The Sound of Live Music

[DonH50]

A related tale from the performer's perspective: There was an article I cannot find on a trumpet forum a few years ago. A conductor (do not recall whom) decided to dedicate the performance to a friend who had just passed away. The conductor wrote a long blog about the experience. In summary, he decided to "emote" on stage, really get into it with emotional displays of grief whilst conducting. He saw the recording later and was horrified; he said he looked like a caricature from a B-movie or something like that. The orchestra had trouble following him, the audience thought he was too grief-stricken to conduct, etc. There is a fine line between putting emotion into the music you are playing and just being plain emotional.

I find it best to be involved but emotionally detached, sort of, when playing. My goal is to make the audience feel the emotion in the music, not get emotional myself and muck it up. A hard line to walk. It has been said, speaking of emotional, that "taps" is the hardest 24 notes in trumpet literature.

I tend to get involved in the music whether or not I can see the players, but it's nice to see them when I can. Hard to see much from the back row, however.

FWIWFM - Don

 

[Al M.]

Hi Al,

Well, I think it's a really interesting subject.

Looking at some older research (Ballachanda: 1997) suggests the greatest pressure gain in the ear canal due to its shape, length and natural resonant frequency (four times its length - making it a quarter-wave resonator) is in the region of 2kHz to 4kHz at 10-15 dB, while the peak increment is at 3kHz for a maximum of 17-22 dB. So it seems for a given ear canal length of 25mm (the average for an adult male), one can then calculate ear canal resonant frequency by using this equation: f = c/(4xl), where f = the resonant frequency, c = the velocity of sound in air, and l = the length of the air canal. So for an average adult male whose ear canal is 25mm in length, we’d get f = 34400/(4x2.5) which gives a resonant frequency of 3.4kHz.

So again, perhaps this phenomenon is related to harmonics occurring in the range not only of the ear canal’s greatest pressure gain, but also of its natural resonant frequency. Perhaps that’s also why some experience it and some do not, due to the variance of the individual’s ear canal shape, length, and the point at which the sounds are received at the ear and the combination of the even- and odd-harmonics of the musical spectra exacerbated by the room.

Again, guessing.

Very interesting again, 853guy. Yes, that might explain differences in perception, simply based on different physics of individual ears.

Well, that would seem to concur with the current research (Vines, Krumvansl, Wanderley, Dalca, Levitn: 2010 ) that seeing a performance, as opposed to just hearing it, may lead to an increase of positive versus negative emotions in the listener, irrespective of whether the physical performance of the musicians is animated or subdued. Interestingly, evidence was found to support the theory that music has the potential to generate multivalent emotional states in which positive and negative emotions co-occur, much like life.

Perhaps we are more susceptible to negative emotional states when deprived of the ability to see, and hence, perhaps more able to be influenced by sonic anomalies (distortion, odd-order harmonics, etc) than we would otherwise.

It is great to hear that my sense experiences are not an anomaly and that there is indeed a more general observation to back up the idea that we perceive differently with eyes open or closed. I am not sure though that with eyes closed I would say I am more open to negative emotions. Rather, I am more capable of a neutrally observing aural state. If in live situations I perceive hardness of sound and 'distortions' or whatever you may call it, it does have a rather positive effect on me: it tells me that perhaps my stereo doesn't do as much wrong as I might have otherwise assumed

Anyway, I have another anecdote that supports how your visual senses can fool you and distract from what your ears are actually hearing. In a concert hall in Austria I sat in two very different spots on two separate occasions, during two different vacations there in fact. In one concert I sat very close to the stage (the experience that I touch upon in my opening post) and not just was the sound immensely powerful, but the sound image was of course absolutely huge, much larger than I can imagine any system with just two speakers being able to reproduce in a home setting. On another occasion I sat in the middle of the hall, perhaps slightly towards the back. The sound was also big, bold and powerful, but when I closed my eyes I was in for an absolute shock: the sound image was incredibly small! It was hardly bigger than a relatively pin-pointed center image between my speakers. With eyes open I would never, never in a million years, have guessed that the sound image was so small: after all, I could see how large the orchestra was! So only overriding my visual impressions by closing my eyes allowed for aural reality to enter my mind.

