AR Live vs Recorded sessions, Opinions of people who may or may not have been there.

[soundminded]

No, I have not heard it. I assume that it is a CD and I certainly will go look for it. RCA has not been a player in the super hi-fi sound world for some time, but maybe the transcription was done by some European outfit on contract. Who engineered the thing?

Here is one for you to look up, although it may no longer be available:

Handel: "Concerti Grossi," op. 6. Recorded at the Villa Contarini, Plazzola Sul Brenta, in Italy. The engineer was Peter Willemoes. This is a three-disc set released as Denon 81757-6305. Superb baroque ensemble sound, and a superb performance, too.

Howard Ferstler

Howard, it was engineered by Tony Faulkner at Sudwestfunk Landesstudio, Freiburg, Germany. It was recorded from August 20-26 1997. I'm sure you are aware that Kissin is widely regarded as one of the best pianists of this era (along with Martha Argerich.)

There are other gems on RCA. There's a terriffic recording of Vaughan Williams "A Sea Symphony" conducted by

Andre Previn worth hearing. Great recording too. If you've never heard this work, you should.

[Carlspeak]

........................

Here's a good recording for you or anyone to test their sound system's accuracy with, Yvgeny Kissen playing the Busoni transcription of the Bach Chaconne RCA 09026-68911-2.

Hey, I've got that one. Nice recording indeed!

Caution though, the Zilchester has got you guys sucked into his lair!

[soundminded]

Ah, I figured that it had to be engineered by somebody other than what what we have with the current RCA crew. Faulkner is terrific. Below is the biographical sketch I did of him for The Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound:

FAULKNER, TONY, November 16, 1950-. A noted recording engineer, researcher, and consultant, Faulkner has a degree in physics (with additional studies in music) from the University of Surrey. From 1972-76, he was with Angus McKenzie Facilities, Inc., in England, as Chief Engineer. From 1977-80, he was with Enigma Records, and was responsible for running the recording and editing department. From 1980 to date, he was an independent classical-recording engineer with his own company, Green Room Productions. In 1997-98, he also worked for Sony Music Entertainment, U.K.

He has engineered over 2000 classical recordings for dozens of record labels, many of which are award winners and acknowledged to be technical masterpieces. He has recorded hundreds of notable artists, including Claudio Abbado, Charles Mackerras, Peter Maxwell-Davies, Jessye Norman, Seiji, Ozawa, Bryn Terfel, Kiri te Kanawa, Zubin, Mehta, André Previn, and Michael Tilson-Thomas, as well as hundreds of performing ensembles. He was the first U.K. classical engineering specialist to work with digital audio equipment (1980), and has specialized in cutting-edge digital technology for over 20 years.

Faulkner is a member of the Audio Engineering Society Technical Council, was a member of the Board of Directors of EUROLAB, is President of the Federation of British Tape Recordists and Clubs, and is a member of the Music Performance Research Centre, in England. He has taught educational courses in recording techniques in England, Canada, and Japan, and has written articles for a number of audio-related and technical publications.

End of my sketch work for the book.

I have reviewed two versions of the Sea Symphony. One is Chandos 8764 (London Symphony Orch, engineered by Ralph Couzens) and the other was Virgin Classics 90843 (Philharmonia Orch, engineered by Mike Clements and Mike Hatch). Both good recordings.

Gotta go. My wife and I are about to do our afternoon exercise walk.

Howard Ferstler

Howard, sorry I didn't look it up. My recording of A Sea Symphony is the Philharmonia Orchestra under Slatkin RCA 09026-61197-2. The "balance engineer" was Mark Vigars. It was recorded at Abbey Road in June 1992. Another excellent recording by RCA and another outstanding performance.

Speaking of Abbey Road, a lot of their recordings IMO stink. Many of their pop recordings have what I call the Abbey Road syndrome which consists of reverb applied to the sibilant parts of speech only. You can hear it on all of Kiri Tekanawa's pop recordngs made there for EMI but not on her pop recordings made elsewhere at London Records for example. Certainly not on any of her classical recordings. (I'll look up who the perps were who engineered them.) Also you can hear it in the recording of Phantom of the Opera made there. Very annoying.

