What instrument is most challenging for a speaker to make sound real?

[caesar]

Is it the piano, the cello, the bass, or something else?

And what speaker, in your opinion, does the best job of making that instrument sound real?

 

[Bruce B]

Is it the piano, the cello, the bass, or something else?

And what speaker, in your opinion, does the best job of making that instrument sound real?

1. the piano

2. your guess is as good as mine.

 

[muralman1]

Is it the piano, the cello, the bass, or something else?

And what speaker, in your opinion, does the best job of making that instrument sound real?

Since you asked, my Apogee Scintillas will bring any musical instrument to it's fullest expression. I would agree the piano is the most difficult, because you really need a seamless very low bass to high frequencies. The system hast to be able to read finger pressures to get the artistry of the player. Also, you need power to get the dynamics while at the same time keeping the micro dynamics lively.

 

[ack]

Another reason to consider why the piano is so difficult, and it has to do with hybrid speakers like mine - woofer/stat - where most of the piano notes are coming from the panel, then all of a sudden they start coming from "down below", if you know what I mean, plus are different in pitch definition - ahem, no piano I know of sounds like this. Haven't tried the Summit X yet...

 

[garylkoh]

Is it the piano, the cello, the bass, or something else?

And what speaker, in your opinion, does the best job of making that instrument sound real?

The piano is by far the most difficult - that is why I use a piano scale and make sure that each note sounds subjectively the same throughout the range. It is incredibly difficult as ack pointed out to integrate drivers with different technology - dynamic cones vs electrostats vs ribbons. Even when you have dynamic cones of different materials - ceramic, metal, kevlar, paper, etc.

I won't answer your second question because I will be biased.

 

[RogerD]

The piano by far,like everyone has mentioned. I also think brass instruments are hard to get that correct "brassy" sound,when they sound right it's really nice. The organ is one of my favorites also, to capture it faithfully is probably impossible in reproduction at home,but the power and majesty is awesome.

 

[Stereoeditor]

Is it the piano, the cello, the bass, or something else?

Piano is difficult, but the hardest, in my experience, is the xylophone. Years ago, we used an anechoic xylophone recording in blind testing, which we could compare with the sound of the same xylophone played live. There wasn't a loudspeaker tested that could reproduce the sound of that xylophone without coloration.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

 

[audioguy]

Piano is difficult, but the hardest, in my experience, is the xylophone. Years ago, we used an anechoic xylophone recording in blind testing, which we could compare with the sound of the same xylophone played live. There wasn't a loudspeaker tested that could reproduce the sound of that xylophone without coloration.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Interesting. Have you considered publishing which speakers, in your opinion, came the closest?

 

[microstrip]

The piano is by far the most difficult - that is why I use a piano scale and make sure that each note sounds subjectively the same throughout the range. It is incredibly difficult as ack pointed out to integrate drivers with different technology - dynamic cones vs electrostats vs ribbons. Even when you have dynamic cones of different materials - ceramic, metal, kevlar, paper, etc.

I won't answer your second question because I will be biased.

I agree with you the piano is difficult, but there is one big difficulty in using this instrument to assert systems - the sound taking techniques affect the recording very strongly and vary a lot. Sometimes this can be misleading. Also different pianos are not alike in character, and the sonority is affected by the player technique.

As I am not biased I will say some of the best piano I heard was on a ESL63. If you want a good test CD try Stravinsky Petrushka played by Maurizio Pollini DG 447431-2.

 

[garylkoh]

In conversation with recording engineer Jim Merod (http://www.blueportjazz.com/), he said that the hardest instrument to accurately capture "live" was the vibraphone (vibes have metal bars instead of wooden bars and have a 'cleaner' sound). The piano was easy in comparison.

While we know the term 'xylophone' because of our kindergarten classes - the most often played instruments of this type that we hear on recordings are the marimba and the vibraphone.

 

[Bruce B]

The more I think about it... the best piano representation I've heard came from a pair of Maggie MG20.1 speakers.

