Steve Deckert
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The first thing I was taken by was the difference in how the piano recorded vs. the Cello. The Cello was far warmer, kinder, more textured. The piano sound is puzzling. The Cello has so much more bass weight it makes the piano sound like a piano without any bass strings.
It’s hard to believe it’s the same piano I have come to know and love over the years…
The page turning after the song was over was killer. I heard the whole room.
The cello is sooo good sounding and the player, Narek, is a master as he and the cello become one. He makes the space between the notes almost more interesting than the notes themselves, like the way a whisper draws you in and silence opens you.
)A&. PAUSE
Time for a different headphone. The hard to drive planners I was using is causing the headphone amp in the stock tape machine to sound hard on the piano, and it was making me hate the piano player. Another example of how we as audiophiles tend to shoot the messenger. I knew this couldn’t be. But the beating on the keys, and the disjointed timing was making me thing frankly I could play the piano better than that!
Now, when you realize that you’re thinking you can play piano better than Noreen Polera, something must be wrong. And it was.
So now, let us try again with the proper headphones for the amplifier and see what magic is in here. I’m almost scared now. Narek sounded good even with the highly distracting piano, so now things should be very much improved.
SIDE NOTE: I actually thought the piano player sucked. It was my gear. How many times has this happened in the audiophile universe I wonder? My guess would scare us all.
Alright, lets press play:
Well right off the bat there is a balance that wasn’t there before. The piano is no longer hard and in fact layers behind the cello for much of the track. The timing is so much better now. Hmm, so strained audio gear can mess with timing…. Because it’s flawless now. Cohesive is the word. We went from WTF to Holly Crap! Sorry if that’s a little earthy for you, but I’m not writing to please anyone, just communicate in the rawest way possible.
Yes, I’m into in it now. The piano sounds great and the cello is becoming one with the piano. So in the first try, Narek became one with the Cello, probably to hide from the piano, and in this iteration Narek and Noreen have not become one, but dissolved into the music which has become conscious.
It’s nirvana when this happens, and here we are at the page turn again. Interestingly, this short 10 second interlude seemed to take about 4 times longer this time. I’m hearing so much more complexity in the paper folding and echoing out into the room, and the air and space around the microphones that time lost it’s linearity. This used to happen to me when I played drums, giving me what seemed like minutes to think of what I should do next when in reality it was only microseconds. We called that dream time.
So as you can see, with proper playback gear my fascination with the page turn went from one sentence to one paragraph. Need anything more be said? Track two - the tone of both instruments and the touch of both musicians is like watching flowers bloom.
Somehow Narak makes his Cello sound like he is hitting the low string with two bows at the same time…
I feel like I’m there. The breathing is well, too clear to be coming from behind a mask. The microphones are placing the cello on the right at about 25 degrees or so, and the piano reaches from about 10 degrees right to probably 45/50 degrees on the left, so a nice span. It interestingly lets the piano have the same loudness as the cello while remaining less loud because it is bigger and slighter farther back. I can count the hairs on the bow, the slow parts and silence between the notes that allow the space to simply be there are what (get this) define the space. I call it horizontal headroom. It’s what draws you into the music. It lets textures and decays happen.
I mean really with this current headphone rig, I can smell the bow as it drug itself across my forehead… it was like experiencing everyday things under a microscope.
Yup, the applause. It was well done. Boy the clapping couldn’t be more perfect. It just doesn’t lie, and that was the best clapping I’ve ever heard.
OK, next track. Holly cow, what an intro — explosive texture on both instruments. A little more dynamic than before. Those hanging notes from the cello, and the way the piano chords attach to those notes, …. Holy crap this is good!
I love tape.
It’s hard to believe something so simple can be so complex with the dynamics, the tone, the timber, the attack, the push, stretch and pull of time, the point where music pushes into the visual cortex and you start to see shapes. This is the very reason why I have never enjoyed classical music on 16 bit CD’s played on 3 digit audio gear. It’s all lost, leaving only an imprint of what was once there, like a firkin fossil. I didn’t set down to listen to fossils, I want to experience the flesh and blood of it.
And that’s what just happened. Damn that was good. Crap it’s over. I hate it when that happens. I really do.
And now that it’s at least 2 hours past my bedtime the only logical thing to do is play the first tape again on these better headphones.
OK, on the first tape again now. Her introduction and the overall sound of the room, and the audience chuckling is more relaxed and less awkward sounding than the first time I heard it.
She starts playing and I am hearing more texture from the bow as well as more cohesiveness with the piano… but everything is a little forward and get this, the violin is getting a touch hard!
So let me put back the other headphones and see…. Hmmm…. Everything sounds great now.
Damn I hate this hobby sometimes.
Fine, I can play this game…. Back and forth between the two. Each has merit. Let’s just grab a third headphone. This one is complimenting the presentation the best overall while each other the other ones did certain things better. And if you don’t think the human ears a a million times more sophisticated than any microphone/DSP/ consider this…. If I was standing there live for both recordings they would have both sounded exactly the same from a contextual point of view, the same recognizable piano in the same space with the same room and never once would the thought go through your mind that something to too forward, or hard, or anything else, because it would… guess what… sound right. Real always sounds right.
These phones are friendly…. What the hell, let’s try another pair.
OK, with each pair I move farther back in the audience. This last pair I am at the back of the pool and everything sounds completely real.
If I’ve learned anything tonight it’s why serious headphone listeners have so many different pairs.
This pair is exquisite from this perspective. It lets me move up closer if I want to, and instead of getting beamy it’s just like I’m not wearing headphones.
It’s dreamy good now. Much more real. I am no longer the microphone, but the audience.
Damn, it’s so good. And to keep all things equal, the same stock tape machine that was used for part 1.
So there you have it, moving around in the room by simply switching from one headphone to another….
Thank-you Ed.
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