Recent Concerts You've Enjoyed

Thought this might be a fun thread and a way to find out about acts on tour.

My wife and I saw the Smoke Fairies at the Tractor Tavern last evening as the opening act for Rasputina. The Smoke Fairies are a 'folk blues' duo from Wales and have been described as "Bob Dylan's dream." I thought that their debut release "Through Low Light and Trees" was one of last year's best. It was just the two principles singing and playing guitar. Really terrific concert with excellent acoustics and thankfully not too loud.

If you are ever in Seattle, the Tractor Tavern is a great venue in the Ballard neighborhood. Very fun people watching...I think my wife and I were the only ones without tattoos! I got to chat with them after their set and had my LP signed. I love the lilting Welsh accents!

Here's a video of "Hotel Room" from their debut LP:

[video]

concert3.jpg
 
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Bob Seger at the Palace of Auburn Hills the other night. Next week it is Alison Krauss and David Grey. Then two weeks later it is Mary Chapin Carpenter in one of the most intimate venues anywhere, The Ark in Ann Arbor.
 
Symphonie Fantastique at Walt Disney Concert Hall / Los Angeles Philharmonic this afternoon.


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I really, really, really like the acoustics of this hall!
 
South Jazz, a small newer jazz venue on N. Broad Street in Philadelphia on 10/27/17. Remembering Ray Brown featuring Philly's own Christian McBride on bass, the sensational Benny Green on piano and the most recorded drummer in jazz, Lewis Nash on the skins.

IMG_0895.JPG
 
E55F46A6-F80D-4CC9-9226-4A2A180D5126.jpg Andrea Bocelli at the Little Cesar’s Arena in Detroit on 12/3/17. True Genius and breathtaking performances by everyone.
 
Good luck with catching Ked on the live performances Ron though a valiant and noble aim for sure. Also I spied some potential congratulations on your choice on the Alieno and the AMS amps if I read your equipment list update as new amps locked and loaded for the listening room. Nice.
 
Yes, of course. No one can catch up to Kedar in the live performances department!

(PS: I think I have decided to drop the Alieno idea in favor of a Jadis.)
 
Tonight we are at a loft apartment in Downtown Los Angeles at a Group Muse musical event where a violinist and a guitarist are playing (unamplified) a variety of Italian and Spanish pieces.

I am sitting seven feet from the guitar player and 10 feet from the violinist. As usual, with live, unamplified music, I hear nothing whatsoever that is the slightest bit bright. I also do not perceive any clearly delineated sonic images. This is why any brightness in a stereo (except strong brass instruments) turns me off, and I have learned that those clearly delineated images we sometimes here from audio systems are electronic falsehoods.

(I am always pleasantly surprised and very impressed when Los Angeles has a great version of anything. Group Muse is a type of performance where private homeowners host professional musicians and advertise the event and anyone can sign up to come to the host’s home to hear the performance. So 20 or 30 or 40 or more people who do not know each other all meet at a private home to enjoy the performance and socialize together.)
 
Tonight we are at a loft apartment in Downtown Los Angeles at a Group Muse musical event where a violinist and a guitarist are playing (unamplified) a variety of Italian and Spanish pieces.

I am sitting seven feet from the guitar player and 10 feet from the violinist. As usual, with live, unamplified music, I hear nothing whatsoever that is the slightest bit bright. I also do not perceive any clearly delineated sonic images. This is why any brightness in a stereo (except strong brass instruments) turns me off, and I have learned that those clearly delineated images we sometimes here from audio systems are electronic falsehoods.

(I am always pleasantly surprised and very impressed when Los Angeles has a great version of anything. Group Muse is a type of performance where private homeowners host professional musicians and advertise the event and anyone can sign up to come to the host’s home to hear the performance. So 20 or 30 or 40 or more people who do not know each other all meet at a private home to enjoy the performance and socialize together.)


Ron, how close do you feel that any of the systems that you have heard can come to reproducing the sound that you heard live at this home. I was talking to Lynn Stanley yesterday, and she believes that her work can pretty much be duplictated-as to the SQ, by the best systems....I disagreed with her...at least IME.
The guitar, was it an acoustic steel string or a nylon string...I ask this, as the steel string guitar can certainly sound to the ear as a little bright...if you are perhaps too close to it...that can never be said about the nylon string guitar.
Nonetheless, I’m sure that what you posted about it not being defined in space is accurate. However, I’m sure that you could approximately locate it in the room if you were to stand back and look at the grouping...
 
I think what I heard last night should be relatively easy for a good system to reproduce with a pretty high degree of suspension of disbelief. But to my ears it would require tubes driving a non-bright speaker and a non-analytical-sounding cartridge.

