|
|
樓主 |
發表於 2016-8-12 13:48:17
|
顯示全部樓層
LEE 388 OF AUDIOYECHNIQUE CAME IN TO GIVE DEMO IN TIDAL ROOM
@ CD track of Halie Loren, a live recording and the track played was Fly Me to the Moon. A piano began the introduction but the sound was not that smooth. In my view this was a bad recording in that the piano, voice, drum and electric bass all bunched up in one row from front to back in the centre (like single channel mono sound).
@ a UPMCD of Beyond, track played was 海濶天空。The high notes were beyond 家駒 voice’s upper range; also his voice sounded too nasal. In passages when the voice and band played loud, the sound was stressed, compressed and distorted. Appeal to fans but not a good recording for showing audio properties.
THEN SWITCHED TO LP
@ Lee was a responsible person in that he came to the room in the morning to test run the gear. He and Tam found the bass inadequate and raised the crossover point to get more low end response (more on this later when talking about the Carol Kidd track).
@Wilson Audio, pipe organ (Bach Toccata and Fugue track?) I found the upper midrange sounding stressed. Soundstage width and depth were good but not wall to wall and not filling the ambience in front of the speakers with sound. (Playing 2L-077, Organ and Harmonica via the Avant Garde Trio+bass horn, the reproduced sound was wall to wall of 20 something feet in the showroom and had much more frontal extension than the Tidal).
Lee asked the audience about impression of the sound. Phenomenal, yes but I pointed out there was inadequate wall to wall and frontal extension, probably adversely affected by the flimsy partitions of the room. Lee said wrapping round sound was hifi because in live concert little frontal extension of the organ was noticeable.
(The occasion was unsuitable for debating. I thought Lee might probably had only heard pipe organ in Cultural Centre where it was installed above the back of the stage, some 40 ft away from the stage front. Couldn’t hear much reflection at a seat on the side or another 30 ft away (total perhaps 70 ft). But for making a recording where would the engineer place the microphones? Within 10 ft from the pipes I guess, and there the microphones would pick up reflections from the sides of the stage. If Lee had attended weddings or death masses with organ and choir in churches, he would have heard much more reflections, with sound filling up the space. I believe Wilson’s album was recorded in a church and not in a concert hall because the latter would be hard to schedule and very expensive for a small label like his).
* Shostakovich 10th Symphony, soundstage was wide (though not wall to wall) but the strings sounded like having a dense pool near the left and right speakers, akin to having two noticeable lumps of sound there. (dispersion problem of speaker? or disc cutting compromise?)
* LP called Extreme Sound mastered by Doug Sax prior to his death. The track Espanyol? was played. The guitar stuck to the right speaker whilst the violin was at the back on the left, sounding like out of phase. Some audiophiles might consider this good soundstage depth (hope it is not the producer using this gimmick intentionally to fool the uninitiated; an artificial means to create false depth). Even Doug Sax could not improve upon a bad recording like this.
* Berlin New Year Concert 97, TEST PRESSING/WHITE LABEL
track Hungarian Dance (Ventures played this tune with guitar but called it Red River Rock)
Regret to say the orchestral sound was strained, constricted (not open enough) and thin. Nonetheless, handclaps at the end sounded nice.
*Carol Kidd LP, a reissue of the album named Gold
I think the original was digitally recorded. The famous track When I Dream was played. Her voice was slightly diffused. The main guitar, playing chord arpeggio accompaniment was too large and boomy. The second guitar that played notes at times was well separated from Kidd and the main guitar. (I checked the ripped CD track after going home. Voice was much better focussed as was the main guitar. The boom and image diffusion in the Tidal setup was probably caused by raising the crossover point too high).
Prior to playing the disc, Lee 388 advised the audience that when listening to an acoustic guitar its notes should not waver from side to side. (He was right but I would add that the point source should be realistically small because the air hole of the guitar is only about 4 inches. The spruce top (kind of wood) helps resonating the whole guitar body (sides and back of good ones made of rosewood) but the main sound source comes from the air hole).
(To evaluate a speaker’s matching of drivers and integrity of crossovers, I use solo tracks of double bass all the way to cello, acoustic guitar, voice and violin. Solo without any accompaniment is to ensure image is in dead centre and not affected by accompanying instrument).
