lorspeaker said:

now to find a reference music from which all of us can benchmark against.

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I have had some fun with Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon.

The double remastered album with both a studio and a live version of the same songs.

I am no pro, but it does give different effects of the same song.

Jim

That's what people mean when they talk about soundstage around here. But that's phase effects, not soundstage. If you want true soundstage it has to be a minimum of mikes covering a spread of sound, not close up miking assembled into non-natural relationships in the mix.

I've heard very good soundstage in the Living Stereo series. Two or three mikes at a normal listening distance- perfect.

True. That said, I often enjoy the creations of the recordists. I prefer smaller aggregations to large orchestras and the close miking in vogue today can create an almost hyper real setting. My favorite listening experience in real life is being among or almost coincident with the musicians. Not difficult to simulate with isolation, close miking and mixing. In a previous thread it was described as "being on stage with the musicians". Close, but what I have in mind is being in the studio or in the room with them. Sitting facing Coltrane or in the chairs with the English String Orchestra is my idea of paradise. Well, paradise would be that with Cate Blanchett sitting on my lap to share the experience.

Most pre-fusion jazz was recorded with a clear and definite soundstage laid out in front. It works great on speakers. It's totally real and present sounding. It wasn't until instruments started plugging in and the Beatles took LSD that engineers started creating non-realistic placement of instruments.

bigshot said:

That's what people mean when they talk about soundstage around here. But that's phase effects, not soundstage. If you want true soundstage it has to be a minimum of mikes covering a spread of sound, not close up miking assembled into non-natural relationships in the mix.

I've heard very good soundstage in the Living Stereo series. Two or three mikes at a normal listening distance- perfect.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the definition.

Jim

PS I think I am beginning to understand.

i have a few LIVING STEREO somewhere..let me go search. 
 
was listening to a few electronica music albums last nite, just not my thang...
maybe the artificial/disorientating electronic soundstaging confused me.
 
i used to sit INSIDE a college band playing an instrument,
somehow i always wanted to relive that feeling in my headfones.
the drums are here...the pickles there.. err picolo i meant.

In the early days of stereo they hadn't really figured out how to do stereo mixes yet, so they just placed a microphone on the left and right of center on the orchestra and fed that straight into the two channels. It makes for very natural instrument placement, particularly with speakers where te distace between the mikes matched the distance between the speakers.

Quote:

lorspeaker said:

i have a few LIVING STEREO somewhere..let me go search. 

 
was listening to a few electronica music albums last nite, just not my thang...
maybe the artificial/disorientating electronic soundstaging confused me.
 
i used to sit INSIDE a college band playing an instrument,
somehow i always wanted to relive that feeling in my headfones.
the drums are here...the pickles there.. err picolo i meant.

Click to expand...

 
Some of the early Living Stereo RCA and Living Presence Mercury stuff still sounds phenomenal today!
Sure, there is a bit of hiss and distortion, but once you get past that, the RCA stuff and Mercury stuff sounds far better than 95% of the DG stuff.
Quote:

bigshot said:

In the early days of stereo they hadn't really figured out how to do stereo mixes yet, so they just placed a microphone on the left and right of center on the orchestra and fed that straight into the two channels. It makes for very natural instrument placement, particularly with speakers where the distance between the mikes matched the distance between the speakers.

Click to expand...

 
You mean this is in the early days before they figured out how to screw stereo mixes up and make them worse.
More classical recording companies should be doing this with modern equipment.

Living Stereo and Mercury Living Presence doesn't have any audible distortion on CD. They're super clean recordings. The distortion was part of the LP format.... Record wear, inner groove distortion, overdriven peaks, etc.

My point was that a modern recording may sound squeaky clean, but most of the modern Classical recordings do not sound as good as the best Living Presence and Living Stereo recordings.
 
It wasn't an attempt to get into another pointless CD vs. LP "discussion". That's been beat to death.