What is a good piano reproduction???

[amirm]

I often hear or see audiophiles make comments about some reproduction of piano being great versus not. I don't know what that means. Recently had a friend come over to my system who was classically trained pianist. I give him control of the system and he goes to Tidal and pulls out a track and plays. I just hear piano playing . He listens to the end but doesn't say anything. Getting worried I ask if it sounded right. He said it sounded amazing! Better than he had ever heard. Again, I merely heard piano playing .

Recently I bought a high-res piano recording of Misha for DSD Native: http://blog.nativedsd.com/misha-recorded-in-dsd-256fs-by-yarlung-records/

As I reported elsewhere, I found the sound flat, boring and dull. There is no ambiance at all and it sounds like muffled mono piano notes to me. Yet someone else on another forum said it was the best rendering of Piano they had ever heard.

Am I missing a skill here? What do you look for in Piano reproduction? Does one need to be a musician to know this???

 

[TBone]

with me, the ability to differentiate the individual melodies/notes each hand is individually playing. In my opinion, that separation all-to-often gets morphed in translation.

 

[RayDunzl]

I really enjoy Carla Bley.

Go Together, and Duets, are two albums that have only Piano and electric Bass.

I think they're well recorded, in her basement, Grog Kill Studios.

Samples:

 

[RayDunzl]

Am I missing a skill here? What do you look for in Piano reproduction? Does one need to be a musician to know this???

Have you been around pianos?

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Try this one

 

[amirm]

Try this one

And what is the difference between good and bad reproduction in there?

 

[AJ Soundfield]

The sound?

Can't hear your "bad" one and I'm certainly not buying it now!
Free sample clip somewhere?

 

[amirm]

Not sure what you are saying AJ. I am asking if others use Piano as an evaluation type of clip for reproduction hardware. And if so what they listen for other than it sounding like a Piano.

Let me give you another context. If you heavily compress that piano, due to sharp attacks of each note, you get pre-echo which is a scratchy version of the notes leading every one of them. I can readily hear those artifacts. And I just described what they are technically and how they sound.

Do you have equiv. of that outside of lossy audio compression?

 

[AJ Soundfield]

I am asking if others use Piano as an evaluation type of clip for reproduction hardware.

Yes and I gave you a specific track I use.

And if so what they listen for other than it sounding like a Piano.

Not much. It either does or it doesn't. We sometimes have pianos in house at our local monthly club meets. Serves as a nice reference.
Stereo recording will never capture the real thing (I assume you've read JJs work), so the best we can hope for is some semblance of realism and cues.
What I linked (in 16/44 of course) has both, IMO.

cheers,

AJ

 

[Blumlein 88]

I rather like the Wilson Audio recordings of Hyperion Knight for piano. I so far only have them on CD, but they are now available in various formats. I believe the original recordings were done to 30 ips tape.

These two are the best of those in my opinion:

http://www.wilsonaudio.com/wilson-audiophile-recordings/album/pictures-at-an-exhibition

http://www.wilsonaudio.com/wilson-audiophile-recordings/album/gershwin-by-knight

The other Wilson's are nice recordings as well if you like the music.

EDIT: This describes a bit about the recording gear used for my two links.
http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/1..._By_Knight-DSD_Single_Rate_28MHz64fs_Download

http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/1..._By_Knight-DSD_Single_Rate_28MHz64fs_Download

 

[fas42]

It's a lot to do with the attack being reproduced correctly - I have an interesting "reference" in the form of a Yamaha keyboard that's in the house, from their PSR range, which came out in the early 90's - Bev is a great fan of these devices.

By modern standards it's a bit limited, but is still very competent in what it does ... anyway, it has a piano sound of course, digital samples captured from a Yamaha grand ... so these should come across reasonably well, wouldn't you think?

Well, from a cold start, switch on, this aspect of the machine sounds bloody awful!! Horribly artificial, tinny, miles from sounding decently like something worth listening to ... but, from experience, I just let it "bed in" ... feed it Midi files hour after hour, and hard, max. volume, just using the internal speakers. Bit by bit the quality of the sound builds as the machine stabilises, the electronics settle down, the speaker driver suspensions condition themselves.

Eventually, the machine comes together ... that is, the piano "voice" sounds like a piano ... which means what? Mainly, that the full intensity of the note attack is happening correctly - standing over the machine while it's pumping at natural volumes the bite and, yes, attack of the note is there - it literally feels like the energy of the note is lunging at you, without any discernible funniness or fakeness to the sound.

Many hifi systems get that intensity completely wrong, giving the game away immediately ... this is what I look for in any system pretending to be correct, whether that impact of the piano note is "working" or not ...

 

[RayDunzl]

Am I missing a skill here? What do you look for in Piano reproduction? Does one need to be a musician to know this???

Have you been around pianos?

Was that a yes or a no?

