PlayClassics TRT v3.0 sneak preview

[Mario Martinez]

Hello everyone!  I finally have something new that I would like to share with you.

 

We have spent the last 18 months working on a new version of our Truthful Recording Technology. We are about to launch it to the public but before we do, I would love to share it with you here at the Computer Audiophile.

 

This new version features a new piano with a new placement on the stage, some minor adjustments on the acoustics of the hall and a completely new calibration. The recording gear and the placement of the mics remains the same. Our philosophy has not changed a bit. We are just digging deeper into our original project.

 

 

Edit (April 14 ):

The previous calibration (v2.0) had some issues that we wanted to solve. I do think v3.0 was successful on fixing those issues but I also felt that the "general balance" was somehow altered on this new v3.0. I have been working on it and as a result we now have a new calibration v3.1. I have prepared a zip file with seven samples processed with this new v3.1

- one movement of a String Quartet
- one movement of a Wind Quintet
- the Flamenco sample number one
- the Drums sample number three
- one short piano piece by Mas Porcel
- one short piano piece by Webern
- Liebeslied by Rachmaninoff
 

If anybody wants to try these please post or send me a PM and I will send you the codes to download them.

 

Here is a sketch of the string quartet:

 

here is a sketch of the wind quintet:

 

here is a sketch of the flamenco sample:

 

here is a sketch of the drums sample:

 

here is a sketch of the piano:

 

the person in the red shirt represents the placement of the mics.

 

I hope you find this interesting. I would really appreciate your feedback

[semente]

Hi Mario,

 

Welcome back.

Looking forward to listening to those samples.

 

Best,

Ricardo

[Mario Martinez]

Thanks Ricardo, I am glad to be back

 

most of you who already know about this project are probably wondering why we went through the trouble of developing a new version. Allow me to use our little sketches to try to explain why we thought this step was necessary.

 

Ok, so ideally we would like to have something like this:

The orange area would be the "calibrated area" of the stage. That would mean that the setup would be prepared to transparently capture the tone of any instrument within that area.

 

Our old piano was placed somewhere within this area like this:

We wanted the piano to sound as transparent as possible, so we adjusted the calibration as much as we could. The more we adjusted, the more we narrowed the calibrated area to the position of the piano. So by the time we had our TRT calibration v2.0 we had something like this:

This calibration worked wonders for the piano. But take a look at what happened when we used other instruments:

This other instruments (the drums, the winds, the flamenco singer and guitar and a possible string quartet) will lay outside of the calibrated area. They will still sound good but the results may not be optimal.

 

That is the problem we were trying to solve by developing this new calibration v3.0.

 

So this time we place the new piano in a new position like this:

We then worked on our calibration until we got the most transparent result possible. By the time we finished we had something like this:

This configuration results in a smaller calibrated area, but even though it is smaller we are still able to fit other instruments too:

A smaller calibrated area allows us to be more precise resulting on more transparent results plus being able to fit other instruments within this area allows those instruments to benefit from the same results.

 

 

[semente]

1 minute ago, Mario Martinez said:

Thanks Ricardo, I am glad to be back

 

most of you who already know about this project are probably wondering why we went through the trouble of developing a new version. Allow me to use our little sketches to try to explain why we thought this step was necessary.

 

Can we still use the "old" calibration file to set the listening level?

[Mario Martinez]

Yes

[fas42]

Downloading now ...

[Mario Martinez]

I am thinking, ...it might be useful if we could use the same recorded material to directly compare both calibrations.

 

The old and the new pianos are sitting in different positions, so there is no point on processing any old recordings with the new calibration or vice versa.

 

But we could use the experimental recordings we all have (the flamenco and the drums) because those recordings do not involve the piano and the instruments in both cases are sitting on the affected area.

 

According to the previous explanation this would be the result using TRT v2.0:

In both cases the instruments lay outside of the optimized area.

