Most Realistic Recordings


I was recently listening to my daughter practice the piano and I was enjoying quite a full-body sonic experience. I later went to my system and picked out a few piano recordings that I suspected were recorded well, but as I listened, I just didn't have anything close to the same experience. The piano just didn't sound right, nor nearly as full as I had just experienced while listening to my daughter. I know what pianos sound and feel like. I grew up playing many different types and understand their differences. I've done some research on recording pianos and have learned they are particularly difficult to record well.

As I've delved deeper into this audio hobby/interest and acquired more respectable gear, the more general question that keeps coming to my mind is this: How did this music sound at the time it was recorded? (presuming it was a person playing an instrument, not something "mixed" or electronic). Meaning, if I had been in the room, would I have heard or felt the same? Or is there something about the recording setup/micing/mixing/etc. that has failed to capture the moment? Or has the audio engineer intentionally filtered some of that out?

Now, being an audiophile (i.e., a music lover) has many paths and many goals. For me, I love lots of different kinds of music and am not too caught up in the ever changing landscape of audio gear and the need to try something new. I hope to get to the point where a well-captured recording sounds realistic in my room on my system. I like full-spectrum sound (i.e., if the note/sound is in the track, I want to hear it). I know that accurate, realistic reproduction through any system is depends a great deal on the equipment and the room it's being played back in. I don't expect my system to give me that jaw-dropping "I'm there" experience (yet), but some day I hope to get there.

So, to my question above, I would very much love to hear if anyone feels they have heard an album, a track, a recording of some kind that could be used to test out the "realism" of one's system. What would you say is a recording that more accurately captured the sonic hologram of the moment it was performed. Any genre is ok. And if you think a particular studio/company does this well, I'd love to hear about it!

And, please, I don't want the conversation to about gear or room treatment. This is about the recording itself, the source material, and how accurately the entire moment is captured and preserved. I respect everyone's personal experiences with your system, whatever it's comprised of. So, please don't argue with each other about whether a recording didn't sound realistic to you when it sounded realistic to someone else. Let's be civil and kind, for how can you deny what someone else's ears have heard? Thank you! I'm excited to learn from you all!

tisimst

@twoleftears 

One other thing to consider: most people don't listen at home to piano recordings at the same volume as if they were sitting ten feet away from a grand piano.  So try this: establish a "comfortable" listening level, then inch the volume up slightly.

I completely agree with you. Finding the right volume level helps tremendously, I've noticed.

Listen to:

Little Person by Michael Wollny (wait for the string bass to pluck their first note)

Nasty by Vincent Ingala

Thanks, tisimst, for this thread. As many have pointed out, it is unusually civil and constructive for this forum.

My two cents:

First, I agree with zgas-music about the general principle that "small ensembles" (and, by extension, solo instruments) sound best on one's home system. It's really not possible to reproduce a symphony orchestra in a grand space like the Musikverein convincingly in one's living room. So, from small to large, emphasizing idiosyncratic options others have not yet mentioned:

Solo piano: Beethoven's Sonatas opp. 57 and 111 by Carol Rosenberger on Delos. Not my favorite performances, but strong and confident—and she plays them on a Bösendorfer Imperial Concert Grand piano. This piano doubles the bass strings, and has an enormous sound. Arguably, this is "inauthentic" for Beethoven, as he composed these pieces for the pianoforte, a very different, much more modest instrument. But these two sonatas are "heroic" indeed, and sound "superheroic" on that super piano. The recording was made in 1981, at the very beginning of the digital era (it is a digital recording). Early digital notoriously sounds harsh. Not this CD.

Ivo Pogorelich's performance of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" on DGG is very natural-sounding. An audiophile friend turned me on to this recording, and I agree with his embrace of it.

Solo violin: Hilary Hahn's first recording of the Bach sonatas and partitas. Unpretentious artistry intimately recorded.

Solo cello: bdp24 recommended Starker on the original Mercury vinyl, and I wholeheartedly agree. I have owned that 3-LP box set since high school, and it is one of my prized possessions. There are three different recordings/performances by Starker; the Mercury set from the early 1960s is the best by far, both for sound and for interpretation. IMO, this is what Bach himself would have chosen from that huge field of alternatives. But I also agree with mceljo that the Bailey on Octave is outstanding, and has great sound. For that matter, Bailey's earlier performance on Telarc is also outstanding in both respects. 

ECM has been recommended by several folks, and I will concur there too. Jarrett, of course, but almost anything else as well, including their experimental stuff. Manfred Eicher is a genius, and the guiding force behind the label. If you like choral music, check out Vox Clamantis, a CD called "Filia Sion" (Gregorian chant, with other medieval things done in a slightly contemporary fashion, and gorgeously recorded). But one of my very favorite disks is Arvo Pärt's "Te Deum" on ECM. About half an hour of pure bliss! 

For Haydn symphonies (small ensemble performances, spectacularly well recorded), try any of the Orpheus versions on DGG. My favorite is probably No. 53, "L'Imperiale," but they're all good. And available cheap on eBay. The Orpheus performance of Beethoven's complete "Creatures of Prometheus" music is another favorite, and one of my "reference recordings." I've written about it on other threads. If you know Beethoven, you'll know the Overture to this piece, but the incidental music that follows it—an entire CD of little-known middle period Beethoven—is just as compelling.

Haydn's "Creation" ("Die Schöpfung") is another of my reference recordings, performed by Gardiner (his Beethoven cycle on original instruments, which was praised by someone above, is also outstanding), on Archiv. This is a big piece, with orchestra, chorus and soloists, but it is so well recorded here it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. And it's wonderful music.

Finally, just to shut myself up: "Uncommon Ritual," an odd but delicious album of miscellany by Edgar Meyer, Bela Fleck and Mike Marshall (so, acoustic bass, mandolin, guitar, and banjo) is really beautiful, and so naturally recorded it feels very much like they're all in the room with you.

FWIW, my wife is a pianist, my daughter a violinist, and I play cello. We play together in the house all the time, so my ears are attuned to how those instruments sound in my listening space. These recordings faithfully reproduce the timbre, scale, and presence of piano, violin and cello with amazing fidelity.