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Which speakers are the Classical Music Pros using?

mkt

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Pretty boring setup. Genelec 7x (8351B + W371) + 4x 8341 + 7380?
And kind of a loser? "As a producer and engineer he held the record for most Grammy nominations without a win, with twenty-eight through 2019, until 2020 when he won his first Grammy."

 

Frank Dernie

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Pretty boring setup. Genelec 7x (8351B + W371) + 4x 8341 + 7380?
And kind of a loser? "As a producer and engineer he held the record for most Grammy nominations without a win, with twenty-eight through 2019, until 2020 when he won his first Grammy."

Fabulous.
I love the recording technique, which I see as a modernised version of the old system of getting the balance by moving the performer relative to the microphones and using the microphone orientation.
Sadly I will never now have a room suitable for a system like that, and it would be quite pricy even by high-end bollox standards!
 

q3cpma

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Pretty boring setup. Genelec 7x (8351B + W371) + 4x 8341 + 7380?
And kind of a loser? "As a producer and engineer he held the record for most Grammy nominations without a win, with twenty-eight through 2019, until 2020 when he won his first Grammy."

Looks like a very nice guy to talk with. Incredible setup too, but I wonder how small is the population that can fully experience 7.1.4 (and I don't mean people with a "million of minuscule sattelites + single crap sub" Bose kit).
From my profane point of view, his technique sounds like "live" mixing, instead of recording each instrument separately and doing digital mixing afterward. Probably a way to a get a natural sound easily.
 
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mkt

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amadeuswus

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Boston Symphony Orchestra:

TEHemgg.jpg

B&W 802 Diamond
Regarding the Boston Symphony's recording/monitoring, here's an interview with BSO engineer Nick Squire on what he's doing differently when recording the socially-distanced BSO (more spot mics, unfortunately):
https://theberkshireedge.com/interv...nick-squire-takes-covid-challenges-in-stride/
 

mSpot

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These are the Polyhymnia International (the former recording center of Philips Classics) studios in Baarn:
0RlyY8m.jpg

Studio 2 - B&W 801 Nautilus
I was particularly taken with the bank of Studer tape machine in Studio 2 above. Presumably for digitising and/or remastering old recordings I can can't see anyone recording new material on tape.
From their website:

https://polyhymnia.com/studios-equipment/our-studios-in-baarn/
"Studio 2 is equipped for transfers from analog tape, from 1/4” to 1”, using rebuilt Studer A-80 transports (the ultimate in Swiss precision), and our own custom built playback electronics, connected with silver-wrapped cables specially designed by Van den Hul. We’ve also rebuilt our Dolby-A decoders using the very best components. In other words, Polyhymnia has spared no cost or effort to get every last bit of quality out of existing analog tapes. The results can be heard on PentaTone’s RQR series."​

BTW, you can also see an LP turntable on the left side.
 

Saidera

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Sony Music Studios in Tokyo seems to use B&W too.
studio.jpg
 

Frank Dernie

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Public cost but really? More brands fight with discount for enter great studio or broadcast as ATC in Radio France
Maybe, I don't know what "public cost" means for a studio monitor only sold and marketed through professional dealers, not as HiFi.
It is reassuringly expensive compared to B&W or ATC anyway which will sway many people's opinion of it.
It may well be very good but I had never seen marketing or measurements.
 

Floyd Toole

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I have just dipped into this thread after a long absence and I apologize in advance for not having read all entries in the thread. However, I have noted that B&W 800 series speakers are reported as showing up in control rooms, implying that they have some special quality missing in "non-classical" monitors. Sorry, but this is simply human nature at work. There are facts and there are opinions - the two frequently differ.

I cannot speak for the latest version of the 800 series, but in previous incarnations they have by measurement and by double-blind subjective testing been shown to be less-than-neutral sounding loudspeakers. They are not "bad" but they don't win double-blind listening tests. The most neutral, transparent, loudspeakers do, and this can be deduced from a comprehensive set of on- and off-axis anechoic measurements, especially if those data are presented in the spinorama format, which estimates the sounds arriving at a listener in an acoustically typical room.

B&W have done a superb job of marketing their product, and servicing customer needs, which are admirable traits. But if one is interested in hearing unadulterated, neutral, versions of the signals that were recorded, these speaker have not done it. Yet they have a following amongst some, not all, classical recording engineers. I have a theory which goes back to the analog-to-digital transition decades ago.