BTW, do you have an entry for Ed Thompson? He was the engineer for Chesky Records and later for Sony who made some wonderful recordings of Earl Wild's playing at Fernwood Abbey in Ohio. (Wild prefers the Baldwin SD-10 which is even bigger than the Steinway D.) Spectacular playing and excellent recordings IMO but they are not equalized the same way as each other. This points out the problem where sound systems that cannot be adjusted for different recording methods cannot be called high fidelity because if they sound accurate for a few recordings, they will sound inaccurate for most others. My equalization settings for many recordings look like the profile of a roller coaster ride only each recording is different roller coaster.

[soundminded]

Maybe. But if we start discussing recording quality and recording engineers he may just give it up. I am convinced that he does not have a good listening space, and so he would not be able to solidly analyze a good recording if his life depended upon it.

Speaking more of good recordings, another top-tier recording (and performance) is entitled:

"Seventeenth Century Music and Dance from the Viennese Court" (Music of Heinrich Biber and Johann Schmelzer), Chesky CD173. The ensemble was the Ars Antiqua Austria. It was engineered by Miguel Kertsman

This is a superb release, particularly in terms of soundstaging and clarity, and will show off really superb speakers quite well. Chesky also released it as an SACD (262), that offered the stereo CD tracks as alternates for those without an SACD player. This dual-disc release rates some additional comments.

I reviewed both discs obliquely in a review I did of the dual-format Yamaha DVD S-1500 player in issue 104 of The Sensible Sound (July/August, 2005). The main speakers were Dunlavy Cantatas, with the center speaker being an NHT VS1.2, and with the main surround speakers being Allison Model Fours mounted on the side walls a bit behind the listening position and with small custom speakers built by me in the left and right front corners. The processor/amp was a 7.1 channel Yamaha DSP-A1.

During the review I compared the stereo CD tracks on 262 to the surround-sound tracks on the same disc. (The stereo CD tracks on 262 are identical to the stereo material on the standard, 173 disc.) I could find no particular advantage to the SACD tracks as compared to the CD tracks in terms of clarity, distortion, dynamics, etc, but it did have those surround channels, which made it more spacious and lifelike than the stereo CD version.

I then configured the DSP-A1 to apply surround sound output from the CD tracks. In this case, the CD tracks actually sounded better than the SACD tracks! Why? Well, there are two reasons.

First, the Yamaha processing I chose to use (classical/opera) included a steered center channel that was derived from the L+R part of the mix. The SACD release had no center feed at all. It was a 4.1 recording and not a 5.1 recording. (Most of the Yamaha hall-simulation modes do not include a center feed, either, but the classical/opera mode does, and I prefer it to any of the other simulated hall modes.) Having a center feed, with the levels adjusted to keep the L+R steering from collapsing the soundstage too much into the center, improves any soundstage, at least if the recording itself is a good one. I generally recommend backing off the center feed 3 dB below the standard Dolby set-up level for music playback, with the levels returned to normal for movie use.

Second, the DSP-1 is a 7.1 device, meaning that not only does it feed data to two side/rear surround speakers, but also feeds data to two front "effects" speakers flanking the left and right mains. Those flankers, with their very appropriate delays, open up the front area and add depth. Yamaha has this technology down pat, and the result was terrific.

I am not sure of the status of SACD these days, but with this disc the CD version is a better buy, provided the owner has a processor as good as or better than the DSP-A1. Just about all top-tier Yamaha processors since the DSP-A1000 can do this.

Actually, I always thought DVD-A was a better bet than SACD, because while the alternate (CD) tracks on any SACD release were only in two channels, the alternates on a DVD-A disc were in Dolby Digital 5.1 (and maybe also DTS 5.1), which means that anybody with a DVD player and surround-sound processor could get surround sound from the release. And I never found higher data rate Dolby Digital 5.1 to be significantly audibly inferior to DVD-A.

Howard Ferstler

Howard Ferstler

"Second, the DSP-1 is a 7.1 device, meaning that not only does it feed data to two side/rear surround speakers, but also feeds data to two front "effects" speakers flanking the left and right mains. Those flankers, with their very appropriate delays, open up the front area and add depth. Yamaha has this technology down pat, and the result was terrific."

This is one of the minimum criteria to meet the requrements of my patent. It is set forth at the outset in the pararaph called "the abstract." Without a theoretical minimum of three and a practical minimum of four channels recreating the reverberant sound field, it is not possible for it to be a vector sound field. The dispersion requriments of the direct and reverberant sound fields are entirely different. This by itself is enough to explain why 4.0 (quadraphonic sound) 4.1, 5.0, and 5.1 cannot recreate concert hall acoustics.

