Why on earth do speaker wires sound different?

[MrGongGong]

Do go - it's an amazing place. I think it's easiest to do the last bit by train, even if you don't go all the way, and then walking out of the railway station is just so weird, seeing the absence of roads. Travelling around on the vaporetti is fun too. Of course, there's not much else to do or see there

Sounds wonderful

[johnb]

I've never been to Venice but 'I know' it's rubbish , I just do

Yes, decaying buildings with the rendering falling off, sinking into the lagoon, the whiffy odours in summer (and that's just from the tourists).

[french frank]

Very wet, Venice ...

[I've removed some posts that were the subject of complaints.]

[Bryn]

Very wet, Venice ...

[I've removed some posts that were the subject of complaints.]

Hmm, I note that mine relating to the fact that Venice is built on rubbish (a straight forward fact), and that the music of Stockhausen at al was built on centuries of the best of European and other musics, seems to be among those removed. What possible reason can be given for that?

[french frank]

Hmm, I note that mine relating to the fact that Venice is built on rubbish (a straight forward fact), and that the music of Stockhausen at al was built on centuries of the best of European and other musics, seems to be among those removed. What possible reason can be given for that?

The usual one - you quoted a message which had been removed. If you would like me to edit it and reinstate, please say.

[Bryn]

Thanks, Frenche, but I think I covered what I thought relevant in that recent message. No point duplicating it.

[french frank]

Thanks, Frenche, but I think I covered what I thought relevant in that recent message. No point duplicating it.

[johnb]

Very wet, Venice ...

[I've removed some posts that were the subject of complaints.]

I didn't think I had sufficient grounds to report them but some posts had an unpleasant edge to them and were veering into decided unpleasantness.

[Nevalti]

.......Imagine you are at a concert, and you close your eyes. Now you can hear the orchestra and you think it's laid out in a conventional way. You keep your eyes closed. You are listening to a new piece, so you don't know it. After a while a new instrument appears, perhaps a harp, a piano, or a saxophone. Mentally you place it at a particular orientation relative to yourself, and then you open your eyes and look. You can't see the player, so you keep looking, and eventually locate him or her a considerable angle away from the expected position. I am convinced that this can and does happen.

There can be several reasons for this.

1. Some of us really can't do accurate spatial localisation.
2. The hall has an ambience (echoes, reverberation etc.) which make this hard, or can mislead.

Try doing this in some venues, such as the RAH. It is perfectly plausible that spatial awareness can be compromised in venues like that.

I promised earlier in this thread to try your suggested experiment. Last night I went to the RAH. Unfortunately, unknown to me in advance of the day, my wife could only get tickets in the choir seats so the sound was doubtless even worse than normal in the RAH. She hadn't told me because she knew I wouldn't have wanted to sit there . The Rachmaninov was completely ruined, because both the piano and the violins were 'pointing' away from me, but the Tchaikovsky was still magnificent, even from that awful seat.

However, for your suggested experiment, that seating position was quite good because the orchestra layout was decidedly odd and I had no 'cheating' knowledge of where each instrument was. With my eyes closed, I 'located' each instrument with my ears. Every time I opened my eyes I was within 5ft of the musician and usually spot on.

Relative to another question raised in this thread, I also tried to detect if the quieter instruments got completely masked/swamped by the noisier one. As there is a lot of loud brass in the Tchaikovsky it was a good test. I found that I could almost always hear all the other instruments although I did notice that I could not hear the violas at one point when they appeared to be playing something very similar to the brass. Even when the violas 'disappeared' the cellos and violins remained perfectly audible despite the loud brass.

To reinforce the 'fact' that we all hear or perhaps just notice different things, I happened to be sitting next to a stranger who turned out to be a violinist in the Leipzig Orchestra. She was mildly critical that the orchestra were not playing 'together' properly at times. I hadn't noticed that at all.

(Please don't ask me what I thought of 'The Cosmic Dance' as we elected to stay in the restaurant instead.)


Another easy example of locating sounds is hearing an aeroplane flying over when you are out in open countryside. If it is high and fast, the sound will obviously appear to come from a position well behind it but for lower, slower planes, I presume we can all look up, directly at it. Even with echoes from surrounding buildings it is usually pretty obvious where the plane is.

[Dave2002]

I really don't like those choir seats much, but I can imagine that it's easier to locate the sound sources from there. I have been there - but I didn't try that "experiment" there I can assure you that this is not possible in some other locations in the hall, or indeed in some other halls.