 

[Al M.]

EExtremely interesting discussions!

My $.02:

The physical space in which the music is performed has perforce an impact on the sound we hea. Yes! One can sit at the wrong place in a live performance. However much current days audiophiles want to push away Science it is all there; You will not escape the Laws of Physics by denying their existence.

The recollection of Al. M and Peter A. is just an example of small room acoustics at works IMO: Room modes dominate ins those small rooms. Same in our listening environment. Most (All) living rooms obey to the laws of small room acoustics. Whether the sound producer is a speaker or an instrument the results will be similar.

That supports how important acoustic room treatment is for probably most rooms. Yes, I have heard systems in rooms without dedicated treatment that sounded excellent, but I would assume those are rather the exceptions than the rule. I think it is worth planning for room treatment in a system budget, and perhaps spend a bit less on speakers in favor of room treatment; after all, a speaker can only sound as good as the speaker/room interaction will allow. Yes, with DSP some anomalies of in-room frequency response can be corrected, but nothing beats the plain physical removal of unwanted reflections which can also be detrimental for the mid and high frequencies. Ideally, DSP will work in tandem with acoustic room treatment.

I would suggest that the studies cited above (Vines, Levitin et al 2010) could IMHO be extrapolated to the tendency to hear positive things about certain systems or components when the reputation/price/prestige is known. Said perception consistently become different (more accurate?) once knowledge is removed..

That is very well possible. I can, however, be also quite critical under sighted conditions. Two years ago I tried a fancy power chord for my CD transport that was supposed to be so beneficial, according to many people, including posters on this board. I also do have a bias in favor of power conditioning. Yet however much I tried, I could not find any difference with the stock chord on any parameter that I was listening for. After a while I decided that there really was no difference, and I saved myself a lot of money. Perhaps I lost the bragging rights of owning the fancy chord, but bragging rights are stupid. Personal satisfaction with your system is all that counts.

 

[ack]

Regarding how harsh live music can sound, take a look at http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=22480 for what musicians like violinists think - and if you've ever heard a violin played at close range you'd immediately realize how loud it can be, and perhaps how annoying at the same time. Here are some excerpts:

Ear protection during practice?

May 11, 2012 at 04:43 PM · I'm also interested in what made you start doing it. For me, two factors came into play: 1) chin rest type; 2) string type.

In 2005, I switched to center-mounted chin rests and noticed right away more volume and resonance. While two fiddles do very well with wound-gut A-D-G, the third one comes to life with composite-core A-D-G -- notably Tomastik Dominant, Infeld, and Vision -- in a way that it didn't with wound gut. I use steel E's on all three fiddles.

There is an 85-yo violinist in my orchestra who has been playing violin about 80 of those years. She played semi-pro when she was younger, says she played with the Boston Pops in the 1960's. She is almost completely deaf in her left ear from all those years of playing. Her right ear is still pretty good though.
Anyway, ever since I had that talk with her I've been wearing a foam earplug in my left ear when I'm practicing at home, especially when I practice something loud, high, and repetitive. I don't always remember to do it, but when I do it might even help me hear pitches better because it takes the edge off the sound.

I only have ear plug in the ear next to the violin, not in both ears. It kinda feels cool to get that extra feel on the vibration of the instrument.

One of my students with very sensitive hearing wears a Hearos Ear Plug in her left ear when playing violin. It doesn't block out everything, but reduces the sound to a comfortable level

I use an partial-block ear plug in my left ear as I am prone to noise-induced tinnitus (and worry about my hearing - my mother was deaf by age 55).

However, what I've noticed is that the sound improves. You loose the scratch noises that the bow makes with little loss of the note - I think I am hearing a closer version of what the audience gets.

 

[MadFloyd]

Great thread!

Somehow it reminds me of certain experiences I've had with resonances. When I auditioned a pair of Genesis 6.1 speakers at Lyric Audio in NYC, I experienced a form of distortion at a certain frequency that made me uneasy. At this point in my life I didn't have too much experience with high end audio and these were the most expensive speakers I had ever heard. My wife loved them and we ended up buying the demo pair and bringing them home. Well, at home I heard the same 'distortion' on the same notes (didn't matter if it was piano or vocals) and it was always there (at least if you knew to listen for it). I remember wondering if it was my ears. Years later when I replaced the speakers that resonance disappeared.

