Tinny sound accompanying cello on recordings ?

Guidocorona makes a good point about miking, which is one thing I love about recordings: the intimacy. Impossible to get that in a large hall all the way back.

Listen to the way Jordi Savall's solo gamba is miked. Really close, and tons of exactly what you described. I think you will come to love it as part of the richness of the instrument once the weirdness plays out for you.

By the way, Starker is one of my all time favorites for Bach solo cello. Casals maybe beats him out though:).

You can tune the cello sound with the bow weight - a heavy bow will sound duller and more resonant and a lighter bow will sound thinner and more "reedy". Pretty much every instrument is tweaked - drum sets have pillows and scotch tapes over them - it is normal - for goodness sake don't sell your audio gear because something sounds too strident - it is likely to have been INTENDED to sound that way.

This is where a system equipment selection based on a nice full warm sound will make you miss half the expression in music - yes it is true - music is SUPPOSED to sound strained/strident/loud/aggresive/painfull/shocking sometimes - music expresses all emotions - not just "beauty" and "warmth". Russian composers often have their music played with a strident sound to the strings - this is intentional!

Those who chase only "beautiful sound" - you know the female vocalist or the "Cowboy Junkies" type stuff are missing the other side of music ....loud bombastic and aggressive shock and awe music...there are all kinds and a properly selected system will play it all...

On the same cello, there are infinite combinations of materials and playing techniques that will modulate the sound to bewildering variants. . . string brand and model, bridge design and material, tailpiece design and material, end pin material, bow design and construction (you can spend $20K on bow alone)(, bow hair, rosin; position and angle of attack of bow on strings, bowing speed, wrist pressure/elasticity if any, hand grip infinite variants on left hand techniques. Some combination yield a rich sound, other emphasize harmonics, other just lose the fundamental, other modulate the amplitude (vibrato), others are plain horrific.

Guidocorona and Chashmal: Yes, you make a good point, which is absolutely correct. Before going to bed last night, I figuratively hit myself on the head when I realized (and I certainly had known this before, but for the time being had lost sight of it) that in the recording process, soloists are frequently miked very closely, therefore all kinds of details are "thrown out" at the listener. Some of the more obvious examples that come to mind are a number of the Heifetz recordings, and the Linda Ronstadt album, What's New...Also, the sounds I alluded to are clearly coming from the speakers and not the middle of my head. By the way, Chashmal, I have long intended to pick up a copy of Starker's Bach Cello Suites, but have not done so. I need to take of that in short order...Shadorne: Thanks too for your helpful comments, especially the one about cello tuning with the bow weight. I also listened last night to a portion of the Dvorak Concerto with YoYo Ma performing. He must have had the bow more heavily weighted, because I heard virtually none of that "reedier" sound you referred to. In fact, I found his richer tonal rendition more appealing than Fournier's and Harrell's. Thanks once more to you good fellows, and I have no intention of interfering with the kind of sound I presently have..Jeff

Great responses by all above, and a useful reminder from Shadorne on the wrongheaded desire for system "warmth", etc. People hear system problems and try to smother them with warm sonic blankies, instead of identifying and removing the problem. I'm sure many of us have heard $100K+ systems built in exactly this way. I have, and they may sound "nice" but they invariably smother all life out of the music.

On topic, I once had a visitor who complained that massed violins in our system didn't sound "massed", and that he heard a thin "distortion" on top of every note.

We had to point out to him that a live violin section (or chorus) heard up close doesn't sound "massed". It sounds like individual violinists (or singers). The "distortions" he heard were attacks of bow on string, the grip and release of rosin and the astonishingly complex harmonics produced by different parts of the instrument. We asked, and he'd never heard any bowed string instrument up close.

In concert, these things become less audible if you're more than a few rows back or in an acoustically dull hall. OTOH, if you hung your left ear 12-15 feet directly above the first violins and your right ear the same distance above whatever was on the other side of the podium, and if you had no audience noises, no traffic noises, etc., you'd hear rosin, hair on strings and a 100 other things you can't normally hear. Of course your ears might look funny, suspended up there.

Try Heifetz's concerto recordings. He forced RCA to mike him very tight because he wanted everyone to hear his fiddle as normally only he could. Not a normal concert perspective for anyone, but certainly realistic from his.