Sanity Check

[Fluffytime]

Uhm, weren't you just making the close-miced argument?

 

I'm honestly not following.

[STC]

11 minutes ago, Fluffytime said:

Uhm, weren't you just making the close-miced argument?

 

I'm honestly not following.

 

I am sorry if that caused some confusion. Closed mic means more of direct sound. More of the original sound. It will not sound correct unless you processed them with reverb. 

 

A good recording engineer instinctively knows where to place the microphone so that the playback sounds good enough for the realistic depth and soundstage. That’s where pros like you and George come in. 

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, if you could answer why the microphones ( in George’s picture) were placed much closer to the source than the actual listener’s position than you will know it is not correct to capture the actual sound at the listeners position and expect them to sound similar when you replay the recording in your system. Anyone here could try that with the phone ( preferably disable the noise cancelling in the smartphones) and experience yourself to understand about reverbs and how human process them. 

 

I have a lot respect for recording engineers and I am not even hinting what George did was wrong. I was just pointing the different approach by Mark. In fact, careful reading of all the previous post you will see we both are saying the same thing but why it is being interpreted differently is due to the distinction of reverbs. Reverbs alone would not give you the soundstage and depth. That requires skills like what you guys got. 

[semente]

15 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Generally, yes. But fundamentally, the brain is able to separate the direct sound from the reverb. IOW, adding more hall sound doesn't change the sound from seat to seat, it just enriches it to a greater or lesser extent and in slightly different ways. I always thought that the ideal would be to stereo mike an orchestra completely dry (as in a cinema soundstage) and then use DSP at playback to "dial-in" a venue acoustic that the listener likes. As an example, say, for instance that you like the sound of Carnegie Hall. When you put-on a new, "dry" stereo recording of, perhaps, Beethoven's Symphony #9, you set your multi-channel "Venue Generator" to Carnegie Hall, or if you wish, Chicago Symphony Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall, or whatever you like. Perhaps you would like to hear the recording as it would sound in it's home venue. Then just select it from the on-screen menu. Perhaps each Dry recording could come with the hall parameters attached to it in some meta-data type attachment. It would be loaded into the Venue Generator and would show-up as an option. 

Not really all that important. It's still the real sound of real acoustic instruments played in a real space. The fact that the hall sounds somewhat different in different parts of it, is pretty irrelevant, IMHO. However I have known music lovers who insist on listening down-front center because they want more of the direct sound from the orchestra, but that's just another way of looking (listening?) at the same subject.

Alternatively you could have a really nice-sounding room, a place that would have the right acoustics for a piano solo or a string quartet.

In fact I would prefer that to messing up the signal with DSP processing and fake acoustics.

[gmgraves]

17 hours ago, STC said:

 

Which part I don’t if you I don’t understand? That you place the mic at a spot that records the air/space to give a correct sound when played via the music system?  You are not alone and many doing it successfully.  

Then what are you arguing with me about???????????????????

[gmgraves]

17 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

You're not giving the human hearing system enough 'respect', in terms of what it is capable of - yes, poor reproduction of many, many recordings will yield a "loud and obnoxious cacophony of sound that only superficially resembles a performance" - but that's because the picture is confused by the playback adding yet another layer of muddling, by blurring, discarding or otherwise distorting the vital clues and cues that our ear/brains need to unscramble the complexity of what's in the recording. I have heard the two extremes of presentation: "loud and obnoxious cacophony" and, a marvellous recreation of a complex sound field - of the same recording! The only difference was that in the first that the playback was inadequate; in the second, the SQ was now of a sufficient quality "for everything to make sense" - what I call, competent playback.

Oh contrare, Tweek breath ! I give the human hearing system plenty of respect. The human ear/brain can do things that  microphones can't do, like pick a set of sonic parameters out of an environment full of sounds and concentrate on them. Microphones "hear" everything within their pickup pattern, indiscriminately. If I want the microphone to focus on something particular, I have to use more microphones and perhaps sonic baffles to isolate that sound. The human ear, can, in a concert situation, for instance, allow the listener to move closer to the music or further away simply by shifting his/her attention! Microphones can't do that. And the "best seat in the house" isn't the same for people and microphones. For a microphone capture to sound like the best seat in the house, I have to place the microphones much closer to the ensemble than that. The reason? A human in the "best seat" can ignore people coughing, rattling programs, shuffling feet and other extraneous noises, the microphone can't. The human might not even remember, afterwards, that these noises occurred because he/she was intently listening. Microphones can't do that, so I have to place them in such a way that minimizes (or better yet, eliminates) such extraneous noise. Oh no, my friend Human hearing is a very high-order machine for listening to music. 

[Ralf11]

good one George!

[Ralf11]

on a related note, how long until the new Apple Homeboypod can simulate an Ambiphonics system?

[Telstar2]

On ‎31‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 4:25 PM, Ron Scubadiver said:

Your money might be better spent taking your honey out to dinner.

