"What do you think..."
I think you may not have optomized your speaker/room set up/interface with any of the speakers you have mentioned.
JMHO based on your comments. |
well, some speakers produce excellent resulution, texture, room information - you are there - paradigm
and some produce dense instrument body - "they are there" paradigm
some amps do, some not
which one do you know ?
speakers dont have to go loud as well...
dont produce ultra resolution (fail with all other than ultra good recording quality)
i´ve heard 300 b do an excellent job in instrument presentation. what do you think ?
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Honestly, I find that what you are seeking is just the opposite of what live music in most venues sounds like. I am always amazed at how, except, obviously, for solos or one section of the orchestra playing on its own, the sound of an orchestra is way more homogenized than what audiophiles seek. Rock, or other amplified music for that matter, is the same for another reason: the homogeneity comes from the fact that everything comes out through the PA system.
Seems that on the road to the absolute sound, people keep forgetting what the real thing sounds like. What strikes me more as missing from recorded music are the speed, airiness and dynamics of the real thing. My youngest daughter started drumming about a month ago and I can tell you that no system has the slam of a real bass drum or the shimmer of a real cymbal.
The only music that makes sense to experience as the it is here in the room notion, is anything that could actually fit in your room: a solo piano, a trio or quartet at most, a folksy singer with guitar accompaniment. Anything bigger and you have to give that up, |
Having recently progressed through stages of mods to a BAT VK tube amp, I've heard the qualities of which you speak all improve together in the same amplifier driving the same speakers. It's particularly interesting to me that soundstage size & depth-of-field are as much a product of improvements to the amp's electronics as they are a result of speaker placement or room effects. Deep-hall effects are revealed in the far corners, but the performance also moves forward of the speakers toward the listener. The amp improves in its ability to retain accurate frequency balance & dynamics at reduced volume. Finally, the qualities of grainlessness, smoothness, warmth & relaxation, are in no way unreconciled to improvements in treble resolution & air, and punch. Great dynamics is the quality that binds everything together. It fits the instrument's body within the boundary of its image & delivers impact approaching live performance. You sense that it's the intruments that are jumping, not the amplifier. The acid test for live performance is bass control. Almost all amps fail to communicate accurate texture in the bass region. |
agree with pbb....i would add that most recordings are inherently flawed (in an audiophile way)and were never intended to emulate live music. |
thanks for your input
yes i am seeking for the opposite of what live music in most venues sounds like - cause i want a unplugged session in a tiny jazz club sitting in the first row...
i am sure a bunch of people want that as well.. |
What model Energy speakers did you like?
The early models spent a lot of effort on very wide and even dispersion and probably lead to their success as a start up company with people who left AR.
IMHO it is wide even dispersion which produces the most convincing small jazz club soundstage with precise positioning of instruments (of course you need a good recording to). A speaker with too much directivity gives the game away at once....the sound is coming from the speaker and it fails to be convincing! |
Another huge factor is reverb which I should have mentioned...this is what gives the game away on the venue...as opposed to your room.
The kind of mixes you see are ones that are close miked in acoustically damped sound rooms and then engineered to convey a "real" presentation with instruments in various places (in fact it is generated by the sound engineer). These recordings do not convey any telltale room acoustics from the venue.
I have a few examples of some good recordings like this.
Dave Grusin's "Hommage to Duke"
Tower of Power "Soul Vaccination"
Steve Ferrone's "More Head" (with STP bandmembers)
George Benson "Live - Weekend in LA" (Harvey Mason's drums "On Broadway" are particularly interesting on this recording as you actually feel as though you are five feet from the drummer - perhaps a bit over done by the sound engineer but impressive nevertheless - definitely feels as if they are jamming in the room with you!)
An example of a good recording but one that definitely lets you know you are in a concert venue with lousy acoustics from the stage and hall (i.e. the opposite to what you seek) is Talking Heads "Stop Making Sense". Another of this type is Eva Cassidy "Live at the Blue Note".
At the end of the day, most of what you are seeking is down to the sound engineer mix, microphone placement and acoustics of stage or sound room. To recreate perfect positioning it usually requires separate sessions for each instrument in acoustically damped environments that are later carefuly mixed together - ever see typical video footage of a vocalist in a sound room alone with headphones and a microphone.....now you know why!
You also now know why those magical moments when a live recording sounds great are so magical.... |
StonedTemplePilot,
There's a trade-off relationship between immediacy and richness. The more dominant the first-arrival sound, the more immediate (front-of-the-hall) the presentation. The more dominant the reverberant energy, the more rich and ambient (rear-of-the-hall) the presentation. Room acoustics, speaker positioning, and speaker radiation characteristics come into play here.
In my opinion, the characteristics that would give what you're looking for in a loudspeaker are a slightly downward-sloping on-axis response and smooth power response along with a somewhat narrower-than-normal radiation pattern. You also want a speaker with good dynamic contrast (minimal thermal compression), as this correlates well with liveliness at low volume levels.
If you listen from more than 5 feet away from the speakers, most of the sound energy that reaches your ears is reverberant sound. A key difference between live (unplugged) and reproduced music is this: Live instruments produce natural-sounding reverberant fields, but most home sound systems don't. For example, listen to a piano from the next room, through an open doorway with no line-of-sight to the instrument. All you can hear is the reverberant energy, but it sounds totally natural and convincing. On the other hand, very few sound systems will sound real when listened to from the next room, and this is because they do not generate a spectrally (and dynamically) correct reverberant field.
