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How often do you hear music performed, acoustic or amplified

herb said:
I am tempted to go mono for my last system. I shall put this to the dealers if that happens, though I may be in for a fight.:D
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I am intrigued by this idea. I think it deserves a thread of it's own.

I have enjoyed 'generations' of large mono radios in our kitchen going back decades (Hacker, B&o, Roberts, Ruark ...) and would be interested in how to achieve a larger scale and higher quality - but still mono - sound with one channel (not just a stereo system with a mono button switched on).
 
About 150 per year, including theatre, cinema on top. Mostly Wigmore Hall, Sadlers Wells, Royal Opera House. I don't consider audio a substitute for live performance, if we had the time and the money we'd go every night, but we don't have enough of either.
 
MONO was ok in the Kay Starr and single vocalist days, in fact can sound very very good but switch out the stereo on any orchestral music and it goes flat and lifeless?
 
Unless my own acoustic guitar fumbling counts, then hardly ever. Probably one live gig in the last 10 years or so.
 
FWIW the sound at smaller venues is frequently mixed in mono simply because most of the audience aren't ideally placed between the speakers. The two (or more) speakers are there mainly to provide even coverage through the venue in terms of amplitude and frequency.

I'm not sure how useful the comparison between home audio and live performance is. The two are quite different in a lot of ways.
 
Tony L said:
- I find much modern kit far too bright, hyped-up and forward, listening to live classical just makes me all the more convinced the vintage Quad/BBC/Tannoy balance is the right one for me.
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MY B.I.L. rehearses in his music room with his band playing 60s Shadows and CCR covers and I need ear plugs to survive the volume for long.

I think modern HiFi has a loudness treble boost built in - it just cannot achieve the volume of a live band. The bass is less boosted as that wouldn't work with a 6" mid bass in a skinny cabinet
 
paulfromcamden said:
FWIW the sound at smaller venues is frequently mixed in mono simply because most of the audience aren't ideally placed between the speakers. The two (or more) speakers are there mainly to provide even coverage through the venue in terms of amplitude and frequency.

I'm not sure how useful the comparison between home audio and live performance is. The two are quite different in a lot of ways.
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jon l said:
Seconded, and not just because of the sound quality.
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So that is you two out.
 
chebby said:
I have enjoyed 'generations' of large mono radios in our kitchen going back decades (Hacker, B&o, Roberts, Ruark ...) and would be interested in how to achieve a larger scale and higher quality - but still mono - sound with one channel (not just a stereo system with a mono button switched on).
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I have a Meridian F80 box which has a variable stereo width option. It has a good old fashioned valve radio sound, but punchy. Perhaps my slowly failing right ear is causing problems with conventional stereo but maybe a single big speaker would be attractive, like it was with radiograms back in the 1950s. I'm thinking single Quad ESL for instance?
 
If I was going mono I'd go absolutely huge corner horn/corner speaker influenced by Gilbert Briggs. I'd make it part of the room, part of the physical structure of the house! Maybe something built out of brick with a 15" Tannoy. Plenty of interesting designs in Briggs' excellent 'Loudspeakers' book of the late-50s/early '60s that would still work beautifully today. I'd definitely want huge to get a lifelike scale, heft and dynamic range out of a single channel. The way to really do this is something like a vintage Western Electric cinema horn, but they cost an absolute fortune and have almost all migrated to Japan by now!
 
Dougie2404 said:
I don't think that you can shout about your system if you really don't know what "live" music sounds like. You only know you like it but not whether it's realistic.
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Surely that only applies if you listen exclusively to live and/or 'direct-to-disc' recordings? The only way to know whether your system realistically reproduces studio recordings is to have been present at the recording sessions. (Personally I'm happy to stick with 'I like it, therefore it's good').
 
I go to modern jazz gigs at least weekly - more often depending what’s on. It’s a 46 mile round trip to get there, but worth the effort.

Classical (orchestral) - nothing last season, but a couple of concerts in each of the previous two. I’m intending to pick up on these again in the coming season (from October).

