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Playback Listening
Topic: Size Deficiency and Lack of Interest (musically, of course)

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-16-2010
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My ultimate wet audio dream was to have Bruckner Room. But so far it turning out that I got another big B room. Since 3 days back I stopped the intellectual masturbation with my room my playback up for the whole week and listening what I am listening I recognize that have un-proportionally high amount of Bach in my listening. It is not that I have anything against it but I wonder if my new listening environment has anything to do with it….

The Cat

Posted by unicon on 05-17-2010
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 Romy the Cat wrote:
My ultimate wet audio dream was to have Bruckner Room. But so far it turning out that I got another big B room. Since 3 days back I stopped the intellectual masturbation with my room my playback up for the whole week and listening what I am listening I recognize that have un-proportionally high amount of Bach in my listening. It is not that I have anything against it but I wonder if my new listening environment has anything to do with it….

The Cat


Romy can you explain the differences between a Bruckner room and Bach room ?(technically)
Im all new in this subject.
rooms are a part of audio playback to transparent audio waves in my idea and no more


Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-17-2010
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 unicon wrote:
Romy can you explain the differences between a Bruckner room and Bach room ?(technically) Im all new in this subject. rooms are a part of audio playback to transparent audio waves in my idea and no more.

 
I wish I could.  I have hypotheses however.
 
Bach, if he is properly played, is perfect arrangement of time and sonority. Bach is an ultimate staccatotist and his “logic” derives mostly from sequencing of individuals micro and macro events. Bruckner lives in legato domain and his “logic” is in not in sequencing of sonority but in fluctuation of sonority. Think about it like longitudinal waves for Bruckner and transverse wave for Bach.
 
So I think in “Transverse Bach” time is more intuitive then in Bruckner and therefore Bach and Bruckner have different demands for “space”. The Bach’s space is more linear and properly algorithmable, it is too perfect and sometime it is too much of perfection.  Bruckner’s space is ever-changing substance where each practical of the space live own life, still fluctuating by some devilish hyperbolic formula. Think about Rayleigh Surface motion what top and bottom are randomly flipping…
 
Oh, yeas, one more hypothesis: my playback nowadays perform too bad to play Bruckner.
 
The Cat

Posted by Lbjefferies7 on 05-17-2010
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Interesting.

When I moved my system and was just learning the new room and making changes, I was also listening to more Bach than usual.  I mostly wanted to play Partitas, Inventions, Preludes, and Goldberg Variations.  I was turned off by any cello work (which is terribly unusual for me), concertos, fugues, and WTC.

The system at that time was only pleasing with "typewriter music."  Now that the speaker placement is nearly final, time-alignment is done and I am finally getting tone and imaging, I am playing more Mahler, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Dvorak, Liszt, and Mussorgsky.  I haven't tried Bruckner, but Haydn, Mozart, and a few others are unattainable at this point.  Of course, I'm not sure exactly is going on, but I think that the room and system is obviously more capable of rendering rhythm and time readily (suiting music that is meaningful in these ways), whereas music whose meaning is more dependent on tone, timber, space, and so on just doesn't feel "right" or even comfortable without the proper ingredients.

LBJ

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-17-2010
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 Lbjefferies7 wrote:
Interesting.When I moved my system and was just learning the new room and making changes, I was also listening to more Bach than usual.  I mostly wanted to play Partitas, Inventions, Preludes, and Goldberg Variations.  I was turned off by any cello work (which is terribly unusual for me), concertos, fugues, and WTC. The system at that time was only pleasing with "typewriter music."

You said it all. I have absolutely identical observation, with exception of WTC that I feel is more in the first group. Your phrasing "typewriter music" (no insult to Bach intended) describes perfectly what kind usic I tend to listen in my new room.

The Cat

Posted by Lbjefferies7 on 05-18-2010
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I suppose WTC is properly in the first group, but I was playing my beloved Richter 1970 performance.  The gorgeous, aqueous, lucid, somehow Mozartian playing just did not work on a inferior setup.  I think that Bosendorfers may always have at least one leg in the second group.

You are right..."Typewriter music" is most certainly not an insult.  I don't know if I could live happily without Bach, but I doubt it.

