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What is audio meant to do?

Fitzcaraldo215

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I've just this weekend rather cursorily watched "Karajan: The Second Life". I know he is a divisive figure nowadays but it's difficult to deny his status as a recording icon. I'd like to watch it more attentively again because what interested me was talk about engineering the conductor's recordings. There are interviews with engineers, producers, musicians and even a neuroscientist who worked with Karajan.

Karajan himself states at one point that the recording offers a more "transparent" version of the performance of the work, something better than the live experience which is always compromised by the listener's physical position in the hall. He seemed concerned that any recording should communicate the "spirit" of the work as he has interpreted it as part of the wider noosphere (he mentions Teilhard de Chardin). The shortcomings of the live experience contrast with the ideal of the recorded version. Interestingly, one of the interviewees gives the opposite opinion, saying that it is the experience of the live performance where that spirit is ideally shared communally and giving a 1980s concert of Mahler's Ninth Symphony conducted by the maestro as an example.

This last comment about the communal spirit of the performance reminded me of something Alain Badiou says in his book on Wagner. He talks about the meaning of the opera Parsifal as being the possibility of a new ceremony and draws on Stéphane Mallarmé's quest to find some social ritual that replaces the old religions:

. . . Mallarmé examined various figures of ritual or ceremony . . . The first thing he looked at were concert overtures, about which he said: "Music declares itself to be the last and most complete human religion." That was certainly the case then. Now, however, music has become a solitary religion. At big rock concerts the yearning for ceremony is blatant. You feel it intensely when you see how young people of all stripes share this deep yearning for ceremony. Except that it is a parody; it never manages . . . to get beyond parody, yet that is clearly what it is attempting to do. Music was once the "last and most complete human religion", but it has turned out to be a human religion in as sorry a state as the Brotherhood of Knights in Act 1 of Parsifal. It has ended up being about having headphones in your ears -- portable music players! Obviously nothing could be further removed from a ceremony than a portable music player. The ceremony is a meeting in a specific place; it is the constitution of a place, whereas the portable music player is music devoid of place. (Five Lessons on Wagner, p148)​
So do audio recordings ultimately fall short of communicating this sacral aspect of music? Are we impoverishing our experience of music by not engaging in it communally and sitting alone in our listening rooms or listening on our DAPs -- a "music devoid of place"?

Or is Karajan right: that the recording can give the listener a more transparent access to the spirit of the work?
Most interesting, and thanks for your insights.

The growth of my love of music, especially classical music, has much more to do with recordings than the relatively few live concerts I was able to attend as a kid, teenager or young family man. Radio, both AM and FM, was probably the single most important, followed by increasingly high performance home audio from my own growing piles of discs. But, over the past several decades, I have also been fortunate to have been able to attend numerous world-class performances especially as a Philadelphia Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera subscriber. I still attend live concerts between 1-2 dozen times per year.

To me, live is top of the heap by a long shot. Sonically, it is the one true reference standard. My seats have varied in the hall somewhat, but I do have seating preferences. And, while there may be some second rate seats in the hall, that has not disturbed my enjoyment and appreciation of the music and sound anywhere to the degree Karajan greatly overstates it. Lets's also not forget that all the great classical composers we have revered through the ages composed with only live performance in mind. There was nothing else. Yes, some contemporary composers may on occasion compose for recorded rather than live performance, but those are still just footnote exceptions.

I also agree there is something special in the sense of occasion of a live concert, the spirit of sharing the music, sound and emotion with fellow audience members, applauding with them in admiration and gratitude, plus the ability to see as well as hear the passion of the performers on stage.

Audio recordings can capture some replica of aspects of that, but they also omit many others in our usually solitary listening at home. We probably tend to overfocus on the sound because we have fewer sensory stimuli affecting us from the grooves or bits on the discs or files. Detail in some recordings may exaggerate or alter the sound or musical balances vs. live. I do believe I hear things live that give me musical insights not often portrayed as well recorded.

