How to reproduce sound of piano

IMHO, apart from the issue of the ability of recording engineers to get it down in the first place, and getting an audio system that could make it sound real (i.e. as it would sound at a live performance) just how large would your room have to be? I think very few of us could afford a house with a room large enuf to accommodate a grand piano, let alone a Bosendorfer or Steinway Concert grand playing something orther than Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at anything like the appropriate volume.

Just imagine Beethoven's Hammerklavier, for example, being played as it was played by Giles, or Mussorgsky's Pictures by Richter, in a 20x30 room (or even larger for that matter). I don't think I could imagine it. :-)

I copped out some years ago even though I probably listen to more classical music for solo piano than anything else. I've learned to focus on the music/performance itself somehow and disconnect the 'audio' connect.

Guido, FWIW I think that your analysis of the value of a collection of audio equipment sort of focus's on its ability to reproduce (and for you to hear when the recording engineer puts his mikes near the sound board) what is going on when you sit next to the piano, just as a conductor hears from the podium, but the reality is that few of us ever do that. Our reality is quite different.

We are usually quite some distance from the piano where these low level sounds, some of which are mechanical and are not in the score at all :-) are lost, but where the dynamics and the appropriate volume rules our appreciation for what sounds like a live piano. But, to get that thru the recording and thru our audio systems it is going to get compressed. And it is that compression that really robs the music of any real sense of liveness. Ultimately you still have suspend your sense of reality and just 'pretend' that it is live.

You might be amused, but I work in a room adjacent to my audio room (accross am open hall way) and I often get caught up more in piano music playing when I'm there than sitting in the sweet spot. :-)

I looked at Plasers room for the first time (boy am I slow or what). Setting up and integrating a sub woofer in a small room isn't a walk in the park, and IMHO, with all due respect to all, in a room this size may still not produce the sound that will make a piano sound more 'real', just with more bass, probably uneven bass. I really don't know........

But consider, that a lot of the warmth of tone, that will make a recording of a piano sound more authentic, may not be just in the deep bass, but may result from some elevation in frequency response say between 75 and 200hz. The use of a small sub, with a 2nd order crossover, set at 80 hz and the main speakers run full range could produce a bit of an increase in the frequency response between 100 and 200 hz - just enuf warmth to make a piano sound more real, without doing serious damage to imaging. (All of this of course ignores room and placement FR response issues).

Or not, just an idle thought I had in the john........

I just had a thought - maybe the problem is not pant flapping bass, or even deep bass, maybe it is a simple as a suck out in the upper bass. A broad and deep enuf suck out in the 60 and/or 120 hz range for example would surely rob enuf tone to make a piano sound unreal. Wonder if, or if not why not, Phaser hasn't evaluated the performance of his speakers in room performance. Perhaps he has some issues that are remedial by speaker movement, listening chair movement (often a biggie), or which are NOT remedial by addition of a sub (deep nulls related to the rooms dimensions for example). A test disc and a SPL meter might be of move value than any sub at this point in time. :-)

Re mono in the next room or down the hall, I agree, as I indicated on Page 1, BUT its not the same when you listen to mono in the same room from your sweet seat.

With a grand piano in an enclosed space even though the source of the direct sounds are obvious the resonances created by the room surfaces in a live performance will be absent in mono - you will have a small central image and no sense of the acoustic.

Thats why 'in the next room' works so well, IMHO, you get both the 'mono' sound and some room resonance sounds without having to sit in front of the speakers and be distracted by less than the sound of a performance from a prospective that you prefer.