanding Theil speakers, and being mighty impressed by the verisimilitude of the sound. Managed to capture something like the size of the instrument without going overboard, with excellent room capture giving a sense of the sonic image's size from an audience perspective. This is big without being unrealistic:

 

[Xulonn]

My parents had me take lessons on our little Baldwin Spinet piano back in the 1950's when I was still in elementary school, but I wasn't good and not into it, so I quit after two years. However, I enjoyed listening to music, and while attending midde school and later, high school, I developed a taste for early pop/rock, as well as jazz, Latin jazz, and classical music. My first exposure to Latin jazz came while surfing shortwave stations on my parents' Stromberg-Carlson AM/FM/Shortwave/phonograph console radio. I stumbled across a Cuban station one night, and have enjoyed Latin-American music, especially jazz, ever since. Also, as I have mentioned here before, during my high school days I worked for two years (1957-58) as an usher at Orchestra Hall, which included evening and weekend concerts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This was during the Fritz Reiner era, and also coincided with some of the early years of the legendary RCA "Living Stereo recordings. This was my introduction to live orchestral classical music - including piano - and was an experience that I did not truly appreciate until many years later when memories were beginning to fade.

Another bit of my audio/music life that I have discussed here at ASR was my early interest in audio, and the first (mono) system I assembled in 1959 with the help of my father, who was not an audiophile, but a good man who nurtured his adopted son's interests. We bought a used 20w Bell 2300 vacuum tube (6L6) amplifier, a Garrard record changer/turntable, and I modified a table radio to use as a tuner by routing the speaker output to a line-level input on the amplifier. One of my father's friends was an engineer at the Jensen Speaker company, and he got us a 12" coaxial speaker, big external crossover, a "super-tweeter, and designed a fairly big bass reflex speaker that my father built in his basement workshop.

Then I bought my first LP - "Latin Escapade" with the George Shearing Quintet, a mono recording reproduced in the YouTube video below. Shearing's unique piano style included "tripling the melody" with vibraphone and electric guitar. His Latin music collaborations included working with Cal Tjader and Mongo Santamaria. I only saw George Shearing perform live one time - at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in the 1980s.

Jump ahead a few years, and my introduction to another piano player, Cuban Rubén González, was via the movie "The Buena Vista Social Club." A couple of years later, in 1999, I attended a concert by González at the big, beautiful restored Art Deco venue, the Paramount Theater in Oakland, California. I bought front row center balcony seats for that event, and never once did I regret the extra expense. A recording of "Mandinga" by Rubén González is also below.

Those two recordings were made about 40 years apart, and are very different in character. The Shearing video is mono and "up front" to me. However, I don't hear much if any separation in the more modern González recording which is more "distant and diffuse". I would want the piano to be centered, but expect to hear other elements (voices, percussion, trumpet) at other locations in the soundstage. However, I enjoy them both because they evoke memories of live performances I attended many years ago. (I did verify that my Q-Audio desktop speakers are in phase, and that a good soundstage is possible [LINK] - but I don't hear separation or instrument/voice placement in videos 2 and 3, where I would expect it to be present.)

The third and last YouTube link is to a live recording of Mandinga performed by the band from the Buena Vista Social Club movie, which includes Rubén González. Although I was not there for the live performance at Carnegie Hall, I did see González live with a Cuban band as I mentioned above. I really like the recording by Buena Vista Social Club band, because it somehow reaches me on an emotional level more than the other two songs I posted.

And the recorded sound of the pianos? Just as real pianos sound different depending on the room, audience, indoor vs. outdoor, stage vs band shell, etc., recordings sound different. I enjoy good recordings of good music, but I can still enjoy good music if the recording is less than excellent. It is getting to be a mantra for me here, but I do seek "sonic perfection" but rather a good emotional experience from listening to music.

I would appreciate any comments by those of you are familiar with recording techniques about the characteristics of these recordings - just out of curiosity. And of course, your opinions and criticisms won't change my enjoyment of these recordings.

 

[Robin L]

My parents had me take lessons on our little Baldwin Spinet piano back in the 1950's when I was still in elementary school, but I wasn't good and not into it, so I quit after two years. However, I enjoyed listening to music, and while attending midde school and later, high school, I developed a taste for early pop/rock, as well as jazz, Latin jazz, and classical music. My first exposure to Latin jazz came while surfing shortwave stations on my parents' Stromberg-Carlson AM/FM/Shortwave/phonograph console radio. I stumbled across a Cuban station one night, and have enjoyed Latin-American music, especially jazz, ever since. Also, as I have mentioned here before, during my high school days I worked for two years (1957-58) as an usher at Orchestra Hall, which included evening and weekend concerts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This was during the Fritz Reiner era, and also coincided with some of the early years of the legendary RCA "Living Stereo recordings. This was my introduction to live orchestral classical music - including piano - and was an experience that I did not truly appreciate until many years later when memories were beginning to fade.

