PlayClassics album premiere for AS members

[Mario Martinez]

35 minutes ago, chrille said:

I suspect your recording room is a bit dryish with rather short reverberation time?

 

Yes, it is a small hall so it is shorter that what you would get on a regular size symphonic hall.

 

Before we started our project back on 2012 this same hall was used for live chamber music concerts with about 80 house seats...

[Mayfair]

@Mario Martinez

 

Yes, please.  Greatly appreciated.

[Mario Martinez]

43 minutes ago, chrille said:

I will listen to the tracks later tonight via headphones to hopefully get  even closer to the actual acoustic of the venue you recorded in.

 

It will be really interesting to see how it comes out on the headset. Please let us know how it feels there...

[semente]

9 minutes ago, chrille said:

Yes of course ,but so are the wind instruments. And in my system at least they tend to overpower the piano a bit more than I would ideally like.

A direct result of the way they were  in FRONT of  the piano.

Imho there is a very good reason why winds are behind strings in virtually all orchestral recordings. And also  why the piano is always put in front of the orchestra in Concerto recordings.

You don't really  need to spot-mic it if it is placed in front but most engineers do so anyway which often renders a similar effect as the winds do in this recording.

Anyway, I am  pretty sure this recording is very  honest and close to how things sounded live.

I just happen to want to hear a bit more of the piano.

One way of getting more of the instruments behind others  without resorting to  spotmiking is to elevate the mics a bit.

I don't know how high the mics were in this recording. But I guess a bit too low for my taste in this case.

Cheers Chrille

 

I understand that you don't like the presentation but I'm sure that there are technical as well as artistic reasons for the setup. With real stereo and this many instruments I suspect that getting the level balance between them right must be a complicated matter.

 

Mario is a competent professional and his recordings are considered to be some of the finest by many here.

 

If you read some of his other threads you will find more information regarding how the recordings are made (maybe start here).

The mics are in the same position in every recording and there's a restricted area for positioning the performers.

[acg]

Mario, I would really like to take you up on your kind offer.

[Rugby]

I would like to get a opportunity to hear the album.

[Rexp]

Yes please Mario! Thank you for your kind offer. 

[jzahr]

Mario, I would love to hear this recording. Please, send me a link.

Thank you in advance,

Jorge

[Mike Rubin]

I too look forward to hearing this recording.  The repertoire looks lovely.

[klassikmann]

@Mario Martinez yes please. I like your Albéniz' Iberia performed by Luis Grané.

 

[plissken]

I'd like to check it out. Please and Thank You.

[Skip Pack]

I have enjoyed your earlier samples and I certainly would like to hear this. Thanks.

[chrille]

On 2/3/2020 at 10:24 PM, Mario Martinez said:

 

It will be really interesting to see how it comes out on the headset. Please let us know how it feels there...

Hello again Mario,
I have now listened several times to the tracks via two different sets of Headphones the Sennheiser HD 800 and the HIFIMAN HEKV2 and my Chord Qutest/Chord MScaler combo connected to a Benchmark HGC2 headphone amp used for monitoring at quite a few DXD recording sessions I have been at. 

Both via speakers and headphones your recordings sound VERY realistic and well recorded imho.

But my only slight reservation balance wise regarding the slow movement chamber version of  Ravel's G major Piano Concerto, still stands via headphones.

In both cases if I play the first two minutes of solo piano as loud as I want to hear it both in my room and via headphones it sounds wonderful and almost as if playing in my room via speakers.
Very good indeed and very well played too.

But when the "orchestra"/winds come in after the roughly two minute intro, the winds several times have a tendency to mask the piano a little bit which to my ears turns from THE solo instrument it should sound like in a Piano Concerto almost to "second fiddle" position.

Around the 4 minutes mark I almost get the impression that the piano is accompaning the winds where in the full orchestral version I hear the opposite.
Winds accompaning the piano.
Those high register piano trills don't quite register as clearly as I would ideally like them to.

Here it sounds  maybe a bit more like a Concerto for Wind instruments with piano obligato?

Small issue maybe for most listeners. But I  personally would as I said originally, have placed the winds behind the piano for that track.

Or the piano in the middle and the winds on each side to get an even wider stereo image.

Imho the piano should at least sound Primus Inter Parus in this case.

On the other tracks this is  really no issue to me. 
There the piano is not really the solo instrument.

But to be honest rather your setup than a HUGE piano and small orchestra behind so common with some labels.

The setup you have chosen is used for a lot of chamber music recordings and works well in most cases and here too apart from in the PC imho.

