tbray@mprvaxa.UUCP (01/15/84)
x <-- USENET insecticide The experience of real concert sound being inferior to that available at home is a common one for those of us who enjoy music that typically involves electrically amplified instruments. This is generally true regardless of the care taken by the artist in question. I earned my living house-managing for a few years and there were definite sonic high and low points, but very few occasions when the stage sound matched the quality of that recorded. My opinion is that electric bands should realize this and not attempt to get too fancy. My most sonically satisfying live electric performances have been those where the instruments were few and the "orchestration" stripped down. Specific examples - Pat Metheny just CAN'T get ECM quality on stage, but JJ Cale CAN duplicate his lean, sinuous sound. For non-amplified music, the concert hall introduces a whole new host of influences. As I found out when, last year, I followed the Toronto Symphony orchestra from a dingy, but classic, shoebox-shaped plaster-walled hall to a towering ultra-modern concrete bowl. Even within the same concert hall, being up in the cheap seats is profoundly different (not necessarily less enjoyable) than mid-orchestra... enough spewing... this should be in net.music anyhow...
reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid) (01/18/84)
As a diversion, I run a small record label in the hours I don't spend working at Stanford. I am a fanatic for sound quality, and since it is my money I insist on proof-listening everything. Before I approve the next step, I listen to master tapes, mixes, reference lacquer pressings, test pressings, and so forth. I have spent a lot of time in the last 3 years teaching myself how to be a better "critical listener", and I like to think I'm pretty good at it by now. I enjoy George Winston's piano music. [lest someone pigeonhole my tastes, I also enjoy The Dregs, Otis Redding, and most opera]. Winston records on Windham Hill, a local Palo Alto outfit that goes to the same extremes that I do to produce ultra-quality recordings. When I buy a new record, my usual practice is to play it once on a B&O turntable, recording it on my Nakamichi 680 onto TDK-MAR-90 cassettes. I then listen to the cassettes through my Hafler 220 poweramp and KEF 103.2 speakers or AKG-K240 headphones. [now you know my various votes for the most cost-effective quality available to people who are trying to make mortgage payments and raise small children.] Last Fall I went on a real binge of listening to George Winston tapes. At least once a day, more like twice, I played the @i[December] and @i[Autumn] albums. Until I had them completely memorized. Every tone and overtone, every timing nuance, every resonance, the sound of fingernails hitting keys. Sometimes I almost didn't need to put the tape on in order to hear the sound in my mind. Just after Thanksgiving a friend got some tickets to a George Winston concert in San Francisco at Symphony Hall. The stage was bare, save for a wonderful old Steinway and a soft-spoken barefoot Winston. There were 2 AKG (i.e. "good") microphones, one for his voice and one for the piano strings. Small monitor speakers, which looked like JBL's, were set up at opposite ends of the stage. I really enjoyed the concert, but the sound quality was MUCH better in my living room than it was in my 10th-row near-center concert hall seat. I know what good Steinways sound like, I know what bad Steinways sound like, and this was neither. San Francisco's symphony hall (Louise M. Davies Hall) has a reputation for generally good acoustics, and we were sitting in very choice seats. So what was wrong? My theory is that there were two problems, namely a frequency-related phasing error in the sound reinforcement system, and a serious all-frequency phasing error between the speakers and the actual piano. I kept wanting to run up and unplug the microphones and dash back to my seat, to see if that made the sound quality better. Has anybody else experienced anything similar? I have been to rock concerts in which the "live" sound bore no relation to the recorded sound I was used to hearing from that group, but I don't think that was so much an acoustic phenomenon or a sound-reproduction problem as it was a difference in the audio effects and the mixing; I believe this piano problem is something else. Brian Reid Stanford ..decwrl!glacier!reid