I've been most privileged to hear many violins including the incredible Guanari del Jesu ex Kochanski in many venues. These included many concert halls including Carnegie Hall, my own home, the owner's home. I came to know the sound of that violin very well. I also heard Heifetz play Carnegie Hall in the 1960s and Mischa Elman at Charles Colden Hall at Queens College. But the ex-Kochanski is the one I can't forget. Most remarkable besides its tone is its amazing power, it's ability to project. I sat where I usually like to sit, about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way to the rear in the orchestra seats. This allows me to hear both the instruments and the acoustics of the hall in a balance I prefer. At Carnegie Hall, row K is reserved for music critics in the press. We hear a lot of violins and violas in this house. Many are brought by students for evaluation to make a decision about purchasing them. Tone is only one factor, there are many others including the ease of playing them, where wolf notes occur and how bad they are, etc. We also have a couple of pianos including a Baldwin and a Steinway grand. I hear these instruments practically every day of my life.
Compared to live music, recordings of music from the best commercially sold sound reproduction systems sound to me flat and lifeless. They are a pale facsimile of the real thing. The technology just isn't that good. Is the fact that the discrepency between what I hear and what the reviewers say about the equipment due to the fact that they just don't hear it also? That's the conclusion I got from the YouTube interview. He just didn't seem to get it because he didn't hear it. For all his commercial success he's no golden ears in my book. Others of his ilk while often equally well intentioned seem to have the same shortcomings. That's why I ask the question; what do they listen to more, real music or recordings of music. What are they most familiar with?
I think you know the answer. I envy your experience with those instruments, but do you actually get to the concert hall more often that you listen to recorded music? For me, that would mean getting to a live, unamplified performance more than daily! And let's say you could do that. What do you hear there and how does it translate to a recording?
Go to your favorite venue, sit in that seat 2/3 to 3/4 toward the rear of the orchestra section. Hang a stereo pair of the best quality microphones right above your head and record the music in the highest resolution possible, or to tape if you prefer. Take it home, plug it into your $500,000 high-end analog wondersystem and hit play.
It will sound nothing like what you heard in that seat. The fidgeting of the woman behind you will be incredibly distracting. The rustling of your clothes, your own breathing may be audible. The music will sound hollow and distant as if you are hearing too much reflected sound, not nearly enough direct sound, which you are. It will be...wrong.
Our brains, our psychoacoustics have this remarkable ability to focus on the music and filter out the crowd noise right next to us. They have the ability to seemingly alter the very acoustics of the room and hear more of the music and less of its reflections. But run it through a microphone, a recorder, a playback system and now our brains are filtering, processing and altering the environment of our listening room, not the hall in which the recording was made. Or at least that's my best guess at what's wrong. That it's wrong, I'm sure of.
Our brains are perhaps the subtlest and most perfect of audio processors. But they have no switches or knobs, and we have no control of them and they don't translate well to our systems. We must record much differently than we hear to create recordings that are even a reasonable facsimile of what we hear.
What is the sound of one brain processing? On a good night, it's better than the original event. Much better. Your reference does not translate. And of course that doesn't keep audiophiles from hearing it in their systems. Another form of psychoacoustics.
Tim