All the wind instruments sound very real with truthful tonality and sonority  albeit a wee bit dry, making it very easy to hear which instruments are playing at any given moment.

Thanks for a Great Album and all the best for your future productions.
Today I'll spend  more time on that quite simple yet very beautiful Ravel intro at the piano.

PS One last question how high do you put your stereo mics at sessions? 

Cheers and thanks again Chrille

 

[Mario Martinez]

1 hour ago, chrille said:

Hello again Mario,
I have now listened several times to the tracks via two different sets of Headphones the Sennheiser HD 800 and the HIFIMAN HEKV2 and my Chord Qutest/Chord MScaler combo connected to a Benchmark HGC2 headphone amp used for monitoring at quite a few DXD recording sessions I have been at. 

Both via speakers and headphones your recordings sound VERY realistic and well recorded imho.

But my only slight reservation balance wise regarding the slow movement chamber version of  Ravel's G major Piano Concerto, still stands via headphones.

In both cases if I play the first two minutes of solo piano as loud as I want to hear it both in my room and via headphones it sounds wonderful and almost as if playing in my room via speakers.
Very good indeed and very well played too.

But when the "orchestra"/winds come in after the roughly two minute intro, the winds several times have a tendency to mask the piano a little bit which to my ears turns from THE solo instrument it should sound like in a Piano Concerto almost to "second fiddle" position.

Around the 4 minutes mark I almost get the impression that the piano is accompaning the winds where in the full orchestral version I hear the opposite.
Winds accompaning the piano.
Those high register piano trills don't quite register as clearly as I would ideally like them to.

Here it sounds  maybe a bit more like a Concerto for Wind instruments with piano obligato?

Small issue maybe for most listeners. But I  personally would as I said originally, have placed the winds behind the piano for that track.

Or the piano in the middle and the winds on each side to get an even wider stereo image.

Imho the piano should at least sound Primus Inter Parus in this case.

On the other tracks this is  really no issue to me. 
There the piano is not really the solo instrument.

But to be honest rather your setup than a HUGE piano and small orchestra behind so common with some labels.

The setup you have chosen is used for a lot of chamber music recordings and works well in most cases and here too apart from in the PC imho.

All the wind instruments sound very real with truthful tonality and sonority  albeit a wee bit dry, making it very easy to hear which instruments are playing at any given moment.

Thanks for a Great Album and all the best for your future productions.
Today I'll spend  more time on that quite simple yet very beautiful Ravel intro at the piano.

PS One last question how high do you put your stereo mics at sessions? 

Cheers and thanks again Chrille

 

 

 

Thank you Chrille for taking the time to listen both with speakers and headphones and for your very detailed feedback.

 

Since we were talking about instrument balance I just wanted to rule out any room or system related interference. That is way I was interested in hearing about your headphone experience. By what you are saying I understand there is no interference whatsoever (you are hearing the same thing on both)

 

And reading your comments I understand that your concerns are not about the results of the recording method, but have to do with the artistic decision of placement within the stage which obviously affects the balance of the end result.

 

As such this comments are very interesting and I will pass them down to our artists. They might want to take them into account in future productions :)

 

Pd. The mics are placed at ear height of a person siting down (just like if your were siting down at the spot of the person with the red shirt in the picture.

[SMG]

I would likewise love to listen to your new recording.

[Bones13]

I would love a code. I just bought/downloaded the spanish guitar album, very nice, thanks. One of the wonderful things about the new digital music era, is that passionate people can do projects like this without a large promotion company to record/distribute/suck the money out of, music.

 

Keep up the good work.

[Mario Martinez]

19 hours ago, Bones13 said:

I would love a code. I just bought/downloaded the spanish guitar album, very nice, thanks. One of the wonderful things about the new digital music era, is that passionate people can do projects like this without a large promotion company to record/distribute/suck the money out of, music.

 

Keep up the good work.

 

Thank you Bones13

 

All our albums have been recorded using the same physical setup (same hall, same gear, same mic placement)

The only thing that has changed over these years is the calibration.

This calibrations is just an eq to compensate for the things that could not be corrected on the physical room.

All our albums are always updated to the latest calibration so they all have the same sound quality.

It does not matter if we are recording a wind sextet, a string quartet, a piano, a guitar, a soprano, a tenor, the results are always the same; a natural sound with the presence of the real life performance.

This has never been done before.

No other technique/studio/producer achieves this results without having to tweak each recording separately (that is why they do their mixing and mastering)

A regular space will always deform the color/balance of your mic pickup. The engineers job is to work on the sound of that altered raw take to try to make it sound good. That is what mixing and mastering is supposed to do.

