PlayClassics TRT Sound master file giveaway for CA members

[Mario Martinez]

We will be happy to send a Gift Code to all CA members who would be willing to try the sound of our recordings on their systems.

 

These recordings are the product of an acoustic research project aimed at developing a truly transparent audio recording system. We have been working on this project for a few years now. We first posted here on CA on November 2015 to share the results we had back then and have been coming back to share all our developments ever since.

 

It has almost been a year since we posted our last calibration (version 3.0). At that time we had two different calibrations: 2.0 on the albums recorded with the old piano and 3.0 on the albums recorded with the new piano.

 

The results obtained with calibration 3.0 were not as good as expected. Some of you contacted us privately to give us you feedback (for which we are very grateful) and told us about the issues that you had. We tried to work on those issues and developed a couple of fixes but it did not seem to work. It looked like we had overlooked something that was throwing us off. For that reason we decided to drop version 3.0.

 

Since then, we have been working on a new calibration but this time we have followed the same path that took us to calibration 2.0. This time we did not end up with a different calibration for each piano. Instead we have created a calibration that works for both pianos and everything else on the stage. Now we have one calibration for all 12 albums (the old ones and the new ones).

 

We would like to offer to you our experimental demos (drums, flamenco, string quartet) plus four albums:

- "Iberia" so you can compare the new calibration (2.0a) vs the old one (2.0)
- "An evening with Riera" so you can hear the sound of the new piano
- "Mozart - Beethoven wind quintets" to hear the results with multiple instruments
- and one more album of your choice (you can see all our albums at http://www.playclassics.com)

 

All we want in exchange is to get as much feedback as possible. If everything goes as expected, we would like to end our research project to try to introduce our product to the market.

 

-------------------------------------

 

Here is an SPL file you can use to calibrate the volume of your system to the volume of the actual performance:

TRT2.0a_SPL75dB_master.zip

TRT2.0a_SPL75dB_dvd.zip

TRT2.0a_SPL75dB_cd.zip

TRT2.0a_SPL75dB_mp3.zip

 

While playing this file in stereo, adjust the volume of your system until your SPL meter reads 75dB at your listening point. All our recordings (except for the drums and the "Stories" album) are recorded with the same level, so once you calibrate your playback system you will be hearing all the recordings at real live level.

 

The drums are 24dB louder than this. If you wanted to get real live levels of the drums you would have to turn the volume up by 24dB.

The "Stories" album is 6dB lower than this. If you wanted to get real live levels of the "Stories" album you would have to turn the volume down by 6dB.

 

Enjoy!

[Mario Martinez]

I just sent you the codes. Thanks for listening :)

[Mario Martinez]

ok, I just sent you the codes.

 

Remember we are giving out 4 albums: "Iberia", "Riera", "Quintet" and a fourth album of your choice.

 

Let me know which one you would prefer and I will send you the codes too.

[Mario Martinez]

Yes, of course, everyone is welcome to try :)

 

I just sent you the codes, let me know if you have any trouble downloading.

[Mario Martinez]

Thank you rando. Do not worry, the codes are the easy part. You are the ones taking the time to listen and I am grateful for that. I am sending you a new code just in case you do want to try.

 

On the old albums (Iberia, Chopin polish songs, Songs of Paolo Tosti, Cabrera plays Debussy and Conversations) version 2.0 and 2.0a are extremely similar. Like firedog said, you can only tell if you listen back to back, otherwise they are almost identical.

 

We developed version 2.0 based on the instrument we had at that time (that would be what we refer to as the old piano) and it did a perfect job on those albums but it did show some problems on the drums and flamenco that we shared with you back then. So we decided to go one step forward and try to develop something that would solve those issues too.

 

It seemed impossible to go any further with the resources that we had so we decided to get a new piano to help us develop this new calibration.

 

So our goal now was to develop a new calibration that would work with the old piano and everything else (the new piano, the drums, flamenco, wind quintet and string quartet)

 

Why would we want to do this?

 

The goal of our research project was to develop a transparent audio recording system (stage+hall+recording chain) So if we can make one calibration work for all this instruments (two different pianos in two different locations on the stage, a string quartet, a wind quintet, a flamenco guitar and a drum set)  Not only would that have been a first time in the recording industry, but it would also be empirical proof of the transparency of our system.

