Do you find applause disconcerting?
Posted by: Don Phillips on 09 September 2009
I have a reasonable system, not state of the art, but it generally produces a good sound.
I find I am disconcerted by applause.
I am not talking about the sycophantic applause you get typically at Frank Sinatra concerts where the musically illiterate take eleven bars to recognise the song he is singing and proceed to tell him so just before the middle eight. No that is inane.
I mean the genuine applause that accompanies good performance, such as most of the Pablo label live jazz records.
Firstly I think it takes an extremely good system to make applause sound realistic. Mine just about does, although often it lacks in lower frequencies.
What concerns me most is where the audience sits - usually behind the orchestra. I have just listened to Grappelli playing with Peterson. I spend twenty minutes in the certain illusion that I am sitting facing a stage - Grappelli is just right of centre, Peterson just left and bass and drums have their own positions.
Then follows applause. But I am alone, as if at the back of the stage with the performers. I am not surrounded by clapping hands - they are over there, behind the orchestra presumably hiding behind my curtained window.
Am I alone at observing this? I must admit that fellow audience approbation is a strong, and possibly only, argument for surround sound.
Don, sun-setting downtown York
I find I am disconcerted by applause.
I am not talking about the sycophantic applause you get typically at Frank Sinatra concerts where the musically illiterate take eleven bars to recognise the song he is singing and proceed to tell him so just before the middle eight. No that is inane.
I mean the genuine applause that accompanies good performance, such as most of the Pablo label live jazz records.
Firstly I think it takes an extremely good system to make applause sound realistic. Mine just about does, although often it lacks in lower frequencies.
What concerns me most is where the audience sits - usually behind the orchestra. I have just listened to Grappelli playing with Peterson. I spend twenty minutes in the certain illusion that I am sitting facing a stage - Grappelli is just right of centre, Peterson just left and bass and drums have their own positions.
Then follows applause. But I am alone, as if at the back of the stage with the performers. I am not surrounded by clapping hands - they are over there, behind the orchestra presumably hiding behind my curtained window.
Am I alone at observing this? I must admit that fellow audience approbation is a strong, and possibly only, argument for surround sound.
Don, sun-setting downtown York
No I get used to it! 
Only when you are near someone with a big bore. 