Headphone Imaging

HD662-EVO on the EMU 0204 headphone out on Ubuntu.
Hardly ideal.

In my younger years I usually went camping on Holidays.
I remember waking up in my tent where a gentle stream of water was close by.
The reason I remember this so well was that I was fascinated how when one wakes up the 'volume' of the hearing was slowly turned up.
As if a volume control was turned up slowly.
The water nearby had a similar sound as the one on the recording.
Just noise...
I could hear that noise being dialed up..
During the day the sound of the stream wasn't really audible.
Maybe outside sounds drowned it, maybe the brain filtered it out (like how you don't always hear trains going by when living somewhat near a railroad for years.

The magnificat has a lovely airy quality to it, but the S's get a bit harsh... but I'm listening through AKGs, so it's likely the fault of the headphone.

The birds on the dusenbach piece really do sound amazing. I can see where the stream would benefit from a better bitrate.

In the third piece, I can hear all kinds of room noise, like feet or sheet music shuffling, people clearing throats, etc. The music itself is very well captured, like being right in the room. Very dynamic.

I absolutely love the piano piece. Rarely have I ever heard a piano captured so well.

That last piece was just a joy to listen to.

Thanks for sharing!

I would like to be able to publish longer extracts but the 1Mb limit here makes that impossible.
You are listening to the work of our audiovisual team here in Russia.

I may be able to put up a slice of the opera we did this week, so this post gets longer and longer.. what I would LIKE, what I can actually have etc etc...

We are obviously proud of what we do, because it's not been done overnight, and started by accident.
In a country with no training taking place any more, it's "our French imported exception" which makes me proud, then you have the language barriers, which are formidable in technical talk.
I know we could invite anyone from the old Primus at SXB Uni or IRCAM and they would be right up to speed the day they arrive, then we would struggle with English, Russian and French!

I am sure we do the best production quality in the country bar none.
Sadly most others like Mariinski or Bolshoi have 100x the budget we have.

It may interest you to know we don't have a single concert hall in the city worthy of the name so we have to do the most crazy things to get the results we are after.

The piano extract was a case in point, because the acoustic is awful in that hall.
The other stuff is in the Opera house, which if anything is even worse, then they insist in putting a dreadful metal screen behind the orchestra for symphony concerts.

This causes an awful comb filter effect which we can't generate an algorythm sophisticated enough to remove.
The Mahler I heard, simply hurt my ears so much I was relieved to leave.

I have a similar problem in the "acclaimed" concert halls in Johvi and Parnu.
They sound great at ppp>mf but you will keel over and die once they start to play fff.
I can only signal this sort of thing to Linda who did the acoustic studies and HOPE!

If you like the sound, it's very nice for us, because I will tell my friend who works with me.
He had similar compliments from Germany this week from various "Tonmeister" who thanks to our optic fibre can listen and watch 1000s of kms distant.

If you think you like the sound, you should see our video!
Nothing from MEZZO, Arte or Kultura comes close.
The HD stream which goes out with that sound quality, I reckon is one of the best efforts in the world now, and of course the ongoing polemic is,- TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

I am very impressed with the HD video and I'm not a "video person".

We did something completely unheard of this time, which is to make the sound focus on the on stage video or vice versa if you like.
Both of us, are still sitting down with this new version of Pyramix & the jump in level, in shock, compared with pro tools!

This is where your website here came in.
I was looking for a proper compensation amp which gets rid of all that crap, uncompensated headphones make, and I spotted what you guys have done.
The first victim of the review was those horrible Audeze units, which the conductor lent us as "the ultimate hi end experience"!
They lasted about 30secs, before I took them off and gave them back, cos they have no treble response.

If you like to know,- this is the current debate, which I believe can take place once we have a decent compensated stereo listening validator.
In the next weeks I will make a box that sorts out my HD650s, change the muffs and have a go at my HD414s too.

We already did surround sound versions of Borodin Prince Igor some 4-5yrs ago, and I did Schubert Winterreise, Brahms requiem, and Gladiators live 15yrs ago in France.

It then became an enormous challenge how on earth we can listen to what we did.
This encouraged me to put together what is soon to be a giant triamped per front channel surround system back home.
I'm still collecting bits for it from far and wide!
That's 6 (SIX) or 3 stereo valve amps for the front channels alone!

The live surround reggae concert is one of the most stressful surround recordings I have ever heard.
There is literally no system so far which is able to reproduce it, without falling over, burning out the speakers or something worse.

Everyone wants to do live surround, but I don't feel we are ready for such an ambitious idea without building a dedicated listening room.
So far the only speakers I have heard which I would consider might be QUAD ESL mixed with Klipsch.

Funding remains the main obstacle, but if I discuss why, it can only become political which I don't want here.

Maybe I like a dry acoustic then. But I'm just a consumer, no expert. Obviously :-)

Well you commented on the recordings and some liked the unusual dynamic and detail of the piano.

I commented on the environment where the recording was made,the difficulties of getting the result, and now you know how we did it.

The hall acoustic was awful, more like a lecture theatre, (with good old fashioned USSR style ceiling - sheremetevo1 airport style)
The organ hall nearby is 100x worse btw..

I love "gadgets", my nickname for a "bespoke french style bidule" that kills 2 birds with 1 stone.

This is a single point stereo source which defeats the phasiness, crosstalk and delay you get with multi mike or lots of omnis.
It gives fantastic location, wide image, and the directivity of cardios with the excellent bass reponse & dynamic range of omnis.

It's in the same vein as native transaural rejection a technique I have never seen replicated anywhere else but Strasbourg.
TAR, gives an image stability which can't be beaten, and also uses a single point source, with 4 mics.

(Image doesn't collapse to just one speaker or the other if you move your head)

hmmm. Are you sure?

You don't want to be close to a violinist, you get lots of scratching and all kinds of strange parasitic stuff.
If the violinist image is moving around this is a serious error, and a common one.
Ask me how I know.

The violin's peculiar propagation characteristics mean it has to be given SPACE to develop.

The other commonest error is to make the 2 of them in a duo unequal.
I don't like that at all, but it's rather traditional to do it like that..

I want to hear exactly what is going on in the musical dialogue, not have someone tell me what their idea of it is, it's why I worked so often with Ivry.

I finally downloaded and listened to this:-

I'm sorry but I didn't like this at all.

Here's why.
The stereo is full of bleed over and the location is vague and wandery.
The violin is located on the right but keeps moving around from there to roughly central.

The piano has clearly also been multi miked because the image moves with the pitch, varying from left to centre then fully bleeding into the right channel when playing forte.

If you listen to the opening of Tzigane, there is a really obvious use of a Lexicon, with the usual unnatural reverb it produces, which is suddenly truncated, when it's not a natural acoustic.
I don't like that.

Also the reason the violinist sounds "forward" is quite simply they are not recorded in the same "plan sonore", so you neither get the splendour and presence of the Steinway nor the brilliance of the upper strings.

Who knows who the engineer was at polydor, but I wouldn't have him work for me.
Been there, seen that with Estonian radio, who turned up with a Decca tree in Parnu with Neemi & Parvo Jarvi, then they screwed up.
I had to laugh.

FWIW, I've never had any difficulty understanding you, Sergey. Your English is much better than many Americans. Come to think of it, Americans tend to have the most horrific language skills. Please don't ever hesitate to post, as I value your insight.