Poor recordings - are they genre related?

[Beresford]

Sometimes it's the case of "too many microphones". The rot started with Decca Phase 4, which was interesting in its time, but not really a good idea. I was involved in a recording at CTS Studios in the mid-1980s and was horrified by the artificially of at all - a mike over every orchestral musician's stand. The result had impact, but no real depth.

Can you say what it is that goes wrong - technically - when too many mics are used, or used in the wrong way? Do recording engineers still use the "crossed pair" single stereo mics that I understood (from reading) to be the source of stereo imaging?

[richardfinegold]

Richard: I'd be interested in hearing which CD version of Tea For The Tillerman you've been listening to - the original CD from the 80s, or the remaster from the early 2000s? I have the latter and seem to recall it sounding fine.

The Jewel case states the Eighties

[Conchis]

The Jewel case states the Eighties

I've got most of the CS remasters that were put out in 1999 (I think) and they all sound pretty good to me. I tend to like Sushi Gur's (who did the remastering on these) work, generally: he supposedly boosts the bass response but I don't see that as a bad thing as the lower range was not well served in the early days of CD.

[Conchis]

Most people seem to think Rattle's CBSO recordings are very poorly engineered. It's been a long time since i listened to them, but would forum members generally agree?

[Jasmine Bassett]

There are several things which can make multi mic recordings more unnatural than the classic "Blumlein" crossed pair arrangement. I don't know how much that arrangement is currently used but it does rely on the balance being right within the ensemble itself, with the recording venue itself and with the exact position of the two microphones within the room. It takes time and experience to pick exactly the right spot and both of those things are in short supply in these days where time is money. Looking at published session photographs of even small groups (string quartets for example) suggests that multi-mic techniques are the norm even in these circumstances - which is a shame.

Multi-microphone recordings are usually made with the idea of individual microphones pointing at individual or small groups of instruments with the view to being able to adjust the balance at a later stage after the musicians themselves have gone home and are not being paid session time. With the increasing use of live recordings microphones close to instruments can reduce the amount of audience noise that is picked up. However one characteristic of all instruments that changes with distance is the exact harmonic balance of the sound. The higher harmonics of instrumental tone are absorbed by the air and so the closer to an instrument the microphone is the brighter the sound will be. Although the microphones used for individual instruments will have been chosen to have some directional bias they will each pick up sounds from many off the instruments around the intended one and when all these are mixed together there will be no coherence to how the sounds combine leading to an inevitable blurring and smudging of any image. Finally, when the sounds of an ensemble is picked up by a single pair of microphones the time at which the sound from each instrument and the amplitude of that sound arrives at the microphone is precisely related to the distance from the microphone and is one of the reasons the simple approach gives such good stereo results. Multi micing destroys all of those relationships.

In many ways it's surprising multi micing produces anything remotely like a believable sound stage but to my mind this is the prime reason why there are so very few good natural sounding modern recordings.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

One of the reasons I don't much care for so-called 'authentic performance' is that, whereas you might be hearing 'what the composers heard', you're not necessarily hearing what the composers wanted.

You'll never walk alone.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Can you say what it is that goes wrong - technically - when too many mics are used, or used in the wrong way?

It's a matter of whether the end result sounds like an orchestra (etc.) in a concert hall (etc.) or something much more artificial. A recording engineer can respect the choices of the musicians, or override them by distorting the balance to a considerable degree. In the Phase 4 box I referred to earlier, there's a wide variation of interference, ranging from the balance of Kenneth Wilkinson (which is exemplary) to some utterly tasteless manipulation that should be banned by the Geneva Convention.

[cloughie]

Most people seem to think Rattle's CBSO recordings are very poorly engineered. It's been a long time since i listened to them, but would forum members generally agree?

I don't know if they so much poorly engineered as engineered with a dynamic range which did not cater for listening in the average domestic setting ie soft passages may be too soft and loud passages too loud. I do not think that EMI were alone in this nor just the CBSO orchestral recordings. Bryn Terfel's Vagabond CD on DG suffers from this and I guess there are many others.