I'm single

[Telstar2]

9 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I give the human hearing system plenty of respect. The human ear/brain can do things that  microphones can't do, like pick a set of sonic parameters out of an environment full of sounds and concentrate on them.

QFT.

And the sensitivity to TIMING, which is higher than the best measurement equip.

[gmgraves]

17 hours ago, STC said:

The subject matter is why the microphone is placed at a much closer position to the source and not at the actual listeners position?  That’s all I am asking. 

That has been explained several times above by several different people. How many times does it have to be said? A pair of microphones placed in the best seat of the house will not yield a recording that sounds anything like what a person who is sitting in that seat listening to the same concert perceives! It's that simple. Like I have said before, humans hear differently from microphones. Humans have brains connected to their ears, brains can discriminate against sounds they don't want to hear and can concentrate on sounds that they do want to hear. Microphones can't do that. Microphones just pick up what's there and it gets transcribed onto the recording. So, that coughing spell that the guy two rows behind you can be ignored by you, but replace you with a microphone connected to a recording setup, and every time, from now into perpetuity, that someone listens to that recording, they are going to hear that coughing spell and actually come to anticipate it ("Oh, here comes the part where that guy has a coughing fit.") As a recording engineer, I have to try to minimize those extraneous noises. 

 

The rest of it is just experience. I know the effect I'm looking for, and I know that the perspective of a listener in the first couple of rows is captured with the microphones both closer to the ensemble and much higher-up than a listener would be to hear that same effect during a live concert. 

 

I cannot explain it any better than that. It's one of those things that a recordist learns through trial and error, It's not in any book. However, I can recommend that you go to my blog:

 

http://audioandrecordingworld.blogspot.com/

 

Where I talk about all aspects of location recording. I talk about microphone preamps, microphone types, how to deploy microphones for different purposes (and why) etc. The blog is written with the oldest entries at the bottom, so If you decide to read the blog, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the "page" and read the bottom-most article first, then the next to the bottom, moving up the page for each article. Be sure to click on "Older Posts" when you get to the bottom of the page, to access the first two articles. This might answer some of your questions and clear up my position without me having to endlessly restate it. 

[mansr]

13 minutes ago, Telstar2 said:

And the sensitivity to TIMING, which is higher than the best measurement equip.

That is patently false.

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, semente said:

Alternatively you could have a really nice-sounding room, a place that would have the right acoustics for a piano solo or a string quartet.

In fact I would prefer that to messing up the signal with DSP processing and fake acoustics.

Who wouldn't? I have often thought how nice it would be to have a "music room" big enough to have not only a great stereo system, but, front and center, a full-sized Steinway Concert Grand piano equipped with a Disklavier system and a complete set of piano program discs! Imagine coming into such a room, popping a CD-ROM into the Disklavier machine mounted under the lip of the keyboard, sitting in one's easy chair and listening to Horowitz play Chopin "Etudes" or Glenn Gould Play Bach's "Well Tempered Klavier", Or Rachmaninoff himself playing his own solo piano works. Talk about the ultimate in hi-fi! Reproducing the player's performance instead of the sound of that performance would be that experience!

[gmgraves]

28 minutes ago, Telstar2 said:

QFT.

And the sensitivity to TIMING, which is higher than the best measurement equip.

 

OK, that's another plus for the human ear/brain!

[gmgraves]

30 minutes ago, Telstar2 said:

I'm single

 

Good for you (if it's by choice)! Me too. I have never been able to understand what other guys see in marriage (especially since the candy has always been free. Why buy the candy store?).

[Telstar2]

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

That is patently false.

proof?

[gmgraves]

38 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

on a related note, how long until the new Apple Homeboypod can simulate an Ambiphonics system?

I wouldn't hold my breath were I you. Another similar question would be "How long until Apple upgrades iTunes to handle High-definition music files natively and starts to sell them on the iTunes store? Same answer though. Maintain regular breathing. 

[fas42]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

Oh contrare, Tweek breath ! I give the human hearing system plenty of respect. The human ear/brain can do things that  microphones can't do, like pick a set of sonic parameters out of an environment full of sounds and concentrate on them. Microphones "hear" everything within their pickup pattern, indiscriminately. If I want the microphone to focus on something particular, I have to use more microphones and perhaps sonic baffles to isolate that sound. The human ear, can, in a concert situation, for instance, allow the listener to move closer to the music or further away simply by shifting his/her attention! Microphones can't do that. And the "best seat in the house" isn't the same for people and microphones. For a microphone capture to sound like the best seat in the house, I have to place the microphones much closer to the ensemble than that. The reason? A human in the "best seat" can ignore people coughing, rattling programs, shuffling feet and other extraneous noises, the microphone can't. The human might not even remember, afterwards, that these noises occurred because he/she was intently listening. Microphones can't do that, so I have to place them in such a way that minimizes (or better yet, eliminates) such extraneous noise. Oh no, my friend Human hearing is a very high-order machine for listening to music. 