LBJ

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-18-2010
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 Lbjefferies7 wrote:
I suppose WTC is properly in the first group, but I was playing my beloved Richter 1970 performance.  The gorgeous, aqueous, lucid, somehow Mozartian playing just did not work on a inferior setup.  I think that Bosendorfers may always have at least one leg in the second group.

You are right..."Typewriter music" is most certainly not an insult.  I don't know if I could live happily without Bach, but I doubt it.

Oh, yes, the Richter’s 1970 performance of WTC will certainly do it. I agree that it is with one leg in the second group. The WTC that I am tend to listed latterly is more like pure Typewriterish – by Glen Gould. I have to admit that Gould forever broke my virginity about how Bach might sound. Regardless who I listen – Richter or Feinberg I always miss that neurasthenicly-harpsichordish pattern of Gould’s Bach. In some instance I feel that back need to be played only like this…

Anyhow, what is interesting that this harpsichordishly-typewriting play is more suitable for my current room sound then “cello work, concertos, and fugues”. BTW, yesterday WCRB broadcasted live recording of of BWV 1061A double concerto  (with no strings, just Artist Name/Performers: Peter Sykes and Mahan Esfahani played double harpsichords harpsichords) and it was very nice. So, I guess the typewriter concertos would do….

The caT

Posted by Lbjefferies7 on 05-31-2010
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V56_x_tGzrA

At about 2:50 into the video, Gould explains how his playing differs between his living room and a concert hall.  "...the moment that I step into such an ambiance, something says, 'be expansive,' you know.  'Feel levels of things that you can't hear in a living room with a rug on the floor' and so on and so on.  Right there, there's a difference, a difference so great that it really influences the concept of the piece."

I suppose it is not exactly the same as some composers working somewhat well on primitave-sounding systems, but his comment on speed smote me, and I believe it applies to a room in which Bruckner and the composers of "expansive" sound and meaning could sound proper.  In my new room, I can't find the patience to listen to Bruckner.  I can now listen to concertos and pieces with content in the tone and space, but if the music takes too long to get into it, I become impatient, then feel like a rediculous and disrespectful philistine for turning it off prematurely.  In my old big room, it was never a problem.  Do I need "Expansiveness Injection?"  Absorption? Diffusion?  Maybe I should read-up on Lamm's X-Factor and steal an L2...

The Bewildered and Somewhat Pissed,
LBJ


Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-31-2010
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 Lbjefferies7 wrote:
In my new room, I can't find the patience to listen to Bruckner.  I can now listen to concertos and pieces with content in the tone and space, but if the music takes too long to get into it, I become impatient, then feel like a rediculous and disrespectful philistine for turning it off prematurely.  In my old big room, it was never a problem.  Do I need "Expansiveness Injection?"  Absorption? Diffusion? 

 
I like the way you think. I would offer some of my commentary of the subject. The very first thing you need to find out if your audio anti-Brucknerism has natural or audio nature.  What I mean is that sometime I develop temporarily feeling against some music and if you in the period when you prefer do not listen Bruckner then it is fine, there is nothing wrong with it. It is not even feeling against some music but rather feeling against specific expressive methods… Again, it is normal.
 
However, it might be not natural fluctuation of preferences but audio-made aversion. This need to be cured not even cured but corrected. I have a LOT of data, experiments and experience on the subject and I will post some recommendations how you might “test” it. Unfortunately I have no time now, today is hollyday and I am bussy. I will post an extended response later on during working week.
 
The Cat

Posted by Paul S on 05-31-2010
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Gould was such a great talker!  I love listening to him on just about any subject.  But don't let this stop you from digging into it, if you want to "fix" it.

LBJ, there are bound to be periods when, and plenty of varying reasons why, one just is not up for big music; but I, for one, would hate to lose that option.  And it may well be that there are adjustments you can make to get your present system, or most of it, in better sync with the room, and there are a few things you can do, if you are up for it, to begin to determine what's going on with you and the Bruckner.  To begin with, setting aside purely personal issues, I would assume it is some disfunction of an element or elements in the "system", which includes components, sources, power source, room and listening position.  With this simple assumption, we leave the realm of the arcane and the obtuse and we can begin to deal systematically with rote problems.  Simple? Tres.  Also, powerful.  Once there is a willingness on your part to suspend musical enjoyment for a while, along with the proper determination, the work can begin.  Given that you have recordings of Bruckner, etc., that you liked before, it should not take long to make some findings.