[vinteuil]

In the Phase 4 box I referred to earlier, there's a wide variation of interference, ranging from the balance of Kenneth Wilkinson (which is exemplary) to some utterly tasteless manipulation that should be banned by the Geneva Convention.

... ah, but it might be "what the composers wanted".


.

[Conchis]

I don't know if they so much poorly engineered as engineered with a dynamic range which did not cater for listening in the average domestic setting ie soft passages may be too soft and loud passages too loud. I do not think that EMI were alone in this nor just the CBSO orchestral recordings. Bryn Terfel's Vagabond CD on DG suffers from this and I guess there are many others.

Actually, you've reminded me that 'untamed dynamic range' was one of the besetting sins of those recordings. It's funny how the listener (well, this listener at least) is inclined to blame themselves at first for 'having to adjust the volume during quieter and louder passages: it's only after a while that you start to think the producer may have been at fault.

Michel Glotz ('Karajan's' Wunschdiener' - sic! - in the control room) came up with some very, very strange balances, particularly notable on von K's EMI recordings (the Tristan being the best example I can think of).

There is a whole can of worms associated with the remastering of rock on CD. The name Jon Astley (erstwhile brother-in-law- of the Who's Pete Townshend) has audiophiles coughing and cursing.

[jayne lee wilson]

I don't know if they so much poorly engineered as engineered with a dynamic range which did not cater for listening in the average domestic setting ie soft passages may be too soft and loud passages too loud. I do not think that EMI were alone in this nor just the CBSO orchestral recordings. Bryn Terfel's Vagabond CD on DG suffers from this and I guess there are many others.

Trouble is, what is an average domestic setting and how is any engineer, trying to get the best possible sound out of a given hall/orchestra, supposed to cater for it?

Rattle's CBSO recordings are some of the finest, most realistic I know (along with BIS). Disappointed with the constricted, less natural sound on various Red Line or HMV Classics reissues, I sought out the original EMI Angel CDs... they sounded wonderfully natural - spacious and dynamic, and I've collected them obsessively since. There's at least 20 on that shelf now, including the Bartok Piano Concertos with Donohoe, the Sibelius Symphonies, Henze 7, two wonderful Haydn anthologies, the Beethoven Concertos 1&2 with Vogt....Prokofiev 5, Ravel Concertos with Ousset, Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, Debussy Images & Jeux...
Many of these received high praise in Gramophone's Sounds in Retrospect/Soundings, and take look at the engineering roster: names like Keener, Clements, Murray feature regularly. They are demanding of amps and speakers, but that really is the point - they're a sonic touchstone.

Apportioning "blame" to engineers or domestic listeners comes at it from the wrong angle. It's more a question of understanding the aims of producers, the limitations of amplifier power and speaker sensitivity and so on, then trying to improve on that if you can...
(it was a BIS CD, one of the first I bought, which audibly overloaded the system I had then, which set me on the long and winding road to understanding, and HiFi upgrades...I didn't have a large budget then & had to read much, ask questions & think hard!...)

(And there are plenty of alternatives of the same repertoire to choose from, if all that's unappealing....)

[cloughie]

Trouble is, what is an average domestic setting and how can any engineer, trying to get the best possible sound out of a given hall/orchestra, supposed to cater for it?

Rattle's CBSO recordings are some of the finest, most realistic I know (along with BIS). Disappointed with the constricted, less natural sound on various Red Line or HMV Classics reissues, I sought out the original EMI Angel CDs... they sounded wonderfully natural - spacious and dynamic, and I've collected them obsessively since. There's at least 20 on that shelf now, including the Bartok Piano Concertos with Donohoe, the Sibelius Symphonies, Henze 7, two wonderful Haydn anthologies, the Beethoven Concertos 1&2 with Vogt....Prokofiev 5, Ravel Concertos with Ousset, Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, Debussy Images & Jeux...
Many of these received high praise in Gramophone's Sounds in Retrospect/Soundings, and take look at the engineering roster: names like Keener, Clements, Murray feature regularly. They are demanding of amps and speakers, but that really is the point - they're a sonic touchstone.

