Hardest genre to reproduce accurately

How can you tell the differences in reproduction between classical or vocal or rock? All we have is an imprinted disk; do we know how it 'suppose' to sound?

Yes, that is my impression. I constantly attend classical concerts to keep my ears trained as to how a real instrument sounds. The variations in sound between two french horns are known, and correspond to a few different brand makers and schools of playing the instruments (basically british-german versus french-russian). When a microphone (which one, which type?) and an amplifier (again, which type, tubed, solid state?, etc) with some control parameters come in, my impression is that one has a very large space of variations for the sound, at least much larger than say, between two oboes. My own experience is basically that, but of course, it is just one opinion.
 
With early classic rock vocals I find some groups come across as a din of distortion. Requiring really good speakers and components on down the system chain.
 
I know not all gear gets vocals right, but IMO it's not that hard to do as the recording process has done a lot of the work.
 
Piano, classical or not, is by far the most difficult instrument to make sound genuine on an audio system IMO.

I'm with Art, here. Even the greatest engineers like Rudy Van Gelder would end up with distorted/bleeding piano on many of the source tapes.
 
Since a piano is technically a percussive instrument, I think all these piano answers make my response even more correct ;)
 
Classical piano and human voice are the biggest challenges for any audio system to reproduce correctly.

I would qualify the human voice thing... CHORALE recordings are among the ABSOLUTE HARDEST things for speakers to get "right", IME. Dense, multi-harmonic, sometimes deliberately an-harmonic, with loads of overtones and a LOT of energy in the lower midrange. If the speaker has a break-up in the woofer or midrange, THIS will find it.

Other than that, solo piano and pipe organs are also very difficult. For a lot of the same reasons- complex waveforms, with lots of energy in the lower mids...

Regards,
Gordon.
 
It's already been said, but I have never heard a truly "natural" sounding human voice, whether speaking or singing. There's just something about it--no matter how good a microphone was used, or the rest of the signal chain for that matter, it just sounds "recorded".

that's because no microphone, not even a $15,000 Telefunken 251 hears the way our ears do. Then, on the other end, all speakers are liars. The trick is finding ones that are good at it.
 
Piano, classical or not, is by far the most difficult instrument to make sound genuine on an audio system IMO.

not only is it hard to reproduce, but how it's recorded has soooo much to do with the sound. Where are you the listener supposed to be in relation to the piano? I've got some great performances of Horowitz and Ashkenazy, but sometimes it sounds like the mics were placed in the middle of the hall, there is so much reverb. Keith Jarrett's solo piano work on the other hand, is more close miked, drier. Different approaches. Being a piano player, I'm used to hearing it close up, obviously. A concert goer with good seats wants more hall.

One size does not fit all. I use three systems, modern and vintage, and five sets of speakers.
 
reproducing massed violins...is no easy thing to do either...:scratch2:

another difficult instrument is the acoustic double bass... its easy to get it wrong and make that 'boom' sound instead of how it should sound...'rough' textured' 'honking' 'wooden' and 'plucked'

..most speakers i've heard with big woofers make a total mess of this instrument...the woofer is simply too underdamped and vague to keep pace with the leading edge or 'attack' of the plucked or bowed note...so the instrument sounds muddy and the notes just tend to blend into each other without stopping and starting precisely..
 
How about an accordion orchestra? Now there is toughie. And not too pleasant to record it either! :)

Joking aside, Fopp, I think you are right, especially symphonic recordings. It's just too damn crazy what with all the sound waves zoomin around!
 
Generically speaking, the hardest type of recording to reproduce will always be the one whose original sound you are most familiar with. A stack of speakers at a heavy metal concert has a sonic signature that is as nuanced as any symphony orchestra - to a listener who knows it. And it's not just music; to anyone who's ever been on the flightline of an aircraft carrier or watched an ICBM launch, the phoniness of the sound FX version of these on commercial or home movie playback is instantly obvious.
 
As a side note Opera can give your average phono cartridge a real workout. As to recording a piano one frequent screw up is two mics under or in the piano giving bass in one ear and treble in the other. Quite annoying.

mike
 
Classical piano and human voice are the biggest challenges for any audio system to reproduce correctly.

I have to go along with this, too. The piano raises a number of challenges. The dynamics between the moment just before the hammer hits the string and the moment of impact, for instance, is a huge leap in dynamics. But it's not just about capturing and playing back that impact. The notes bloom out and then decay. It's a fairly complex sound when it's just one key, but throw in whole chords comprised of two or more of these interactions between string and hammer, and you have a very complex audio signature. Consider, too, the subtleties and nuances that comprise a great deal of a classical pianist's performance. It's not just about being loud or soft, but the artist really has to know the instrument, and they're doing things with their hands and feet and the keys and pedals to coax out a very particular sound.