I do much prefer the sonic reproduction by discrete Mch, where I find the sound much more natural and a better replica of live, including the spatial sense of a concert hall and its acoustic. Also, unlike many audiophiles, I prefer recordings made before a live audience, including their applause at the end. I especially enjoy the almost raucous vocal bravos that accompany great arias and performances on live opera recordings. Opera is just not the same without them, as in the real thing live.

But, more involving than audio recordings and almost totally engrossing are live concert, opera and ballet BD videos, usually always made before a live audience. The hirez Mch sound is generally excellent, and the ability to see clearly the energy and emotion of the performers, the instrumental layout, the hall, the audience, etc. can be much more deeply moving and involving than audio only. The only problem is that the videos do not wear as well on repeat viewings. You see the same faces, the same gestures from the same camera angles repeated exactly as before. So, you turn the video off, if necessary, and just listen.

But, in many ways, with opera in particular, BDs provide an excellent means of enjoying the experience of the music. I relinquished my Met subscription and expensive, tedious trips to NYC when I discovered them. For concerts, I was always somewhat cool to Claudio Abbado. But, then I discovered his Lucerne Festival BDs of 8 of the 9 Mahler symphonies, his Bruckner 5th, etc. I came to love the Maestro and his music making beyond words. Different from live, yes, but outstanding music listening and watching experiences.
 

Kal Rubinson

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Is that the rig with the Marantz AV8500 at the healm?
I do not know what an AV8500 is. ;) The small system has the large screen: a 50" Fujitsu and is driven, at the moment by an Marantz AV8802a. But I was talking about my main listening system which has only a 24" PC monitor in the room.
Kal are you also a lawyer, or maybe you were a lawyer in another life? ;)
I went to law school for 2 weeks until I decided better of it. I am now Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
 

svart-hvitt

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I do not know what an AV8500 is. ;) The small system has the large screen: a 50" Fujitsu and is driven, at the moment by an Marantz AV8802a. But I was talking about my main listening system which has only a 24" PC monitor in the room.
I went to law school for 2 weeks until I decided better of it. I am now Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology.
[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

@Kal Rubinson , given your background I think you should be more outspoken on methods, measurements, the use and misuse of statistics etc.; here and elsewhere. You only live once ;)
 

Fitzcaraldo215

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Kal are you also a lawyer, or maybe you were a lawyer in another life? ;)

I thought personal insults like this were against forum rules. :eek:

Sorry to any lawyers out there, but you know well the low esteem your profession has, unfortunately.
 

Kal Rubinson

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given your background I think you should be more outspoken on methods, measurements, the use and misuse of statistics etc.; here and elsewhere. You only live once ;)
Note the "emeritus." Since my retirement, I do only WTF I feel like doing so I jump in when the spirit moves me.
 

Guermantes

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There is a lot of evidence that music did of course (and does) fulfil this role in societies without writing (this is my attempt to avoid the word "civilised"). But does Badiou imagine that, even in these societies, there was no irreverence in music? That no-one took a flute or a pair of sticks and created melodies or rhythms that we not intended for the group, that did not convey the spiritual or the profound? This seems highly unlikely to me.

IME, it's much more likely that music has always and in all places been capable of performing non-communal, non-sacral roles. Capable of being the vehicle for humour, satire, nonsense and fun. Capable of being enjoyed and performed not only for the benefit of the community, but also the individual (of course, back then you had to make it if you wanted to hear it).

Yes, I agree, the "music for pleasure" aspect can't be ignored, but it's interesting that the ancient Greeks saw this, too, as an expression of the divine in the Dionysian. The festival has long been about play and the disruption of social strictures (The Fight Between Carnival and Lent) but once again it is a primarily communal event. But I like the image of a solitary paleolithic flute player keeping the terrors of the night at bay with a merry fireside tune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_flutes

Karajan's comments are interesting to me for a different reason, since they seem to begin from the far more modern Western - and almost opposite - assumption that an individual artist expresses themselves (not the communal or the sacral) through a musical work. If this is the case, of course the recording may provide a superior medium of expression than the live performance. Once art becomes about individual expression and not about ceremony, the ideal medium is the medium that the artist chooses.