I just listened to the Slatkin recording of A Sea Symphony in its entirety. It is one spectacular recording.

[Zilch]

Maybe. But if we start discussing recording quality and recording engineers he may just give it up. I am convinced that he does not have a good listening space, and so he would not be able to solidly analyze a good recording if his life depended upon it.

What Ferstler post would be complete without the obligatory dump on the Zilchster?

Keep up the good work, Howard; you're learning the code.

YO, SOUNDMINDED -- You'll find the "Fast Reply" and "Add Reply" just a teeny scroll down. All the rest of us have to scroll an entire page or more to read your posts. I should think as the site's third most prolific poster, in over 1000 posts, you'd at least have figured out how it works....

[soundminded]

What Ferstler post would be complete without the obligatory dump on the Zilchster?

Keep up the good work, Howard; you're learning the code.

YO, SOUNDMINDED -- You'll find the "Fast Reply" and "Add Reply" just a teeny scroll down. All the rest of us have to scroll an entire page or more to read your posts. I should think as the site's third most prolific poster, in over 1000 posts, you'd at least have figured out how it works....

YO ZILCHFIELD;

"YO, SOUNDMINDED -- You'll find the "Fast Reply" and "Add Reply" just a teeny scroll down. All the rest of us have to scroll an entire page or more to read your posts. I should think as the site's third most prolific poster, in over 1000 posts, you'd at least have figured out how it works.... "

HOWARD SENT ME A CHECK FOR $20 TO SPEND ON A CD IF I PROMISED NOT TO USE IT BECAUSE HE KNOWS YOU DON'T LIKE IT WHEN WE DON'T. (ANOTHER $20 HOWARD AND I'LL STICK TO ALL CAPS. I DON'T THINK HE LIKES THAT EITHER.)

[soundminded]

Unfortunately, I did not do entries for either Vigars or Thompson. I started out profiling a number of people I knew well (like Roy Allison, Ken Kantor, Tom Nousaine, John Dunlavy and several others) and after I got that taken care of I queried them about people they knew who were also worth profiling. This gave me an ever growing list, as I querried the newcomers the same way. Some of those I contacted were cooperative as can be (some of them even had heard of me and liked my work), but a few simply did not care to be profiled at all. Some (Bob Carver, Andy Katsatos, and David Ranada, for instance, and several others) were either too busy at the time to deal with me or promised to come across with info later on. The info actually involved answering a list of questions I sent out via email. Once I had a response I would write a profile and send it back to them to either approve or edit. Sometimes the messages went back and forth several times.

The work was tedious, but I got maybe 150 people done that way. A few, like Richard Small (who was very helpful), Leo Beranek, Albert Thiele, Stan Goodall, Richard Greiner, Sidney Harman, Amar Bose, George Augspurger, Julian Hirsch, Jack Renner, Al Schmitt, Gordon Holt, Stan Lipshitz, Mark Davis (who I had know for some time), George Massenburg, Alan Parsons, Phil Ramone, Paul Goodman, David Griesinger (whom I had corresponded with in the past), Larry Klein, Hugh Padgham, Elliot Scheiner (very helpful), Bob Ludwig, Tony Faulkner (who was helpful in many ways), Ralph Couzens, Michael Bishop, John Eargle (who I had known for some time), Jim Fosgate, and even Floyd Toole (who I had also known for some time), were thrilling to contact, and these were only a few of the several dozen notables I dealt with. One nice thing about the experience is that after my initial work with them many of them invited me to get back to them anytime for information, ideas, and encouragement. While the writing work was a chore (worse than any of the other books I had worked on), contacting and corresponding with those people was a warm series of experiences.