[Mario Martinez]

yes, we are giving out four albums for each Computer Audiophile member.

 

All you have to do is ask :)

 

[Mario Martinez]

1 hour ago, phosphorein said:

 

Is there a preferred playback volume for this calibration, Mario?

 

Yes, It would be the same as before (like mansr pointed out)

 

You can use the old SPL file if you have it, if not, I will upload a new one so you can download it (because I think the old one is no longer on the server)

[Mario Martinez]

17 hours ago, phosphorein said:

 

Sorry, I must have missed this. I would appreciate it if you could upload the SPL file and provide the link. Thanks much!

 

I just updated the OP with the links and info of the SPL files...

[Mario Martinez]

Here is something you might find interesting...

 

It is a paper on "Timbre Solfege" written by Tomasz Letowski from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and Andrzej Miskiewicz from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music.

 

The paper discusses the foundations of "Timbre Solfege" (a course in perceptual analysis of sound) and presents the current version of the course program from a perspective of over three decades of its existence in the sound engineering curriculum.

 

The interesting thing about this paper is realizing that the timbre we hear in every recording is not a direct product of the timbre of the physical instruments, but a product of the psychoacoustic abilities of the engineer that made that particular recording.

 

No matter how far technology goes (better mics, better preamps, better converters) there will always be a "black hole" on the recording chain that will prevent us from capturing the timbre of instruments "as is"

 

That "black hole" is located on the recording chain between the instruments and the mics and, according to this paper, the only instrument we have to restore its effects is the psychoacoustic abilities of the recording engineer himself.

 

But how can we be sure that work has been done properly?

 

There is no objective way to check that this work has been done properly. The only thing we can do (like the engineer did) is use our psychoacoustic ability to subjectly determine if the timbre sounds right to us, but in our case we have not even had the chance to hear the physical instrument.

 

Our research has to do with all this. The purpose of our work is to develop a methodology that will ensure we get the right timbre on the recording without the use of subjective evaluation.

 

 

[Mario Martinez]

1 hour ago, phosphorein said:

 

Thank you! A point of clarification: is the level 75 dBa average?

 

You are welcome :)

It is 75 dB(C) Slow

[Mario Martinez]

Here is an update on how we are doing so far:

 

We have given out 23 codes (Thank all of you for participating on this)

 

About the free album, 8 people have made a choice:

Stories (3)

Chopin Polish Songs (3)

Goldberg Variations (1)

Ad astra (1)

You can choose your free album anytime, so please let me know when you decide which one you want.

 

The offer is still on, if you would like to try please say so and I will be happy to send you the codes

[Mario Martinez]

Here goes another update of how we are doing.

 

We have given out codes to 29 people so far.

 

This are the albums they have chosen:

Stories (6)

Chopin Polish Songs (3)

Conversations (1)

Goldberg Variation (2)

Ad Astra (1)

 

We are still giving out albums, all we want in exchange is your feedback. Your impressions are very helpful to us.

 

 

 

[Mario Martinez]

Here is some info that might be helpful in the evaluation of the different calibrations.

 

The purpose of our methodology is not to make each album sound as "good" as possible. If we wanted to do that we would not use one single calibration for all our albums. Instead we would master each album separately to obtain whichever sound we liked best. For example, say we are recording a small piano that has very little bass, we could compensate the recording to make it sound bigger. That is actually the standard procedure in any regular recording project.

 

The purpose of our methodology is to make each instrument sound as "truthful" as possible. That means portraying the timbre of each instrument "as is" with all its good and bad qualities. No instrument is perfect in every way, some have a glorious bass, others have beautiful treble, other rich mids, some sustain wonderfully; choosing an instrument is always a compromise.

 

When we developed calibration 2.0 we only had one piano to work with. We tried to be as objective as possible on the developing of our calibration but with only one instrument to run test with it was easy to be bias by the particularities of the instrument.

 

We were not aware of this when we presented 2.0. The recorded sound was so good we were convinced we had gotten it right. But running further tests made us realize that we could have unintentionally tweak the calibration in favor of that particular piano.

 

That is when we decided to get the new piano. We thought having two completely different instruments placed at two different spots on the stage would help us stay objective.

 

Running 2.0 over this new piano was an eye opener for us. It did not just confirm our suspicions but it also gave us immediate clues as to what was going on.

