My 2026 live concert kicks off in August, with many more to follow reason I'm very picky on the performance and the conductor. Hard earned money, you know.
People have very little idea what's real timbre. In this context, timbre is merely an envisage and conveniently borrow from the past casual listening experiences and introduce higher fidelity. More tellingly, they developed fragmented listening. The cannon in the1812 Overture, the noises behind the music, the stomping of the Flamenco, the bass of cinematic track for instance are their showstopper. Make things worst, the heavy-handed EQ recordings. Too polish and too clean to be unreal. Hence, they allow envisions to run wild with their notion of sound, unchecked. Extension, resolution, fatter bottom and et cetera.
My recent live concert's insight; the fogginess of our playback, at any price level of system. My educated guess is the microphone at the first line of recording. Not much we can do about it. I go as far to say the modern recording technique couldn't capture the real timbre and nuances. Listening live always make me grief with my playback.
You can't miss the violin's buzzing sound, as if there's an amplification at the f holes. The friction of bow-string showcases the radiance of lumen thereafter a long ascending sustain. I can't help being astonished with the intricate details and the sonic amplitude. Despite extraordinary swift, I can articulate each note and visualize the action on the strings.
When the entire string section in play, unison come to my head, the pitches receive a rounded makeover to arrive at bodied sound. Fortified. Similarly, the cellos become mellower, grounded and layered. What can I say about piano? A very challenging piece of instrument. All playback that I've heard failed in either a short-lived sustain or less imposing pitches. The exotic tweeters do bring the gap closer in spite of our audible range. Notwithstanding the complexity of piano pitches, the roar of the piano begins with a tee off with steely pitches and a pronounced body resonation follows. Either aggressive attack at the keyboards and fleet fingered, our skin feels the acoustic energy. In this regard, our playback failed miserably. Woodwind ah...., the flute and the oboe, capture the moment of the beguiling warmth of the morning sun or the depiction of a stroll through the garden is in insight. Moving on to the screeching metallic sound of the brass cutting the air like a butter, often used to convey a dramatic change of event. Sigh! The nuances mostly got lost in the recording I often find difficult to come to terms with after a live concert. Our playback is outrightly pale. Accept no argument. go listen for yourself. The philharmonic sound is the gold standard.
Odds are you will go off track with your tuning without a reference. It happens under your nose. Whatmore with audiophile samplers with crazy fireworks. And this narrative is profoundly misguided. Most audio enthusiasts embrace the scientific approach to sound, too clinical for musical appreciation and profoundly soulless. And yet, the measurement is impeccable.
Listening to the same score through my system ripped off an unsettling issue, the recessed upper midrange energy. Reason being my tuning was erring on voices. This is a longstanding conundrum, voice or instrument, you can't do both well. My speakers were toed in about 5 degrees, a slight toe in. As with all box speakers, off axis will result in rolled off highs. Your flat frequency response goes to the bin. Nevertheless, my voices are served pretty well, remarkably bodied and palpable but my violin loses its rightful luster.
At around 15 degrees, my tweeters are on axis. Upper midrange energy increased to come to a shift on sonic equilibrium. The usual hi fi-ish presentation reinstalled, precise imaging, stronger delineation, less analogue albeit the violin's vividness. To some extent, the room didn't get energized the way it used to. Alas, the loss of bass drive makes the sound subtly uncanny, less anemic, less punchy, at least from where I come from. Bass quality improved though, less cloudiness and more "concise". Granted, the room plays a lesser role, I have squandered my immersive sound. At this standpoint, reposition my AGS and crank the volume up a little bit get me closer to where I was. This exercise unveiled one thing, contrary to conventional wisdom, a slight smeared bass can be so alluring for music appreciation but I'm not going back. With that in mind, you have to decide which you prefer.
Toe in affects soundstage considerably, this will be followed up in my next posting.