It is very hard to say, Davey, obviously. I’m not sure how to even go about thinking through in my mind the many systems I have heard, and then hypothesizing how they would have sounded with these two particular instruments alone when I did not hear these two instruments solo on any recording we played on those systems?

Perhaps I can think about it only in terms of recalling artificial or inaccurate brightness or not. I know I never heard any brightness which I considered to be artificial brightness from a Rockport speaker driven by Absolare or Viva (or tubes in general). There is zero artificial brightness in DDK’s very natural-sounding system.
 
I think what I heard last night should be relatively easy for a good system to reproduce with a pretty high degree of suspension of disbelief. But to my ears it would require tubes driving a non-bright speaker and a non-analytical-sounding cartridge.

It is very hard to say, Davey, obviously. I’m not sure how to even go about thinking through in my mind the many systems I have heard, and then hypothesizing how they would have sounded with these two particular instruments alone when I did not hear these two instruments solo on any recording we played on those systems?

Perhaps I can think about it only in terms of recalling artificial or inaccurate brightness or not. I know I never heard any brightness which I considered to be artificial brightness from a Rockport speaker driven by Absolare or Viva (or tubes in general). There is zero artificial brightness in DDK’s very natural-sounding system.

Thanks, Ron.

While I do agree 100% that live instruments are not bright...I have on occasion heard the room that they are played in be too bright. In the pro audio world, we call this aspect-- glare. It is something that a poorly designed studio or other venue can elicit. One of the reasons that I do NOT think that even a very good system could actually reproduce the sound you heard last night...with any real exactitude ( sure, one could set aside one's discriminators and fool oneself into the belief that they are a very good facsimile) is due to what you always hear when listening live...that is the immediate knowledge that live is what you are listening to! Most of us...perhaps all of us; have this innate ability to determine the real from the reproduced. I think a lot of us like to believe that we are close to this reproduction...so close that we can actually reproduce the sound of the unamplified live instrument in our listening rooms....I am, however, NOT one of those people. YMMV.:D
 
Thanks, Ron.

While I do agree 100% that live instruments are not bright...I have on occasion heard the room that they are played in be too bright. In the pro audio world, we call this aspect-- glare. It is something that a poorly designed studio or other venue can elicit. One of the reasons that I do NOT think that even a very good system could actually reproduce the sound you heard last night...with any real exactitude ( sure, one could set aside one's discriminators and fool oneself into the belief that they are a very good facsimile) is due to what you always hear when listening live...that is the immediate knowledge that live is what you are listening to! Most of us...perhaps all of us; have this innate ability to determine the real from the reproduced. I think a lot of us like to believe that we are close to this reproduction...so close that we can actually reproduce the sound of the unamplified live instrument in our listening rooms....I am, however, NOT one of those people. YMMV.:D

Well, you will never get there with monitor speakers...even one with as fine a SQ as the Sonus Fabers. Even a solo violin at close range is too much dynamically to get it right with that kind of speaker...I had a hard enought time capturing the damn thing at 3.5 meters in a 20sqm room without overdriving the recorder. Guitar is easier as it doesn't have the same room pressurization capabilities (a good violin is a sonic cannon in a relatively small room). The sad truth is that it takes big, high sensitivity speakers, or truly huge panels with top tube amplification to get close to the real dynamics of even moderate sized ensembles...nevermind a full orchestra. The ONLY somewhat convincing listening sessions I have ever heard had this as the basic ingredient. Some of the least convincing have been huge cone/domes with monster SS amps...ironic but that is the way I hear it.
 
Well, you will never get there with monitor speakers...even one with as fine a SQ as the Sonus Fabers. Even a solo violin at close range is too much dynamically to get it right with that kind of speaker...I had a hard enought time capturing the damn thing at 3.5 meters in a 20sqm room without overdriving the recorder. Guitar is easier as it doesn't have the same room pressurization capabilities (a good violin is a sonic cannon in a relatively small room). The sad truth is that it takes big, high sensitivity speakers, or truly huge panels with top tube amplification to get close to the real dynamics of even moderate sized ensembles...nevermind a full orchestra. The ONLY somewhat convincing listening sessions I have ever heard had this as the basic ingredient. Some of the least convincing have been huge cone/domes with monster SS amps...ironic but that is the way I hear it.


Unfortunately, you won’t get there, period. Therefore, IMO, all speakers are at best a compromise...so you pick your poison.
Personally, I much prefer what the smaller, quality mini monitor can do for some instruments than the larger, brute force, high sensitivity speakers. One thing you forget to mention, is the room. We do not listen in rooms that even approach the size of a concert hall. Particularly true, I might add, in Europe!