Folk - I’ve been to a few Cambridge festivals over the years, the last five between 2009-2014. Not planning to do any more, for a couple of reasons, one of which is that although it’s always been a broad church, I’m now quite turned off by who they include in the line-up in a festival that’s supposed to have its roots in folk. I still watch out for one-off folk gigs, e.g. 2 last year, but none since (other than an evening of floor spots).

Rock - not for me any more. As Tony L says, too loud and wanting to preserve what’s left of my hearing. In 1980, I had a backstage entry to a gig from one of the road crew (a relation) and standing to the side, off-stage, with my left ear to a stage monitor (part of the sound mixing) I incurred hearing damage. Afterwards hearing slightly off in that ear and I now have tinnitus (mostly I can block it out). Should have got the hell out of there, but being young/daft and seeing for the first (and only) time a band performance a few yards away from the side of the stage, I stuck it out to the end.

Other - one-offs e.g. Gryphon (out of nostalgia!) last year, and Mor Kabasi this year. A friend and I keep an eye open for anything of interest - he goes to more of these than me.
 
Tony L said:
If I was going mono I'd go absolutely huge corner horn/corner speaker influenced by Gilbert Briggs. I'd make it part of the room, part of the physical structure of the house! Maybe something built out of brick with a 15" Tannoy. Plenty of interesting designs in Briggs' excellent 'Loudspeakers' book of the late-50s/early '60s that would still work beautifully today. I'd definitely want huge to get a lifelike scale, heft and dynamic range out of a single channel. The way to really do this is something like a vintage Western Electric cinema horn, but they cost an absolute fortune and have almost all migrated to Japan by now!
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I have a - lately redundant - Pro-ject Tuner Box S (FM only) languishing in it's box and was thinking of finding a nice, second-hand, sealed cabinet, single speaker (often found on ebay) and marrying it up with a small Pro-ject Box series mono power amp. The problem would seem to be finding an equally small pre-amp/volume control that would accept 2 x RCA phono stereo inputs and output mono.

My Ruark R1 (mono) kitchen radio will accept an external 3.5mm (stereo) source and play it fine. I just want to scale that up a notch or two.

Sorry to semi hijack the thread by running away with the mono theme that was introduced earlier.
 
Tony L said:
If I was going mono I'd go absolutely huge corner horn/corner speaker influenced by Gilbert Briggs. I'd make it part of the room, part of the physical structure of the house! Maybe something built out of brick with a 15" Tannoy.....

I'd definitely want huge to get a lifelike scale, heft and dynamic range out of a single channel.
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Thanks Tony, exactly what I was thinking of :) I sat in front of a big Tannoy in a theatre a few years ago and was quite impressed by the sound.
 
TBH, not often enough - local has bands Saturday nights doing covers, heard a few concerts/rehearsals in churches but don't go to classical concerts enough these days.
Pop music usually sounds worse live but the atmosphere makes up for that but classical music always sounds far better live.
 
most days...wifey and I both play instruments, then we go to 4 or 5 concerts a year...biggy stuff,
then we go to local pubs and clubs a fair bit.
None of which is much relevance to my HiFi which despite swallowing huge wads of my cash, sounds like none of it. I blame the recordings.
Or the acoustic.
Among the things I blame, are the recording, the acoustic and the kit.
 
I go to maybe 20+ live gigs a year, mostly jazz, rarely if ever rock. Plus a good handful of classical, from large scale orchestral in the Bridgewater Hall, to acapella sacred music in a cathedral. I'd go to more, but funds, time and the rest of real life intrudes.

The hifi rarely gets close, but is still a very satisfying, sometimes exhilerating, experience in my living room.

Somebody upthread mentioned that they only go to concerts that reflect their personal tastes. The one thing my hifi has done for me is to broaden the range of music I can listen to, way beyond what I'd hear if live music was my only option. It also brings me the genius of musicians long gone, who I'll never get to hear other than on a recording.
 
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