Incredible Audiophile Imaging -- at a Concert!

@sns 

You bring up a very good point. Some folks want to hear a sonic spectacular and some folks want to hear the real thing. Here lies one of the fundamental differences in manufacturers of equipment as well. You have Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, etc on the reproduce natural music precisely and then you have Burmeister, Rowland, etc that work to do sonic spectacular. 

I held season tickets to the Oregon Symphony 7th row center for a decade. Then a couple years ago they installed a whole hall DSP system to make concerts sound better. It completely destroyed the natural musical sound... the violins hardened. the bass became too dominant. The snare drums came from behind the seating. I discussed it with management of the hall. No idea what I was talking about. I brought a professional sound engineer and musician to a concert... he was appalled and appealed to management. They discussed with the consulting firm... and made a couple changes with no improvements. Multi million dollar system that destroyed the sound. Can you imagine being twenty five feet from a world class violinist with a Stradivarius and hearing it spread across the sound stage, hardened and distorted by DSP. I thought for classical concerts they would  turn it off... but no such luck. I guess when you bought a multimillion dollar sound system you have to use it. 

My system at home sounds much better... hence no reason to go to the symphony any more. 

@sns +2 I agree not my cup of coffee. 

Thanks for sharing this experience.

Mike

Thank you all for the responses!

@g2the2nd Thanks for the link. Yes, a very similar effect. It’s not "real sounding", much in the same way that many producers / sound engineers are fond of panning the drum kit all the way across the sound stage. But nonetheless interesting.

@sns I realize that the way I described it, it sounds like it was very in-your-face. But it was more subtle than that. It was a very gestalt-like thing. It was in part why it took a couple of songs to perceive it. You could listen to the concert as a whole and not notice it (and in fact none of the 9 other people I was with -- of which one other was a musician -- noticed it). But once you shifted into hearing it (much like those 1980’s-era stereogram photos where you cross your eyes to see the 3D image), then you could bask in this virtual keyboard.

@corelli Yes I like the SET / full range driver analogy. I think the sheer simplicity of this sound system, the absence of the complications of reflection, and the sound engineers’ maniacal attention to detail all combined in this uber-cool way...

@ghdprentice  Incredible story!  Dumfounds me that these so called sound engineers can be so deaf and clueless as to their destruction of the music.  Hard to believe you can make a living destroying the very essence of the product you are bringing to the public.  But then, if you look around, that kind of thing is all too common now a days.  So, on second thought, sadly maybe I am not so surprised.

I have attended broadway productions locally where sound engineers totally destroyed the event.  Don’t you just love it when they jack things between 2-3khz to the point where your ears bleed!  Couldn’t wait to get home.  Sounded SO much better on my home system.

@corelli

+1

Sad, but often true.