 

On the other hand this is what we would obtain if we were to use TRT v3.0 on this same recordings:

Now the instruments are laying within the optimize area which should translate into better (more transparent) results.

 

I have process both recordings the drums and the flamenco with the new version (TRT v3.0) so you can downloaded them too. Here are the links to all the file formats:

 

Flamenco TRT v3.0 Master

Flamenco TRT v3.0 DVD

Flamenco TRT v3.0 CD

Flamenco TRT v3.0 MP3

 

Drums TRT v3.0 Master

Drums TRT v3.0 DVD

Drums TRT v3.0 CD

Drums TRT v3.0 MP3

 

 

 

[STC]

On 3/4/2018 at 5:51 AM, Mario Martinez said:

Hello everyone!  I finally have something new that I would like to share with you.

 

Hi, thanks for the samples. I just finished listening to the CD version.

 

It sounded clean and not a single clipping! Please see my PM to you. 

 

Thank you once again. 

[firedog]

Just listening to solo piano. Amazingly natural sounding.

[Mario Martinez]

Hi Danny, thanks for listening.

 

I am glad you like it

 

The purpose of doing this new calibration was not so much to improve the sound of the solo piano but to guarantee that we would get those same results across all other instruments when recording chamber music.

 

Have you had a chance to listen to the quintet and/or the drums?

 

I am really interested to see what your think about the new version of the drums since that is a recording we can use to compare v2.0 vs v3.0. If everything went right that recording should show a significant improvement.

[firedog]

Okay, Mario - just downloaded the quintet and the drums.

 

Here's my quick reaction:

Quintet: the sound of the quintet is of a group - 5 people playing together. That's how it should sound, but in many "quality" recordings what you get is the sound of 5 instruments separated by so much "air" that it almost doesn't seem they are playing in the same space. This is the opposite of that, and sounds much more like what a real performance sounds like. Each instrument is clearly defined, but it sounds like they are all together. 

 

Drums - Very real sounding. The dynamic range isn't pumped up, so I need to turn the volume above what I'd normally listen to to get it to a "realistic" level. That's a good thing. 

The transients are very sharp (not overdone, but real sounding).

I'm most impressed by the bass drum. It has a "thump" to it that is very solid and sounds like the real thing. I think it is the best bass drum sound I've had in my room. 

[Mario Martinez]

Hi Danny,

 

thank you very much for your feedback.

 

I did think the old calibration had some issues (otherwise we would have not gone through the trouble of making a new one) but you are really not aware of how much the results are affected by those issues until you hear them resolved and I think this drums recording does just that. I was surprised myself when I heard that bass drum under this new calibration.

 

The good thing is that the quintet (or any other chamber music arrangement that fits within this area) should benefit from this results too.

[rando]

Mario, for comparison do you have v.1 available for download still?  Until this morning I had only given the newest calibration files a cursory listen.  It would be helpful to establish further detail on how your recordings are improving so feedback is of greater value.

[ivarsmu]

Just downloaded CD quality files.

Unbelievable quality, perfect!

So nothing wrong even with Redbook, if studio work on such level.

 

Thanks a lotI

[rodrigaj]

The Flamenco tracks are outstanding. No artificial separation noted. The voice comes from the left and the guitar from the right but they blend together exactly as they would in a small concert venue - evenly with no emphasis on the guitar.

 

Classical and flamenco guitar is so difficult to get right. On the one hand, you get wall to wall guitar (Christopher Parkening '70's recordings) or you get the far better narrow hallway sound of the Segovia '60's Decca recordings.

 

These tracks are perfect. For volume control settings, as you turn the volume down both the guitar and voice grow smaller and smaller together and larger and larger together. You can precisely tune in the natural soundscape.

 

I am also using these tracks for Audirvana+ pre-ringing adjustments since transients are so easily discernible.

 

The musical performance is outstanding as well.