Another bit of my audio/music life that I have discussed here at ASR was my early interest in audio, and the first (mono) system I assembled in 1959 with the help of my father, who was not an audiophile, but a good man who nurtured his adopted son's interests. We bought a used 20w Bell 2300 vacuum tube (6L6) amplifier, a Garrard record changer/turntable, and I modified a table radio to use as a tuner by routing the speaker output to a line-level input on the amplifier. One of my father's friends was an engineer at the Jensen Speaker company, and he got us a 12" coaxial speaker, big external crossover, a "super-tweeter, and designed a fairly big bass reflex speaker that my father built in his basement workshop.

Then I bought my first LP - "Latin Escapade" with the George Shearing Quintet, a mono recording reproduced in the YouTube video below. Shearing's unique piano style included "tripling the melody" with vibraphone and electric guitar. His Latin music collaborations included working with Cal Tjader and Mongo Santamaria. I only saw George Shearing perform live one time - at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in the 1980s.

Jump ahead a few years, and my introduction to another piano player, Cuban Rubén González, was via the movie "The Buena Vista Social Club." A couple of years later, in 1999, I attended a concert by González at the big, beautiful restored Art Deco venue, the Paramount Theater in Oakland, California. I bought front row center balcony seats for that event, and never once did I regret the extra expense. A recording of "Mandinga" by Rubén González is also below.

Those two recordings were made about 40 years apart, and are very different in character. The Shearing video is mono and "up front" to me. However, I don't hear much if any separation in the more modern González recording which is more "distant and diffuse". I would want the piano to be centered, but expect to hear other elements (voices, percussion, trumpet) at other locations in the soundstage. However, I enjoy them both because they evoke memories of live performances I attended many years ago. (I did verify that my Q-Audio desktop speakers are in phase, and that a good soundstage is possible [LINK] - but I don't hear separation or instrument/voice placement in videos 2 and 3, where I would expect it to be present.)

The third and last YouTube link is to a live recording of Mandinga performed by the band from the Buena Vista Social Club movie, which includes Rubén González. Although I was not there for the live performance at Carnegie Hall, I did see González live with a Cuban band as I mentioned above. I really like the recording by Buena Vista Social Club band, because it somehow reaches me on an emotional level more than the other two songs I posted.

And the recorded sound of the pianos? Just as real pianos sound different depending on the room, audience, indoor vs. outdoor, stage vs band shell, etc., recordings sound different. I enjoy good recordings of good music, but I can still enjoy good music if the recording is less than excellent. It is getting to be a mantra for me here, but I do seek "sonic perfection" but rather a good emotional experience from listening to music.

I would appreciate any comments by those of you are familiar with recording techniques about the characteristics of these recordings - just out of curiosity. And of course, your opinions and criticisms won't change my enjoyment of these recordings.

The first is a marvelous studio construct. I suspect the piano lid is either closed or mostly down, but I'm not hearing any hammers here. There's a "warm" high frequency roll-off from the George Shearing Quintet, sounds like a deliberate effect. It's mono and could be a single microphone.

The second excerpt suffers [in my opinion] a little from the same issues as the Hank Jones recording, previous. Microphones too close to the hammers, too widely spaced. So, I'm hearing different elements of the piano coming from different places, and even sitting in front of the instrument does not allow for this kind of perspective. Of course, I have no idea what instrument he's playing, which has a lot more to do with the end result than anything else. The record cover suggests something like a Steinway B, but the sound seems a little more like an upright. Just this side of a tack-hammer piano. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's splashier and closer than what I expect to hear from the audience perspective. This recording serves the music well, the spread of the other voices in the mix makes for a fine ambience.

As for the third---ain't live recording fun? The piano sounds twenty feet wide, easy, various hall perspectives are overlapping, resulting in a lot of sonic confusion. Fun music, not such a great recording qua recording.

 

[pablolie]

Of course, being as it's Bill Evans, it's not a fair comparison to anything else.

Very much the perspective of either being the pianist or in his lap. This situation is much like that of orchestral recording, where the best position for an ORTF pair is about five feet back and five feet above the conductor, a very hard seat to get in real life. But, yes, this is lovely. Better than real life, in its way.

Indeed - that's why I also mentioned Waltz for Debby. In some aspects it is flawed, but to me it's a perfect recording for a jazz trio with equal balance on all 3 virtuosos that captures their stunning synergy, with each having their rightful spot, and the piano claiming that correct extra space. That's if you pay attention to such minutiae when you listen to them - what a jazz trio!

I have converted friends to audiophile status with that recording.