I can't remember if you mentioned your room particulars, or if you've said anything about BEP and/or its remediation in your system.  For one thing, right off the bat, I can tell you for certain that there are days here when BEP allows jazz and chamber works but not the big stuff; or, I can get Beethoven but not Bruckner.  Anyway, electricity is a possibe factor in many of the problems I notice at any given time, which may be well to remember as you trouble shoot.

Apart from the "musical sources" and the electricity, there are only, broadly speaking, the potential of the components themselves, the simple ordering and positioning of components, particularly speakers, and yourself, within the room, and the rote tuning of the gain stages to yield what you are looking/listening for but not presently getting.  It is a truism that it is easier to charge a smaller room, and as long as the room is "big enough", you should be able to use this to your advantage, even in this case.

If you are lucky, Romy will unfurl one of his very rigorous takes for you.  In any case, I suspect that what this situation mostly wants is the willingness to forego Music long enough to really work at it.  And you certainly have my sympathy in this!

FWIW, my own system was not designed for big works in the first place; but using the windfall ML2s I have tweaked what I have to the point where I can really wallow in big works when the electricity is good.  Ironically, I had numerically more frequent "big music days" before I worked my last couple of rounds of "improvements".  Now I have fewer (less frequent) days when I can enjoy the big works, but I get more out of them now when everything is right.

IMO, hi-fi mostly sucks.  But I have to admit that expanding program options makes it suck a good deal less.

Following these unleavened words, I will put your thoughts in the oven and see what bakes up.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Lbjefferies7 on 06-01-2010
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Thank you Gentlemen,

"I would offer some of my commentary of the subject. The very first thing you need to find out if your audio anti-Brucknerism has natural or audio nature."

Of course any input you can offer will be gladly considered.  Yes, of course, I have gone through cycles where I don't care to hear certain pieces.  It usually ends when, for whatever reason, I just need to hear it again.  I haven't really been able to figure out exactly why this is, but, of course, it has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with me.  It is certainly possible that I do not yet fully "get" Bruckner (Wagner is still a mystery).

"Gould was such a great talker!  I love listening to him on just about any subject.  But don't let this stop you from digging into it, if you want to "fix" it."

Ditto.  Gould was an amazing musician as well as an amazing person.  It is a shame that he couldn't do more.  That's a rediculous and terribly selfish thing to say, really, but anyone who could converse like that and be so grippingly interesting could probably also write quite effectively; literature, naturally, and in his case, music also.  I think that one of the best things he did was his attempt to discourage clapping.

"LBJ, there are bound to be periods when, and plenty of varying reasons why, one just is not up for big music;"

True, but I don't quite think that's what is going on.  I always (almost) love big music and big sounding performances.  I have been trying to play Von Karajan's 1971 Bruckner 7th, particularly because of Karajan's incredible ability to make the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra play so expansively and so hugely.  I just played Dvorak's 9th "New World" Symphony with Rafael Kubelik leading Berlin PO (a performance that is really quite important to me) and the system did not reveal the size of the first movement well enough.  The Largo was phenominal.  There were deficiencies, of course, as there always are, but I could not be compelled to care.  The expression was just as I have wanted to have it...Except...At the big fortissimo at around the 9 minute mark, it was wonderfully loud, but not properly big.  I want it to tower over the world, not to "be loud."

"I can't remember if you mentioned your room particulars, or if you've said anything about BEP and/or its remediation in your system."

I haven't.  I had previously been listening in a room that is about 65 feet wide by 32 feet deep with 14 foot ceilings at a far-field position.  I once set it up for near-field and was intrigued enough to move into a room that is exactly 11'1" by 11'1" by 8'1".  My Ears are exactly 5'11" from the speakers.  They are time-aligned teardrop shaped 3-ways (probably soon to be 4-way to solve a fairly moderate mid-bass deficiency).  In the previous location, they were trained to behave very well when portraying size.  Here, things have not been quite so easy.  They are postioned to within a red twat-hair's breadth of DPOLS (quite impossible in the old room).  Electricity is untreated, so...you know how it is.  For my Dvorak performance, it was not too crazy.

