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Old vinyl vs today's technology

this is fabulously preposterously easy to recreate with plug ins in the digital domain .

When I watch live music performed the stage is generally much wider than 3m. So to my mind having a "soundstage" that attempts to portray that is simply being accurate. Not an added effect. I have 487 LP's & 304 CD's. If it is so easy to reproduce a soundstage that reflects the original performance then why did this LP stand out.
I obviously understand that on a studio produced track on track on track, any soundstage would be fake but on a live recording ? Where is it on Diana Krall's Night in Paris ? Presumably they had all the technology you mention at their disposal but I just don't "see" her on stage, or if I do it's through a gap in the curtains.

ps. I see lots & lots of speaker reviews that mention "too forward" or "a deep soundstage" so perhaps it's just me missing the point. Is a wide soundstage really not very important, or realistic ?
 
Last week I went to the Proms and sat in a box at the side, so the 'left' side of the orchestra, (e.g. violins) was much closer to me than the bass strings and I was almost looking across the orchestra from the side. Any hifi which produced the 'soundstage' I heard would be condemned beyond hope in any hifi review. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

Soundstage is musically irrelevant. If it weren't, composers would include soundstage notation in their scores, and nobody would stand or sit at the sides at a concert. It's a gimmick, a perfect irrelevance to the job of hifi, which is to reproduce music. People who care about soundstage should take up another hobby, because they clearly don't understood the point of music.

Discuss. ;-)
 
Completely agree. Set up a small jazz band or string quartet in your living room. Listen to them from outside the room. Now ask them to move about & play again. Do they sound any less real for having moved?

Stereo is a contrivance which might help with the illusion and if captured on the recording, then ideally it should be replayed. But judging a system or component using soundstage or stereo imagery as the yardstick is missing the point.
 
........and people who name themselves after a product which epitomises gulability should not be so condescending ;)
 
Completely agree. Set up a small jazz band or string quartet in your living room. Listen to them from outside the room. Now ask them to move about & play again. Do they sound any less real for having moved?

Stereo is a contrivance which might help with the illusion and if captured on the recording, then ideally it should be replayed. But judging a system or component using soundstage or stereo imagery as the yardstick is missing the point.

maybe missing the point here, and do appreciate sondek's points in previous post but... what does the above prove in terms of a live performance other than what it sounds like to hear one diffusely from outside the acoustic environment in which it directly occurs ... ?
we do have 2 ears after all - and the OP was talking specifically about a copy of what I took to be a 'classic' jazz recording made live, skillfully, in just such an acoustic space.

isn't it pretty much BS to assert that in terms of the hifi experience of recorded music (which anyone on these boards is interested in presumably) 'soundstage' is irrelevant?
to conflate another post by the OP with Fox's above, the inverse (converse?) of this holds too, doesn't it: that studio 'contrivances' can indeed be given a soundstage, both at time of production and subsequently then through the 'effect' of one's hifi.
And that this is certainly 'important' in the resulting enjoyment of the music ... ?
 
Soundstage is musically irrelevant. If it weren't, composers would include soundstage notation in their scores, and nobody would stand or sit at the sides at a concert. It's a gimmick, a perfect irrelevance to the job of hifi, which is to reproduce music. People who care about soundstage should take up another hobby, because they clearly don't understood the point of music.

Discuss. ;-)

More pointless absolutist taunting in the audio room. I don't know why I bother with pfm any more but I have a spare 5 minutes, so here goes. The music that you refer to was probably written long before audio reproduction existed (yes?, no?). If so, such concerns would be largely irrelevant. Besides any composition could conceivably contain exactly such an instruction if it were the composers intention to organise the music in that way. Although the majority of modern pop is effectively mono, many early stereo recordings employed extreme stereo panning with the express intention of manipulating the soundstage (David Axelrod's recordings for Columbia spring to mind) and this is clearly a deliberate and intentional part of the music. This applies equally to modern live performance. A recent example being a show I attended by Cluster where the finale involved a series of loud pops with distinct decay patterns, each positioned at a different point in space, like auditory fireworks. The soundsatge was as much part of the music as the sounds themselves. The score isn't the music. Music occupies an auditory scene and has both temporal and spatial dimensions.
 