Howard Ferstler

Of all the people you mentioned, the one who is by far the most interesting to me is Leo Beranek because of his work on acoustics of concert halls. It's unfortunate that his 2001 Geugenheim Lecture at the Mechanical Engineering Department at Georgia Tech is no longer available on Georgia Tech's web site. I'll bet I watched that interview over a dozen times and learned something from it each time. You can read his technical papers comparing concert halls and opera houses trying to correlate measured variables with preferences of conductors and top music critics on his web site. (The highest and second highest correlations were binaurality and bass response.) Here's a link to the second of two biographical interviews of him on the IEEE web site;

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Oral..._Beranek_(2005)

In his lecture he discussed at length the Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall disaster. I'll bet looking back on it he must have wished a million times he'd just walked away when the architects and the management committee overruled his advice. Instead he'll be tarred with that brush forever having tried to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He redeemed himself with his design in Tokyo but again his ideas were nearly screwed up by an architect who wanted to make a "statement." (I've run into more than one of those myself.) His own statement is simple, what looks good often doesn't sound good so copy what has proven to work. Sounds like good advice to me even though nobody in that business ever takes it. He made an interesting comment in the interview about the Disney concert hall being screwed up too.

[Carlspeak]

Howard, it was engineered by Tony Faulkner at Sudwestfunk Landesstudio, Freiburg, Germany. It was recorded from August 20-26 1997. I'm sure you are aware that Kissin is widely regarded as one of the best pianists of this era (along with Martha Argerich.)

There are other gems on RCA. There's a terriffic recording of Vaughan Williams "A Sea Symphony" conducted by

Andre Previn worth hearing. Great recording too. If you've never heard this work, you should.

Here's a relatively new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould. It's in stereo on a SACD. Pretty amazing since Glenn's been dead for quite sometime.

Actually, it's a digital recreation of his original recording with all the nuance of the original performance somehow programmed into a highly sophisticated Yamaha piano.

Visit the link below to learn how this amazing recording was made. Also note SM the text about the piano that was used and who voiced it.

http://www.zenph.com/sept25.html

[soundminded]

Here's a relatively new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould. It's in stereo on a SACD. Pretty amazing since Glenn's been dead for quite sometime.

Actually, it's a digital recreation of his original recording with all the nuance of the original performance somehow programmed into a highly sophisticated Yamaha piano.

Visit the link below to learn how this amazing recording was made. Also note SM the text about the piano that was used and who voiced it.

http://www.zenph.com/sept25.html

I was sure I had that recording but no, I've got a two disc cd set "Glenn Gould plays Bach" Sony SX2K 62588. I may have the original on vinyl in my basement but finding it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. The term that best describes Gould is nutcase. Not the slightest doubt of it. I've got an interview with him on a vinyl record and he was surely wierd. He did not believe in live performances. There's a famous story which may in part explain why. As I heard it, he was supposed to play a concerto with the NY Philharmonic. He and Bernstein didn't agree on the tempo. The first note was the last one the orchestra and the piano played together, neither would budge an inch. They played the whole piece through each at its own tempo mindless of the other. Needless to say the concert was a disaster.

How a Yamaha can be voiced to sound like a Steinway is beyond me. Even how one Steinway can be voiced to sound like another is implausible. Back in the day....there were a large number of them at Wurlitzer's in NYC. Each artist had his favorite. Ship number 27 over to Hong Kong for a September 13 performance by Pennario. Ship number 16 over to Paris for an October 2 performance by Rubenstein, and so on. You see a lot of Yamahas on cruise ships because of the player piano feature. Every Holland America ship I've been on so far had one playing frequently in the Atrium. Some jazz pianists like them. Many jazz piano recordings made on Concord Records at Maybeck Hall were performed on Yamahas. Dick Hyman whom I had the pleasure of meeting on the Royal Viking Star in 1988 likes and plays a Yamaha. Marian McPartland prefers a Baldwin. Billy Taylor likes Steinway. Among classical pianists, Steinway is usually the choice. But Earl Wild prefers his Baldwin. To each his own.

From Marc Wienert's interview;

"Also, the voicing is constantly changing through use. Very subtly, but the whole thing is about subtlety "

I wasn't going to say it but since he did, that was Yamaha's reputation, after about five years they bit the dust. I'd heard that a long time ago but I'd figured they'd fixed that by now.

"We have a Yamaha here and [Gould’s] 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations is made on a Steinway, and Gould was a Yamaha Artist at the end of his life and this is a Yamaha that we’ve endeavored to bring a Steinway flavor to its personality, all the while letting it be the fantastic Yamaha piano that it is.

CEB: What is the difference between the Yamaha and the Steinway voices?

MW: Sometimes the Steinway voice can sound somewhat muted or unclear while the Yamaha delivers a beautiful bell-like clarity almost always. Conversely, the Steinway can give up some deeper tone sometimes that the Yamaha doesn’t lend itself to as natively as it comes to the Steinway."