BTW, a great guitar is in fact also a cannon... all listeners who have heard my Taylor Dreadnought comment on how much power it has and how it pressurized the room. Same with a good violin.
 
Well, you will never get there with monitor speakers...even one with as fine a SQ as the Sonus Fabers. Even a solo violin at close range is too much dynamically to get it right with that kind of speaker...I had a hard enought time capturing the damn thing at 3.5 meters in a 20sqm room without overdriving the recorder. Guitar is easier as it doesn't have the same room pressurization capabilities (a good violin is a sonic cannon in a relatively small room). The sad truth is that it takes big, high sensitivity speakers, or truly huge panels with top tube amplification to get close to the real dynamics of even moderate sized ensembles...nevermind a full orchestra. The ONLY somewhat convincing listening sessions I have ever heard had this as the basic ingredient. Some of the least convincing have been huge cone/domes with monster SS amps...ironic but that is the way I hear it.

Very few people will care about reproducing a violin in a 20 sqm room - surely not me! Your challenge is perhaps interesting for you, but meaningless for most listeners who do not share your preference.

IMHO we should not dig on our poor or least convincing experiences, but on the best with each type of equipment. Those are the representative of the performance of this particular equipment, and we should learn from them. As usual IMMV.

Should we consider they are all just misguided guys http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?21241-One-Amigo-Visits-South-East-Asia-and-Hears-Some-Amazing-Systems/page5? :D
 
Unfortunately, you won’t get there, period. Therefore, IMO, all speakers are at best a compromise...so you pick your poison.
Personally, I much prefer what the smaller, quality mini monitor can do for some instruments than the larger, brute force, high sensitivity speakers. One thing you forget to mention, is the room. We do not listen in rooms that even approach the size of a concert hall. Particularly true, I might add, in Europe!

BTW, a great guitar is in fact also a cannon... all listeners who have heard my Taylor Dreadnought comment on how much power it has and how it pressurized the room. Same with a good violin.

Your preference is what it is but it becomes clear why you don't think any system can do live music justice...with small speakers you are not really trying! Brute force is trying to drive "concrete" with an "arc welder"...not a high sensitivity driver, which is simply much more responsive to subtle inputs.
 
Very few people will care about reproducing a violin in a 20 sqm room - surely not me! Your challenge is perhaps interesting for you, but meaningless for most listeners who do not share your preference.

IMHO we should not dig on our poor or least convincing experiences, but on the best with each type of equipment. Those are the representative of the performance of this particular equipment, and we should learn from them. As usual IMMV.

Should we consider they are all just misguided guys http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?21241-One-Amigo-Visits-South-East-Asia-and-Hears-Some-Amazing-Systems/page5? :D

The specific example is to support general rules regarding dynamics. It is not relevant if you care about solo violin or not...that is beside the point.

My preference is for live, unamplified music...something that is of interest to a great many people. I have had the fortunate experience of hearing daily a world class violinist playing rare and amazing instruments and took interest in both recording some performances and carefully observing the more interesting effects of live music dynamics (solo, duo and quartet) and the difficulty in capturing them on tape, without compression.

What this tells me wrt to reproduction is also interesting and makes my violin experiment relevant even if you never listen to solo violin...it is already hard enough for most systems to fail to be convincing...in this Davey and I almost agree.
 
The specific example is to support general rules regarding dynamics. It is not relevant if you care about solo violin or not...that is beside the point.

My preference is for live, unamplified music...something that is of interest to a great many people. I have had the fortunate experience of hearing daily a world class violinist playing rare and amazing instruments and took interest in both recording some performances and carefully observing the more interesting effects of live music dynamics (solo, duo and quartet) and the difficulty in capturing them on tape, without compression.

What this tells me wrt to reproduction is also interesting and makes my violin experiment relevant even if you never listen to solo violin...it is already hard enough for most systems to fail to be convincing...in this Davey and I almost agree.

You are missing the point, Brad. My preference is also for live, unamplified music, and I also like solo violin, but as Francisco pointed out, reproducing it how it is played in a 20 sqm room does not have to do anything with how people usually hear live music, which is in larger venues or even rooms. Together with other WBF members I recently enjoyed a concert of Brahms' violin sonatas in a large living room -- much larger than a 20 sqm room -- and even though we heard it close-up, the dynamics of the violin were not something that would be a particular challenge for many good systems. The tone is a different matter. As was the dynamics of the piano.

And that was in a large living room, for modern standards an unusually intimate setting -- mostly you hear solo violin in larger venues than that.
 

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