Tinny sound accompanying cello on recordings ?

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.

Chasmal wrote, a couple posts above: "I think you will come to love it as part of the richness of the instrument once the weirdness plays out for you."

GREAT POINT!

We've consciously trained ourselves to be aware of that sensation of weirdness and of how it plays out, particularly when auditioning new tweaks and components. Has the sound of a familiar recording become less familiar, strange, even uncomfortable? If so, its time to kick in our brains and figure out why.

Much more often than not, it means the new tweak or component is in fact an upgrade, that it's extracting more information from the recording and getting it through the system and into the room. Assuming no obvious flaws, the weirder and stranger things seem at first, the more likely it is we're hearing a major upgrade.

Our ears and brains adjust after a short while and the increased complexity becomes the new normal. From that point, taking the new tweak or component away leaves us feeling bereft. Example: I wouldn't stop demagging my LP's or shorten my cleaning regimen because they both provide exactly that sense of weirdness-from-increased-information.

(A note regarding your LP cleaning issues: the ultimate test of an effective cleaning regimen is not how quiet the surfaces are. I could make even my best records quieter by smearing Gruv Glide or some other crap on them. They'd be quieter but I'd hear less music. The true test of a clean LP is how much low level detail and microdynamic subtlety you can hear. When we compared different waters for final rinses, this was the only difference. No water made the record any quieter than any other water, but one was better at revealing very fine levels of detail and dynamic shadings.)

Apologies to Opus88 for the threadjack. Inspired by weirdness!

I never heard of adding weights on bows per se. Is this a known technique? As far as I know adding weight will unbalance the device and alter its elastic properties. rather, bows may be manufactured to different weights. . . for example, bows made from dense ironwood or snakewood may be heavier than pernambuco bows.

And of course, the instrument itself has enormous influence over the sound. . . heard once a live Amati cello from very up close (8 feet away). The instrument had been created for the private orchestra of French king Henry IV. Definitely powerful and full of upper harmonics, but also wild and. . . reedy. The opposite sound was a Testori: warm and gushy. . . and incredibly boring. The instrument's inherent characteristics will come through in any good recording. G.

I never heard of adding weights on bows per se. Is this a known technique?

No it is not normally done that way - usually the bow is balanced so you select the bow based on its feel and weight to help produce the desired sound.

Sorry if my narrow example missed the mark - there are a lot of other ways to control the sound of a cello - I did not intend to give an exhaustive list.