* LP of Sarasota pieces; track was Habanera?
A very good sounding LP, violin recital with piano accompaniment. Focused and good imaging. Violin sound is smooth and nice though slightly stressed and squeaky (利) when playing loud.
*tutti LP from Reference Recordings
I think the original was digital. The strings sounded compressed and unbalanced with the bass.
* Sade singing Smooth Operator
Her voice was smooth and focussed whilst being positioned at back of soundstage. But the highs of accompaniment stuck to the two speakers suggesting dispersion problem. Accompaniment of the singer should always be positioned behind him/her.
Observations and Summary
% LP source sounded better than CD in the room (though not direct combat with same track) but no information as to whether the DAC came with upward resampling function and whether it was activated. Upward resampling should alleviate the compression and artefacts inherent in 16/44.1
% There was recurrent bunching up of strings sound close to the left and right speakers. Need further tests to find out if that arose from: dispersion of speakers; cartridge/phono amp; bad acoustics of the room. I would be most interested in attending a session to hear whether the system will pass with flying colours or have its knees down when playing the last several minutes of Appian Way in Pines of Rome as well as the crescendo towards the end of Mahler’s Symphony 8 (Symphony of a Thousand).
Also a soprano and/or a tenor singing high and loud.
% dispersion issue as noted in the pipe organ track; there are 3 tracks to test the system’s performance. The audience applause at the end of the Matilda track in Bela Fonte in Carnegie Hall. Photos of the Hall show that there are 3 storeys of balcony seats on both sides but none at the back of the stage. In most systems, the audience applause is reproduced at the back of the soundstage. Don’t blame mixing if an audio system is short on this. Even a moderately priced system, the M2Tec Vaughan DAC into two active monitor speakers on 淘寶 stands were able to reproduce the applause along the two side walls of the defunct Aura showroom in Star House. The second one is the applause at the end Mahler 8th Symphony recorded live (conducted by Bernstein) in the Golden Hall, Vienna. The Hall is shoe box like, with two storeys of balcony seats on two sides and none at the back of the stage. The applause should come from two sides (and not from the back of the speakers) and some in between the listening seat and the speakers, more prominent in this recording than in the Matilda track. The number 3 track is 2L-090, Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence. The 22 member ensemble were placed sitting in a circle and Morton Lindberg recorded them with microphones set up in the centre of the circle facing different directions. An audio system that has imaging and dispersion excellence should be able to reproduce the ensemble in a circle, though about half of the members sitting with their backs facing the listener may sound subdued but still the circle should be discernible.
% Crossover point set too high resulting in boomy and bloated lower midrange. To over come this, I switch off both subwoofers of each channel when playing tracks of solo voice, violin, guitar etc.
% In regard to the aspect of accompaniments being placed in front of the singer, I guess there is dispersion constraints on the tweeter. Energy (sound) is propagated near field whist the midrange voice is propagated farther to the back. May test whether the guess is right or wrong by using a track recorded with 2 microphones: 八音和 by Terence Lai and drum set by Mario (microphones setup in ORTF manner). In these two tracks high frequencies of instruments are to be positioned at various points in the soundstage that should be confined within the inner edges of the two speakers. If they cluster near the speaker boxes,I am afraid cabinet design would have to be reworked. Many large speakers in boxes exhibit this problem whilst the Avant Garde Trio horns having an open design do not.
% test pressings; nowadays many test pressings of new or reissues are offered for purchase. These current vintage to me are merely means to get more money. One should understand the purpose of test pressings in the old days. They were submitted by the mastering studio to the producer/conductor/artist as DRAFTS for approval before mass production (too costly to correct mistakes after that). The producer/conductor might prefer different frequency balance (low to high), loudness, channel balance and tracking easiness to be adjusted. Therefore many so called testing pressings were work in progress rather than the final product. (I had one from the producer marking 2db down for 1 channel).
(too long for 1 post) |
評分
-
2
查看全部評分
-
|
樓主: momei
IP卡
狗仔卡
顯身卡
發表於 2016-8-16 06:40:55