 

But fixing it proved much harder than hearing it. We spend a long time trying to fix what we knew was there but we did not manage to get it right. Every time we thought we had something we would test it against the old piano just to find out that we were being fooled again.

 

At some point (probably drawn by desperation) we wondered away from our initial philosophy and decided to use two different calibrations (2.0 for the old piano and 3.0 for the new piano) but that would have been wrong. It would have been just like mastering each album in a different way. Back then we convinced ourselves that this was the only way; we even came up with a good excuse that justified the use of these two different calibrations (that excused is explained on the 3.0 thread)

 

But some how (and with the help of some of you) we came back to our senses, we decided we would try it again, and this time we did manage to get something that worked on both pianos.

 

[Mario Martinez]

Here are some sketches that may be useful as a reference on your evaluation.

The blue area represents the stage. The person in red represents the mics.

 

 

The following sketch represents instrument placement for the old albums :

- Debussy Preludes. Book 1.

- Chopin Polish Songs

- Iberia

- Songs of Paolo Tosti

- Cabrera plays Debussy

- Conversations

The black piano on the sketch represents the old piano:  a smaller size piano placed further back on the stage.

 

 

The following sketch represents instrument placement for the new albums:

- An evening with Riera

- From Russia with love

- Mozart - Beethoven wind quintets

- Goldberg Variations

- Ad Astra

The brown piano represents the new piano:  a bigger size piano placed up front on the stage.

 

 

And these are the sketches for the classical guitar, drums, flamenco and strings:

 

 

All these recordings have been done using the exact same setup: same hall configuration, same mic arrangement and position, same recording chain, same calibration.

 

The only thing that changes from one recording to another is the instruments themselves and their position on the stage.

[Mario Martinez]

If the calibration is right, what you see on the recordings should match what you see on the sketches.

 

In other words, all the instruments on all these recordings should be rendered by your systems in a way that their relative position to one another matches the position of the physical instruments on the stage.

 

Why is this important?

 

The "black hole" we were talking about before is the one responsible for the deformation of the spectrum of all recorded material. That deformation does not just affect timbre, it also affects depth, presence, balance, position, etc...

 

If you were to record several instruments (like we did) using a fixed two mic setup with no mixing, you would definitively be able to perceive the effects of this "black hole" on the sound of the raw takes.

 

As of today, the industry does not have a "mechanical" way to correct this (that is what we were talking about on the "timbre solfege" post). There is no known solution to this other than the engineer fixing it "by ear".

 

Our research project is about developing a methodology that will allow us to deal with this "black hole" in a more objective manner, but checking the quality of the results is still something that has to be done "by ear", which is what we are trying to do here with this giveaway.

 

[Mario Martinez]

3 hours ago, kschac said:

I've been able to listen to the From Russia With Love and Evening with Riera recordings.  Both are really good piano recordings, and I am a big fan of classical and jazz piano.  Probably half of my listening is to solo piano recordings.  I'm not sure I can articulately  describe the differences from your earlier piano recordings.  Those were terrific too, but these new ones seem to emerge from a blacker background and the bass register of the instrument in particular seems incredibly rich -- for example, in some of the Nutcracker movements.  The piano sound is quite palpable and beautifully focused.  I'm not sure if it is the new piano, new recording techniques, different pianists or all three.  Anyway, these are excellent recordings!

 

Thank you Ken for your feedback. I appreciate it

 

The recording setup is exactly the same on all albums (old and new) so none of the differences you hear should be due to different recording techniques.

 

The only thing that is different is the piano itself and its position on the stage. The new piano is a larger piano and it does have a much richer bass. It is also placed up front on the stage so if you were sitting in our hall it would actually be closer to you. It seems like what you are hearing is consistent with what we are doing in the actual hall (and that is a good thing because that is usually not the case)

 

[Mario Martinez]

17 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

Is this a new recording from the first offered a while back?

 

Back then we had 6 albums that we offered with calibration 2.0

 

We now have 12 albums plus we have further developed our calibration to try to improve transparency. The new albums have been recorded using a new piano. All 12 albums are now processed with calibration 2.0a.

[Mario Martinez]

Hello everyone, I would like to give you an update to what we have been doing so far:

 

Some people contacted us privately to give us very detailed feedback. The good thing is many of these people have been listening to our calibrations from the beginning (they can play all our different calibrations on their systems). That allowed them to A/B compare all those calibrations over the different instruments to let us know which instrument sounded best on which calibration. These kind of feedback is very helpful for us because it does give us a very good sense of what is going on.

