Hi Mario,
I got around to listening to both the Debussy and Albeniz last night. Both were great. The performances are great and so are the recordings. I would love to hear full orchestral performances recorded in this manner. I will continue to watch for new recordings on your site and after a few times listening I will write a bit more of an in depth review. Though, that probably won't happen until September.
Best regards,
Stephen
Hi Stephen, thanks for taking the time to listen. Your feedback is really important to us
The space we are using is a chamber music hall. It might be to small for a full orchestra (though we have not really tried) It can be used for classical (solo and chamber music), jazz, blues, flamenco even rock.
The purpose of this technology is to produce a facsimile image of the concert space. We use the same setup for every recording. It does not matter if it is just piano, or any other chamber music arrangement. We only use two mics and they are always placed on the same exact spot of our auditorium outside of the stage area. There is no mixing or mastering involved, left mic is left speaker and right mic is right speaker. We have obtained this sound by working the acoustics of the auditorium itself.
This is an accurate picture of our setup. It might not be pretty, but the measurements are correct. The person at the bottom of the picture represents the actual position of the mics (that would be your listening position). They really are outside of the stage area, and they are sitting at that same spot for all five albums.
Here is a sketch of the Drums samples:
I know nothing about live recording. So with that said , I am curious why the drummer is facing away from the audience/recording mics?
First off I have to acknowledge what a generous and kind gentleman Mario is. I chose the Albeniz and the Debussy recordings to download for evaluation, and I should state upfront that the majority of my listening is to jazz and blues. Nevertheless I found these recordings to not only be of exceptional quality but also of excellent and musically engaging performances. The recording excellence is immediately apparent in both albums, with the piano having a realistic presence and natural sense of space. The decays and reverberation of the piano are very well captured and communicated in these recordings, which I find to be of reference quality. I hope that in time more diverse musical genres will be recorded using the unique techniques which Mario and PlayClassics have developed. Thanks again for making these evaluation recordings available to us!