The Classical Chat Thread

[North Star]

If you're doing these for others, Greg, and taking requests, I'll have Britten Santa.

[TheGSMoeller]

If you're doing these for others, Greg, and taking requests, I'll have Britten Santa.

I did a bunch last year, I'll get you a Britten Santa!

[North Star]

I did a bunch last year, I'll get you a Britten Santa!

Thanks!
Yes, I remember, I had Sibelius then. And apparently I didn't save it on my PC. 

[North Star]

Yippee!

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.

[jochanaan]

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Claus?  Love it! 

[North Star]

100 € / kg

[71 dB]

I think I have lost all my interest to discuss and argue about classical music.    I want to listen to classical music (and all other music for that matter) on my own terms.

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Finally I finished the "deluxe" headphone adapter I have been planning to construct for months. Headphone adapters are connected to the speaker output terminals of an audio amplifier to attenuate the signal about 30-40 dB for headphones. Headphone adapters are passive headphone amplifiers Benefits:

- Low output impedance meaning high damping factor (the headphone outputs of audio amplifiers have too high impedance).
- Possibility to shape the signal more suitable for headphone listening (e.g. crossfeeding)
- inexpensive to make if you have the skills.

The effective output impedance of my new headphone adapter is 1 ohm. That's comparable to quality headphone amplifiers.  With Sennheiser HD 598 headphones the damping factor is 60, much higher than the recommendation of 8 or more. Higher damping factor means tighter and cleaner distortion free sound.

Almost all stereophonic recordings are produced for loudspeakers. They have wide "superstereo" sound because of acoustical crossfeeding that happens because both ears hear sound from both loudspeakers. Room acoustics futher blends the audio channel information. When listening with headphones this stereo image narrowing doesn't happen and the resulting sound is tiresome and unnatural. Sounds are located near ears on the left and right side of the head rather that in front of the listener where they usually belong. Stereo image is also tangled because  psycoacoustic cues of the sound are too strong. This is called spatial distortion. How to get rid of it? Well, (electrical) crossfeeding is the obvious answer since lack of it gave us this problem in the first place!

My new headphone adapter has no less than 6 crossfeed levels to accommodate with different kind of recordings from mild -9.9 dB up to pretty strong -1.1 dB. Frequencies below 800 Hz are crossfeeded to the other channel at these levels delayed by about 250 µs to simulate the longer distance to the ear. Most headphone amplifiers on the market do not have crossfeeding and those models that have it give only one or two options for the level. Crossfeeding is extremely important because spatial distortion is nowadays the biggest problem of headphone listening, people just don't realise that and are happy with the unreal and tiresome superstereo sound optimized for loudspeakers.

My new headphone adapter has also mono and "blurred mono" options for problematic soundtracks. Works well with Youtube where stereophonic sound is often f*cked up. When people upload videos of themselves speaking about something, they should acquiesce to mono sound. "Blurred mono" is near-mono. It preserves a small part of channel separation. 

[Karl Henning]

I think I have lost all my interest to discuss and argue about classical music.

What use is a forum to you, or you to a forum, then?

[71 dB]

What use is a forum to you, or you to a forum, then?

95 % of my message was about my new headphone adapter. This forum provided a place to post it. I don't know if anyone gets anything out of it.

[TheGSMoeller]

The Hurwitzer naming a few CDs that he collected while in hell...

.

[kishnevi]

I'm not sure the performance is worthy of eternal perdition,  but I tend to agree with him about that Bruckner recording....agree enough, at least, that I haven't thought it worth listening to for several years now....

[Karl Henning]

A big chuckle to close out the year, I am lovin' this:

"Give up on Beethoven .. You've got Stockhausen now." -Miles Davis
STOCKHAUSEN PERFORMANCES
(will be updated regularly)
*rolls eyes* - Metal Dave

[mn dave]

I bought that honkin' huge Rubinstein box and have barely touched its millions of CDs. 

[Karl Henning]

I bought that honkin' huge Rubinstein box and have barely touched its millions of CDs. 

I nose a resolution for 2014!

[mn dave]

I nose a resolution for 2014!

Yeah, man. There are a couple Haydn boxes I've barely touched as well.

[North Star]

I have taken a couple of breaks - one has to eat, too..

37 hours or so of Britten at one sitting could be a challenge for some.

[Karl Henning]

I clicked. And I'm glad, I tell you.

[Brian]

I just got notified that Jose Serebrier is following me on Twitter. I feel really weird now.

[TheGSMoeller]

Mega Media knows how to bargain...

[Brian]

Daniele Gatti has canceled two months of work for health reasons.


@Greg - that's hilarious.