Karajan was the great interpreter of Romanticism, so the expression of the existential struggle of the individual artist comes as part of the package, I suppose.

I also wonder if Badiou/Mallarmé 's view of the ceremony is heavily dependent on the Catholic Mass as its model while Karajan's individual spirituality is more German Protestant . . .

The development of the printing press in Europe, while democratising and privatising literacy, also saw the slow decline of the linguistic arts as oral and communal practices. Nowadays we prefer the novel (an internalised literate genre) over poetry (a more externalised oral genre). Has the invention of sound recording done similar things with music? Will genres primarily associated with live performance give way completely to those more amenable to private listening? If so, perhaps our concern over whether the recording replicates the acoustic event will become redundant.
 

Wombat

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Which Tested Fail
 

Sal1950

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I do not know what an AV8500 is. ;) The small system has the large screen: a 50" Fujitsu and is driven, at the moment by an Marantz AV8802a. But I was talking about my main listening system which has only a 24" PC monitor in the room.
I went to law school for 2 weeks until I decided better of it. I am now Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology.
Brain fart on the numbers, Thought I had read in your latest In The Round that you were upgrading your AV8802 to a AV8805, maybe not?
So then you have 2 Home Theaters, one with a big screen and the other with a little one. :p
Note the "emeritus." Since my retirement, I do only WTF I feel like doing so I jump in when the spirit moves me.
Now your stealing my line. LOL
 
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andreasmaaan

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The development of the printing press in Europe, while democratising and privatising literacy, also saw the slow decline of the linguistic arts as oral and communal practices. Nowadays we prefer the novel (an internalised literate genre) over poetry (a more externalised oral genre). Has the invention of sound recording done similar things with music? Will genres primarily associated with live performance give way completely to those more amenable to private listening? If so, perhaps our concern over whether the recording replicates the acoustic event will become redundant.

^^Absolutely. Whether it reaches its logical conclusion completely or not, the trend is already well and truly underway.
 

Kal Rubinson

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Brain fart on the numbers,
I know.
Thought I had read in your latest In The Round that you were upgrading your AV8802 to a AV8805, maybe not?
In process.
So then you have 2 Home Theaters, one with a big screen and the other with a little one. :p
So, the latter qualifies as HT even when the screen is not visible?:facepalm:
 

Hipper

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I've just this weekend rather cursorily watched "Karajan: The Second Life". I know he is a divisive figure nowadays but it's difficult to deny his status as a recording icon. I'd like to watch it more attentively again because what interested me was talk about engineering the conductor's recordings. There are interviews with engineers, producers, musicians and even a neuroscientist who worked with Karajan.

Karajan himself states at one point that the recording offers a more "transparent" version of the performance of the work, something better than the live experience which is always compromised by the listener's physical position in the hall. He seemed concerned that any recording should communicate the "spirit" of the work as he has interpreted it as part of the wider noosphere (he mentions Teilhard de Chardin). The shortcomings of the live experience contrast with the ideal of the recorded version. Interestingly, one of the interviewees gives the opposite opinion, saying that it is the experience of the live performance where that spirit is ideally shared communally and giving a 1980s concert of Mahler's Ninth Symphony conducted by the maestro as an example.

This last comment about the communal spirit of the performance reminded me of something Alain Badiou says in his book on Wagner. He talks about the meaning of the opera Parsifal as being the possibility of a new ceremony and draws on Stéphane Mallarmé's quest to find some social ritual that replaces the old religions:

. . . Mallarmé examined various figures of ritual or ceremony . . . The first thing he looked at were concert overtures, about which he said: "Music declares itself to be the last and most complete human religion." That was certainly the case then. Now, however, music has become a solitary religion. At big rock concerts the yearning for ceremony is blatant. You feel it intensely when you see how young people of all stripes share this deep yearning for ceremony. Except that it is a parody; it never manages . . . to get beyond parody, yet that is clearly what it is attempting to do. Music was once the "last and most complete human religion", but it has turned out to be a human religion in as sorry a state as the Brotherhood of Knights in Act 1 of Parsifal. It has ended up being about having headphones in your ears -- portable music players! Obviously nothing could be further removed from a ceremony than a portable music player. The ceremony is a meeting in a specific place; it is the constitution of a place, whereas the portable music player is music devoid of place. (Five Lessons on Wagner, p148)​
So do audio recordings ultimately fall short of communicating this sacral aspect of music? Are we impoverishing our experience of music by not engaging in it communally and sitting alone in our listening rooms or listening on our DAPs -- a "music devoid of place"?

Or is Karajan right: that the recording can give the listener a more transparent access to the spirit of the work?

Not recent but very interesting thread.

When I've been to concerts (pop type events which I always found too loud so stopped going) I tended to listen in a solitarily way, and not communally.

It seems to me it is the same as going to a football (soccer) game. I used to follow football and generally got my emotions from what I saw, not how others reacted. Watching a comedian - I laugh when I think it's funny, not necessarily when everyone else does.

I don't know if that makes me unusual but it may help to explain my contentment with home music reproduction.
 

amadeuswus

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Yes, various microphone techniques have been experimentally tested with quite some rigor several different times. Blumlein is the most accurate in a high fidelity sense of direction. The fly in the ointment is with your speakers at an angle of 90 degrees. In at least one test Blumlein was still best with speakers at 60 degrees though other techniques were judged to be very close. Basically taking into account how human directional hearing works Alan Blumlein developed the simple technique that is rather accurate for directionality ....

Finding Blumlein recordings is difficult as they are rarely done. For everyone of those are several that employ a Blumlein pair flanked by spaced omnis. And even those are extremely uncommon. Until a few years ago Chesky recordings were done with just a Blumlein pair. They are done quasi-binaurally now.

Since it's so hard to find Blumlein recordings, I thought I would share several examples that can be heard on Tidal. I had the two Sheffield Lab recordings on direct-to-disc vinyl. The two from Water Lily used to be available in four channel SACDs with the rear channels synthesized by Robert Greene, the Absolute Sound reviewer.

(ps. I would have started a new thread for available/streamable Blumlein recordings, but I couldn't tell if there would be much interest here.)

Grieg songs on the Simax label. My copy of the cd has a photo of the singer, Ellen Westberg Andersen, but I believe it's this album on Tidal.
https://tidal.com/browse/album/1091443

The Leinsdorf Sessions v. 1 (Sheffield Lab) (LA Philharmonic, recorded on a somewhat dry-sounding Hollywood scoring stage)
https://tidal.com/browse/album/11561301

Leinsdorf Sessions v. 2
https://tidal.com/browse/album/11693572

Shostakovich Symphony no. 7 (Water Lily Acoustics)
https://tidal.com/browse/album/37987675

Mahler Symphony no. 5 (Water Lily Acoustics)
https://tidal.com/browse/album/38745474
 
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andreasmaaan

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Since it's so hard to find Blumlein recordings, I thought I would share several examples that can be heard on Tidal. I had the two Sheffield Lab recordings on direct-to-disc vinyl. The two from Water Lily used to be available in four channel SACDs with the rear channels synthesized by Robert Greene, the Absolute Sound reviewer.

(ps. I would have started a new thread for available/streamable Blumlein recordings, but I couldn't tell if there would be much interest here.)

The Leinsdorf Sessions v. 1 (Sheffield Lab) (LA Philharmonic, recorded on a somewhat dry-sounding Hollywood scoring stage)
https://tidal.com/browse/album/11561301

Leinsdorf Sessions v. 2
https://tidal.com/browse/album/11693572

Shostakovich Symphony no. 7 (Water Lily Acoustics)
https://tidal.com/browse/album/37987675

Mahler Symphony no. 5 (Water Lily Acoustics)
https://tidal.com/browse/album/38745474

Thanks, some great pieces of music there :) Looking forward to having a listen...
 

