Mario Martinez

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...

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...

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 :)

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.

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.

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

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...

About the balance between winds and piano the old post also mentions that we are not using a 9 foot grand. Back then we used a 7 foot grand like it says in the post, and one year later on 2016 we got a new piano that also was a 7 foot grand. All 12 recordings in our catalogue (plus this one that we are listening to) have been made with 7 foot grands. 9 foot pianos are more suited to play in large halls. Their color or sound is not necessarily better, they are just more powerful. We have tried both sizes in our room and for our purposes we always chose the 7 footers. That might also have to do with the way you are perceiving the balance. Besides this, there is always the fact that different systems/rooms emphasize different parts of the spectrum. It would be interesting to know how others perceive this balance...

This question did come up during our first thread back on 2015 :) Here is the explanation:

Here is a sketch with the position of the musicians during the recording sessions. From left to right French horn, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon. The person in red represents the placement of the mics.

I should give the musicians all the credit for the cover, it was their idea from the start :)

I am sure it could be done... I would love to try something like that. But we would need the collaboration of the hall owner plus way more funding that what we now have. The difficulty about this methodology is setting up the hall and recording chain to calibrate things to eliminate human interference in the post production process. We would need access to the venue for long extensive periods of time to try to get everything to work, but after that, if everything works out correctly it would be just the same as in our studio, but with enough space to fit an orquestra :)

For those who do not know about our project, these recordings are all made with just two mics. No mixing and mastering involved. Just a stereo pickup and a calibrated system to produce the most transparent possible sound. You can read about it at: http://www.playclassics.com/trtsound

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