Long ago I had been using LPs as musical sources for listening tests in my research. I came to understand the medium extremely well, even to the point of creating test records to test the capabilities of the medium. It is sadly lacking - it is simply not possible to hear what was on the master tape when playing back an LP. It can be extremely pleasant if the music is to your liking but, objectively, the detailed sounds reaching your ears are not the sounds that were on the master tape.

At a point, through personal connections, I was able to acquire a PCM digital version of a master tape, and an analog duplicate at 15 ips. I also had the LP release of the music. I cannot recall what it was, but it was one of the "warhorse" symphonies, very popular and in a highly thought of rendering. The first thing that was clear in the simplest of listening comparisons was that the PCM version and the one-from-master tape versions were essentially identical. The LP version was very different. This is precisely as I had expected.

The monitor speakers used in the recording were B&Ws and I had anechoic chamber measurements of them. They exhibited much the same upper midrange dip in frequency response that is seen in recent 800 series monitors. In fact several of the less expensive B&W models at the time had similar characteristics, indicating that there was corporate performance target. People had thought about it and decided that flat was not ideal. Why?

In my double-blind listening tests of that period - and to this day - loudspeakers exhibiting flat, i.e. neutral, on-axis response and similarly smooth off axis behavior, were highly rated in most of the tests with most of the recorded music of the several genres that were auditioned. But, this particular recording, while being very enjoyable musically, was frequently judged to be somewhat too bright.

In the day, and now, recordings of classical orchestras were often made with microphones placed in elevated positions above the violins. These instruments radiate strong high frequencies upwards, not towards the audience in a concert hall. They are heard by the audience, but after reflection and reverberation in a physically large space - they add "air" to the illusion. The microphones were relatively close and in a position to collect more high frequency energy than is likely to be heard in the audience, certainly in the ground level seats. It turns out that loudspeakers with slightly attenuated upper-mid/lower highs sounded better. So, instead of listening to neutral monitors and adding a little EQ attenuation in the offending frequency range, they decided to listen to the flattering monitor speakers and leave the excessive highs in the recording.

In short, the non-flat loudspeakers were being used as a program equalizer, and the results would only be appreciated if customers had similarly non-flat loudspeakers. In my terms the "circle of confusion" would be eliminated, but only for recordings made using these monitors and for customers with similarly colored loudspeakers. In the real world this could not really work, because even at that time a flat axial frequency response was the normal target performance, albeit often violated in random ways. Now it is pretty much the norm, for those companies with the engineering competence to achieve it.

A feature of the 800 series not commonly appreciated is that its behavior is predictable from visual inspection. The midrange speaker is quite large, meaning that it is becoming significantly directional before it crosses over to the tweeter. When the tweeter comes on, it has wide dispersion which is enhanced by its unbaffled mounting, which aggravates the problem. Today, it is becoming common to see tweeters on baffles with waveguides to improve the directivity match with the midrange speaker at the crossover frequency - thereby achieving what is widely regarded as a desirably smooth directivity index as a function of frequency.

I am confident that the B&W engineers know all of this, but by now the 800 has achieved a certain status among consumers and professionals and the attractive physical form and appearance are iconic symbols. Sadly they make good acoustical design very challenging. Wise studios would have an alternative, neutral loudspeaker, to audition as well, and many do.

So, is the appearance of this speaker in recording studios a validation of its acoustical excellence and neutrality? No.

Spinorama data on this and many other loudspeakers can be found on the internet, in my two books, and AES papers by Dr. Sean Olive.
 

Geert

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Good information, thanks. It's the story of the "BBC dip", initially found in the "LS3/5a", and adopted by some speaker builders like Harbeth and also B&W.

The B&W 803 D3:
Spin - Bowers & Wilkins 803 D3 (old measurement system) raw.png
 
OP
tuga

tuga

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Good information, thanks. It's the story of the "BBC dip", initially found in the "LS3/5a", and adopted by some speaker builders like Harbeth and also B&W.

The B&W 803 D3:
View attachment 140236

There's a more recent measurement of that speaker:

Ov7Poqc.png





How the LW response compares with that of the Salon 2:

Yxyjhj8.jpg
 
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