I can't agree. My experience is that Steinway's just about always have a beautiful bell like quality, Yamaha's don't. They are the pianos that sound muted to me. I do agree that Steinways do generally have better lower registers. The comparisons for me are between Steinway and Baldwin. Steinway has a more forward sound to my ear almost a slight midrange peak. It puts slightly more emphaisis on the lower harmonics than Baldwin. This makes it sound richer. Baldwin is as clear and at least as brilliant as Steinway but sounds more neutral, comparitavely colder. Generally Baldwins also have outstanding bass.

IMO the best course of action would have been to try to obtain the original Steinway piano the recording was made on, try to tune it to match the recording taking into account limitations of 1955 recording technology especially with regard to the highest overtones and then trying to match the Yamaha to the Steinway. Trying to match it directly to the recording was a mistake in my view. Colorations due to differences in listening equipment from the original monitors even if the recording were perfect would create an audible mismatch.

"CEB: Why did Gould, a Steinway artist at one point, become a Yamaha artist at the end of his life?

MW: Other people would know that story better than me. All I know, that in general the way these things tend to work is that there’s personalities involved and deals to be made and negotiated and if someone’s not happy with their deal, they might go to another manufacturer that will give them what they require. "

Or perhaps he made demands on Steinway that they found so unreasonable they told him to just leave.

[speaker dave]

Of all the people you mentioned, the one who is by far the most interesting to me is Leo Beranek because of his work on acoustics of concert halls.

In his lecture he discussed at length the Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall disaster. I'll bet looking back on it he must have wished a million times he'd just walked away when the architects and the management committee overruled his advice. Instead he'll be tarred with that brush forever having tried to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He redeemed himself with his design in Tokyo but again his ideas were nearly screwed up by an architect who wanted to make a "statement." (I've run into more than one of those myself.) His own statement is simple, what looks good often doesn't sound good so copy what has proven to work. Sounds like good advice to me even though nobody in that business ever takes it. He made an interesting comment in the interview about the Disney concert hall being screwed up too.

I've long been a fan of Leo Beranek's. A friend in the business was able to get me a signed copy of his latest book which has pride of place on a lving room shelf. In college I used his book "Music, Acoustics and Architecture" as a text and did a study of the various halls at Purdue. It was good science in that he interviewed the conductors, measured the halls, and then found the correlation between the objective measurements and the subjective rankings.

So it always struck me as curious that someone who "knew the answer" could be associated with such a design disaster. I have read every account of the Philharmonic Hall disaster (Hans Fantel in Stereo Review was revealing) and it seems to me that Leo just dropped the ball. The architect and his staff swear convincingly that every design change was documented, and updated prints sent to BBN. Having worked for a architectural acoustics consulting firm, I can't imagine updated prints coming in and the design principal not reviewing the changes and calling out the issues, but that appears to be what happened. New York wanted to squeeze more seats in and save cost on trim (much designed in for diffusion) and Leo let it happen. If he was too busy he should have had a subordinate on top of it.

Between the 60's when the first book was written, and now, much has been learned. Primarily it has been Barron that has clarified the importance of strong lateral reflections and low IACC. He and others have shown how these desirable characteristics are difficult to achieve with fan shaped halls and seating greater than about 2200 (difficult but not impossible).

Good stuff.

David

[soundminded]

"So it always struck me as curious that someone who "knew the answer" could be associated with such a design disaster."

That is not fair. I don't think you understand the consulting business. It is very hard to walk out on a project midway through it, especially one that is very high profile and enormously prestigious such as the main concert hall in what was to become the premier national site for symphonic performances in what was considered the cultural center of the United States and the most important city in the world. Ego has everything to do with it...and the money didn't hurt either. But as Beranek said, what looks good does not necessarily sound good and size does matter.

