Soundstage depth and width

it is eaier to record ansmall ensemble than a large orchestra, if one desires to create a semblance of reality.

in fact, as i have recounted, i was present at a demonstartion that compared live vs a microphone feed.

the group was misty river. the venue was the san remo hotel in las vegas. the comparison revealed small differences . i was suprised that the the differences were as small as i heard.

some of you who write on this forum may have been present at this event.

so it is possible to narrow the differences between the sound of live music and recordings, under certain conditions.

i will leave you with this question ?

why is it so hard to recreate the sound of a piano on a cd ?

It's hard to properly mic a piano, given it's size/shape(the various sound propagation points), and the instrument's dynamic range. Move around a piano, and the sound changes quite a bit. A stereo pair, inside/facing L/R, reative to Middle C works well(but is not realistic, regarding sound stage) It's difficult to get the instrument's dynamic range, without some amount of compression, and we know what that does to music. I've heard some really nice piano, captured on Diana Krall's discs. You can actually picture the position of her head(voice) relative to the piano(she does get emotive, when performing), where her hands are, on the keyboard(L to R), and her foot, working the Soft, Sostenuto
and Sustain pedals(all part of, "being there"- KUDOS to the man on the mixer). One of my favorites is Christine McVie's, 'Songbird', recorded at Zellerback Auditorium(UC Berkley). Nothing but her voice, piano, simple guitar accompaniment, and a nice sense of the acoustic(rendered beautifully on the Nautilus, 'Rumours' disc).

I think Mr T was asking why vinyl can capture piano better than CD (digital?).
I have never heard a piano convincingly portrayed on CD yet I have at least 4 or 5 records which create a remarkable illusion?

YEP! I missed the, "on a CD" part of his question. The discs I mentioned are all vinyls. Redbook CDs just don't capture the piano's dynamics. I don't have any piano on HDCD or XRCD, to compare with vinyl, but suspect those formats would come closer in realism. Done well, they do with every other instrument/voice. There again; everything depends on the care taken/technics used during the recording session, mastering and stamping/pressing processes. A plethora of variables and opportunities for sound/ambience info to be lost(regardless of format).

Gentlemen, if you are looking for a redbook cd of well reproduced solo piano, try to find Wilson Audio WCD-9129, Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58 (and other shorter works), performed by Hyperion Knight. I think you would be amazed. It is long out of print, though, and hard to find.

Of course, it wasn't exactly produced and engineered in typical fashion. Some excerpts from the technical notes provided with this 1991(!) cd:

The recorded perspective of the piano in this recording is close, as though the 9' Hamburg Steinway in being played for you in your living room. Of course the actual recording was not made in a living room! Instead, the great room of Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch, with its incredibly low noise floor and fully adjustable acoustics, was used.... A pair of Sennheiser MKH-20 omni microphones were employed ... amplified by two superb pure class-A microphone preamps custom-built for Wilson Audio by John Curl. MIT cable carried the balanced line level signal to Wilson Audio's Ultramaster 30 ips analog recorder. Subsequent digital master tapes were made through the Pygmy A/D converter on a Panasonic SV-3700.

Regards,
-- Al