Classical musicians and hi-fi selection

Posted by: feeling_zen on 10 September 2016

Had an interesting experience today that brought back memories.

I had a friend come over to demo my PMC Twenty.23s to replace his B&W CM1 S2s. Loves many genres but mainly classical and looking for a speaker with a light touch even at volume. But a violinist with experience in an orchestra and who attends a lot of live orchestral performances. To cut a long story short, he really did not take a liking to the 23s at all. Perfectly fine, but the reason: far too much bass.

Yes I know, the 23s aren't exactly a bass heavy speaker on any day of the week. Mine are in a large room and fairly well controlled by 282 into a 250DR. I've even been contemplating replacing them with Twenty5.24s because they can lack a bit of punch. But here's the thing; from my friend's perfectly valid point of view, while playing in an orchestra or listening to live orchestra he has never ever felt any low frequency response from a live instrument uncluding the percussion section. As a result, in his view, if you can feel bass, then the system is simply wrong. End of story. Bass should be heard and never felt.

This got me thinking. Back in the 90s, when I was in the trade, there were profiles of certain customer types that generally held true. One was that any customer who played an traditionally non amped instrument (so orchestral roles) generally (well always) had this same view. If you can feel bass ever, then the system is wrong. Not much point arguing about this or discussing the fact that if it is mastered that way then it's mastered that way. It was a fairly commonly held view from those types of musicians. It then became a challenge to find out whether they had pockets deep enough to steer towards electrostatics (ESL-63s) or, if pockets be shallow, to steer onto a speaker and amp set where the amp had tone controls which they would invariably turn the bass all the way down. The result was often a system where the prospect of listening to it for 10 minutes could be weighed up with elective root canal surgery for all the joy it had. Nevertheless, it pleased the customer. Problems were with the customers of pockets of mid depth. Electrostatics out of range and no tone controls on anything in the mid range or the market (that we sold) so if they are looking at and any speaker that had traditional drivers was just going to piss them off (because you know... they produce some bass - a lot, a little it didn't matter - it was there). I might disagree but hard to argue with people who produce the ingredient that fuels our passion. I've yet to meet a classical musician that is an exception to this model.

Never ever experienced this ridged view of audio correctness from jazz or rock musicians. A few odd views (and odder system preferences) from sound engineers (I don't even want to get into that conversation). But now, as then, it seems classical musicians have a certain view of correctness, that if true, renders nearly every system out there worthless.

On the other hand, my take was that, my speakers failed to recreate live performance dynamics for the opposite reason. They don't actually have the low frequency punch the you get in a live jazz or blues venue.

Very curious about forum member's take on this. Especially if there are any musicians out there that can share how they reconcile their view of correctness from familiarity with live unamped performances with the system they chose. Are we all, as my friend hinted, listening to it wrong, or should a wall be erected between live and playback music and the two mediums kept separate? I've always maintained that a system that is good for specific genres of music but not others is a bad system. But now I am thinking this is not accurate. Maybe it should be that a system that does not sound equally enjoyable for all genres to the owner is a bad system; since a system that accurately reproduces music in all genres seems mythical in the light of today's experience.

Posted on: 15 September 2016 by cgarden

There's a lovely sharp pistol crack on the Gergiev Nutcracker. If it's supposed to be a cannon then my system is ... rubbish.

Posted on: 18 September 2016 by David Hendon

This is quite a bit off-topic, but I thought of this thread last night because we were watching a DVD of "A little chaos" and we had it fairly loud to catch all the dialogue, some of which was quite quiet. For those that don't know the film, it's about a gardener (Kate Winslett) helping create the garden at Versailles for King Louis XIV. Suddenly, most unexpectedly, a cannon went off in the extreme left, presumably a royal salute. It was loud and had a lot of energy down low. Two of our cats that happened to be in the room jumped and rushed out, which wouldn't have mattered except that the one who is on the loudspeaker in my avatar was on my lap at the time and she dug all her claws well into my thighs to get a good purchase for launching herself off. I turned off the sub-woofer in case there were more cannons later,

best

David

Posted on: 18 September 2016 by Ebor

Telarc's 1812 Overture recording from 1978 (CD80041) was a very early digital recording, done at least in part as a demo of just what a great digital recording could be like. The orchestra was recorded in early September 1978 and the cannons, which had been recorded separately in August, were layered on afterwards, along with a separately recorded carillon. Eloise's information from the Decca release which used Telarc's cannons fits with what's written in the 1978 liner notes, but just to add some details that might be of interest:

"The initial 'crack' of the cannon upon ignition of the powerful charge (which variously lies in the 2000 to 3000Hz region) and the follow-up boom (going all the way down as low as 6 cycles) represents a phenomenal challenge for recording engineers and equipment: to capture the sounds initially; to permit mastering engineers to put them on a disc; and not least, for the consumer to playback"

Given the problems with getting these sounds into a vinyl groove, I would say there's a good case for playing this back on CD (which, of course, wasn't around in 1978): it's still available, nearly 40 years later. Watch out for the 2001 release (CD80541) - it has a more generous playing time, and one might hope it would benefit from the more modern recording technology, but I hear rumours it's not as good as their first attempt.

As a footnote, seven of the 1978 cannon recordings were released ten years later as sort-of bonus tracks on a later Telarc sampler CD (Sampler Five Plus, CD80005). The same disc also has recordings of other explosions and gunfire recorded for other Telarc CDs which make for fun tests of one's system after the 20 musical tracks. It's been deleted for a while, but still fairly easy to get second-hand through the usual channels.

Mark (something of a Telarc fan)

Posted on: 18 September 2016 by DrPo

Very interesting thread. I was in a concert last night and was focusing on how the bass from a symphony orchestra sounds in real life in comparison to what I hear at home (using this as an evaluation criterion for amp selection). The bass pizzicato notes were tighter than what my current amp portrays (yet much more realistically reproduced by one of the amps I am currently evaluating, this is a good sign!) and the drums definitely produced a solid "bass" which I could very well feel (not just "hear") where I sat (which was a very average seat in the hall).