How Hi Fi Has Become a Standard Unto Itself

[spiritofmusic]

The worst example of that I've ever experienced was trying to run Audion 845 SETs off a Townsend Allegri AVC.
All the detail you could want, but tone bleached and bloodless.

 

[PeterA]

The worst example of that I've ever experienced was trying to run Audion 845 SETs off a Townsend Allegri AVC.
All the detail you could want, but tone bleached and bloodless.

“Bleached and bloodless”. Boy you BRITs sure have a way with imagery. I’ve always liked the color ox blood and the phrase fox and hounds.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Well, I was gonna say "exsanguinated" but as you know I hate to exaggerate Lol.

 

[tima]

We all agreed that a reproduction is a reproduction and live music is live music, especially un-amplified!

I would have loved to attend. Very nice write-up on what must have been a very educational and enjoyable event at yr hotel. I applaud you Okan for doing this - maybe you come to the States some time and do it again!

 

[kodomo]

One thing we found out really quick is that you can't play back a recording in the venue in which its recorded as you get the acoustics of that venue in the recording and then again in playback. It won't sound right. Quite literally you have to move the recording off site (which is why there's a recording booth in a recording studio).

We have tested this as well. We listened back in recording venue and the listening room next door

 

[Edward Pong]

I love this line:
"live, unamplified music played in a natural acoustic environment should be the gold standard for evaluating sound"

This has been my focus for UltraAnalogue Recordings: to record the music I love, played live, by some of the best young soloists of this generation, to give the audiophile the feeling "you are there"!

A few audiophiles have indeed come to hear the live concert, followed by listening to the tapes of the concert...

Ed

 

[Karen Sumner]

Ed, you provided the perfect segue to my next thread, but unfortunately, I am not yet ready to post.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and experience about our hobby which is a lifetime passion for many of us. I will be referring to many of the comments above in my next thread.

"SpiritofMusic" said, "There are only 26 letters in the alphabet."

Such simplicity works because we keep combining the letters and arranging them in infinitely interesting ways to convey ideas. Likewise, we can endlessly discuss the same ideas from different vantage points and learn new insights. To take the analogy further, Western music's 12-note scale provides endless possibilities to discover and make new music, to find existing music we have not yet experienced, or to dust off old favorites and discover new things about them.

 

[Kingrex]

All you need are two good mics and a decent recorder....
[/QUOTE]
I hope this is true. I was going to have a hot rodded front end made for my 15ips tape deck to record a friends band. They kick butt. In the end I dropped the idea as I was lead to believe i could never make a good recording. That engineers spend their lives learning how to set up for a session and bring it home. I was lead to believe it was not feasible to do.

 

[Atmasphere]

All you need are two good mics and a decent recorder....

I hope this is true. I was going to have a hot rodded front end made for my 15ips tape deck to record a friends band. They kick butt. In the end I dropped the idea as I was lead to believe i could never make a good recording. That engineers spend their lives learning how to set up for a session and bring it home. I was lead to believe it was not feasible to do.

You can record anything with 2 mics and a recorder. You just have to place the mics in the right place so that it sounds like what you're hearing just standing there. A lot depends on the venue and the like but the easy way to handle the mics is to use a stereo bar and either run the mics as cardioids aimed about 110degrees apart on the same stand or do a figure 8 setup and then the mics are 90 degrees apart. The other thing to keep in mind that if you try a test with the ensemble, expect that when actually playing they will be a bit louder so give yourself about 10dB of headroom.

If you use Omnis you have to have them spaced apart. I use a rule of 3rds; if you split the ensemble's width that they present in thirds, the mics will be placed about 1/3 and 2/3rds with 1/3rd of the width between them. The stereo bar method is easier. Don't get the mics too close or you won't pick up much of the venue (you'll have to figure out if that's good or bad...).

Have fun with it!

 

[miniguy]

This is what we did at my hotel. We recorded a string quartet and a jazz trio acoustically with just two mics while we were at the recording. Then we played back the music and listened with the musicians at the same venue through different sponsored sound systems. For later reviewing of their own systems, the attendees left with two mixes from two different engineers using the exact same recordings. I also wanted to make people see that even what we call neutral recordings and no dynamics processor involving mixing creates different sounding results through different engineers.

The only valid way to compare live vs recorded is to record anechoically.

 

[kodomo]

The only valid way to compare live vs recorded is to record anechoically.

if we are doing a technical analysis then yes. I would recommend playing a variety of signals rather than music and analyzing them through software.

Recording is an art, it is not solely engineering. It is creative problem solving, the use of space, choice of mics, placements in regards to what is being recorded does not have one right way. This is what I was trying to say. Also, we idealize stuff, a recording is never the live event and vice versa. The difference does not start and end with just sound too. Home listening and live listening have so many different components to it that adds up on the sound heard and become the result that is in our brains. We can not take one component out of it and hope for a complete answer. Our brain can not just take the information of sound and construct a representation in our brain, there are variety of inputs that are altering it in many levels.

 

[Edward Pong]

"Recording is an art, it is not solely engineering."
This line says it all... Bravo Kodomo!

An analogy, is saying a violin is just a woodworking project, a great violin is a work of art...

Ed

 

[KostasP.]

if we are doing a technical analysis then yes. I would recommend playing a variety of signals rather than music and analyzing them through software.

Recording is an art, it is not solely engineering. It is creative problem solving, the use of space, choice of mics, placements in regards to what is being recorded does not have one right way. This is what I was trying to say. Also, we idealize stuff, a recording is never the live event and vice versa. The difference does not start and end with just sound too. Home listening and live listening have so many different components to it that adds up on the sound heard and become the result that is in our brains. We can not take one component out of it and hope for a complete answer. Our brain can not just take the information of sound and construct a representation in our brain, there are variety of inputs that are altering it in many levels.

