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Hi-fi cannot compete with reality

M

marshanp

ellipsis addict
At least, not if you like the kind of large-scale orchestral music that is meat and drink to me...

Last night at Symphony Hall, Birmingham: Barber's First Symphony. Wow! The sheer cumulative power of it!

Music at home can be very satisfying... occasionally transcendent... but if it's Ultimate Wallop you want, go live :)
 
Interesting points, however on balance, there are some fine recordings which may be played again and again.

The ones I'm thinking of are Records- oldest being pressed in 1954- which were passed to me by my Grandfather.

These are what got me into Classical music in the first place.

I guess it's different strokes for different folks.
 
Large-scale orchestral music is best enjoyed in-person, nothing can quite rival the sheer visceral thrill of a great orchestra and conductor with a real passion for the piece they are playing - but a good hifi system with decent-sized loudspeakers can do a very satisfying job of portraying it, too.

Cast the net more widely to include all musical genres, and the same generalisation remains broadly true, but by no means always - I've been to some dismal concerts, in some dismal venues, to see off-form or going-through-the-motions acts - or good ones having their efforts wrecked by a bad sound engineer or crappy PA; some acts should never leave confines of a studio IME! That end of the scale is very readily beaten by a good hifi system!

Beer's cheaper too...
 
marshanp said:
At least, not if you like the kind of large-scale orchestral music that is meat and drink to me...

Last night at Symphony Hall, Birmingham: Barber's First Symphony. Wow! The sheer cumulative power of it!

Music at home can be very satisfying... occasionally transcendent... but if it's Ultimate Wallop you want, go live :)
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In a good seat in a good hall, then yes, you're right. But I've had some wallopless experiences in the cheap seats.
 
I really enjoy my in-house symphonic orchestra produced by the naim gear. It has lots of power too :)
 
Both Hall and Home can be wonderful - but it is never the same experience. Home never has the ambience. Home never has the same visceral power when stuff gets loud. Home never quite works on the very quiet bits either.

Those of us close enough to Birmingham for an evening are very lucky - I am a train ride away with a brisk walk to Snow Hill before the train back to Kidderminster. I ought to make more use of it!

I was in the audience on the 2nd night of opening, having been a town hall regular before that. Kids got in the way - but looming retirement will make more trips very likely.
 
I’d agree nothing can match a good orchestra in full swing on large-scale Mahler, Bruckner symphonies etc, but I’d far prefer to hear a string quartet, string trio, solo piano, violin, cello etc via a good hi-fi than in a full concert hall. That stuff is called chamber music for very good reason; it needs to be performed in an intimate space. My favourite live chamber experiences have been at the RNCM front row centre in their smaller side room (can’t remember the name), that can be wonderful. I really struggle with chamber music even in a good seat towards the front in a full-sized concert hall. The massive acoustic is all wrong, the players are too far away, and the audience is always too noisy.
 
I've had two outstanding experiences of live chamber music - which I agree is very well served by a decent system.

One was in the small ballroom of the Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury. What a wonderful acoustic for a string quartet! I was sat toward the back of the audience, and it was still a sound more powerful than you could credit coming from four string instruments.

The other was in an Oxford college chapel, (Hertford, I think) where the attendees of a Bruckner Journal conference were given a concert (including the Bruckner quintet) by the augmented Fitzwilliam Quartet, no less. The violist, the quartet's one original member, had given a paper about Bruckner and chamber music earlier that day. There were only about 30 of us in the audience, and we could sit where we liked. I was about 10-12 feet from the musicians. To have a world-class quintet play (seemingly) just for me... a dream experience, never likely to be repeated.
 
I’d really love to see something at that level in a similar environment, though I’m never less than impressed with the students at the RNCM. Some amazing talent there.
 
Having come from listening to noisy rock music in sweaty student unions I remember being amazed at how quiet orchestral music seemed, albeit I was in the cheap seats a long way away from the action (Blomstedt conducing the Leipzig Gewandhaus in St David's Hall Cardiff sometime in the late 90s). The sound was exquisite though, amazing unanimity and precision.

I regularly argue with a friend about the pros of listening live versus on a hifi, though I do accept with Mahler / Bruckner etc that there will always be something in terms of scale that hifi can't quite manage. But chamber music can be beautifully reproduced on hifi. My favourite chamber music venue is the Wigmore Hall, sit in the middle at a string quartet concert, close your eyes and you're listening to a classic velvet-toned Decca recording (yes I know that's the wrong way round!).