As I recall from the interview, Beranek had essentially duplicated Boston Symphony Hall. That was the smartest thing he could have done. But the architects didn't like the look of it and the management committee wanted a hall that would seat at least 2900, far too many. Not only is size restricted by the physical space required for the bodies but by building code occupancy standards including means of egress. New York City had its own building, fire, and electrical codes and they were very strict. (For example, a concert pianist who'd been around for many years told me that the acoustics of Carnegie Hall was wrecked when the NYC Fire Marhsall ordered that the paint be changed from oil base paint to latex paint.) Beranek protested the Lincoln center management directives but the committee wouldn't listen. That's when the fatal choice was made, to stay and try to make the best of it or to walk out and write it off. Walking out was the hard choice but it would have saved him from being held responsible for the disaster and later he could have said "I told you so." When the result proved the abortion he knew it would likely be and no one else could fix it, he could have come back if they'd wanted him to rescue it and said now tear it down and build what I told you to in the first place. Considering how much money has been spent unsuccessfully trying to fix it, it wouldn't have cost any more to do that.

One other factor that should not be overlooked is that in the early 1960s the body of knowledge, sophisticated measuring equipment, high speed computers and software for modeling halls we have today didn't exist yet. While he knew the changes to the design wouldn't work, as the decades passed by he gained even more insight from both his own experience and the advances by others inceasing the collective body of knowledge to better understand why.

Ultimately you can't beat stupidity. As you can see from his story in the link to the IEEE interview, the dopes in Tokyo, their Architect, their management committee made the same mistake their counterparts in New York City made 30 years earlier and it was only sheer luck that it didn't result in the same disaster all over again.

[Carlspeak]

I was sure I had that recording but no, I've got a two disc cd set "Glenn Gould plays Bach" Sony SX2K 62588. I may have the original on vinyl in my basement but finding it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. The term that best describes Gould is nutcase. Not the slightest doubt of it. I've got an interview with him on a vinyl record and he was surely wierd. He did not believe in live performances. There's a famous story which may in part explain why. As I heard it, he was supposed to play a concerto with the NY Philharmonic. He and Bernstein didn't agree on the tempo. The first note was the last one the orchestra and the piano played together, neither would budge an inch. They played the whole piece through each at its own tempo mindless of the other. Needless to say the concert was a disaster.

How a Yamaha can be voiced to sound like a Steinway is beyond me..............

Gould may have been eccentric as you claim. History has examples of many like him who, are geniuses none-the-less. I've seen films of him wearing a pair of heavy wool gloves when not playing. Perhaps he wore them year round. I don't know. However, no one can doubt his playing talent. The Goldberg's are a glaring example of a body of work, when played by Gould, seem to have been written just for him. I think that is why his recordings remain the best performances of these works.

I also believe modern recordings made in the past 5 yrs or so far surpass those previously made in terms of audio quality. Here, we have the greatest performances of the Goldbergs now available on SACD and recreated in stunning detail by modern technology and played by a piano voiced by none other than Gould's original piano tuner.

I also have both of Gould's '55 and '81 renderings of the Goldbergs. Now I plan to order the SACD and compare the three.

[soundminded]

I listened to the 2 disc Gould recording last night, at least as much as I could stand of it. The name of the recording is actually "images." Disc 1 is "Gould Plays Bach." Disc 2 is "Gould Plays Not Bach." This is a compilation of selections of recordings made between around 1959 and 1984. Some were recorded in Columbia's 30th street studios in NYC, some at RCA Studio A in NYC, some at Eaton Hall in Toronto, and one with the American Symphony Orchestra under Stokowsky at Manhattan Center (last movement of the Beethoven Emperor (concerto #5.)) They all sound like they were played on Steinway pianos to me, perhaps the same Steinway piano for all of them. But the recording results vary all over the lot. It was interesting to be able to filter out the sound of the piano itself from the differing technologies and techniques used to record it. Surprisingly some of the recording techniques stank, especially the one used in his performance of the Brahms Rhapsody in B minor made at RCA Studio A in 1982. Bass was surprisingly thin on it, at least 5 or 10 db down from the other recordings. You needed to equalize each one individually to get it to sound listenable. When the Emperor Concerto came on, the bass boomed out and the strings were harsh and shrill.

That this guy is a nutcase is now for me beyond any shadow of a doubt. I listened to this recording once before several years ago after I listened to his interview and hearing it again only reinforced the conclusion I came to the last time. Yes his technique is brilliant. He plays in a kind of staccato style which makes his tone very clear. I can almost hear a metronome ticking in the background, his tempo never wavering one bit. I think this guy must surely have had OCD. Some of the music lends itself to this kind of playing. Bach may often demand this treatment especially historical interpretations of it although I think most modern interpreters would not choose to always play it that way. For example I heard few if any rubatos. Included in this recording is the Goldberg theme and variations 1-5 he recorded with Columbia in 1981. I liked the Bizet First Nocturne in F and the Strauss Sonata in B minor but the Mozart Rondo a la Turque was a joke, a parody IMO.