I find a convincing soundstage makes the sound more like real performers, making real music. I like it. Don't give a damn if it is actually there on the recording or an artefact.

Nic P
 
Sondek,

could I seek some advise please. I have a very varied taste in music but have struggled to find my way into classical music. 2 out of every 3 LP's I pick up from charity shops seem a bit inaccessible to me.
I like Grieg's Death of Aase, the Planets Suite, some Sibelius, cello music, some Opera. I don't like Elgar, Tchaikovsky.

So it would seem I prefer something with a melody. If you get a minute could you list a few composers that possibly fit the bill.

thanks
Hugh.

Grab these whilst you can. I bought the complete set when it came out every two weeks years ago.

http://treesureisland.co.uk/acatalog/The_Great_Composers___Their_Music.html

Something for everyone.

Cheers,

DV
 
Just to be clear, I think soundstage can be captured from a real performance and replayed. All I said is the impression of soundstage can be enhanced artificially.

I have heard nice three dimensional soundstages (yes including height!) and it's great. Apart from the recording itself obviously, the room plays a very important part in this...a large wide, tall room will tend to help imaging IME. (Sadly my room is relatively narrow; it's no coincidence that I've heard the same equipment cast better soundstages elsewhere.)
Darren
 
could I seek some advise please. I have a very varied taste in music but have struggled to find my way into classical music. 2 out of every 3 LP's I pick up from charity shops seem a bit inaccessible to me.
I like Grieg's Death of Aase, the Planets Suite, some Sibelius, cello music, some Opera. I don't like Elgar, Tchaikovsky.

So it would seem I prefer something with a melody. If you get a minute could you list a few composers that possibly fit the bill.

thanks
Hugh.

I don't like Elgar much either - except for Ms du Pre playing his Cello Concerto. (No-one has ever raped a cello quite like Jacqui did! :D ) From what you've said, I suggest you shouldn't go near Mahler, Wagner or Bruckner, either.

Some opera ... and something with a melody ... OK. Have you tried Baroque music - say, Bach's double violin concerto ... or his Cello Suites? Vivaldi's "Gloria" ... Pergolesi's "Magnificat"?

Or for something 300 or so years later ... Glass's soundtrack to the Paul Schrader film "Mishima" or his violin concerto? Or his opera "Akhnaten" or Michael Nyman's soundtrack to the Peter Greenaway film, "The Draughtsman's Contract".

Good luck,

Andy
 
If I record my turntable digitally the replay sounds exactly like the TT - to the point where they cannot be separated. I seriously doubt that if I took the output from a CD player and used to to produce a vinyl record, the replay would sound identical to the CD.

Hi Rob,

What do you use to digitally record the output from your turntable?

Regards,

Mus
 
........and people who name themselves after a product which epitomises gulability should not be so condescending ;)

There are two d's in the middle of my user name, as in 'Direct Drive'. It was supposed to be subversive. Never mind.

There are also two L's in 'gullibility', although 'credulity' sounds better. Condescending? Moi?
 
Hi Rob,

What do you use to digitally record the output from your turntable?

Regards,

Mus

I use a Pioneer PD609 CD recorder (which has a great AtoD) and cannot distinguish a high end turntable (Roksan/Xerxes/Koetsu/TEAD Groove when played back through a TEAD Eikos.

Nic P
 
Thanks, Nic, that's really interesting. It also partially addresses what was to be my next question i.e. is it worth digitising at 24/96 24/192. Does the Pioneer break up the tracks or record an entire side at a time? Do you bother much with vinyl or do you listen to digitised records?

Regards,

Mus
 


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