GMG and classical music collection - the conflict

[71 dB]

The best sounding recording I have ever heard was recorded in 1954... Fiedler's Gaetie Parisienne on Living Stereo. It sounds better than many recordings that were made much later. I've also heard mono recordings that were strikingly lifelike and dimensional. It's more a matter of the miking and mixing than it is the recording format.

This? Unfortunately the programming seems uninteresting to me. Not into Offenbach nor Rossini at all.

[asin]B0006PV5VW[/asin]

How do you define "best sounding"? Pleases your ears the most? Has lowest distortion? Lowest noise floor? Mono sound can be good, but I have yet to hear one that I can call lifelike or dimensional. Mono recordings also tend to suffer from high noise floor, poor frequency respond and distortion as they are old.

In fact I am developping as a hobby "better" mono sound I call "vivid mono". It has to do with how mono sound is downmixed from stereo sound. Normal stereo to mono mixing destroys differential information of stereo sound. Vivid mono tries to code it along. Vivid mono could be somewhat beneficial in cellphone ringtones as they are monophonic, but usually stereophonic sounds originally.

Microphone placement and mixing are very important, but there is no reason why old recordings should do this better than newer ones.

That said, I am using speakers with a 5.1 system and pretty sophisticated DSPs to play these recordings back. A good surround system will make anything sound better than just two channels in headphones.

How do you play mono on 5.1 system?

Headphones can produce phenomenal sound if you use proper crossfeeding. Of course, 5.1 system can give stunning results too.

[otare]

"Best sounding" to me means most lifelike - most like the sound you hear in a concert hall. It has not to do with distortion as such. Vinyl buffs say that vinyl sounds better than CDs. That is not because there is less distortion, but that the distortion introduced by the equipment is more pleasing to the ear. The same is true for tube amps - the distort more, but the distortion is more agreeable to the ear.

And of course there are reasons why they could spend more time with microphone placement in old recordings. They didn't have the equipment to "fix" mistakes in the mixing stage. They had to get things right from the beginning. And the cost of this was not necessarily prohibiting. As far as I have read, in the Mercury recordings they actually hired an orchestra and a hall, and the orchestra played the piece while the engineers worked with the microphone placement until they were satisfied. When the recordings were done it all went directly to tape without a mixing board at all. Something you could never do today.

But this is getting very OT.

[Henk]

Just don't grab.

[71 dB]

"Best sounding" to me means most lifelike - most like the sound you hear in a concert hall.

Thanks for clearing that up.

It has not to do with distortion as such. Vinyl buffs say that vinyl sounds better than CDs. That is not because there is less distortion, but that the distortion introduced by the equipment is more pleasing to the ear. The same is true for tube amps - the distort more, but the distortion is more agreeable to the ear.

One needs to use the correct terms: Vinyls may sound better to a person (with certain preferences), but techically CD is superior, because it introduces hardly any changes to the original recorded sound. The distortion of vinyl and tube amps is not present in a concert hall, so we can conclude that CD gives better changes of "lifelike" sound than vinyl / tube amp regardless of how "good" it sound.

As an acoustic engineer I often tell people that good sound quality means the beauty and ugliness , warmth and coldness of the sound is presented precisely and equally. Tube amps can't produce totally distortion-free sounds, so the timbral "space" of tube amps is smaller than that of a distortion-free (meaning the distortion is so small nobody can hear it) amp.

And of course there are reasons why they could spend more time with microphone placement in old recordings.

This is not obvious to me. It's not time spend, but craftmanship.

Let's compare two recordings of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius. The Barbirolli (1964) I mention earlier and Elder (2008).

Okay, it might be recording engineer spend more time with Barbirolli. However Barbirolli contains hiss, slight distortion and spectral colourization (I think it's the microphones). Elder is just very pure. The problems of Barbirolli makes it LESS lifelike compared to Elder. This is a technical comparison, the artistic quality of these performances is another issue.

They didn't have the equipment to "fix" mistakes in the mixing stage. They had to get things right from the beginning. And the cost of this was not necessarily prohibiting. As far as I have read, in the Mercury recordings they actually hired an orchestra and a hall, and the orchestra played the piece while the engineers worked with the microphone placement until they were satisfied. When the recordings were done it all went directly to tape without a mixing board at all. Something you could never do today.

Well, if you can fix mistakes, then you can make mistakes, can't you? In reality it isn't easy at all to correct such mistakes. What the engineer learned in the past is knowledge available for engineer today. Microphones have developped as well and it is easier today to get a good result than back in the 50's.

I just wonder. Do you really find all recordings after 1970 crap?