 

[Bruce B]

In conversation with recording engineer Jim Merod (http://www.blueportjazz.com/), he said that the hardest instrument to accurately capture "live" was the vibraphone (vibes have metal bars instead of wooden bars and have a 'cleaner' sound). The piano was easy in comparison.

Ain't that the truth... I did a location recording at Meydenbauer Ctr. of Susan Pascal and Ben Thomas. That was a nightmare with levels and such.

 

[garylkoh]

I agree with you the piano is difficult, but there is one big difficulty in using this instrument to assert systems - the sound taking techniques affect the recording very strongly and vary a lot. Sometimes this can be misleading. Also different pianos are not alike in character, and the sonority is affected by the player technique.

I definitely agree. Even on the same piano with the same mikes, two players will sound different. I think that having heard performances live, and having heard the recordings of the performance, we know how far from the "truth" recordings can be. Nevertheless, the question was what instrument is most challenging for loudspeakers to make sound real - and in my view, it's the piano for several reasons:

1. A range of seven octaves - one of the widest of any instrument (the vibraphone has a 4-octave range)
2. Transients that can be percussive or damped are hard to reproduce accurately (shows the technique of the pianist)
3. Harmonics - one of the richest of all instruments (because of multiple strings per note as a coupled oscillator)

As I am not biased I will say some of the best piano I heard was on a ESL63. If you want a good test CD try Stravinsky Petrushka played by Maurizio Pollini DG 447431-2.

Thanks, microstrip. Glad to see that you're still here! Do you mean this one?

 

[garylkoh]

The more I think about it... the best piano representation I've heard came from a pair of Maggie MG20.1 speakers.

With massive amounts of power, there is nothing like a pair of MG20.1's to reproduce the scale and majesty of a grand piano may be except for a pair of G2's or G1's.

 

[fas42]

There are a number: the human voice is probably key because there are easy live references for that, also piano, vibes, violin, crash cymbals, massed brass.

The second question IMO is quite irrelevant; the answer is the system and its setup. The "best" speaker in the world connected to a system with weaknesses will be dramatically inferior to a properly tweaked junk speaker hooked up to a replay system which has been completely sorted out, as far as the ear is concerned. Yes, the latter will probably have frequency response deficiencies, etc, but from the point of view of the listening experience, there will be no comparison ...

Frank

 

[DonH50]

1. I would say piano due to its combination of percussive strike and rich overtone series (it is not a purely harmonic series). The net sound spans a very large dynamically and frequency-wise with very complex waveshape. Vibes, I would not think they are as bad, but then again am not sure I have recorded them much (and always aasa part of a larger group).

2. Good impulse/square wave response is required, a characteristic of planars like 'stats and Maggies as well as some of the best conventional dynamic speakers. The whole "time alignment" deal came about partly because of that... B&W did a lot of work to provide proper time alignment, as did companies/folk like Dahlquist and DCM.

 

[ack]

Piano is difficult, but the hardest, in my experience, is the xylophone

How about the pipe organ?

(first post with the ipad2!!!!!!)

 

[DonH50]

Pipe organ requires a god bit of dynamic range, and of course the biggest require extended frequency range deep into the bass, but lacks the hard percussive impact of piano and the mallet family.

As far as mic'ing goes, a trap set is about the toughest, as it often requires a number of mics of different types carefully placed to capture all the sound...

All imo - Don

 

[tony ky ma]

Is it the piano, the cello, the bass, or something else?

And what speaker, in your opinion, does the best job of making that instrument sound real?

SET amp+ electric static speaker for strings instrument, add sub also good for piano
Metal horn (mid and high) good for brass and pipe or metal percussion and wood horn for wood percussion too
Big wood horn in low frequency is good for pipe organ and drums

 

[Gregadd]

It makes sense that the piano would be difficult. It so easily overloads a room. The most difficult challenge is a symphony orchestra.
Planar speakers tend to handle pianos, percussion, voices,strings, trumpets and saxophones very well.

As the Basspig will tel you bass is remains the ultimate challenge.