Özenli, tutkulu emeklerin ve metodlar?n için, çok tebrikler! Yorumlar?n her zaman olumlu ve e?itici.
?yiki vars?n.
Selamlar, Kostas.

Congratulat?ons for your fastidious efforts and methodologies, as well as your frequent positive and instructional contributions to the forum.

Since I also record, adopting a minimalist \ purist approach, I wholeheartedly agree with your comments and sentiments.

Keep well, Kostas.

PS: Since I am teaching myself Turkish, here was an opportunity to use it.

 

[kodomo]

Özenli, tutkulu emeklerin ve metodlar?n için, çok tebrikler! Yorumlar?n her zaman olumlu ve e?itici.
?yiki vars?n.
Selamlar, Kostas.

Congratulat?ons for your fastidious efforts and methodologies, as well as your frequent positive and instructional contributions to the forum.

Since I also record, adopting a minimalist \ purist approach, I wholeheartedly agree with your comments and sentiments.

Keep well, Kostas.

PS: Since I am teaching myself Turkish, here was an opportunity to use it.

Dear Kostas, thank you for your kind words and your Turkish is very good!

I also would love to listen to your recordings if they are available.



and now in Turkish for you;

Sevgili Kostas, nazik sözlerin için te?ekkür ederim ve Türkçen çok iyi!

Ayr?ca kay?tlar?n ula??labilirse, dinlemeyi çok isterim.

 

[Edward Pong]

To further expand on Kodomo's line: "Recording is an art, it is not solely engineering"

To truly record something magical, one has to first consider/control the instruments that are being recorded. Recording violins, they all have different voices and one must be aware how the instrument has been setup. Some have tremendous power & if the player is a soloist, often their violins are setup for ultimate projection, which is often not the most pleasant sound the record. To project, they often have a sharp edgy sound to reach the back of big halls. Obviously, the hall/room/space is critical if the reverb recorded will sound natural. To this end, I have sometimes used gut strings in the violins to create a softer, sweeter sound.

Often there is talk about the classic old tube mics. Even more important I feel is the microphone pre-amp being used. I've found, the resultant sound, of any recording, is the result of the signal path, in the whole chain. It's only as good as it's weakest link. Therefore, everything in this signal path must be at the same top level to realize all the goodies in this chain.

A case in point, was when I found a pair of NOS 1956 WE300b tubes. When these were placed into our custom mic pre-amp, the whole sound spectrum was taken to another level. (I was using new production WE300b before...no slouches!) The same happened when we made a battery supply to the 1st stages of the tubed record & playback amps for the Studers... everything makes a difference. There is no "free lunch"!

My 2c on recording...

Ed

 

[Atmasphere]

Often there is talk about the classic old tube mics. Even more important I feel is the microphone pre-amp being used. I've found, the resultant sound, of any recording, is the result of the signal path, in the whole chain. It's only as good as it's weakest link. Therefore, everything in this signal path must be at the same top level to realize all the goodies in this chain.

I ran into the same thing. Ultimately I built 8 channels of tube mic preamps. I started initially by refurbising some Western Electric mic preamps that I had pulled from a dumpster about 35 years ago ( a theatre had simply thrown them out...). They worked alright but I felt I could do better in the same space. They were missing the input transformers so I used Jensens and set up the balanced outputs using a custom wound output transformer that we had made, based on the Ampex 351 tape electronics output transformer. That had enough guts that it could drive the +4dBm inputs of our tape machines with ease. Doing that won the setup a lot of transparency.

 

[Elliot G.]

"Recording is an art, it is not solely engineering."
This line says it all... Bravo Kodomo!

An analogy, is saying a violin is just a woodworking project, a great violin is a work of art...

Ed

Doesn't this really apply to all things that are great. Let us count some:
I say this all the time to my clients and friends , that it takes more than want too to do what someone with years of experience and lots of knowledge took a lifetime to learn.
Making a recording that sounds great is not an accident and as most of you have noticed there are far more bad ones than good ones.
Lots of people can cook very few are Michelin Starred Chefs
Anyone can buy a sports car very few can win a race

Any one can buy a guitar but very few will ever play at Carnegie Hall
Anyone can buy a stereo/ hifi system but very few will sound great.

 

[Edward Pong]

I ran into the same thing. Ultimately I built 8 channels of tube mic preamps. I started initially by refurbising some Western Electric mic preamps that I had pulled from a dumpster about 35 years ago ( a theatre had simply thrown them out...). They worked alright but I felt I could do better in the same space. They were missing the input transformers so I used Jensens and set up the balanced outputs using a custom wound output transformer that we had made, based on the Ampex 351 tape electronics output transformer. That had enough guts that it could drive the +4dBm inputs of our tape machines with ease. Doing that won the setup a lot of transparency.

Sounds like fun!
We actually starting building my system with copper transformers, but it wasn't long before we realized, the same wound with silver sounded so much more natural. So all transformers in my recording, playback & monitoring systems are wound with silver... fortunate to have done it many years ago before silver became s expensive!

 

[bonzo75]

Electric recording company get the masters tape for their recordings. Their LPs sound better than many modem day reissues not as good as the originals which were cut from the same masters

 

[Atmasphere]

Electric recording company get the masters tape for their recordings. Their LPs sound better than many modem day reissues not as good as the originals which were cut from the same masters

Recording tape looses some of its energy over time. That is why reissues of older recordings are rarely as vivacious as the originals.