That said, I've experienced the same form of distortion from a live piano. My brother in law has a nice grand piano that he has sitting near windows and when I get to hear it played (by many talented individuals in his family) I hear something similar that I assume is due to room interactions. I found it fascinating and enlightening.

 

[Al M.]

Regarding how harsh live music can sound, take a look at http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=22480 for what musicians like violinists think - and if you've ever heard a violin played at close range you'd immediately realize how loud it can be, and perhaps how annoying at the same time. Here are some excerpts:

Those are interesting quotes. On the website of Galen Carol Audio there is a loudness chart,

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html

that also lists dB levels for some individual instruments; I suppose these levels are from the player's perspective. Violin is listed at 82-92 dB which is pretty loud but less so than several other instruments. Yet because of the higher frequency content of violin sounds the ear might be more susceptible to damage, and many hours of daily practice at the levels listed will not be without effect.

Also interesting is the note:

The incidence of hearing loss in classical musicians has been estimated at 4-43%, in rock musicians 13-30%.

Gary mentioned in post # 7 that his daughter, who is a flutist, wears ear protection when she practices. His post after that lists some measurements of drum volume levels.

 

[Al M.]

I remember the first time I auditioned a Pass Labs X-15 phono stage. I rejected it because I didn't like how it sounded on electric guitars. I might have even played AC/DC (not sure, it was some years ago). Ultimately I thought it was robbing the guitars of their grandeur, that they didn't sound like I thought they would/do in real life, nor how they seemed to come across on lesser systems including car stereos.

Some high-end snobs might scoff at comparisons with 'lowly' car stereos, but I agree with you that they can be a useful reality check. And sometimes they are not flattering. I remember instances where after an audio demo I stepped into my car and found it embarrassing that even the car stereo sounded more lively than what I just heard. Some systems that I heard really sounded remarkably un-dynamic and lifeless (I am happy to say that none of the systems in our 'Boston group' fall into that category). The result was high-quality acoustic wall paper rather than anything that resembles real music. But perhaps that was more of a problem in a not so distant past when highly inefficient speakers were more common and the amplifiers driving them were less advanced than today's technology as well.

 

[DonH50]

They left off trumpet! The references I have say on average trombones are around 5 dB louder for various reasons, but since trumpets play more in the vocal range and a little above they actually sound louder. The clarinets and bassoons are directly in front of my section and they wear earplugs at time when we are playing some big piece in a dead'ish hall and the conductor wants everything ffff. As for dB, a trumpet quartet measured 140 dB (!) close-mic'd at the end of one of their pieces, and I have measured myself up in the 120 to 130 dB range into a mic about 3' (1 m) away, fairly typical for an experienced player. Not as loudly as I can play, but as loudly as I would ever care to play.

And I have those kettle drums right behind me in rehearsal, blah...

 

[theophile]

I generally find the sound of most systems I listen to: Lifeless, stifled, subtractive(to what I know to be there), sat-upon dynamically, untrue to the tone of instruments, muddled, congealing individual elements together along with leaving elements out.

The biggest antidote to correcting all of that was to devise a means of isolating my turntable from the support it sat upon. The closer I got to optimising that goal, the more all of those problems faded away. In my system at least, the acoustic impingement in the form of acoustic feedback was not the great problem. Even though the floor in my listening room(my living room) is tile over concrete slab, the problem is what is coming up from the floor. It took me years to figure out just how to optimise it. Wrong turns in experiment were needed to reach correct conclusions. Understanding fundamental principles I had previously unconsidered also helped to consolidate gains. Each step forward was reflected in the lessening of limitations to the sound along with clarification of what was on the record. I could use the recordings as my compass.

The two rock solid sonic guide points I use are dynamics and instrumental tone. All of the things I spoken of have to be across the board with all types of recordings. Not just a handful of select recordings. True progress in system resolution will yield true improvement in all recordings. It will also reveal the difference between recordings to a greater degree. I have seen that improvement across the board does not incur the penalty that the best recordings are compromised. The best is gained from whatever is played, even if the gap between the not so good, the good and the great is better discriminated.