Mixing and mastering is a subjective matter. The quality of the results always depend on the psychoacoustic ability of the engineer. That is why a "timber solfege" class is included (or should be included) on the audio engineering curriculum.

We have develop a methodology that avoids using this subjective procedures. We have worked on a setup so transparent that it does not require any kind of tweaking.

This looks like quite a simple concept but it has always been believed to be impossible to achieve.

[Mike Rubin]

56 minutes ago, Mario Martinez said:

 

Thank you Bones13

 

All our albums have been recorded using the same physical setup (same hall, same gear, same mic placement)

The only thing that has changed over these years is the calibration.

This calibrations is just an eq to compensate for the things that could not be corrected on the physical room.

All our albums are always updated to the latest calibration so they all have the same sound quality.

It does not matter if we are recording a wind sextet, a string quartet, a piano, a guitar, a soprano, a tenor, the results are always the same; a natural sound with the presence of the real life performance.

This has never been done before.

No other technique/studio/producer achieves this results without having to tweak each recording separately (that is why they do their mixing and mastering)

A regular space will always deform the color/balance of your mic pickup. The engineers job is to work on the sound of that altered raw take to try to make it sound good. That is what mixing and mastering is supposed to do.

Mixing and mastering is a subjective matter. The quality of the results always depend on the psychoacoustic ability of the engineer. That is why a "timber solfege" class is included (or should be included) on the audio engineering curriculum.

We have develop a methodology that avoids using this subjective procedures. We have worked on a setup so transparent that it does not require any kind of tweaking.

This looks like quite a simple concept but it has always been believed to be impossible to achieve.

It sounds as though the earlier releases have changed since posting.  Is there a way to update them to the current versions?

[Mario Martinez]

14 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

It sounds as though the earlier releases have changed since posting.  Is there a way to update them to the current versions?

 

We have always kept all our albums updated to the latest version of our calibration. The current calibration is 2.0f so right now all the albums in our catalogue are running calibration 2.0f.

 

If you have one of our albums from previous posts they will sure have an older calibration (whatever we had at that time). You can see what calibration you have on the tagging of the tracks (if you have calibration 3.x keep in mind that we dropped version 3 altogether).

 

There is not a way to "update" your albums. You would have to get a new one from our web page, but I can help there...

I about I open a new thread with an offer to get three masters at mp3 price, ...would that help?

It would be something like "Get 3 Masters for 27€"

It would be a good opportunity for people to "update" the old versions they might have from previous giveaways :)

[Mario Martinez]

The album is now in our catalogue.

You can listen to it online on the albums page or on the streamer along with all the other albums.

We have also uploaded some comparisons with recordings of this same pieces with other methods...

[ksb]

On 2/2/2020 at 5:40 AM, Mario Martinez said:

Once more I am coming back to the forum to share our latest work with you all.

 

Many of you already know about our research and have greatly contributed to making it work with your valuable feedback. I am extremely grateful for this so I would love to share this last work with you which I think represents the summit of what our technology is able to do.

 

This particular album with sextets for piano and winds by Ravel, Poulenc and Françaix, will be released on February 19th 2020, but as of right now it will be available to all AS members as a free master file (24/96) download. All you have to do is ask and I will be happy to send you a gift code to download the album.

 

Of course, as always, feedback is welcome but not mandatory to receive and enjoy your album

 

I Would also love to hear it! Thanks

[Mayfair]

Stunning imaging and "being-there" ambiance.  Also liked the visual nod to Chaplin in the cover art and album title.

 

Thanks again, Mario.

[semente]

Hi Mario,

 

As usual listening to this recording is a bit disconcerting.

The realism is tremendous and the balance is so natural that I keep turning up the volume until the medium-sized-speakers-in-a-small-room combo start to show its limitations.

 

I'm sure you played with the lid position? What did you end up with?

 

Best,

Ricardo

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

Hi Mario,

Thank you for your offer, count me in.

Cheers

David

[Mario Martinez]

 

On 2/25/2020 at 9:03 AM, semente said:

Hi Mario,

 

As usual listening to this recording is a bit disconcerting.

The realism is tremendous and the balance is so natural that I keep turning up the volume until the medium-sized-speakers-in-a-small-room combo start to show its limitations.

 

I'm sure you played with the lid position? What did you end up with?

 

Best,

Ricardo

 

Hi Ricardo,

 

all the recordings we have done so far have had the lid of the piano completely open. You can see it here in the picture...