 

[Cosmik]

I'm with you Amir: I don't particularly notice piano sounds as being good or bad. What I don't like is when the piano has been recorded with the mics practically inside the piano while the rest of the orchestra has 'ambience'.

I don't think of piano as a revealing test of a system because it is inherently coloured and limited dynamically - no matter how many notes are playing, they're all being generated by a single, thin wooden board, the very definition of resonance, colouration and intermodulation (which is why we like the sound). Solo piano is not difficult for an audio system to reproduce, and would tell me nothing about whether my system had similar (unwanted) 'wooden board' characteristics.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

with me, the ability to differentiate the individual melodies/notes each hand is individually playing. In my opinion, that separation all-to-often gets morphed in translation.

In melodies? If I could not pick out the individual notes in melody and counter melody, I'd assume I had just plain awful reproduction, or a really bad recording.

Tim

 

[TBone]

I once assumed the same thing ...

 

[NorthSky]

I've read this thread late last night. Amir's first original post was very interesting...great audio subject of conversation.
And! Amir seems to have a high resolution sound system. And! His friend that came over seems to know about some great piano recordings (on Tidal).

To me, that's theapothéose (apotheosis). I don't have it in my home, just some simile effects.

We all have piano recordings (my favorite musical instrument, and the cello), and they vary many of them the way they were recorded and then reproduced in our homes. Also, not everyone person prefer the same piano "sound" from the same recording. ...I think.

But there are some piano sound that we like better. I would need to compile some of my favorites, but there are much much more that I don't know about and are out there.
Sure, out of my head I can enumerate Keith Jarrett, Glenn Gould, Murray Perahia, Claudio Arrau, Angela Hewitt, Nojima, Dick Hyman, ... on specific record labels and album's titles. ...ECM, Columbia, Sony Classical, Philips, Hyperion, Reference Recordings, ...
Some of them I like the piano "sound". But there are so many variations (recording techniques) and brands of piano, and microphones.

_________

Plus, some speakers and turntables are better than others @ piano delivery/rendition. Mine are not worthy, and I use an inferior (mainly) music format (CD).
On multichannel SACD a piano sound is strange in some sort of way, but also addicting in realism from a tasteful recording engineer.

Do you listen to some piano recordings in more than two channels, occasionally?

 

[Cosmik]

What do people think of this recording? (available on streaming services, I think)
https://delosmusic.com/recording/water-music-of-the-impressionists-rosenberger/

It's a Bosendorfer beautifully played and, I think, a very nice sound.

But here's an interesting thing: it was recorded digitally in 1979.

 

[fas42]

What do people think of this recording? (available on streaming services, I think)
https://delosmusic.com/recording/water-music-of-the-impressionists-rosenberger/

It's a Bosendorfer beautifully played and, I think, a very nice sound.

But here's an interesting thing: it was recorded digitally in 1979.

A big no from me, and I have the recording! The acoustic is just too much, I'm swimming in this cavernous space , and it drowns me in its "luxuriousness" ! Definitely the least interesting piano recording I have, rarely played - it's more like a special effects effort, for me ...

 

[Cosmik]

A big no from me, and I have the recording! The acoustic is just too much, I'm swimming in this cavernous space , and it drowns me in its "luxuriousness" !
Definitely the least interesting piano recording I have, rarely played - it's more like a special effects effort, for me ...

Interesting... I tend to agree with this person:
http://www.regonaudio.com/Records and Reality.html

Throwing some controversy into the ring, could your aversion to the record stem from your tendency to listen to 'smaller' systems? It seems to me that when I went from smaller to more substantial, possibly more revealing, systems, I began to appreciate 'ambient' recordings much more. I would guess that I am hearing the 'depth' (that we were discussing in another thread) correctly, and also the detail that is present beneath the 'ambience'..? On a different kind of system, I might just register the ambience as a detail-obscuring 'wash'. Just a thought.

 

[fas42]

Throwing some controversy into the ring, could your aversion to the record stem from your tendency to listen to 'smaller' systems? It seems to me that when I went from smaller to more substantial, possibly more revealing, systems, I began to appreciate 'ambient' recordings much more. I would guess that I am hearing the 'depth' (that we were discussing in another thread) correctly, and also the detail that is present beneath the 'ambience'..? On a different kind of system, I might just register the ambience as a detail-obscuring 'wash'. Just a thought.

Don't think so. I have numerous piano recordings, solo and in concertos, and in those the piano comes across as it does in real life, the sound is not swamped in the reverberations.

I agree about depth, this is marvellous to explore but if it is exaggerated as it is in this recording, then it's too much! If you want to really test your system's capabilities, get one of those meditation recordings you hear at crystal shops - some of them have very low level detail, way, way in the distance, curious little effects which are completely inaudible on a normal rig - see how much of this is audible to you!