Kal Rubinson

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The two from Water Lily used to be available in four channel SACDs with the rear channels synthesized by Robert Greene, the Absolute Sound reviewer.
These are not very satisfying in 4 channels.
 

tuga

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On a side note, I can think of only one possible way in which a recording might be able to be said to capture a performance according to the model I discussed in the OP. This would be when the recording itself is taken in an anechoic chamber.

I've never heard a recording taken in an anechoic chamber - has anyone hear ever heard or made one? I imagine it would sound as unnatural as the experience of being in an anechoic chamber. Or perhaps after an adjustment period, you'd get used to the way the sound you hear from your speaker(s) contains only reflections from the room your speakers are in.

Even if you record in an anechoic or outdoors, like Acoustic Research did with their Live vs. Reproduced demos, you will never be able to recreate the original soundfield with a pair of stereo speakers.

Here's an interesting presentation (attached) on recreating the soundfield of a recorded instrument in the listening room using spherical arrays:

3ByV8Q0.png

Rhwyf2h.png
 

Attachments

  • ZotterPomberger_Spherical Arrays for Analysis and Synthesis of Radiation.pdf
    5 MB · Views: 96

tuga

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Acoustic Research got away with stereo because of the predominantly diffuse radiation due to the distance of speakers to audience.

6Yu5gmq.jpg


zgzJD4U.jpg


Another reason that "live vs. reproduced" comparisons are difficult is that live sound is more convincing spatially than even the best two-speaker stereo. As an undergraduate, I heard a demonstration by Acoustic Research of a pair of AR-3a speakers on stage with the Fine Arts Quartet. At some point in the concert, the quartet switched from playing to miming, and the speakers took over. Placed among the quartet members and fed from an anechoic tape, they excited the acoustics of the hall very much as did the live instruments. With my eyes closed, I did not hear the changeover.
I don't think that AR-3a's were perfect speakers. I think that the ambience accuracy dominated the situation, leaving me, like Edison's audience, without convenient categories for telling live sound from reproduced. I think that on further listening, I could have learned to tell the AR speakers from the quartet.


http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/rules.htm
 
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andreasmaaan

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Even if you record in an anechoic or outdoors, like Acoustic Research did with their Live vs. Reproduced demos, you will never be able to recreate the original soundfield with a pair of stereo speakers.

I'm not great with pictures and flow charts ;) Do you have a link to the paper that's taken from?

I agree with your statement in any case, though.

EDIT: don't worry, just realised you'd already attached the PDF it came from, thx.
 
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tuga

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I'm not great with pictures and flow charts ;) Do you have a link to the paper that's taken from?

I agree with your statement in any case, though.

EDIT: don't worry, just realised you'd already attached the PDF it came from, thx.

Some more wood for the fire:

Analysis and Synthesis of Sound-Radiation with Spherical Arrays
Franz Zotter

This work demonstrates a comprehensive methodology for capture, analysis, manipulation, and reproduction of spatial sound-radiation.
As the challenge herein, acoustic events need to be captured and reproduced not only in one but in a preferably complete multiplicity of directions, instead.
The solutions presented in this work are using the soap-bubble model, a working hypothesis about sound-radiation, and are based on fundamental mathematical descriptions of spherical acoustic holography and holophony.
These descriptions enable a clear methodic approach of sound-radiation capture and reproduction.
In particular, this work illustrates the implementation of surrounding spherical microphone arrays for the capture of sound-radiation, as well as the analysis of sound-radiation with a functional model.
Most essential, the thesis shows how to obtain holophonic reproduction of sound-radiation.
For this purpose, a physical model of compact spherical loudspeaker arrays is established alongside with its electronic control.

https://iem.kug.ac.at/en/projects/w...of-sound-radiation-with-spherical-arrays.html

https://iaem.at/projekte/sphericalarrays/compact-spherical-loudspeaker-arrays
 
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