Anyway, I thank you all as cordially as I can and look forward to expanding on this rediculous little expedition of mine.  Night, night.


Posted by Paul S on 06-01-2010
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Well, that is a small room, all right.  Regardless, a "mid-bass deficiency" alone could literally evicerate big works.  I have written up the Kubelik/BPO/Dvorak 9, because I think so highly of that performance.  It should absoutely be loaded to the gills, and anyone not moved by it should hand in his credentials.

Anyway, it sounds from your description like you somehow must have used a long-distance variant of the "speakers as headphones" gambit in the very large room, since those speakers likely could not really load the giant room, and now some room effects are "interfering" with this strategy,  perhaps some mid-bass cancellation?  Also, by sitting much closer to the speakers now you may be "enjoying" the typical "up-tilted" frequency response at its finest.

I agree that, one way or another, you need the lower-mid/mid-bass glory.  Maybe re-think your DPoLS in light of the "headphones" strategy before you piss money on new pre-packaged speakers.  Especially if the present speakers "worked" in the large room, I would not give up on them before I got them as far as they can be gotten, or at least got a clear strategy from effing with them.

BTW, not saying it is BEP, but BEP can absolutely mess up any particular playback frequency at any given time.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Paul S on 06-01-2010
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Embarrassed to say that I just now thought about the 11' 1" X 11' 1" dimensions.  This is generally not a good start, to say the least.  I'll leave it for you to do the math and/or the measurements.  This might be a case where you could benefit from some un-equal screens in/near the corners and/or asymetrical speaker placement and/or listening position.  Likewise, think of "sails", discussed elsewhere in this forum.  Of course, particular room treatments will depend on whether you choose to charge the room or go "pro-style" with the very directional "monitors".  I am not prepared  to propose a "mixed" approach until I get more specific information.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by jp on 06-03-2010
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"When I moved my system and was just learning the new room and making changes, I was also listening to more Bach than usual.  I mostly wanted to play Partitas, Inventions, Preludes, and Goldberg Variations.  I was turned off by any cello work (which is terribly unusual for me), concertos, fugues, and WTC.

The system at that time was only pleasing with "typewriter music."  Now that the speaker placement is nearly final, time-alignment is done and I am finally getting tone and imaging, I am playing more Mahler, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Dvorak, Liszt, and Mussorgsky.  I haven't tried Bruckner, but Haydn, Mozart, and a few others are unattainable at this point.  Of course, I'm not sure exactly is going on, but I think that the room and system is obviously more capable of rendering rhythm and time readily (suiting music that is meaningful in these ways), whereas music whose meaning is more dependent on tone, timber, space, and so on just doesn't feel "right" or even comfortable without the proper ingredients."


Ive only had experience with one room for any length of time but I can identify with the experiences of LBJ and Romy.  I could not bear to listen to Bruckner when my system was somewhat out of sorts while conducting experiments in my system.  Listening to Bruckner in a less than ideal state, I felt impatient and somewhat annoyed and mentally fatigued.  It was nearly impossible to get at or into Bruckner.  I had a much more enjoyable time listening to it on my portable cd player.
In my attempts to locate the DPOL, I would use certain concertos and solo pieces to nail down the imaging but often times the sound/presentation was completely unsatisfactory when I changed to more sophisticated symphonic pieces such as Bruckner.  Quite frustrating and maddening.  So now when I do any sort of experiments I pretty much use Bruckner as my final test in evaluating my system.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 06-04-2010
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 jp wrote:
Ive only had experience with one room for any length of time but I can identify with the experiences of LBJ and Romy.  I could not bear to listen to Bruckner when my system was somewhat out of sorts while conducting experiments in my system.  Listening to Bruckner in a less than ideal state, I felt impatient and somewhat annoyed and mentally fatigued.  It was nearly impossible to get at or into Bruckner.  I had a much more enjoyable time listening to it on my portable cd player.
In my attempts to locate the DPOL, I would use certain concertos and solo pieces to nail down the imaging but often times the sound/presentation was completely unsatisfactory when I changed to more sophisticated symphonic pieces such as Bruckner.  Quite frustrating and maddening.  So now when I do any sort of experiments I pretty much use Bruckner as my final test in evaluating my system.

