# Classical music records



## protone (Apr 8, 2013)

Hi 
I am a lover of many kind of music. And one of my old love is classical music for big orchestra. But I have not been aible to find really good records. I have been keeping asking my dealer who is selling only very expensive 
high end products, but even he told me, I cant find anything really perfect. 
It has nothing totdo with digital or analog, even records with high sample rate 196 kHz and 24 Bit resolution sounds the same. 
The main problem is the stereo field and the out of phase effect. I think the main problem starts when they put to many microphones near to the instruments, and some microphones to capture the concert hall. Than they mix it and adjust balance to place it in the stereo field. Than they mix some amount of the room to it and that should give you the impression of a orchestra. 
This seams not to work. It is like making a steak out of minced meat. You never will get a steak even if you press it with 100 tons.
The effect on this recording tecnique is: there is not an orchestra playing in the same room, some instruments are playing the same composition but thats it. Additionally you can here noises that you will never here when you go to a concert like the scrtching of the bow of the bass even in a very loud part. You can here the flaps of the flutes or other wind instruments. And when it gets loud the sound becomes very sharp.
Another terrible effect is the phase. The phase can turn up to 180°. This means you can change the polarity of the speakers and you dont notice a big difference. This phase problems have been solved in all other music 
styles but not in classical orchestra records.
I have read about a tecnique where several microphones with very narow direction characteritics are placed in one position, and tha are directed to the target. This has the advantage that the sound reaches the microphone at the right time. So no phase problems should be there and the stereo field should be more real.

By the way the best records I found so far are from 1968 where they did not have many microphones. But the noise is high and the frequency response and dynamics where not as good as it is possible today. 

Does anyone know about this or can anybody give me an idea where to find really good classical orchestra records?

Thanks for any help


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## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

Channel Classics
Linn Records
HarmoniaMundi (France)
SFSO
BSO
Note that these recommendations are based, primarily, on their multichannel tracks.


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## protone (Apr 8, 2013)

Thanks Kal
Unfortunately I have only two chanels. But I will check if they also have some good stereo records. 
This is realy a long search for me, more than 20 years until now.

Regards 
Roland


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

Interesting you would bring this up. I posted a similar question recently in another HTS forum. Analyzing several different recordings of the same symphony, all of them had a "split stage" effect, a left side and a right side, but they might as well have been recorded in different cities, no center at all in the recording, no cohesiveness to the sound stage, zero phase relationship between the two channels. Nice recordings other than that, but what an oversight, totally disruptive to enjoying the music. It was really obvious with headphones, and pretty bad with my favorite near-field monitors, not quite so bad with a regular diffused-field speaker setup. These were all recordings from within the last 20 years.

No doubt, recording an orchestra is not a simple matter, but in this day there have to be some engineers who can do better than that. I share your frustration.

If I come across any nice recordings that have a particularly well-captured soundstage, I will let you know.


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## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

AudiocRaver said:


> Analyzing several different recordings of the same symphony, all of them had a "split stage" effect, a left side and a right side, but they might as well have been recorded in different cities, no center at all in the recording, no cohesiveness to the sound stage, zero phase relationship between the two channels. Nice recordings other than that, but what an oversight, totally disruptive to enjoying the music. It was really obvious with headphones, and pretty bad with my favorite near-field monitors, not quite so bad with a regular diffused-field speaker setup. These were all recordings from within the last 20 years.
> 
> No doubt, recording an orchestra is not a simple matter, but in this day there have to be some engineers who can do better than that. I share your frustration.


Really? Often when I play stereo recordings, I am motivated to check that my center speaker is *not *playing because there is so much that is, apparently, coming from between the speakers. I have been reminded of this lately as I have been fooling around with stereo and MCH DSD rips.

It is not a suprise that there is an issue with headphones and that is one reason I cannot stand them.


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

Kal Rubinson said:


> Really? Often when I play stereo recordings, I am motivated to check that my center speaker is *not *playing because there is so much that is, apparently, coming from between the speakers. I have been reminded of this lately as I have been fooling around with stereo and MCH DSD rips.
> 
> It is not a suprise that there is an issue with headphones and that is one reason I cannot stand them.


I should clarify. This was 2-channel listening, by "center" I meant center of the soundstage with a stereo setup.:sn:


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## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

AudiocRaver said:


> I should clarify. This was 2-channel listening, by "center" I meant center of the soundstage with a stereo setup.:sn:


That's exactly what I took it to mean and that was the context of my comments.


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## protone (Apr 8, 2013)

Thanks for your comments. So I am not alone with this frustration. Audio Raver I have also made the expirience as better the chanel separation is, as worse it gets. Once I visited a friend who is not very interessted in audio, so one of his speakers was placed on the top of a cabinet almost touching the celling and the other somwhere behind the sofa. You couldnt do it worse, but the room feeling was very surprising. He totaly destroied the stereo field and created a diffuse field. So overall even if it is cracy I liked it somehow. But this cant be the solution.
Some years ago I read an interview with a sound engineer and he said: it must be possible to listen to clascical music while you are vacuum cleaning the house or while driving in the car. And I think this is where the disaster starts. Comercial interessts are very high. The number of people who listen music in the background are more than the ones who really listen. So if you make a record without any compromises to dynamics and room, these records can be played on very good equimpment only and you must listen carefully to hear everything. A vacuum cleaner canot be used than. 
After reading this interview I call these comercial records (aprox. 99.9%) "vacuum cleaner records". 
So I will continiue to find for the 0.1% wich might be good.

