My experience with the Malaysian Philharmonic orchestra last night

Hi
Last night I attend a concert at the new Dewan Undangan Negri hall in Kuching. The building is nice but the concert hall acoustic is a bit over damped IMHO .This type of concert are few and far between in Kuching.

I enjoy the evening of orchestral music with the MPO.
It make me realize that good bass reproduction is very important to enjoy this type of music.

This is a time to recalibrate my ears for hi fi tuning.!

regards

kp93300

kp93300 wrote:
It make me realize that good bass reproduction is very important to enjoy this type of music.

This is a time to recalibrate my ears for hi fi tuning.!

regards

kp93300

Especially if the bass blooms and that is when you are "there"

NOW you are in trouble. Because to get realistic life music kind of bass, you really need proper speakes, amps and room.

Did you sit in the premium seats ? They are in the center and usually around the half-way point of the hall (measured from back of stage to back of hall). From those seats, we can hear proper imaging and soundstaging, just like what we expect and hope to get from our hifi system.

The other frustrating thing about live concert is how the highs are always so sweet, pure, and extended...

Can you enlighten me what is proper speakers and amps? Concert hall type, stadium kind, studio kind? speakers the size of fridges? Tri or quad amplification? .

I was sitting close to the center of the hall,
There is no amplification at all.

The drum is played by a small size lady at the rear. It sounds so sudden and loud . The mallet hit the skin and what a nice resonance from within the drum and then a nice decay.

When played in my home, the aural perception of the drum seems to be much smaller in size !

The other fact i notice is that the intake of breath and the aural perception of air flowing through the flute is a by product of close mic recording.

regards
kp93300

Them drums are called 'Timpani' and their true master at the MPO is a chap by the name of Paul Philbert... try to catch him when they're doing a stirring programme like Beethoven or Rachmaninoff... killer skins man...

Re: saliva, breath and air in recordings can be damn annoying for me sometimes, one reason why I tend to avoid many 'audiophile' specific releases and artists.

Ah yes, the perils of close-miking which is ever so popular with audiophile recordings (NOT audiophile re-issues of commercial recordings though). The best audiophile singers actually try to muffle their breathing during recording but personally, one annoying thing I find lately is how some amateur recordings were done intentionally with the singer taking deep deep breaths at the mike. If I want to hear deep breathing, it won't be from a song...

Cmboy, personally for me, to get realistic reproduction of a big scale orchestra piece, especially realistic relative to hearing a premium seat, my personal approach is that we really need a large speaker. It must be able to generate a lot of bass and also project 'powerful' sound. Often in this type of question, people will get hung up on the brand or type of speaker but for me, as long as the speaker is able to physically move a lot of air, that is one of the criterias. For me at least, this means a large surface area for the mid and bass radiator (woofer or panel). For e.g. since I know you like high sensitivity speakers, one of those big JBLs, like the one I used to hear many years ago, with a huge 15in woofer. They generate quite realistic orchestra music when driven by appropriate amps.

Then of course we need the rest of the system to match up. E.g. the amp must be able to drive the said speakers properly to life-like volume and so forth. The source must be high quality enough, etc.

Unfortunately we also need a large room, as low bass needs space to properly develop, so if our room is say 12ft in length, we will never be able to get very low bass unfortunately. Also because of the soundstage perspective needed, we really need to be a certain distance away from the speakers. Anyway, this is just ONE of MANY approaches to attempts at realistic reproduction of classical orchestra music. I will openly admit I myself do not currently have the pre-requisites for it. On the other hand, it certainly doesn't stop me from enjoying my classical LPs !