[Mario Martinez]

Thank you all for taking the time to listen

 

I sent Rando a PM with the links to the old version of both flamenco and drums. If anybody else needs that please tell me and I will send them to you too.

 

I did not explain anything about our setup. It has been a long time since our last thread so let me go ahead and give a summary of how we are doing this for those of you who are new to our project.

 

What you are hearing is the take of two mics always placed on the same spot of our auditorium outside of the stage area. The left mic is the left speaker and the right mic is the right speaker so there is no mixing involved.

 

All these recordings have been made using the same recording setup (by recording setup I mean the system formed by auditorium acoustics, stage area, mic position and arrangement, recording chain and calibration). The only thing that changes from one recording to another are the instruments and the musicians themselves. Everything else remains the same so there is no mastering involved.

 

We do not use any dynamic range compression so what you are hearing is the full dynamic range of the instruments.

 

 

[sandyk]

Hi Mario

 Much of the material is not what I would normally listen to, but it is all obviously very well recorded.

With track 1 of the Flamenco master recording (01 Flamenco 1 v3.0_master) it is VERY 3D sounding via my PC setup into Audio Technica W1000 headphones. However what really surprised me when playing using CPlay and ASIO was how much better the .flac file sounded after conversion to a .wav file. Rarely do I notice such a marked improvement. Before that, the voice annoyed me a little.

 I also got the eerie feeling of HEIGHT with this track, although this may have been just due to using headphones.

 

Kind Regards

Alex

[rando]

Hmm, will try batch converting the files to wav.  I've been using uncompressed flac for ripped discs lately, but there is no metadata to concern oneself with here.

[fas42]

If I'm seriously trying to evaluate SQ of something, I would never, ever play the compressed format directly - I always convert MP3, FLAC, etc into WAV first, to give the recording and playback chain the opportunity of showing itself in the best light ... the greater the potential, the more the most subtle factor may play a part.

[rando]

SQ was, as expected, better after conversion to wav.  

 

@fas42 maybe we could find a better thread to unpack why you think this as more beneficial than an uncompressed flac.

[sandyk]

18 minutes ago, rando said:

Hmm, will try batch converting the files to wav.  I've been using uncompressed flac for ripped discs lately, but there is no metadata to concern oneself with here.

 

 I will not be drawn into another waste of time discussion with the usual Objective crowd, however, just how good .flac converted "on the fly" sounds compared with the decoded .wav or .aiff file, will depend mainly on how electrically quiet your computer is.

I.M.E. The quieter your PC is, the closer .wav and .flac sound to each other.

[sandyk]

9 minutes ago, rando said:

SQ was, as expected, better after conversion to wav.  

 

@fas42 maybe we could find a better thread to unpack why you think this as more beneficial than an uncompressed flac.

 

 Do that, and be prepared to cop a lot of .flac (pun intended) from the usual hard line objective mob.

The other mob will NEVER accept what you report hearing.

 Let's leave any further discussion of this issue out of Mario's thread ?

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 I will not be drawn into another waste of time discussion with the usual Objective crowd, however, just how good .flac converted "on the fly" sounds compared with the decoded .wav or .aiff file, will depend mainly on how electrically quiet your computer is.

I.M.E. The quieter your PC is, the closer .wav and .flac sound to each other.

 

Exactly ... a very ordinary desktop, using motherboard DAC, made this screamingly obvious.

[rando]

The disruption being complete, I appear to be the only one who thinks they should apologize to Mario.  To whom I will tender my listening impressions privately.  

[sandyk]

7 minutes ago, rando said:

The disruption being complete, I appear to be the only one who thinks they should apologize to Mario.  To whom I will tender my listening impressions privately.  

Rando

 It wasn't my intention to disrupt Mario's thread, and I apologise for doing this.

 However, given that we both reported an improvement when converting the files from .flac to .wav, perhaps others listening to , or who have already listened to Mario's files could try doing the same ?

 

Alex