[otare]

No, I don't. There are lots of good recordings made after 1970.  And there are lots of bad recordings made before 1970. I just don't make sweeping generalizations, like not buying recordings pre-1970 because they are all bad. I have no problems in believing that the Barbirolli Gerontius recording from 1964 does not have good sound.

[Ken B]

This? Unfortunately the programming seems uninteresting to me. Not into Offenbach nor Rossini at all.

[asin]B0006PV5VW[/asin]

How do you define "best sounding"? Pleases your ears the most? Has lowest distortion? Lowest noise floor? Mono sound can be good, but I have yet to hear one that I can call lifelike or dimensional. Mono recordings also tend to suffer from high noise floor, poor frequency respond and distortion as they are old.

In fact I am developping as a hobby "better" mono sound I call "vivid mono". It has to do with how mono sound is downmixed from stereo sound. Normal stereo to mono mixing destroys differential information of stereo sound. Vivid mono tries to code it along. Vivid mono could be somewhat beneficial in cellphone ringtones as they are monophonic, but usually stereophonic sounds originally.

Microphone placement and mixing are very important, but there is no reason why old recordings should do this better than newer ones.
How do you play mono on 5.1 system?

Headphones can produce phenomenal sound if you use proper crossfeeding. Of course, 5.1 system can give stunning results too.

dB71,
I don't understand why crossfeed would matter in mono. Isn't it the same signal everywhere?

[71 dB]

dB71,
I don't understand why crossfeed would matter in mono. Isn't it the same signal everywhere?

Yes, crossfeed is meaningless with mono. Crossfeed is used to remove spatial distortion. Mono sound and some rare stereophonic recordings don't contain spatial distortion (mono sound doesn't contain spatial left-right information at all), so there is no reason to use crossfeed with them. I mean crossfeed of 2 or more channels. Properly crossfed stereo or downmixed multichannel recordings can sound spectacular with headphones because the acoustics of the listening room doesn't deteriorate the sound quality.

Likewise, using a 5.1 speaker system for mono sound is a bad idea. All you get is a badly comb-filtered sound. In a hometheatre setup the "correct" way to play mono sound is to use center speaker (+subwoofer) only. In many cases people have an "inferior" center speaker and playing the mono sound using left and right speakers may give better result despite of the comb-filter effects. Center speaker is the most important speaker in a multichannel setup, something people don't realise. Three identical front speakers is recommended.

Stereo recordings may (or may not) sound good decoded into multichannel form. It depends on how the recording was made, what kind of spatial information it contains encoded into 2 channels. There are various algoritms of stereo to multichannel encoding available in AV amps (Dolby Pro Logic, DTS Neo:6, NAD's EARS etc.). One algorithm may work best for certain recording but perhaps not for the next. Playing stereo sound always on stereo pair of speakers is always the save way, nothing goes wrong.

[Ken B]

Yes, crossfeed is meaningless with mono. Crossfeed is used to remove spatial distortion. Mono sound and some rare stereophonic recordings don't contain spatial distortion (mono sound doesn't contain spatial left-right information at all), so there is no reason to use crossfeed with them. I mean crossfeed of 2 or more channels. Properly crossfed stereo or downmixed multichannel recordings can sound spectacular with headphones because the acoustics of the listening room doesn't deteriorate the sound quality.

Likewise, using a 5.1 speaker system for mono sound is a bad idea. All you get is a badly comb-filtered sound. In a hometheatre setup the "correct" way to play mono sound is to use center speaker (+subwoofer) only. In many cases people have an "inferior" center speaker and playing the mono sound using left and right speakers may give better result despite of the comb-filter effects. Center speaker is the most important speaker in a multichannel setup, something people don't realise. Three identical front speakers is recommended.

Stereo recordings may (or may not) sound good decoded into multichannel form. It depends on how the recording was made, what kind of spatial information it contains encoded into 2 channels. There are various algoritms of stereo to multichannel encoding available in AV amps (Dolby Pro Logic, DTS Neo:6, NAD's EARS etc.). One algorithm may work best for certain recording but perhaps not for the next. Playing stereo sound always on stereo pair of speakers is always the save way, nothing goes wrong.

Thanks.

Yes, I only use two speakers and two channels.

[Florestan]

Not necessarily. Ives' music existed and was possessed of genius long before any one listened to it. By the time people listened to it, his composing career had been over for decades.

Schubert as well!

[Florestan]

Hmm, that puts reading a book in a new perspective. Ha ha! So reading a book is different compared to reading music per your definition?

Of course it is! Unless one has perfect pitch, reading a score gives one no clue whatsoever about the music itself. 