One of the sonic revelations I've become more aware of is the change in tone that a given instrument displays as the instrument is played up and down its frequency range. This is one of the biggest indicators that the playback is moving towards truth rather than a sound tailored toward a preconceived notion of what is correct. An analogy I'd make is: If one had only heard the sound of a grand piano played on its uppermost two octaves alone, one would be surprised at the sound of the entire keyboard and the marked difference that is evident when the entire range of the instrument is utilised. Great recordings and well sorted systems reveal more of this multiple personality trait that wide range instruments display. This is how tone can be utilised to reveal whether truth is being tapped by a system.

Dynamics also are another way in which truth, actual truth to the captured sound, can be assessed. One of the major short-fallings of recorded sound is the inability to present convincing dynamic contrast and within small shifts in dynamics the ability to discriminate dynamic modulation. With deficiency in these areas we lose a lot of the emotional impact and emotional nuance. One of the effects that I've noticed when the fine tuning of my system has garnered real gains, is that detail which was formerly in the apparent sonic forefront of the presentation, now is there in proportion not dominating. Nuanced details that were seemingly swamped by the previously in the apparent sonic forefront detail are able to be detected. This may give the disconcerting feeling that previously apparent detail is less audible, but in the view of the overall picture, much more is now apparent even if some details appear less apparent than previously detected.

I have noticed along with dynamics and tone that bass and stereo soundstage improve. I have concluded however that one has to be very careful when isolating these two elements as indicators of truthfulness. There are many sources of resonance which increase apparent bass. This can lead to a very satisfying effect and provide a pseudo reality-enhancing confabulation. The same can apply to stereo soundstage. There can be a departure from verity which inflates the apparent soundstage. I can't say why it happens, but it can occur without truer tone and truer dynamics. In fact in many of the instances when it does occur, tone differentiation is diminished and dynamic discrimination is also diminished. One should listen for better bass resolution and better soundstage resolution which is always an accompaniment of truer tone and truer dynamics. My feeling is that in the absence of the two faceted truer tonal differentiation/truer dynamic discrimination 'improvements' to bass and soundstage are indicators of increased distortion/resonance. They are departures from truth when they seem better in isolation from truer tonal differentiation coupled with truer dynamic discrimination.

 

[theophile]

I am more convinced than ever that dynamics in conjunction with true tonality is the litmus test for movement away from artificial sound further toward the sound of True Life real performance. This is not a 'loudness test'. It will encompass higher peak levels and more explosive transients with individual sounds conveying more substance, but that it not the only trick that more life-like dynamics has in it's bag. The key being that individual elements in the sound field have an ability to wax and wane dynamically independently of what the other elements are doing dynamically. So: Explosive dynamics along with greater dynamic insight within the overall sonic picture. Punch, peak levels and nuance, all the differing aspects of dynamic behaviour, being simultaneously further extended. If this is taking place within the system I find that the other qualifiers like bass definition, treble purity, soundstage holography, soundstage depth, layering and coherence all come along for the ride. Tonality sheds an overlay which colours everything when the dynamics fall into place.

I know that I have taken the sound of the system in the wrong direction when the sound picture falls way back, thins out and becomes dynamically flat. Every other aspect of the sound suffers along with that occurrence. The tonality kind of greys-out. Low level detail and nuance is diminished. Intelligibility falls. Transient discrimination blurs. The soundstage compresses into 2D; What was set way back in the soundstage moves forward, what was well forward of the speakers falls back to either the plane of the speakers or further back than that. Everything is now placed left to right without the sense that elements are nearer or further away from the listener.

With this realisation, it is easier for me now to evaluate where my system lies on the line of improvement versus difference without improvement versus difference with degradation of the sound.

I feel that the Source component carries the greatest influence over fundamental improvement. It does take a supremely capable Source to garner these effects. Cosseting a mediocre Source is a waste of time. Optimising a supremely capable Source is the secret to possessing the utmost from the other excellent components in the system. Even a great room cannot compensate for deficiencies in a Source component. Optimising a great Source component is the secret to unlocking the hidden potential of the entire system.