Hear my Cartridges....🎶

frog , what do you think is the result of hearing more music in the orchestra
than in middle hall ?

Frogman , I wonder if you ever played under JoAnn Falletta ?
Performance Today out of St. Paul plays her all the time , her tight control
over the Buffalo Phil  and what she had done  there is amazing to me !

Henry, one question just to confirm the situation: are you listening all the cartridges on balanced mode trough XLR inputs ? I´d assume your great system is fully balanced from cartridge pins to power amps ?

Hi Harold,
All Amplification operating in ‘Balanced’ mode and all cartridges operating in ‘Balanced’ mode with XLRs except for LOMCs when played on the Raven AC-2 as they go through the Kondo KSL SUT which has only RCAs in and out.
LOMCs from the TT-101 go straight through the Halcro DM-10 with XLRs in fully balanced differential mode.

Schubert, great question; and the answer to which highlights one of the main problems with the way orchestral music is often recorded. Most good composers of orchestral music are (and were) very mindful of the fact that the sound of an instrument, or instruments playing together, needs to travel a certain distance on its way to the listener’s ear in order to “develop” acoustically and achieve the desired timbre and texture. Sitting in the middle of an orchestra one hears a good amount of extraneous “noise” in one’s own and other players’ sounds which is not, nor intended to be, desirable. This noise can be excessive air in a wind player’s tone or exaggerated sound of the tongue “attack” of the note. Even in the absence of this noise, the timbre of most instruments is typically more brilliant and aggressive with more prominent, and uneven (unnatural) harmonic content when heard up close. Some players’ tones are much more beautiful heard from a certain distance.

Sitting mid hall, besides more fully developed individual tones, what one hears is the result of what (good) players sometimes refer to as “playing inside each other’s sound”. For instance, when the principal flute and principal oboe have a melody to play in unison, or when the tympani has repeated accented notes with the basses, what the composer usually intends, and what the players aim for, is not for the listener to hear two individual and distinct sounds. The compositional and performance goal is the color of a perfect blend between the two which is essentially a new color in the orchestral color palette. A performance that was recorded too close up does not capture this very important aspect of a composition and performance. Sitting in the middle of an orchestra players are (or, should be) very conscious of all this and play in a way that honors the composer’s goal in this respect. Some players’ tones are much more beautiful heard from a certain distance. Some of this is a bit of a mystery and goes to a musician’s strength of musical “intent”. Some players have the ability to “project” and sound very beautiful heard from a distance even if their sound may seem smaller than another player’s whose sound seems louder or more present when heard up close. Sitting in the middle of an orchestra a good player has to be mindful of all this in order to best serve the music.

Hearing music from inside an orchestra also makes one very aware and sensitive to very fine dynamic gradations in the music. Many of the things that I tried to describe above apply to the area of dynamics. Most listeners tend to focus on tonal issues and distortions in reproduced sound while distortions of dynamic nuance is just as prevalent and important; arguably, even more so since this is what mostly gives music its sense of aliveness. Perhaps a result of personal bias, but I find that distortion of dynamic nuance is the area in audio most in need of attention and improvement.

Re Falletta:

Fine conductor. I had the pleasure of playing under her with Philadelphia Orchestra on two occasions and most recently in a performance of new works by students at Princeton U’s Cone Institute. She is excellent and has the ability to command the respect of the players while not losing sight of the fact that the process is a collaboration to a great extent; something that does not always happen.