The best reference is live music

@russbutton Thank you for sharing your recordings. They sound very good and helps others understand what simple minimalistic recordings are capable of conveying.

Which brings me to one of my favorite discussions with the “audiophiles”. All reasonable audiophiles can look at the picture of the performers that you recorded and happily accept that the audio recordings are representative of the sound in that room the recordings were made in. Now instead of a still picture post a video of the recording session and embed the audio in the video and those same audiophiles will give you all types of reasons and excuses of why the sound on the video is not representative of the sound in the room. Funny how performers can be recorded and accepted but if you substitute a home sound reproduction system in for the performers, then the audio recordings embedded in the videos are not accepted as being representative. I don’t understand the logic.

Have you recorded the sound of your home audio system in a similar fashion?

@carlos269 I do not have a video recorder other than my cell phone, so I donʻt have the ability to do a video recording of a chamber music performance.  I would assume that the engineer who records the Voices of Music performances uses the same mikes for both his video and audio recording systems. I have no experience in video recording of live music, so I have no idea how itʻs all engineered.

Iʻve never thought of recording my home system.  Not sure what the point of that is.

I did my first location recordings back in the 1970s.  I had no idea what I was doing and it was all on a budget anyway.  I still have those recordings today.  Hereʻs one done at the Four Winds Cafe in Yellow Springs, Ohio, of a jazz quartet.  It was trumpet, alto saxophone, bass and drums.  Good players doing bebop.  I had the mikes on either side of the room, pointed at the band.  The bass player had a small amp, but the rest of the band was all acoustic.  I was using Shure SM57 PA mikes into my old Revox A77 open reel deck.  Not an audiophile recording, but it did capture the energy and emotion of the event anyway and is still enjoyable to listen to.

https://russbutton.com/recordings/Kirkpatrick/Scrapple_From_The_Apple.wav

@russbutton  You stated “Iʻve never thought of recording my home system.  Not sure what the point of that is.” One records one’s home audio system for all those very same reasons that you record your wife and all the other ensembles performing.

Like a good pool player, I’m laying out a line of thoughts to eventually prove a point.

It seems like you are happy sharing your recordings. You don’t appear to have no real desire to showcase and share what you have accomplished with your sound reproduction system at home and that is perfectly fine. Some of us do use audio recordings of our home systems to overcome geographical limitations.

If you are not already familiar, I would recommend Gearspace Forum as a good place to discuss and chat with other recording professionals and amateurs with similar interests.

@carlos269 Thank you for the pointer to Gearspace.  Looks like fun.

My home system is all digital these days.  I sold off my record collection and turntable.  I pitched out my Revox A77, as well as my cassette deck decades ago.  Any CDs I run across get ripped to digital.  I play everything from a miniPC running Linux with the JRiver media manager.

I run a VTA tube preamp into a set of custom built Linkwitz Orions Iʻve had for 19 years now.  Still in love with how they sound on voices and acoustic piano, as well as for chamber music, classical and jazz.   If youʻre not familiar with the Linkwitz designs, they are all open baffle systems, run active crossovers and multiple amp channels.  The Orions call for 4 channels on each side at 60 wpc.  I run 8 channels of a 12 channel B&K power amp.

These Orions have forward and rear facing SEAS millennium tweeters and SEAS Excel mid-bass drivers.  There are two 10" Peerless long throw bass drivers on each side.   They are located in the bass bins on the bottom behind the wooden grills.

@russbutton 

Your Orions look particularly good - aesthetically, I mean. Did you design the enclosures? If so, kudos on the tremendous improvement upon the original design!