Also, interesting to note your comments earlier about the Bantam Gold amplifier. I find it frustrating, because it's good at modest levels. Other amps may sound worse, but at higher levels I feel it just doesn't work so well, and I don't know what affordable amps do. Yesterday I browsed through some old magazines, and found descriptions of amps costing £10,000 and up - which were allegedly very good. I suspect that some of them are good, but not many of us can afford that kind of thing.

[Richard Barrett]

Have you ever experienced multichannel diffusion ?
like this

http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/BEAST/index.aspx

or the Acousmonium ? etc .......

I had a highly enlightening experience in April at the establishment where I do my teaching, where we put on a five-day festival of (principally) acousmatic music with the GRM Acousmonium, a two-tier 16-channel system (the one I was directly involved with, which was used for live spatialisation of a nine-piece electroacoustic improvisation ensemble) and a Wavefield Synthesis array all set up in the same space, so that direct comparisons were enabled.

Leaving aside the fact that of course different pieces were played on these three systems, I was particularly struck by the possibilities of three-dimensionality offered by the second and to some extent the first of them (and BEAST, which I worked with a couple of years ago). While virtual-source localisation is quite uncannily "realistic" in Wavefield Synthesis, the fact that everything takes place in a horizontal plane begins to feel like a crucial disadvantage when compared with systems that don't have that feature. (Note that Stockhausen's original plan for Gesang der Jünglinge already acknowledged this by proposing four speakers on the floor of the hall and a fifth pointing downward from above.)

The only thing I'd say about cables is that if all the hifi buffs with their speaker-cables as thick as drainpipes saw the kind of audio cabling that's normally found in professional recording studios they might not worry so much...

[MrGongGong]

I had a highly enlightening experience in April at the establishment where I do my teaching, where we put on a five-day festival of (principally) acousmatic music with the GRM Acousmonium, a two-tier 16-channel system (the one I was directly involved with, which was used for live spatialisation of a nine-piece electroacoustic improvisation ensemble) and a Wavefield Synthesis array all set up in the same space, so that direct comparisons were enabled.

Leaving aside the fact that of course different pieces were played on these three systems, I was particularly struck by the possibilities of three-dimensionality offered by the second and to some extent the first of them (and BEAST, which I worked with a couple of years ago). While virtual-source localisation is quite uncannily "realistic" in Wavefield Synthesis, the fact that everything takes place in a horizontal plane begins to feel like a crucial disadvantage when compared with systems that don't have that feature. (Note that Stockhausen's original plan for Gesang der Jünglinge already acknowledged this by proposing four speakers on the floor of the hall and a fifth pointing downward from above.)

The only thing I'd say about cables is that if all the hifi buffs with their speaker-cables as thick as drainpipes saw the kind of audio cabling that's normally found in professional recording studios they might not worry so much...

SARC in Belfast also has a space with an acoustically transparent floor so under/over rotation and movement is possible.

[Richard Barrett]

SARC in Belfast also has a space with an acoustically transparent floor so under/over rotation and movement is possible.

Yes, I've played in that, it's excellent, though I haven't actually done (or heard) any serious 3D diffusion there. Being able to extend the sound-space below as well as above the audience is a logical and exciting way to go, where this is possible! but a great deal can be done by taking existing architectural conditions seriously, that is interacting with them rather than trying (and almost inevitably failing) to counteract them.

[MrGongGong]

Yes, I've played in that, it's excellent, though I haven't actually done (or heard) any serious 3D diffusion there. Being able to extend the sound-space below as well as above the audience is a logical and exciting way to go, where this is possible! but a great deal can be done by taking existing architectural conditions seriously, that is interacting with them rather than trying (and almost inevitably failing) to counteract them.

That's all very well BUT it's not "real" music , is it ?

I've had a piece played on the Acousmonium but sadly wasn't there so looking forward to getting a chance to hear it sometime.
It's a shame that some of the folk who , on the surface, seem to be interested in sound seem so hostile to things like BEAST when it's one of the things that we have, in the UK , tremendous experience of. It's also on our "doorstep" and has the potential for some tremendous musical listening experiences. (i'll settle for a case of Cote De Rhone as a pluggers fee .... if that's ok Jonty )

[Richard Barrett]

That's all very well BUT it's not "real" music , is it ?

I guess that would be the opinion of some, but I too find it strange that so many people who wax passionately about sound-reproduction technology are completely uninterested in music that actually uses the technology instead of (theoretically) just passing through it to create the illusion that it isn't there at all.