There are also a lot of distracting noises on these recordings. These include Gould humming and talking in the background and what may be noises of the piano bench cushions. Some also have low frequency rumble on them.

Howard, do you have this or any Glen Gould recordings? What do you think?

[speaker dave]

"So it always struck me as curious that someone who "knew the answer" could be associated with such a design disaster."

That is not fair. I don't think you understand the consulting business.

Well, I actually understand a little bit.

You should find the Hans Fantel article from the, I think, October 76 Stereo Review. He goes through the whole history in a fair enough manner that Beranek quotes him in his 1992 overview paper from JASA. What stands out to me is that Beranek doesn't know that the floor plan has changed until he shows up and the foundation is being poured. With my firm we were signing off print packages at at least three stages. Certainly before tender (submitting the prints to the builder for binding quotes) there would be signing in blood for all acoustical aspects. Changes after that point come out of the consultants pocket, if they have omitted anything. This shows unbelievably bad communication between the architect and the acoustician. Plenty of blame for both sides but as several people from Harrison & Abramovitz claim that every design change was drawn up and sent to BB&N (which Beranek doesn't deny) I would say that Beranek was amazingly disinterested or uninvolved in what was a very important job.

He did stick with it and try to tune out the issues and he also got screwed by the politics down the road having run afoul of George Szell. And, the final Avery Fisher Design by Cyril Harris is close to Beranek's first design. Still, it seems to me to be a failure of project management rather than a failure of acoustical design.

David

[soundminded]

"Still, it seems to me to be a failure of project management rather than a failure of acoustical design."

That is where the process failed 100%. Usually there is a project meeting with all important players involved EVERY WEEK at the least. Whenever an important design change is initiated, it MUST be thoroughly discussed by all participants. In the case of a concert hall the acoustician IS the main participant. While there may not have been e-mails in 1960 there were telepohones, I'm pretty sure of that. And if for some reason the Acoustician didn't get back to the Architects and Engineers by phone or mail, then it was their responsibility to find out why and to confront him with the proposed changes BEFORE they were sent to a contractor to build. As soon as the first change was instituted that Beranek didn't agree with, that is when he should have walked out, no ifs, ands, or buts. If your doctor doesn't agree with how you tell him you want him to operate on you, he should tell you to find another surgeon who does. Not perform the operation the way you want it done anyway especially when he knows it will come to a sorry end.

Cyril Harris is a well respected acoustician but trying to salvage an inherently bad design without a major gut rehab is usually futile. That's what the consultants at the New York Philharmonic did, each one had a piecemeal approach most of the time. While Harris's design I think implimented in the 1980s may have been "similar" to Beranek's first design, it was not the same and it was not successful as subsequent necessary alterations proved. Close in that business is not good enough. Much of the money came from patrons. It got so bad that the joke in the business was that they were going to rename it "Philanthropic Hall." It's hard to admit you made a $50 or $100 million mistake and need almost as much to fix it up but that is what was needed at least in today's dollars.

The ultimate responsibility still rests with the steering committee and the Architect who flew in the face of the best acoustical advice they could get. Beranek was the dupe they pinned their failure on, the name everyone remembers. In fact the Acoustician should have been the lead and had the architects and engineers work for him but the process doesn't work that way. He becomes merely an adjunct, one more consultant whose input is taken into consideration and often little more. Hans Fantel was a newspaper record and audio reviewer. What could he possibly know about the process of project management and the political machinations that went on behind closed doors at the NYPO unless he was there to see and hear it first hand?

[soundminded]

Howard, I am not familiar with the action of contemporary Steinways but I can tell you that although older Steinways like mine (1927 M size) are plenty fast enough for any artist, the Baldwins we have much lighter and faster action. I had a close friend who was a world famous pianist who sadly died many years ago and playing our Baldwin she said the only problem with it was that it was hard to play softly. The Baldwin Acrosonic was the only spinet piano I ever saw that sounds like a grand piano. My neighbor across the street bought a brand new Baldwin baby grand about 7 or 8 years ago and got a great deal on it. $15,000 reduced from $30,000.