Apportioning "blame" to engineers or domestic listeners comes at it from the wrong angle. It's more a question of understanding the aims of producers, the limitations of amplifier power and speaker sensitivity and so on, then trying to improve on that if you can...
(it was a BIS CD, one of the first I bought, which audibly overloaded the system I had then, which set me on the long and winding road to understanding, and HiFi upgrades...I didn't have a large budget then & had to read much, ask questions & think hard!...)

(And there are plenty of alternatives of the same repertoire to choose from, if all that's unappealing....)

I agree Jayne about the CBSO recordings - they are very good, better than some of the Rattle BPO recordings, and when I listen to them in the ideal way at a fair volume they are fine, but I perhaps need different settings for different situations depending on which equipment I am using. The Terfel example I quoted was a CDR I recorded for the car along with the Shirley-Quirk, the latter being perfectly audible the former requiring more volume for the quieter bits. I comment on these things not as a complaint but an observation - it's great that we have so many good recordings available at very reasonable prices, and yes Jayne so many of my favourites are from the 50s and 60s.

[gradus]

I don't know if they so much poorly engineered as engineered with a dynamic range which did not cater for listening in the average domestic setting ie soft passages may be too soft and loud passages too loud. I do not think that EMI were alone in this nor just the CBSO orchestral recordings. Bryn Terfel's Vagabond CD on DG suffers from this and I guess there are many others.

The Vagabond album seems well recorded to me and captures Terfel's voice with exceptionally wide dynamic contrasts but I have to admit that my wife finds it just too much of a good thing. But what singing and accompanying.

[Ferretfancy]

Trouble is, what is an average domestic setting and how is any engineer, trying to get the best possible sound out of a given hall/orchestra, supposed to cater for it?

Rattle's CBSO recordings are some of the finest, most realistic I know (along with BIS). Disappointed with the constricted, less natural sound on various Red Line or HMV Classics reissues, I sought out the original EMI Angel CDs... they sounded wonderfully natural - spacious and dynamic, and I've collected them obsessively since. There's at least 20 on that shelf now, including the Bartok Piano Concertos with Donohoe, the Sibelius Symphonies, Henze 7, two wonderful Haydn anthologies, the Beethoven Concertos 1&2 with Vogt....Prokofiev 5, Ravel Concertos with Ousset, Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, Debussy Images & Jeux...
Many of these received high praise in Gramophone's Sounds in Retrospect/Soundings, and take look at the engineering roster: names like Keener, Clements, Murray feature regularly. They are demanding of amps and speakers, but that really is the point - they're a sonic touchstone.

Apportioning "blame" to engineers or domestic listeners comes at it from the wrong angle. It's more a question of understanding the aims of producers, the limitations of amplifier power and speaker sensitivity and so on, then trying to improve on that if you can...
(it was a BIS CD, one of the first I bought, which audibly overloaded the system I had then, which set me on the long and winding road to understanding, and HiFi upgrades...I didn't have a large budget then & had to read much, ask questions & think hard!...)

(And there are plenty of alternatives of the same repertoire to choose from, if all that's unappealing....)

Every now and again you strike near perfection. I recently found a BIS CD in my local Oxfam shop. It was a disc of Satie played by Roland Pontinen and the sound was wonderfully real with a wide dynamic and not a trace of hardness in the piano tone,a real pleasure to hear.

Then you find yourself asking why it doesn't happen more often!

[MickyD]

I too have that Pontinen Satie disc..must have been one of BIS's first releases. I agree that it sounds wonderful. Some other early examples of their outstanding recordings were those with Jakob Lindberg - English Lute Duets, Music from Scotland and France, Vivaldi Lute Concertos and even music for lute by Haydn. I treasure them.