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Reference piano recordings vs others.. and to help you dial your system

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positron

New Member
Ever notice the lack in quality in recordings? Piano is probably one of the toughest to record. Yet here are some links, seemingly by amateurs, that demonstrate a great piano sound can be recorded. I don't think I have ever heard as good of piano as I have from these basic recordings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGv96IpeXbg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEjn2qZuPU0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmQer6N10aM

You can compare these to recordings you may have, and also to check your system setup.

Cheers

Steve
 
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Classical music lovers listen to piano recordings all the time. Some are better than others and some have a very high quality standard.
 
In general, being a classical music listener raises one's expectations for recording quality. Those expectations are usually supported by the quality of the recordings.
 
I could mention piano recordings made by Philips in the late 60's and 70's as very natural sounding to my ears. Same goes for some DG recordings of the second half of the 70's.
 
My theory is that multi-track recording, which came into vogue in the late 60's and came to full fruition in the late 70's, pushed the recording engineer to mic the piano closer and closer (distance) leading to a practice of putting the microphones "inside" of the piano lid. This was done to gain "separation" and this is very different than the way we tend to listen to a piano live. The older recordings only had one, two or three tracks to work with, so they tended to use one, two or three mics and work with them to capture the "in room" sound in the most natural way. On the other hand, many (not all) newer recordings are "close mic'd" instead of "room mic'd" leading to that edgy and somewhat unnatural perspective. In defense of the sound engineer (I've done a bit of that myself) the advantage of having a mic on everything that is feeding its own track on a multi-track recorder (24, 32 or 48 tracks) is that you can adjust the balance of instruments via the "mixdown " process long after the recording session. It is understandable that producers liked these options and "pushed" these microphone techniques because the less time you spend with musicians in the room, the less the recording session costs. But …. Most of the really good sounding piano recordings I have in my library are either older recordings … or modern ones recorded using minimalist mic techniques. Piano is one of those complex instruments (three strings per note all tuned slightly different from each other in the upper registers) that produces a very complex sound wave that seems to form and "sound" better from a normal listening distance. Minimalist mic techniques designed to record the sound of the instrument in the room seem to sound more natural and more pleasant than do "close mic'd" pianos. However, if you want a bright and piercing sound (like for rock or pop music) close mic techniques can give you that "edgy sound" which can penetrate a "rock" or "pop" mix. As always - There are exceptions to every observation. I have heard good and bad "in room" mic techniques on piano and I have heard good and bad "close mic" techniques on piano. I'm just offering my observations and theory. I know that I have not heard EVERY piano recording that exists. So, consider my observations and opinions to be thusly "disclaimed".
 


This version was on an Alpine Reference CD for car audio competitions about 20 years ago. Amazing.
 
A big difficulty with multi-miking on an instrument is that the phase relationships cannot be maintained. The phase difference between mics in a fixed position varies for every harmonic, so the timbre of the instrument is altered. Further, the sound perspective in the recording chamber is not genuine so the sound stage is compromised. The majority of acoustic instrument recordings are gimmicked and that can be heard easily if one is familiar with live music performances. This is even more of a problem with electronically produced sounds like guitars which come from speakers positioned and individually miked and combined at a console with little regard to the sound stage as recorded.
 
positron said:
Hi Guiller.

I don't doubt you one minute. Interestingly you kinda allude to a point or two that I would like to address.

1) If this super/reference quality can be recorded back in the 60s/70s, why can't the professionals do it today? Some 4-5 years ago, on Stereophile and other forums, there were some, including at least one professional recording engineer, claiming we cannot record with super accuracy because of the mics used. Well, it was done back then, and is being done today by non professionals, as the links demonstrate.

2) If we have to go back that far, have we digressed in our knowledge of what actually matters when making a super quality recording?

Cheers
Pos
Click to expand...

I never spoke of super-quality. I don´t speak of "audiphile" records (e.g., Telarc, direct-to-disc, etc). I buy records for the musicians involved and not for the sound. I just say that many of the analog recordings of that period in those labels yield a sound that becomes very close to that of the actual instrument (a local concert piano player agrees with this opinion). Regarding the process of making a recording by a company, well, that´s bussiness and money making. There could be many logical explanations and I don´t have a clue since I don´t know anybody inside a recording company (older generation of recording engineers, older recording equipment, older school of microphone and mixing styles, etc).
 
Sheffield dtd or their CDs taken from the session tapes, minimalist mic'ing and signal path recording.
There are others from Reference Recordings, Water Lily Acoustics, ect.
 
positron said:
They sound pretty good, but still not the same or as good as the three links in post 1. I can clearly hear the difference in quality. The music is just lacking, partlly because of the venue, but also because of the questionable recording equipment quality and mixing performed, compared to the pianos presented in links in post 1.

Cheers
Pos
Click to expand...
I guess we all are looking for something a little different in a piano recording, but to me, nothing in post one sounds particularly exciting. The first link sounds pretty terrible to me - basically what you'd expect from a phone in a less-than ideal room. The second two are almost certainly played back from a sample library - very close-miked and dry.
My favorite piano classical piano recordings all have quite a bit of room sound in them, and the recordings convey a sense of the space in which they were recorded. A good jazz piano recording will be a lot more intimate but still have a sense of spaciousness. The examples on the playclassics.com site that was mentioned above sound very natural to me. It sounds like a good piano in a nice room.
 
I´d better talk about specific examples and not generalities, as they tend to be invalidated easily by a counterexample.

For example, some of the recordings of Earl Wild listed here http://www.earlwild.com/ (Discography) sound very natural to my ears, for example, this one Etcetera KTC 2012 (Liszt program). That recording was made digitally in the 80´s, so it does not belong to the Philips/DG group I´ve mentioned before.
 
A lot of why recordings sounded better in the old days was less multi microphone technique, simpler recording techniques with few to no overdubs, and professional musicians who could play without studio trickery. Not to mention tube mixing consoles, tape machines, and great old professional recording engineers who knew their stuff. Used to be that splices and overdubs saved a performance, now they create a performance.
 
Check out anything put out by Columbia in the 50's or 60's. I have a white label promo of Glenn Gould with Bernstein conducting Beethoven's second piano concerto, and it sounds freaking incredible.
 
IME fewer mics and less studio sweetening/multi-tracking/overdubbing results in better sound. Listen to just about any direct to disc LP or any "audiophile" CD such as a Groove Note or Mapleshade. They all sound better than multi-tracked brick walled commercial recordings.
 
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