Just listening to voice and orchestra over my Spendor 2/3e loudspeakers. Voices are reproduced very realistically, the orchestral backing however is very much diminished. I realize that no loudspeaker sounds like the real thing but do loudspeaker designers make choices about what part of the sound world they try to get most right?
Speakers
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DonQuixote99
pfm Member
Sounds like more how it was mixed than a speaker effect. Did you experience the same effect on a number of different recordings?
JemHayward
pfm Member
People seem to have different expectations of recorded music vs live music. Even in the best of concert halls if you listen to the orchestra in "hi fi mode" you may well discover that some instrumental separations are not as overt as you would expect when listening to what we would call a "good" recording. However the visual input is a significant factor. If I look at the first violin, I can convince myself that I'm hearing that violin separately from the rest, but, with my eyes closed, all I really hear is a mass of violins, and almost no spatial separation between them.
So, recording engineers almost always spot-mic various parts of the ensemble, and then mix them together to create a recording that tries to recreate the experience, but in a way that makes sense without the visual context. Some are more successful than others. Recordings made using just a single pair of microphones can offer a great deal of realism, but often can sound muddled and confused. I suspect that our hearing adapts to the acoustic of the space we are in, so recording a live performance and reproducing it flawlessly somewhere else is probably impossible.
Add in the thorny issue of dynamic range, and things get even more problematic.
So, recording engineers almost always spot-mic various parts of the ensemble, and then mix them together to create a recording that tries to recreate the experience, but in a way that makes sense without the visual context. Some are more successful than others. Recordings made using just a single pair of microphones can offer a great deal of realism, but often can sound muddled and confused. I suspect that our hearing adapts to the acoustic of the space we are in, so recording a live performance and reproducing it flawlessly somewhere else is probably impossible.
Add in the thorny issue of dynamic range, and things get even more problematic.
Whaleblue
Southbound
But you were right to suggest that the most likely weak link is in fact your speakers ('in your room'), assuming a moderately recent (1960s onwards) recording from one of the decent labels.
A large floor-stander, in an appropriately sized (and sympathetically treated) room is likely to get you much more of that orchestra.
That's exactly what I'd like to move on to, but I'm far too risk averse to try to find any I'd like amongst the 100s of possibilities out there, most of which I'd be disappointed in.