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Hi-Rez Highway: Re: Water Lily Russian Recordings and turning the other cheek.... by Chris from Lafayette

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Re: Water Lily Russian Recordings and turning the other cheek....

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Kavi,

I think your last post did not have as much useful information in it as your previous posts did. Be that as it may, please allow me to respond. As usual, the excerpts from your posts are in quotation marks:

“I do happen to know something about orchestral balance and human nature. Orchestral balance in a given hall, is a combination of the seating arrangment, hall acoustics, the dictates of the composer and the artistic disposition of the conductor.”

. . . and, you might have added (if you’re recording the performance), the placement of the microphones!

“Those of us who make one point stereo recordings that entail no gimmickry, wherein we strive to capture the reality in a "documentary" style and do not impose our idea of balance via miking, panning and EQ, as all the majors invariably do, consider perserving the original balance in the given hall, at the time of recording, the Holy Grail.”

Please don’t take offense, but I’m going to use a reductio ad absurdum to get my point across. You say you do not impose your idea of balance via miking. But the very position at which you choose to place the microphones is an imposition of your idea of the balance! It’s a subjective judgement of where YOU think the most realistic balance is achieved – even if you have Russian acousticians to support your judgement. Now for the reductio ad absurdum: Suppose a producer got it into his head that the perfect place for his microphones was directly in front of the brass section, and that this placement was best at “preserving the original balance in the given hall”. Although the resulting recording would achieve a certain reality (yes, that’s how it sounded right in front of the brass section!), I’m sure that most listeners would not applaud that producer’s efforts. Some listeners might even have a PRECONCEIVED IDEA (based on their attendance at any number of orchestral concerts) that the strings ought to be more prominent in that recording, even though they did not attend the actual recording session.

OK, this crazy example is far from what we hear on your recording, but I hope you take my point. You can’t just go around proclaiming that you’re “preserving the original balance in the given hall”. What you’re really preserving is a certain balance from the vantage point of where you place the microphones.

At this point, let me stop and say, believe it or not, I’M ON YOUR SIDE (at least partially) – I don’t like tons of microphones sprouting up all over the place, with the balance reconstituted by (as I mentioned in another post) some dweeb in the control room. I think the difference between us is that I’m less doctrinaire about one point stereo recordings. When you have your minions implying that any other recording technique, even a relatively purist technique such as spaced omnis, doesn’t even sound like music, I think, in your heart, you know that’s not true. (Not that the other techniques don’t have limitations, but they can certainly be effective vehicles for the honest capture of a given performance.)

OK, back to your post. . .

“Human nature being what it is, you are couching the obvious in such a manner so as to make look silly.”

Believe me, this is not true. I’m just trying to get my points across. I’m actually frustrated with myself that I can’t be clearer sometimes.

“Of course I know that what the mikes picked up would have been different in a different place! But I had made it clear as to WHY I had picked the chosen spot. And had you paid a little more attention you would notice that the CD comes with a 16 page booklet with excellent notes, including 3 pages on the recording.”

After I read this part of your post, I scoured the Mahler Fifth program booklet once again. I may be overlooking the obvious, but I sure can’t find any section where the microphone placements (as you so kindly provided in your previous post) were stated. Since you brought up the subject of the program booklet, I agree there’s lots of excellent information therein. But I think you could have used a better graphic design and a more judicious choice of fonts. That’s just my opinion – I’m not pontificating, just offering some friendly advice.

“You can certainly "do" a Lord Nelson by putting the telescope to the blind eye. That too is numan nature but hardly a balanced view!”

Great quotation! I’d like to toss one back at you, and I’m on kind of a Latin kick today, so see if you think this quote from Varro will do:

Non omnes qui habent citharam sunt citharoedi [Not all who have a lyre are lyre players]

(Please don’t construe that as applying to you!)

-Chris Salocks
(Take my opinions with a grain of salt – everything else being equal, I prefer DVD-Audio!)




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