I would not say that listening to Bruckner at even the worst equipment brings me impatience, annoyance or mentally fatigue of any kind. There are however different type of listening: regular listening and The Listening. In the high-end audio we go for The Listening and this is VERY far experience from regular listening.  The last weekend I had Bruckner’s The Listening even in a house of one of my local audio guys – it was the super event. I meant to write up about the event but my feelings of it still too fresh and to vulnerable to fuck it up with writing about it.

BTW, above I have promised that I will do write up about the “Bruckner room sound”. I did not do it yet. Well I did some sketching but it turned out to be a post not about the listening room but rather about Bruckner Sound and Audio. It is much wider than the subject of this thread and I had a lot of interest to write that article. I will compile it in a finish set of thought and will post it in a separate “Bruckner Sound and Audio” thread.

Here is an introduction section from it:

As the prelude to this post we have to very clearly understand that we are talking about audio and audio only. If you are not a fool then there is nothing to prevent you to get Bruckner whiteout any evolved audio – table radio or a car are perfectly fine. However if we presume the audio is able to make difference then let talk just about strictly audio aspects of reproduction the Bruckner sound.

The Cat

Posted by tuga on 06-06-2010
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 Romy the Cat wrote:

 Lbjefferies7 wrote:
Interesting.When I moved my system and was just learning the new room and making changes, I was also listening to more Bach than usual.  I mostly wanted to play Partitas, Inventions, Preludes, and Goldberg Variations.  I was turned off by any cello work (which is terribly unusual for me), concertos, fugues, and WTC. The system at that time was only pleasing with "typewriter music."

You said it all. I have absolutely identical observation, with exception of WTC that I feel is more in the first group. Your phrasing "typewriter music" (no insult to Bach intended) describes perfectly what kind usic I tend to listen in my new room. 

The Cat


I have just bumped into an article by Robert Everist Greene that covers this subject with a reasonable amount of depth:

High Romanticism and the Sound of Recorded Music -> http://www.regonaudio.com/HighRomanticism.html

 REG wrote:

No composer has ever been written about more than Wagner. Indeed, few people have altogether. In the midst of the vast literature on Wagner as a philosopher of music, revolutionizer of harmony, redefiner of opera, master of poetry, dramatic interpreter of mythology, and, incidentally, political revolutionary, it is easy to overlook a basic point: Wagner changed the literal sound of music.


Listen in your mind to the opening of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and then to the opening of Das Rheingold. The Mozart is light, staccato, divided into short phrases, treble-oriented (the melody is the highest part, and harmonized from the top down) and, philosophically, clear and rational. Moreover, the music asks for clarity in performance: clear playing, separated instrumental lines, and clear acoustics to help with the first two.



Das Rheingold is massive and so long-lined as to have lines that go on indefinitely ("endless melody"); it is built from the bottom up and it is philosophically mystical. The performance requirements are warmth, continuity, fullness, bass solidity and relatively reverberant acoustics to support the sound.



Of course, this is oversimplified: Mozart contains Wagnerian passages (the overture to Don Giovanni); Wagner contains few Mozartian ones, but Strauss contains a great many. Still, the essential point remains. The Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, Bruckner's massive sound structures, and Mahler's adagios inhabit a sonic world different from that of the Classic period - Mozart and Haydn-and to a great extent, different from that of Beethoven, too. The Beethoven Fifth has the philosophical character of Romanticism heroic passion, extreme intensity and extreme contrasts. But its sound remains based in staccato-accented rhythmic structures, far more so than, say, a Bruckner symphony. This shift in sonic emphasis has vast implications for how the music should be recorded and reproduced. These implications and how they have been largely ignored or misunderstood will be my subject here. 

To a great extent, the musical changes I am talking about are written in the scores. The massive orchestrations, the abundance of bass instruments - even the invention of at least one (the "Wagner tuba") - and the long melodic lines propelled by complex chromatic harmony are all literal parts of the music as written. But, in addition, one can hear the changes in the acoustics of the places where the music was intended to be played.


He goes on to describe how the music hall was reinvented to accommodate for this new SOUND, and finally the problems in recording (close-micing, "dead" rooms) and playback.

It's a very interesting read.

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