I agree with what Tony says about chamber music in large venues; conversely I find that piano/chamber music or song played with modern instruments / a great big Steinway in a small venue like Oxford's Holywell music room can be a bit overpowering. Am not a devotee of so-called period instrument performance but there is some sense in using period instruments in small venues. I once heard Wolfgang Holzmair singing Schubert in an original Viennese Biedermeier drawing-room with a forte-piano accompaniment, that was an experience! Or maybe it needs performers to scale their performance down. Paul Badura-Skoda, recently deceased Austrian pianist, recalled learning from his teacher Edwin Fischer - who had a legendary touch - the art of making a big sound with less volume on a concert piano when playing chamber music. Or perhaps I am just getting old!
 
alanbeeb said:
Home listening on the hifi has the huge advantage of not being spoiled by noisy sweetie-chomping fidgeting coughing fellow audience members.
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That is a big deal for me. I remember being at a performance of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase (which I still regard as impossible for anyone to play, yet they did) and being distracted by the usual coughing, sneezing, rustling etc. It taught me to either get on the front row or two or not bother going. I know that isn’t a purist attitude but I just prefer it, e.g. my best orchestral experience has been standing right behind the conductor at the Proms (Rattle/BPO/Mahler being spectacular, an amazing massed strings sound) or even on stage when seats behind or to the side of an orchestra are available depending on venue. I guess it is coming in from a rock, electronica or jazz hi-fi perspective, I have no issue with close mic positioning, wide panning etc if it communicates better. The middle of the hall area where most classical fans seem to live just isn’t my favourite perspective, and I’d describe further back than that as usually being bad, just a time-smeared reverby mess in many halls, or just too quiet. Even Liverpool’s amazing horn-shaped Philharmonic Hall isn’t too great upstairs at the back.
 
I was way up front at Birmingham Symphony Hall for a violin concerto once, it wasn't a perspective I was used to but it sure was exciting.

The proms standing area is pretty much the best spot in the (famously bad) venue!
 
If your hifi can cleanly create similar SPLs it goes a long way to recreating the sensation of an orchestra in full swing. For me at home that’s about 95dB peaks at my listening position. Never quite the same though, there’s an immediacy to the dynamics live that eludes hifi, at least the stuff I can afford.
 
I’m always struck by how an orchestra can sound somewhat dull in comparison to hifi.

Perhaps Quad were closest to the original sound after all.
 
The choir seats at Symphony Hall are my favourite. I like watching conductors at work... and I used to play orchestral percussion as an amateur, so the sound suits too. Rattle's orchestral hammer, built to his spec and played by Shrewsbury's own Adrian Spillett in Mahler 6 - heard from 15 feet away... strewth!

The Circle feels a bit remote from the music by comparison. Although having said that, it was still pretty overwhelming for Mahler 2 (the choir seats being occupied by the superb CBSO Chorus that night). They are doing M2 again for Mirga's last concert as music director next summer. I'll be there :)
 
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Johnjo said:
I’m always struck by how an orchestra can sound somewhat dull in comparison to hifi.
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Absolutely, especially modern hi-fi. My systems have what I’d class as a classical balance. I’m often astonished walking around hi-fi shows etc just how bright/forward/fierce so much modern kit sounds. Utter crap to my ears. If something sounds massively different to Quad ESLs, BBC monitors, good Tannoys etc it’s just wrong IMO. My theory is all the brightness and forwardness has arisen from endless subjective dealer dems where folk so often confuse brightness with ‘detail’, leanness with ‘tight bass’, ‘exitement’ or whatever. It’s a real pet hate of mine as I’ve been in enough studios to know what stuff should sound like! I’d love to have some classical studio experience, it would be fascinating to sit at the desk and hear all stages there.

PS I grew up in a house with a grand piano in it, so I’ve always known what they sound like, but I do (pre-covid) try to get to hear some classical every now and again to recalibrate my ears.
 
Orchestral sound can differ from recording to recording of course. John Hunt, classical discographer, did not like Decca's recordings of the Vienna Philharmonic ('glassy treble'), he felt that in real life they sounded nothing like they do on Solti's Ring ('excessively exotic and glaring') and EMI captured the sound of the 'finely blended and rounded group' much better. But quad/tannoy/BBC systems do proper justice to well recorded classical music, whether by Decca or EMI or Philips etc. When I first heard BBC type speakers (in my case original harbeth shl5s) or a quad amp (303/306) I knew straight away that the tonality was perfect for classical music although it could be perceived as duller/flatter sounding than stuff I'd had before (a Musical Fidelity A3 system).
 
That sound of a massed string section placing their bows on the strings has not been replicated, to my knowledge, by any speaker or recording.

There's a piece in the classical repertoire where the string section are all beating their instruments with their bows as a percussion effect, wish I could remember what it is. A reproduction system can't approach it.
 
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