If you can't hear this then you're not an audiophile [See description for link to followup video]

if you can't hear this then you're not an audio file those crazy audio files you know people who would spend a thousand Great British pounds on a one meter interconnect and clearly hear the difference between that and their previous 10B cable bought from AliExpress yes and by lifting their speaker cables a few centimeters from the floor they can hear that too no I'm prepared to believe that some people really can hear this and if I had a no sarcasm Emoji I'd use it now I'm prepared to believe that some people really can hear this notice I didn't quite say I believe if you're watching this then perhaps you're an audio file who's up for a challenge or perhaps you're just curious to know whether you can hear what audio files can hear or what audio files can't hear we'll see so I have a recording and there's something wrong with it the challenge is can you hear what's wrong I can hear it clearly without golden ears ears made of coarsest flannel cloth in fact here's the clip [Music] shall I play it again [Music] so there are two possibilities here you heard the problem or you didn't hear it if you're an audio file with thousand interconnects suspended speaker cables and all the rest and you didn't hear it then you wasted your money if you can't hear this you can't hear anything by anything of course I mean all those details your equipment and upgrades were supposed to provide but maybe you did hear it what did you hear I'll give you a moment to firm up your thoughts then I'll tell you what you heard you heard the solar clarinet wandering in the stereo image sometimes it's Center sometimes left sometimes right and it can vary from note to note I think we should listen [Music] again you heard it this time for sure and even audio files can hear it you know sometimes listening out for all those tiny tiny details can make you forget about the proverbial elephant trumpeting in the room let me throw in some credits here the clarinet soloist is the amazing Roland hendris from his album the clarinet as prima donna I know I'm pronouncing his name wrong but if I attempted what I'm guessing should be Flemish pronunciation it could be a lot worse the piece is VAB second Clarinet Concerto and you can buy this on the evil penguin label along Ong with other music by vber originals and interesting Arrangements the link is in the description oh and it's on Spotify too and probably the other streaming services so you can listen right now right now after watching the rest of this video where I'll explain what's going on there may be some listeners who still have doubts the problem is easier to hear on headphones or closer to your loudspeakers in the direct field so try that here's a clip of the clarinet alone and I'll help you with a vector scope dis display you'll see a lot of fuzziness in the display which is the reverberation in the room what you're looking for is the overall tilt tilted to the left means that the stereo image is biased to the left tilted to the right then it's biased to the right let's [Music] [Applause] [Music] go so what's causing this it's the recording technique I have to say that other than this issue I'm very well satisfied with this recording and since the music and performances are so good a small issue with stereo Imaging isn't going to stop me enjoying it firstly let's look at a video of the recording session we can see that Roland does move quite a bit quite a distance and the clarinet is in almost continuous motion now any recording engineer would prefer that the solo instrument doesn't move this is why the piano was invented but the piano has its own problems but also any recording engineer even fresh out of college knows that if a performer moves it's usually not a good idea to try and persuade them not to movement can be part of the physical expression and the performance will be dull and flat if the performer tried not to move when it's more natural for them to rock and roll a little what we can see in this wide shot are a number of microphones and we perhaps can't see them all what we don't know is whether all of the microphones were used and in what proportions they were balanced into the mix any stereo microphone setup will pick up movement in the solo instrument that's just going to happen and we have to accept it the way to get a firm Center image of a soloist or singer leaving out large instruments like the piano for now is to use a single mic fairly close not as close as he would for popular music The Sound needs to breathe in a little air before it hits the mic but what do we see here aha two mics spaced apart which in this configuration would normally be panned hard left and hard right if you want to capture movement this is the best way an alternative approach is to use a coincident crossed pair which will capture the movement but not so much as a spaced pair because it isn't sensitive to timing differences I see a third mic as well and all three of these mics seem to be pointing towards the solo clarinet the third mic is spaced by height the reason for this may be to avoid Reflections that might affect the sound in the horizontally spaced mics the Third third mic in this position would almost certainly be pound Center this might be an either or situation spaced mics or upper mic setting up microphones that you think you might need helps the session run smoothly it's better to set a microphone and not need it than to need it and you haven't set it or perhaps the third mic is balanced with the spaced pair I'd say though that the spaced pair is doing the heavy lifting here but notice that Roland's movements are sometimes up and down if all three mics are being used this will alter the balance between the space mics and the upper mic the upper mic Shifting the image to the center so if Roland moves from high Center to low left the image in the stereo sound field will move from Center to left if Roland stays low and move to the right the image will move to the right and don't forget that sound comes out of the entire length of the instrument not just from the Bell this accounts for notes randomly popping in from random directions as far as I can think it out this completely explains the sound we're hearing I don't want to come across as though I'm saying the engineer is doing it all wrong as I said in all other respects the recording is excellent and when it comes down to my point in question it's a matter of taste my taste just goes a different way so my questions to you are you an ordinary audio or music enthusiast did you hear it are you an audio file did you hear it if you thought you were an audio file but you didn't hear it what do you going to do now in the comments one more thing in the video I spotted a brasty M7 stereo Reverb processor does anyone have any comments on this in the context of acoustic instruments in the real world and what would audio files think of this see you soon

Channel: Audio Masterclass

Views: 927,501

Keywords: clarinet, weber, clarinet concerto, Roeland Hendrikx, stereo image

Id: 48PxwspDvrE

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023