Popular Post ARQuint Posted March 19, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted March 19, 2021 I'll add my thanks for an illuminating, solidly argued, and beautifully written treatise on a central issue of the audiophile pursuit. The discussion of concert halls, in particular, underscores that the use of the terms "imaging" and "soundstaging" are relevant to accurately describing our experiences with equipment and recordings. I've heard performances at the Musikverein, Concertgebouw, and Symphony Hall in Boston—and, like bluesman, I've heard hundreds at the Academy of Music and Verizon Hall because I live in Philadelphia. Musical memory is, to put it mildly, imperfect so employing the audiophile jargon is a good way to recall what a hall sounded like "in person". My own favorite venue is Bayreuth's Festspielhaus, where Wagner's operas get performed every summer in the theater the composer designed. The first time I went there, I wrote down my sonic impressions immediately after the seven performances that I attended. (There's an article about this in the Dec 2003/Jan 2004 issue of TAS for those AS readers who don't routinely burn their copies of TAS immediately after reading them.) Describing to myself what I was hearing with words like imaging and soundstage was invaluable with writing subsequent reviews of recordings made in that hall. For once, I'll beat Kal to the punch and suggest that properly executed multichannel production techniques can deliver the uniqueness of the word's greatest halls much more routinely than stereo. The deployment of the musicians on stage—imaging—and a sense of the space they share—soundstaging—is not infrequently recreated with two channel reproduction. But a sense of sound in the air between the musicians and the listening position isn't experienced very often with stereo and it is with well-done surround. This is a critical part of hearing a performance at a place like the Concertgebouw or Bayreuth and a reason why I'm a surround sound enthusiast. Andy Quint Senior writer The Absolute Sound bluesman, Gavin1977, Kal Rubinson and 3 others 3 1 2 Link to comment
Popular Post ARQuint Posted March 20, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted March 20, 2021 Along the same lines, I highly recommend a program on the Channel Classics label (a hybrid multichannel SACD, no less) with Paolo Giacometti playing an identical all-Ravel program on two pianos, a modern Steinway and a restored 1888 Érard - the brand that Ravel used at home when composing. The differences in the performer's approach to the same music on the two instruments—tempo, pedaling, dynamics, etc—is very interesting. [The title of the 2-SACD set is Compared. The catalog number is CCS SA 31612] bluesman, Bill Brown, The Computer Audiophile and 1 other 1 1 2 Link to comment
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