 

[pablolie]

The good recording of the piano is not yet of this world. It would take hifi speakers capable of transmitting the vibration of the piano to the ground And the physical scale of the piano

I should note even my current humble setup does a pretty good job - my GF is an extremely gifted piano player (she has recorded and performed quite a bit) and loved the sound of the system. She claims it allows her to easily establish sloppy technique (she's a snob and mocks several famous pianists' delivery). Naturally it's not the same experience as if sitting right next to the piano, but the latter sometims -as we're discussing here- is not always realistic or desirable, IMO. But I agree there's indeed that extra quantum that is missing, the total volume and reverberation... I dabble with percussion so I do have a decent-ish recording hobby environment, but while it works for what I do, it fails spectacularly to record what she does on her Shigeru Kawai.
PS: She doesn't let me play it.

 

[Prana Ferox]

As for the third---ain't live recording fun? The piano sounds twenty feet wide, easy, various hall perspectives are overlapping, resulting in a lot of sonic confusion. Fun music, not such a great recording qua recording.

It sounds to me like you're in a big auditorium and what you're actually hearing is the PA.

 

[rwortman]

I have a jazz surround sound sound recording of a person playing piano and singing and they are not in the same place in the surround field. What was that mix engineer thinking? I am not a professional but from a bit of live sound work I’ve done, I think for studio recording I’d rather have a top end digital keyboard. The folks that created the samples probably did a better job than most people can produce mic’ing a piano.

 

[pablolie]

I am loving this thread - I thought I was the only person that sometimes gets a bit annoyed by "experts" fawning over piano recordings that IMO are flawed! Thanks ASR tribe!

 

[pablolie]

I had not paid attention to the mic placement... what's the benefit of this? Seems like it'd be super confusing? Are they tuned to different frequencies, and if so, that should not result in it being blended just like that is a stereo mix? I love a recent classical recording for delivery and choices, but I find the mix super confusing, with that sometimes seems like the same note being in different locations between the speakers....

 

[Xulonn]

It sounds to me like you're in a big auditorium and what you're actually hearing is the PA.

It was recorded in New York's Carnegie Hall - I assume that they have a god PA system. All PA systems are not the same, and venues that cater to classical music tend to have very good PA systems.

I would guess that the recording equipment in one of the world's most famous concert halls would be good enough to create a fairly "realistic-sounding" recording. Definitely better sound quality than a recording at some town's corner bar and nightclub!

 

[Robin L]

It was recorded in New York's Carnegie Hall - I assume that they have a god PA system. All PA systems are not the same, and venues toat cater to classical music tend to have very good PA systems.

I would guess that the recording equipment in one of the world's most famous concert halls would be good enough to create a fairly "realistic-sounding" recording. Definitely better sound quality than a recording at some town's corner bar and nightclub!

You would think so.

And yet, for this sort of music, a small smokey club would have more focus and less sonic confusion. And a solo recording of a keyboard at home can be great, if one knows what one is doing. Recording piano in a smaller room than Carnagie Hall would give better results. In fact, Carnagie Hall has a smaller hall attached, for keyboard and chamber recitals. I remember going there for a concert of a work of Chen Yi for solo harpsichord. This recital hall is a miniaturized version of the better known Carnagie Hall.

 

[Robin L]

It gets even better when they blend the close mics of a piano with the soundstage of an orchestra, so that the piano seems like covering the entire soundstage... What a mess.

This classic recording comes close to what you're saying. The recording is really quite fine, but the piano perspective is pretty much from the bench, with all of the orchestra on a more distant plane. What can I say? Gould was one of the world's leading egoists, had no problem mauling the rhythms of any number of baroque masterworks or undermining the composer's intentions on a number of later works, seemingly fully at home only in the 20th century, despite his protests. Here he is fully in his element, and Stoky seems to be glad to be along for the ride. I'm guessing that decisions as regards tempi and balances are mostly Gould's. Still, if it's a "piano first" recording of a warhorse you're looking for, this just might be it:

 

[pablolie]

... What can I say? Gould was one of the world's leading egoists, ...

<- This!

Piano players have notorious egos, so of course they'd like a recording with the King Kong piano dominating it all.

Sometimes with solo recordings it's just trying to bring intimacy into it (Vikingur Olafsson's recent Mozart recording is like that, I love the performance, I think the recording is a bit disorienting at times even though the piano is presented sonically in a very pure way).

But when it's a jazz trio or an orchestra, I don't like the piano somehow hovering all over the soundstage and brutally dominating it.

 

[Xulonn]

I retired to the mountains of Western Panama in 2012 - two years before the opening of Schroeder Hall in the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. Both the much larger Weill Concert Hall and the more intimate Schroeder Hall with its Brombaugh Opus 9 pipe organ were designed with state of the art acoustics utilizing both historic information and modern acoustics engineering. I remember the many reported debates about what would make a great multi-genre music hall, with classical music being given the priority.

I am a bit sad that I moved far away from the area before it opened, and it seems to be as good as the designers and planners expected.

I did find one recording of a Schroeder Hall piano solo on YouTube. I feel a bit out of my element compared to the ASR members in this thread who are recording and piano music experts, and would like to hear your comments on the design of the venue and the recent piano performance below. (Where are the microphones?)