Now the idea is not to have a system that you can listen to from the next room - the idea is to have a system that replicates as close as possible the sound field of a live performance. And in my opinion this cannot be done without getting the reverberant field right.
In your listening room, you want a strong, diffuse reverberant field that ideally begins to arrive as long after the first-arrival sound as possible. You do not want an overdamped room, and most home listening rooms are overdamped (carpeted, with overstuffed fabric furniture). Large plants and lots of wooden furniture are good for diffusion, or you can get dedicated diffusors. Since most of the sound energy that reaches your ears is reverberant sound (assuming you sit more than 5 feet away from the speakers), in my opinion it makes sense to start with speakers and proceed to room treatments that give you a natural-sounding reverberant field.
Regarding amplification, SET and OTL amps along with low feedback Class A solid state amps have distortion characteristics that are in harmony with how the ears work. The commonly used total harmonic distortion specification has no useful correlation to how we perceive sound - the amplifier industry has been measuring the wrong thing for years.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer |
Shadorne, I'm not convinced that recording in an actual performance hall is necessary to create a sensation of live performance in playback.
In any case, there are certainly many recordings that are made live-in-the-studio & combine a sense of room acoustics with correct placement of instruments & good separation. All the CIMP direct to two-track jazz disks are recorded with musicians in one room & no close miking or compression. Or a Ry Cooder ensemble outing like "Buena Vista Social Club." The excitement of Derek & the Dominoes "Layla" is partly due to the (mostly) live-in-the-studio recording with leaks across multiple microphones. Though the sound of this session is sometimes maligned, the original LP is actually a pretty good test LP. On a good system you can hear both good instrumental separation and fidelity, as well as a very active room that communicates the energy & dynamics of a live performance in spades. In a larger setting, MTV Unplugged gigs like Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam at Benaroya Hall manage to be remarkably good at separation, fidelity, and you-are-there in a real performance space.
But even many recordings that don't have technically "correct" instrument separation and obvious room effects (such as ECM or Chesky jazz CDs with the drum kit spread all over the soundstage from left to right and other instruments layered on top or behind), the sound can be uncannily real in terms of fidelity, separation, & sense of real life.
But a bad playback system deadens that sense of living, breathing performance in every case. |
A key difference between live (unplugged) and reproduced music is this: Live instruments produce natural-sounding reverberant fields, but most home sound systems don't. For example, listen to a piano from the next room, through an open doorway with no line-of-sight to the instrument. All you can hear is the reverberant energy, but it sounds totally natural and convincing. On the other hand, very few sound systems will sound real when listened to from the next room, and this is because they do not generate a spectrally (and dynamically) correct reverberant field.
Excellent point. This is one of the easy tests that I have been using with speakers for years; does it sound realistic from outside the room? Funny thing is that most people think I am absolutely crazy when I say this is a good test of the speaker quality! I have had salesman grab me and insist I sit in the exact sweetspot where the floor has been marked with masking tape....whilst I prefer to walk around... as a speaker that sounds right throughout the room is what I usually prefer. If I have to sit in a spot marked X for it to sound right then I don't need to waste my time on an audition |
Interesting points about reverberant fields in the original performance, the relative contribution of first arrival vs. reflected sound, and hearing realistic piano sounds in the next room. However, after fixing the variables of room treatment & speaker position, I've observed huge improvements in realism & spacial representation after modifying the circuits of high-quality commerical separates. Even quite expensive stock electronics are compromised & fail to communicate the low-level information necessary for realism & spacial cues. Room variables can only contribute modestly toward remedying such inherent shortcomings. The good news is that the gap between built-to-cost and near SOTA-equipment can often be closed in the aftermarket with light modifications. |
I would add that the same improvements to circuits that reveal low-level information required for spacial cues, also reveal textural details & corrected pitch & timbre in voices & instruments. So it's not just about uncovering deep background. This is why that piano sounds so natural when heard from the adjacent room. This type of improvement has nothing to do with room treatments or reflected sound.
However, such improvements in electronics (at least when driving my Merlin or Wilson speakers) do nothing to enlarge the sweet spot. If anything, the effect is lens-like in the sense that movements in and out of the sweet spot are more easily detected & create dramatic shifts in L/R imaging. |
yes i am seeking for the opposite of what live music in most venues sounds like - cause i want a unplugged session in a tiny jazz club sitting in the first row...
i am sure a bunch of people want that as well.. I agree. Me too. . |
Shadorne, I'm not convinced that recording in an actual performance hall is necessary to create a sensation of live performance in playback. I agree fully. I stated above To recreate perfect positioning it usually requires separate sessions for each instrument in acoustically damped environments that are later carefuly mixed together - ever see typical video footage of a vocalist in a sound room alone with headphones and a microphone.....now you know why! |
Does having GOod dac to no dac Makes a difference. Currently I am running it off of a Technics CD changer which I had bought it 12 years ago. I have a pretty high end system B&K amps, preamp, Paradigm signature series speakers.
Let me know what you think. |