 

We have used all that information to develop a new calibration 2.0b. This new calibration is just a fine-tuning of 2.0a but we think it does make a difference.  We have update our web page with this new calibration.

 

I know all these "updating" can get tiresome, but if there is still someone "out there" willing to try I would love to share these new material with you again :)

 

 

[Mario Martinez]

Hello everyone,

 

I am happy to announce that we have concluded the development of our acoustic research project. The current and final calibration version is 2.0b

 

All the albums in our catalog (we currently have 12 albums) have been updated with this version and we have proceeded to publish them on all the internet stores (Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google Music, YouTube Music, Pandora, etc.)

 

To show the results of our development we have made some demonstration videos where we compare the sound quality of our methodology (TRT Sound) with the sound quality of conventional recordings.

 

Here you have a link to the YouTube playlist where you will find 30 comparison videos of PlayClassics vs Warner, Naxos, Decca, Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Grammophon and many others ...

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNtta5SvxB1IprJFJdTXkYOrZDIWNMS7_

 

I hope you enjoy them. Thank you very much for your help, your feedback has been key to the development of this project.

[Mario Martinez]

The albums are now in the hands of the distributors. It is just a matter of time that they start appearing all over the different platforms.

 

We gave the distributor a 16bit 44.1kHz version of the music (there was no other option). Each platform will have to get its own streaming and download file from this "parent" 16/44.1 version.

 

Any way, we will keep offering the files for download on our web site. There you will find:

- the Master 24bit 96kHz in FLAC and WAV
- the DVD 24bit 48kHz in FLAC and WAV
- the CD 16bit 44.1kHz in FLAC and WAV
- the LAME MP3 vbr 48kHz made directly from the Master 24bit 96kHz
 

[Mario Martinez]

5 hours ago, danadam said:

I get "The playlist does not exist."

We had to erase the videos because someone reported the channel. Apparently under Spanish law we are not allowed to use videos from other record labels to make these A/B comparison demos.

 

We are trying to figure out a workaround on this problem. I will let you know as soon as we have something that we can work with...

[Mario Martinez]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

What is the separation distance between the two mics? And how far were microphones placed from the centre of the stage? 

 

 

 

 

We have used two different pianos in two different positions.

 

The black piano was the one we used for:

- Debussy Preludes. book 1

- Chopin Polish Songs.

- Albeniz Iberia

- Songs of Paolo Tosti

- Cabrera plays Debussy

- Conversations.

The distance from the mics to the center of the soundboard was 3.7 meters

 

The brown piano was the one we used for:

- An evening with Riera

- From Russia with love

- Mozart - Beethoven Wind Quintets

- Goldberg Variations

- Ad astra

The distance from the mics to the center of the soundboard was 2.8meters

 

The mic arrangement is standard ORTF (110º angel, 17 centimeters apart)

[Mario Martinez]

On 2/9/2019 at 3:17 AM, danadam said:

I get "The playlist does not exist."

 

We have figured out a way to make this A/B comparisons without us having to edit any videos.

 

You can see the comparison demos here: http://www.musicstry.com/trtsound

 

The page will directly compare both official YouTube videos (ours and the one you choose)

 

[Mario Martinez]

5 hours ago, Nikhil said:

 

 

I am getting a "video not available" error message.  Is there a geography restriction on the videos?

 

 

 

You should be able to see them from anywhere. These are the "official" Youtube videos published by the distributors themselves. Our page is just playing a back and forward between them so you can compare.

 

the addess of the page is www.musicstry.com/trtsound

[Mario Martinez]

4 hours ago, Nikhil said:

 

 

 

I see...

 

I do not know why this is happening. The pics are just links to official YouTube generated videos (they are not my videos) I just tried and I can open all of them here.

 

You could try these direct links see if they work that might give us a clue as to what is going on:

https://youtu.be/wbS49ggB5uI

https://youtu.be/cgF6CWLF4Rk

https://youtu.be/xo_uAi3dz7U

https://youtu.be/vhLEH7qR97E

https://youtu.be/-YqQNzHnwcI

https://youtu.be/8M5tyuys0Hg

https://youtu.be/sCTvn3iRKIs

https://youtu.be/YxcwL7_tI1c