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

Kavi,

Now we’re back to getting some useful information from you. Thanks! Once again, the excerpts from your latest post are in quotation marks:

“YOU started all this nonsense, not I. You in effect attacked my credibility in a public forum on an issue on which many others, including some experts, have a contrary view/opinion. You have the right to criticise and I have the right to defend myself. I do not agree with you but will simply state my case.”

That’s the great thing about a public forum such as this one – People can to back and check the whole history! I originally posted that, in my opinion, something was not right with the Mahler Fifth. Somehow along the way, you started to construe my criticisms of the recording as personal attacks and insults, even though I bent over backwards to be humorous and civilized. Oh well . . .

“What I have stated from the begining and made very clear, is that the "reality" that Water Lily captures is determined by me and thus my "view".”

This seems to me a bit changed from what you (and Robert Greene) stated originally, that there is only one objective reality and that only Water Lily’s recording technique can capture it. I was the one, who, with considerable verbiage, examples, and explanations, steered you to your present position: that what you’re capturing is YOUR view of reality from the vantage point of where you place the microphones. (Anyone can go back and check this.)

“I do hold however, that our view is valid as it is based on a theoratical model that is very sound. You may know all this, but I am sure that there are some readers who will benefit from the information to be outlined below. The spaced omni mike technique was born out of the research done at Bell Labs in the 20s. Their experiments with Stoky and The Philadelphia Orchestra, wherin rows of mikes placed before the orchesta were in turn linked to corresponding speakers, showed that in effect the same resuls could be achived with just three spaced omni mikes. This "wall of sound" technique was then pioneered by Bert at Everst and addopted by Mercury, Command and much later Telarc. The Bell Labs model was to place the three mikes very close to the orchestra, thus avoiding much reflected sound pick up and then play back the recording in a large, live room, allowing the speaker/room acoustical interaction to provide the "ambiance". The physical nature of this mike placement entails that sounds on the right will reach the right mike before the center and left mikes. So it will be for sound sources on the left. It is this time delay that prevents this mike technique from being able to create a stable stereo image with precise instumental localisation. These time delays also cause a phenomeon knowen as comb filer effects that will further color the sound. There are those who argue that since onmi mikes are in effect directional in the high frequancies (a fact) that the three spaced omni technique can yeild stable, precise images. I have yet to hear this miracle!
The genius of Blumlein is that he realised that the recordeing should capture and presrve the spatial/ambiant information as well. Further, in his mike arrangment, wherein two figure-of-eight mikes are placed coincidentaly, both mikes sample all sounds at the same point in space and thus are phase and amplitude coherent, yeilding precise stereo images and accurate instumantal localisation.”

Excellent information! – although as you say, many of us are aware of this already.

“Mercury may not have EQed nor compressed (except for the medium itself doing it) while recording, but they certainly EQed and compressed while mastering the LP. And I am not reffering to the mandatory RIAA EQ required for LP mastering. Also keep in mind that the German tube mikes they (RCA, Decca and EMI as well) used were far from being flat. Thus, this would have to be considerd a form of EQ as well.”

OK, I stated that I was reading from the Mercury CD booklet, and here you start quoting LP mastering information to support your original assertion. Really, that’s just an attempt to weasel out of your original reckless statement. (Remember: [these recordings] “were deliberatly derived through a combination of mikes/miking technique and EQ/compression”.) I think when most folks read a phrase like that, they have visions of someone applying equalization to compensate for irregularities in the microphones’ frequency response, or, worse yet, applying equalization to suit the whims of the producer or engineer. Clearly, this was not the case in the Mercury recordings.

“To this day some of these tube mikes are highly sought after by the pop studios, as they produce a "fat" warm sound that "enhances" the vocals of the popular "divas". The BBC designed Coles ribbon mikes on the other hand are far more nutral and flatter than any of these tube mikes.”

Here you admit that your Coles mikes are just more neutral and flatter. So I guess if the Mercury team was applying equalization (because their microphones were not perfectly flat), then Water Lily is too (just not as much)! It’s the same logic. By the way, I’d be very surprised if the microphones used by pop divas are the same models which Mercury used for symphonic recording. They might be tube mikes, but that’s about the end of the similarity. (Do you really think divas use omnidirectional mikes? I don’t.)

“Yes, EMI did use the classic Blumlein technique for a very, very short time. (There is an interview forthcoming in TAS wherein I go into all this in great depth and detail.) I have always preferred the EMI "house sound", even after they had abandoned the Blumlein technique. To me the EMI sound was closer to the real thing than that on any Mercury, RCA or Decca recording.”

Whoah, Kavi! How does this statement square with your previous reckless assertion, “. . . there is a Decca sound, an EMI sound, a Mercury sound and an RCA sound. It is my opinion that though entertaining, the "house sound" of these forementioned labels, are highly colored and in no way represent the real sound of an orchestra.”? So you prefer EMI’s sound (even after they abandoned the Blumlein technique), even though it “in no way represent[s] the real sound of an orchestra”? BTW, I look forward to reading your article in TAS, even though, as one of the Steely Dan folks once said, that is one nutty magazine!

“And yes, I will be the first to admit that no recording is "perfect" (limits of technology) and is an exact replica of the musical reality, but some recorings do come convinsingly close. To my ears those recordings are the ones done with coincident and near coincident mike techniques.”

We’ve been over this before. Although I often like coincident-miked recordings (and I’m glad that you’re producing a new series of them – remember, I bought two copies of just the Mahler Fifth!), my tolerance for other relatively purist approaches, such as spaced omnis, is higher than yours.

“As for listeners who have extraordinary pinna structures and are "wired" in such a way, so as to hear "pin point" stereo images from spaced omni recordings, I can only say that not having mastered hyper dimentional physics, this rarefied subject is way out of my league and will have to be reffered to the experts at Area 51. Please drive out into the Nevada desert with Teresa... who knows, you just might hear the sound of "one hand slapping"!”

You don’t need to put “pin point” in quotation marks – I never used that term. But, Kavi, since you stated above that you prefer EMI’s sound even after they abandoned the Blumlein technique, Teresa and I will be happy to take you with us out to Nevada. I can just see the three of us frolicking around in the desert! Oh, and did you mention “slapping” – sounds kind of kinky!

“I refuse to comment further on the layout/artwork issue as it is not really germane to the subject at hand.”

Fine with me.

“Again, not having mastered Latin I must revert to the Sufi tradition that I am familer with for my quote: "The dog may bark, but the caravan moves on..."”

Yeah, I like that quote too, but you’ve already used it in a separate e-mail to me.

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