The problems with stereo recordings

[bluesman]

On 9/17/2020 at 5:10 AM, kirkmc said:

Sometimes I listen to jazz piano trios where the piano is very far to the left and the bass and drums to the right, and it sounds artificial. With all this talk about wanting recordings to sound like music as it is performed (yes, I know, the catchphrase is usually "as the artist intended," but I would argue that the goal is more to make it sound like it was performed), and griping about mastering and other alterations to music, does no one care about this exaggerated use of the stereo effect?

I believe the goal is most often to provide a recording that will sound "real" when played back. Unfortunately, that's an elusive goal, and many widely differing standards are used to decide how close to that goal a given recording comes.  Ping-pong stereo and use of spatial effects that are never part of a live performance are there to dazzle the plebes and techies.  But they have no place in the recording and reproduction of live music meant to sound as it was created.

 

Directionality is pretty much lost at any concert using sound reinforcement, which covers the Dead and most other performance units in most genres.  The symphony orchestra has a traditional seating arrangement that makes it easy to determine if the recording is spatially true to the performance:

 

 

And the traditional 17 piece jazz band usually follows this seating, as shown by the West Point Jazz Knights:

 

 

Whether you hear the piano from the left in a big band's live performance sans reinforcement depends on the acoustics of the venue and where you're seated.  So it's not surprising that the same applies to the position(s) of the mic(s) used to capture it with a true stereo technique.  And then there's the intended listening position or its simulation, which is established by the way the recording is made.  Is the engineer's goal to give you a front row seat, a seat in the center of the hall, a front center mezzanine box, or something else?  Is the goal to make it seem like the instruments are in your listening room or on stage at Carnegie Hall? 

 

With so many variations in listeners, their tastes, and their systems, every commercial recording is a compromise of many factors assimilated into what the producer thinks will attract the most buyers.  This results in a lot of source material that sounds terrible to most of us, because we're not the typical market for most recordings.

 

The piano that sounds 10' wide because it's drowning in the real or added ambiance of a simulated mid-hall seat may sound as though it's sitting on your desktop when played through near field speakers 4' apart.  One dead giveaway to poor recording technique is clear sourcing of the low piano keys from one side and the highs from the other, since pianos are almost always sitting with the keyboard perpendicular to the audience's line of sight.  Whether it's a grand or a console of some kind, the low strings and the high strings are both at the same position relative to the sides of the sonic image.  And even in the very odd case of a pianist who sits with his or her back to the audience or the orchestra, there's little pitch based localization.  You never hear the keyboard spread between L and R in a live performance, so you shouldn't hear it in a recording.

 

As for effects like a trio with the piano far left and the rhythm section far right, this is often an attempt to create the image of stage side table seating at a live performance.  It sounds contrived to me too, when listening from 15' away in the living room.  But, again, I think this is all part of the sonic experience the producers and engineers are trying to give the listener.  And in well made recordings, the apparent size of the instruments often grows into the space in which you listen.  Listen to Undercurrent or Intermodulation, both great albums by Bill Evans and Jim Hall, to hear how a guitar / piano duo are the "right" size whether you're listening through near field monitors at your desk or on your big living room rig while sitting 15' away.  And then there are recordings like Martin Taylor's early albums, which present the same huge solo guitar image he gets live, no matter where you are in your listening room.  He played a big arch top guitar on those with both magnetic and piezo pickups on it - and he used a stereo rig that made the guitar sound truly gigantic.

I hate the gimmicks too.  But they obviously appeal to a broad range of listeners, none of whom is us.

[bluesman]

10 hours ago, bluesman said:

One dead giveaway to poor recording technique is clear sourcing of the low piano keys from one side and the highs from the other, since pianos are almost always sitting with the keyboard perpendicular to the audience's line of sight. 

CORRECTION: I meant the strings, not the keyboard. The keyboard is parallel to the audience’s line of sight and the strings are perpendicular to it. So high and low strings are all in the same left-right location. The high strings are shorter than the lows, so their centers of vibration are inches closer to the keyboard side in a grand (because the strings are horizontal). In a console (“upright”, spinet, etc), the strings are vertical.  In neither is the location of the strings audible, except perhaps to the pianist.

 

Sorry !