I've been intrigued with sound and music all of my life. Both live and recorded music. When I entered engineering school I was sure I was headed for a carreer in this industry one way or another but early in my Junior year I attended the IEEE show at the NY Colleseum and my eyes were opened wide. I quickly understood that there was a vast world out there for electrical engineers much larger and more interesting and important to me and that my interest in sound would always remain nothing more than a hobby. Even when I've built very high end videoteleconference rooms and centers, I've left all of the audio and video details to consultants. On rare occasions when I've had to remediate failed PA systems due to design blunders I've gotten involved but not much else. I once had a temp job with an AV consolidator but it lasted only a month. It was the most boring job I ever had and I'll say my departure was by mutual consent and leave it at that.

[Zilch]

The only picture I would like to see right now is a photo of your main listening room. You know, the place where you audition speakers and come to conclusions about their sound.

Coaxial eWaves.

No, not mine, I only helped build them.

Seems somebody rather liked them:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/design_of_loudspeakers.htm#J

Scroll down to "J".

[soundminded]

What are you telling us Zilch, you are a hobo living rough in San Francisco?

Hey weren't those props in the movie "War of the Worlds?" As I recall they're supposed to fire death rays but I always thought they were mounted on some kind of mobile machine or flying saucer.

[Zilch]

That ain't San Francisco, but the listening space is world class, clearly.

Post a pic of your 901s, Soundminded; Howard wants to see YOUR room....

[soundminded]

At first I thought those things on top were harbor lights or headlamps but I guess those are the helmets of the aliens' space suits. Look's like they're small three legged crawling creatures sitting on top of their weapons. I also suppose what looks like a tripod somehow enables them locomotion. They walk with those tripod things under them? And I guess those boxes on the ground are their picnic lunches Must be Sausalito.

[Zilch]

What counts are good, decent-sized rooms, with good speakers set up properly, and with a good listening location in that room.

Not everyone is so fortunate as to have routine access to cheap wall paneling and a Beanie Baby collection, Howard.

Alas, some of us ignorant unwashed occasionally have no option but to audition our work outdoors at the foot of the Fourth Wonder of the Modern World.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonders_of_the_world

[All that's missing is the string quartet.... ]

[kkantor]

Alas, I no longer have anything even remotely resembling a hifi listening room. I guess I am now unqualified to comment, or even hold opinions, about loudspeakers.

-k

I want to see EVERYBODY's room.

Without a good listening room for auditioning purposes (big enough to do actual, uncrowded A/B comparisons as well as serious single-presentation listening at length), opinions about speaker sound out there in the real world are nothing more than conjecture.

And listening at hi-fi shows (where the acoustics are normally junk), or at dealer showrooms (where the acoustics are often not much better than junk, either), or during occasional evenings at friend's homes (even when the rooms are good), does not count. Listening in closet-sized rooms does not count, either, and listening outdoors certainly does not count.

What counts are good, decent-sized rooms, with good speakers set up properly, and with a good listening location in that room.

Howard Ferstler

[Zilch]

Alas, I no longer have anything even remotely resembling a hifi listening room. I guess I am now unqualified to comment, or even hold opinions, about loudspeakers.

No problem, Ken; we like you and your cheap sunglasses just fine....

[kkantor]

No problem, Ken; we like you and your cheap sunglasses just fine....

Hey. just saw Echo and The Bunnymen at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Thursday night. Amazingly good show. The first set was performed with a small orchestra, (16 pcs + conductor). The second set was all electric and LOUD. (I don't think the dominant conceptual paradigms of audiophilia could handle the artistic range....) I have been a serious fan of theirs for 30 years, so it was a total trip to hang with the band after the show. Very knowledgeable and intelligent folks, who take the sonic side of things seriously. (Although I have less good things to say about the sound guys at the Fox.)

-k

[Carlspeak]

Hey. just saw Echo and The Bunnymen at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Thursday night. Amazingly good show. The first set was performed with a small orchestra, (16 pcs + conductor). The second set was all electric and LOUD. (I don't think the dominant conceptual paradigms of audiophilia could handle the artistic range....) I have been a serious fan of theirs for 30 years, so it was a total trip to hang with the band after the show. Very knowledgeable and intelligent folks, who take the sonic side of things seriously. (Although I have less good things to say about the sound guys at the Fox.)

-k

Ken, pls. check the 'library additions and corrections' threads.

Tks,

Carl