Regards


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## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

protone said:


> Some years ago I read an interview with a sound engineer and he said: it must be possible to listen to clascical music while you are vacuum cleaning the house or while driving in the car. And I think this is where the disaster starts. Comercial interessts are very high. The number of people who listen music in the background are more than the ones who really listen. So if you make a record without any compromises to dynamics and room, these records can be played on very good equimpment only and you must listen carefully to hear everything. A vacuum cleaner canot be used than.
> After reading this interview I call these comercial records (aprox. 99.9%) "vacuum cleaner records".
> So I will continiue to find for the 0.1% wich might be good.


I seriously doubt that this guy is a "classical" music engineer even if he says so. No classical recordist and mastering engineer that I have ever met espouses this philosophy although it is common to pop recordings.

I am, in fact, amazed by this discussion which is so far from what I have experienced and from what I have discussed with other classical music lovers. We are, generally, grateful for the rational consideration and work of serious classical producers.


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## protone (Apr 8, 2013)

Unfortunately he is a classical sound engineer. I also doubt that this is normal. But I have read a lot of litrature about recording tecniques and what I can see everyehere, the main goal is not to get a natural sound, instead the goal is to get a recording where all instruiments can be heard well and clear. They talk a lot about "weak" instruments that could not be heard clearly if not supportet by additional microphones. This sounds very strange to me. I think a classical orcherstea is a very well balanced sound body. And the conductor has spent a lot of time to get it perfect. Why do sound engineers have the idea to make something perfect better? One total wrong idea is, to think of an orchestra as collection of instruments. An orchestra is one sound body and the goal must be to capture the whole sound as it is. As soon as you start to cut it in pieces and than to put it togheter to one again, the situation becomes very difficult, I would say almost impossible to handle. For me it looks we are going in a total wrong direction more and more microphones, higher sample rates and bit deepths but the result is not improving. Some old records with very little numbers of microphones are much more warm and have a more clear room reproduction. Unfortunately the equipment was not that good at that time, so the dynamics and the noise level is not what we are used today. It would be interesting to try a combination of few microphones and latest recording equipment. 

I would be glad if you could recomend me some records.

Thanks


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

Kal Rubinson said:


> I am, in fact, amazed by this discussion which is so far from what I have experienced and from what I have discussed with other classical music lovers. We are, generally, grateful for the rational consideration and work of serious classical producers.


My comments were in reference to three different recent (<20 years) recordings of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, and my surprise to discover the soundstage cohesiveness problem to exist on all three of them. There may be a lot of good recordings of symphony orchestras in this regard, but I have not found any of the 7th yet. It just seems a bit odd.


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## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

protone said:


> Unfortunately he is a classical sound engineer. I also doubt that this is normal. But I have read a lot of litrature about recording tecniques and what I can see everyehere, the main goal is not to get a natural sound, instead the goal is to get a recording where all instruiments can be heard well and clear. They talk a lot about "weak" instruments that could not be heard clearly if not supportet by additional microphones. This sounds very strange to me. I think a classical orcherstea is a very well balanced sound body. And the conductor has spent a lot of time to get it perfect. Why do sound engineers have the idea to make something perfect better? One total wrong idea is, to think of an orchestra as collection of instruments. An orchestra is one sound body and the goal must be to capture the whole sound as it is. As soon as you start to cut it in pieces and than to put it togheter to one again, the situation becomes very difficult, I would say almost impossible to handle. For me it looks we are going in a total wrong direction more and more microphones, higher sample rates and bit deepths but the result is not improving. Some old records with very little numbers of microphones are much more warm and have a more clear room reproduction. Unfortunately the equipment was not that good at that time, so the dynamics and the noise level is not what we are used today. It would be interesting to try a combination of few microphones and latest recording equipment.
> 
> I would be glad if you could recomend me some records.


I have to say that the recording engineers that I have spoken with and the recording sessions I have attended bear no similarity to the misguided efforts you describe.

I think we are looking for the same thing. It will take me some time to come up with recent recordings because the vast majority of recent recordings I have are multichannel and I don't listen to them in stereo. I will look around and see what I come up with.


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

Kal Rubinson said:


> ...the vast majority of recent recordings I have are multichannel and I don't listen to them in stereo.


I am just getting into multichannel recordings, and am looking to grow my collection in that direction. The Beethoven 7th just happens to be a favorite. If you know of a good multichannel recording of it, I would appreciate knowing which one it is. Any other favorites you might recommend? Or list/review sources?


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## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

AudiocRaver said:


> I am just getting into multichannel recordings, and am looking to grow my collection in that direction. The Beethoven 7th just happens to be a favorite. If you know of a good multichannel recording of it, I would appreciate knowing which one it is. Any other favorites you might recommend? Or list/review sources?


I do not think there is a standout to rival the classic Bruno Walter/Columbia or Carlos Kleiber/DGG versions (which have been transferred to SACD). The ones I enjoy are Haitink/LSO, Fischer/Channel, Herreweghe(Pentatone) and Jarvi/RCA but these vary widely in their approach and in their acoustical presentation, so I suggest you sample them for the former before purchase.


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