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What makes instrument immediacy, -separation & -bo

What makes instrument immediacy, -separation & -body density ?

Most speakers i´ve heard present a "you are there" presentation, where you have the feeling of sitting in the recording room/hall. But instrument separation is mostly poor and body is thin even with high end systems.

My ideal reproduction paradigm is : the instruments are playing in my room, 5ft in front of my feet and i "look" into the stage which is ideally extending beyond wall boundaries of the front wall.
The goal is:
maximum instrument body density already at moderate levels.
high contrast between soundstage,air around the instruments and dense instrument body. grip.
instruments appear deep anchored, earthed, energized,
Immediacy while having a cohertent not forward presentation.
deep soundstage

which products (cdp,preamp,amp (300b?),speakers) favourize these design goals ?

yet i´ve found bookshelfs and tube amps to be good in these categories, but havent found a excellent system yet.
Energy speakers were not bad.
Didnt like B&W 805, Dynaudio, JMlab micro utopia - possibly with wrong (cheap) amplification.

What do you think of Reference 3a MM Decapo i with VAC ren 30/30 in a 20x17x9 room ? system budget: 9k

greets

stonedtemplepilot
stonedtemplepilot
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,491 posts
 
A key difference between live (unplugged) and reproduced music is this: Live instruments produce natural-sounding reverberant fields, but most home sound systems don't. For example, listen to a piano from the next room, through an open doorway with no line-of-sight to the instrument. All you can hear is the reverberant energy, but it sounds totally natural and convincing. On the other hand, very few sound systems will sound real when listened to from the next room, and this is because they do not generate a spectrally (and dynamically) correct reverberant field.

Excellent point. This is one of the easy tests that I have been using with speakers for years; does it sound realistic from outside the room?

Funny thing is that most people think I am absolutely crazy when I say this is a good test of the speaker quality! I have had salesman grab me and insist I sit in the exact sweetspot where the floor has been marked with masking tape....whilst I prefer to walk around... as a speaker that sounds right throughout the room is what I usually prefer. If I have to sit in a spot marked X for it to sound right then I don't need to waste my time on an audition
dgarretson
2,623 posts
 
Interesting points about reverberant fields in the original performance, the relative contribution of first arrival vs. reflected sound, and hearing realistic piano sounds in the next room. However, after fixing the variables of room treatment & speaker position, I've observed huge improvements in realism & spacial representation after modifying the circuits of high-quality commerical separates. Even quite expensive stock electronics are compromised & fail to communicate the low-level information necessary for realism & spacial cues. Room variables can only contribute modestly toward remedying such inherent shortcomings. The good news is that the gap between built-to-cost and near SOTA-equipment can often be closed in the aftermarket with light modifications.
dgarretson
2,623 posts
 
I would add that the same improvements to circuits that reveal low-level information required for spacial cues, also reveal textural details & corrected pitch & timbre in voices & instruments. So it's not just about uncovering deep background. This is why that piano sounds so natural when heard from the adjacent room. This type of improvement has nothing to do with room treatments or reflected sound.

However, such improvements in electronics (at least when driving my Merlin or Wilson speakers) do nothing to enlarge the sweet spot. If anything, the effect is lens-like in the sense that movements in and out of the sweet spot are more easily detected & create dramatic shifts in L/R imaging.
bdgregory
1,727 posts
 
yes i am seeking for the opposite of what live music in most venues sounds like - cause i want a unplugged session in a tiny jazz club sitting in the first row...

i am sure a bunch of people want that as well..
I agree. Me too.

.
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,491 posts
 
Shadorne, I'm not convinced that recording in an actual performance hall is necessary to create a sensation of live performance in playback.

I agree fully. I stated above

To recreate perfect positioning it usually requires separate sessions for each instrument in acoustically damped environments that are later carefuly mixed together - ever see typical video footage of a vocalist in a sound room alone with headphones and a microphone.....now you know why!
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