 

A good sign! ... We're getting closer ...

 

Consider for one second, perfect microphone, perfect speakers - on the two sides of a formidable wall. On the microphone side is a musical ensemble of some sort, playing in a good acoustical space; on the other side, the speakers and you. The microphone passes what it hears to you, via some perfect amplification, and the speakers, to you - it is a perfect conduit; it's as if that formidable wall is not there at all ...

 

Now the premise of most is that microphones and speakers are so rough, so imperfect, that a real world conduit like this would be a miserable failure ... but, the tantalising truth is otherwise: the microphones pick up enough, and the speakers reproduce enough, for the ear/brain to get what's going on - and focus as desired, .

 

You see, microphones don't have to hear like humans - all that's necessary is "to pass it on", in enough detail. The fact that you never hear the replay like hearing the performance in the flesh, is because the state of the playback rig is not quite good enough - irrespective of your opinion of it, and what its specs say.

[GUTB]

I don’t have respect for recording engineers — unless they are also audiophiles, their opinions on sound are junk.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Telstar2 said:

proof?

Can you hear the delay caused by 1 m of signal cable? A modest oscilloscope can easily measure it.

[fas42]

What the human hearing system can't do is compensate for too much damage done to the sound after being picked up by the microphones - typically, this happens in the playback chain. Our hearing gives up, and it's just a rowdy mess, unlistenable to - the interesting thing is that there is a very precise point of quality where the brain groks the whole - a switch goes on, and it "all makes sense". Unfortunately, this switch is a very hard taskmaster ... wanting the 'illusion' to happen, and throwing lot and lots of irrelevant and unnnecessary goodies at the situation doesn't help very much at all.

[fas42]

As an interesting aside, the new Dutch & Dutch 8c speakers have it "all in one box", and the work has been done by the engineers to get the package optimised to a high level. The reactions of buyers tell the story - this is 'competent' sound, or extremely close to it.

[STC]

Test

[STC]

2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

That has been explained several times above by several different people. How many times does it have to be said? A pair of microphones placed in the best seat of the house will not yield a recording that sounds anything like what a person who is sitting in that seat listening to the same concert perceives! It's that simple. Like I have said before, humans hear differently from microphones. Humans have brains connected to their ears, brains can discriminate against sounds they don't want to hear and can concentrate on sounds that they do want to hear. Microphones can't do that. Microphones just pick up what's there and it gets transcribed onto the recording. So, that coughing spell that the guy two rows behind you can be ignored by you, but replace you with a microphone connected to a recording setup, and every time, from now into perpetuity, that someone listens to that recording, they are going to hear that coughing spell and actually come to anticipate it ("Oh, here comes the part where that guy has a coughing fit.") As a recording engineer, I have to try to minimize those extraneous noises. 

 

The rest of it is just experience. I know the effect I'm looking for, and I know that the perspective of a listener in the first couple of rows is captured with the microphones both closer to the ensemble and much higher-up than a listener would be to hear that same effect during a live concert. 

 

I cannot explain it any better than that. It's one of those things that a recordist learns through trial and error, It's not in any book. However, I can recommend that you go to my blog:

 

http://audioandrecordingworld.blogspot.com/

 

Where I talk about all aspects of location recording. I talk about microphone preamps, microphone types, how to deploy microphones for different purposes (and why) etc. The blog is written with the oldest entries at the bottom, so If you decide to read the blog, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the "page" and read the bottom-most article first, then the next to the bottom, moving up the page for each article. Be sure to click on "Older Posts" when you get to the bottom of the page, to access the first two articles. This might answer some of your questions and clear up my position without me having to endlessly restate it. 

 

If your brain could filter the unwanted sound at the listening location why suddenly it becomes dumb and unable to filter the same sound over the loudspeakers. 

 

You observation is correct but the reasoning is wrong. 

[semente]

3 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Who wouldn't? I have often thought how nice it would be to have a "music room" big enough to have not only a great stereo system, but, front and center, a full-sized Steinway Concert Grand piano equipped with a Disklavier system and a complete set of piano program discs! Imagine coming into such a room, popping a CD-ROM into the Disklavier machine mounted under the lip of the keyboard, sitting in one's easy chair and listening to Horowitz play Chopin "Etudes" or Glenn Gould Play Bach's "Well Tempered Klavier", Or Rachmaninoff himself playing his own solo piano works. Talk about the ultimate in hi-fi! Reproducing the player's performance instead of the sound of that performance would be that experience!

 

I've just checked the Zenph website and it seems like they been bought by Steinway:

 

http://www.steinway.com/spirio

[mansr]

43 minutes ago, STC said:

If your brain could filter the unwanted sound at the listening location why suddenly it becomes dumb and unable to filter the same sound over the loudspeakers. 

The recording conveys only a small amount of the spatial information we are able to pick up in person. This is not because our ears are in any way superior. It is merely because two speakers can never recreate the full sound field of the original event.