While it's true that all musical artists are doing the same thing, there's just something about a classical piano piece that's really hard to get right in the playback mode.

The human voice, because we all know it so well. That familiarity with how the voice sounds, or should sound, is, as someone intimated in an earlier post, just makes reproducing the sound in a way that will fool the listener into believing that it is, in fact, the human voice and not a reproduction, an incredible engineering challenge. But that's not all... there's all the mechanics going on inside our mouths that make a vocal sound... the shape of the lips and tongue, the position of the jaw, and all those goofy things that speech therapists like to talk about are being reproduced by a device that's simpler than the human mouth by several orders of magnitude.

I have a copy of this great demo disk (CD) that B&W provides its dealers. It features recordings mastered at Abbey Road (because they use B&W speakers as their studio monitors), and there's a recording of Peggy Lee singing Fever (yes, I know, the recording was made well before B&W existed... my guess is that it was re-mastered at Abbey Road, but I can't say for sure), and you can really get a feel for her mouth's presence around the microphone. It's crazy.

So those are my reasons for why I think the piano, more specifically classical piano, and the human voice are the biggest challenges for audio systems.
 
I'm with GordonW on this.
I like that answer.
His point is quite valid.

To take it to another level...

You're always going to be constrained in your musical reproduction by 3 main factors.

1. Was the engineering equipment used, in recording any said medium, up to the task of distortion free and full-range recording, and if so... how was the medium transfered to disk?
(What gear was used?)

2. Was the monitoring gear in the mixing studio, from which the engineers contemplated and implemented their mixing levels, of a sonic standard better of worse than your playback gear?
(Is your gear better or more linear than the studio in question?)

3. What acoustic environment was the recording mixed in?
(Can you account for what the engineers were actually hearing when recording in any given venue?)


Just food for thought.


Regards,
John.

EDIT.
(I need to commend our new friend quneur, for his post was essentially a shortened version of my own)
It was only upon my 2nd reading of this entire thread did I realize I've only touched upon what many of you feel, anyway.
My apologies.
And by all means, as quneur says... listen subjectively, not objectively, for it is an experience unto ourselves alone.
 
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Having recently retired, I've been going to a lot of rock concerts lately (most recently, the Eagles in Phoenix, stadium venue) and my experience is that the larger and louder the venue, the more difficult it is to reproduce at home. I can't think of anything I can do to my system to recreate the boomy, muddy bass and the total lack of clarity and detail in the overall sound of the live concert other than driving my amp into serious clipping and beyond. I won't go into the "imaging" issue - the only imaging was visual. After the Eagles concert, I came home, put on a couple of their CDs (and DVDs) and really enjoyed the tight, solid bottom end, and the ability of my system to articulate vocal nuances and lyrics. I can't play the music nearly as loud on my system, but really loud alone doesn't do it for me. Close miked vocals, guitar, piano, violin, etc., recorded in a relatively small space, usually sound pretty realistic on my system. I guess the question is whether it's preferable to listen to a disagreeable but accurate reproduction of the live performance or a more euphonic version that I can enjoy. BTW, I've got the Telarc 1812 Overture and always enjoy listening to it even though I have to be careful with the volume control to accommodate the dynamics. Old technology, certainly not like being there, but I sure like the sound.
 
The dynamics between the moment just before the hammer hits the string and the moment of impact, for instance, is a huge leap in dynamics. But it's not just about capturing and playing back that impact. The notes bloom out and then decay. It's a fairly complex sound when it's just one key, but throw in whole chords comprised of two or more of these interactions between string and hammer, and you have a very complex audio signature.

Great explanation, thank you :)

While there is no wrong answer, I think it is interesting to note that the general consensus is piano (and voice). Many of us are familiar with a wide variety of genres, yet we still tend to agree on this one (for the most part).

All I know is, if I ever win the lottery, I'm taking some Mozart and Debussy CDs with me when I go shopping ;)
 
My pleasure. We have a tiny little spinet-style piano in our house, and the way it sounds when you hit the keys is definitely not along the same line as a concert grand, but the dynamics are definitely there.

I am a bit embarrassed, though, as in another thread, I also used "attack, bloom, decay." It makes it sound like I just learned that phrase, and, darn it all, I'm gonna use 'em.

I've talked about this in another thread (or maybe even two), but I have a direct-to-disk record that has dynamics on it that are out of this world. There's absolutely nothing in the way of compression in the signal path (from what I read on the album's liner notes).

Too bad the music on it sucks. I keep it, though, for demo purposes.
 
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