[PaulR]

Of course it is! Unless one has perfect pitch, reading a score gives one no clue whatsoever about the music itself. 

I disagree with reading a score by itself gives no clue about the music itself.  If you know how to read a score and have some background with music theory (more of analyzing the score), it would be optimal to have the score while the music is playing.  But just analyzing the score without music can give you information about the music itself. The form/structure of the piece (or movement),the basics of the piece (Time signature/instrumentation/key signatures)...

[PaulR]

Beethoven must have imagined how his music sounds when it is played while composing. The sounds are at least loosely determined: "violin-like sound here, flute-like sound there etc." In my opinion music exists only as sounds. The bits on a CD are information, not music. Only when the CD is played and sounds emerge from the loudspeakers/headphones the information becames music. Same with scores. Notes on paper are not music. They are information* coded as notes. When an orchestra plays the score the information becames music. This is what I think and will always think no matter what others say.

*This information can be and often is considered art, but that doesn't make it music any more than the Mona Lisa painting.

I disagree with the notion that music has to be heard/played in order for it to 'become' music (whatever that means).  I think it is important to distinguish the 'information' (as you would put it) part of the piece and the performance part of the piece.  For me the music itself is in the score. The music does NOT have to be audible.  All the important information is already inside the score (assuming it is all written out and not aleatoric/chance music) if you know how to read it. 

[Florestan]

I disagree with reading a score by itself gives no clue about the music itself.  If you know how to read a score and have some background with music theory

And what if you don´t?

[PaulR]

And what if you don´t?

Then you simply don't know how to find the information.  That doesn't mean it is not there and reading a score by itself can't tell you anything.s

[Florestan]

Then you simply don't know how to find the information.  That doesn't mean it is not there and reading a score by itself can't tell you anything.s

Yes, but it´s very different from reading a book, which was my original point. Reading Cervantes´ Don Quijote and reading the score of Strauss´ Don Quijote are two quite different things.

[PaulR]

Yes, but it´s very different from reading a book, which was my original point. Reading Cervantes´ Don Quijote and reading the score of Strauss´ Don Quijote are two quite different things.

No arguments there.

[Mandryka]

I disagree with the notion that music has to be heard/played in order for it to 'become' music (whatever that means).  I think it is important to distinguish the 'information' (as you would put it) part of the piece and the performance part of the piece.  For me the music itself is in the score. The music does NOT have to be audible.  All the important information is already inside the score (assuming it is all written out and not aleatoric/chance music) if you know how to read it.

How are you deciding what information is important and what isn't?

Which scores are all written out?

[71 dB]

I disagree with the notion that music has to be heard/played in order for it to 'become' music (whatever that means).  I think it is important to distinguish the 'information' (as you would put it) part of the piece and the performance part of the piece.  For me the music itself is in the score. The music does NOT have to be audible.  All the important information is already inside the score (assuming it is all written out and not aleatoric/chance music) if you know how to read it.

You're entitled to disagree of course. What about improvisation? Does jazz music exist to you? You don't find jazz scores. Most of computer music has no scores in the traditional sense: The music is "programmed" and nobody is that interested of the programming. So, I'd say your definition of "music" works only for music such as classical music that uses scores. My definition works for any music as long as it is played as sounds.

[Jo498]

"Information" does not have a frequency, neither has it intensity/amplitude nor duration. I refuse to accept anything as music that is not physical sound. A recipe might have all information for the cake, but it is neither identical to the activity of preparing and baking the cake nor to the cake itself. As can be easily tested by tasting the cookbook page with the recipe printed on it...
But this is not really the topic of this thread...

[PaulR]

You're entitled to disagree of course. What about improvisation? Does jazz music exist to you? You don't find jazz scores. Most of computer music has no scores in the traditional sense: The music is "programmed" and nobody is that interested of the programming. So, I'd say your definition of "music" works only for music such as classical music that uses scores. My definition works for any music as long as it is played as sounds.

Seeing how this is a predominately classical music forum (And even in your original post/title it mentions classical music), yes, I am talking about classical music.  And no, I never stated that I believe Jazz music does not exist.  I am, by no means, an expert in Jazz, but there are still "score-like" things like the "real book."  Obviously, they aren't going as extensive as a classical score, but (to my knowledge, not a jazz musician) they still have information like what chord and configuration is expected to sound. 

But I never stated that music HAS to have a score.  I might have not fully articulated my point, improvisation is music, free improv or improvisation within a specific set of guidelines/expectation (like figured bass, cadenza's in concertos that aren't fully written out.)  My point was more of when there WAS a score, rather than when there wasn't.