[DanH]

When I attend a live orchestral performance to my ears the violin section has two primary characteristics, a woody resonate sound and a steely overtone. To me the woody sound is predominate when listening to a live orchestra. Through all my years of using different sources, amps and speakers it always seems that when listening to an orchestral recording it is the steely overtone that dominates the sound of the violin section. Is this due to the recording process itself or have I not found the right combination of electronics and transducers yet?

[Tyson]

That's because at a live performance you sit pretty far away from the violinist, but in a recording the mic is placed very close to the soloist.  This changes the wood/steel balance considerably.

[Ericus Rex]

And the mikes are directly above the section where your ears aren't

[canzld]

And the mikes are directly above the section where your ears aren't

+1
and as a result

http://books.google.ca/books?id=sGmz0yONYFcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=sound+reproduction+floyd+toole&source=bl&ots=LFHidigFfE&sig=usurayjwcUCiijcQoQRfx4VJFt8&hl=en&ei=CoVcTdPUBsnOgAfAqLCkDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
page 35&36
-the mic gets a different frequency balance than your ears, which you then have to deal with during playback. Also at concerts, if you sit anywhere that isn't very close to the orchestra, you are hearing as much reflected sound as direct. Concert halls are purposely designed that way so all seats get good sound...except my local...which is a concrete carpark 

[Sam-fi]

I attended a Mahler symphony at my local symphony orchestra and upon returning home I found that the recordings had the same effect you describe among other tonal differences.

Sam

[jimdgoulding]

Yep, classical music reproduction is an important reason why we should take care in positioning our speakers in room and dial in a volume setting that favors the whole and a realistic perspective.  Of course, we do that, but it doesn't hurt to mention it.

[Tyson]

I think it's also why open baffle speakers tend to sound best with orchestral (or any classical music).  When you listen live, a lot of sound you hear at your seat is reflected sound, but the way the music is recorded does not capture this reverberant field.  OB speakers bring back the direct/reflected ration in better balance. 

[jimdgoulding]

Just to probe your comment a little, Ty, are you saying that the microphone(s) doesn't capture the actual reflections of the actual site where the recording was made?  Of course, I'm not talking about studio recordings.

[BPoletti]

I think it's also why open baffle speakers tend to sound best with orchestral (or any classical music).  When you listen live, a lot of sound you hear at your seat is reflected sound, but the way the music is recorded does not capture this reverberant field.  OB speakers bring back the direct/reflected ration in better balance.

But all that is already in the recording.  So any additional sound (reflected, reverberant, etc.) would be a distortion, wouldn't it? 

[Tyson]

If you sit on stage with the musicians, you get all direct sound and very little reverb sound.  If you sit in the audience, further away from the musicians, you get a mix of direct and reverb sound.

It's the same with recordings - if they place the mics onstage with the musicians, you get a lot of direct sound and not a lot of reverb sound.  If they place the mics in the audience seating area, there's a mix of direct and reverb. 

The VAST majority of recordings place the mics onstage with the musicians, so what is recorded is not what you would hear in the audience.  There's too much direct sound and not enough reverb due to the mics being onstage.

Using an OB speaker allows you to approximate the direct-to-reverb ratio of sound that you'd get listening from the audience.  It's not perfect, but it is an improvement over speakers that don't have a bipole (or dipole) radiation pattern like OB speakers.

BUT!, and this is a big but, you have to be able to pull OB speakers about 4 feet into the room away from any walls.  Less than 4 feet and the reverb is too close to the original front-firing signal, and it gets smeared and washy, and tonal balance gets screwed up.  At 4 feet (or more), the delay is long enough that the reverb adds richness and depth.

[BPoletti]

If you sit on stage with the musicians, you get all direct sound and very little reverb sound.  If you sit in the audience, further away from the musicians, you get a mix of direct and reverb sound.

It's the same with recordings - if they place the mics onstage with the musicians, you get a lot of direct sound and not a lot of reverb sound.  If they place the mics in the audience seating area, there's a mix of direct and reverb. 

The VAST majority of recordings place the mics onstage with the musicians, so what is recorded is not what you would hear in the audience.  There's too much direct sound and not enough reverb due to the mics being onstage.

Using an OB speaker allows you to approximate the direct-to-reverb ratio of sound that you'd get listening from the audience.  It's not perfect, but it is an improvement over speakers that don't have a bipole (or dipole) radiation pattern like OB speakers.

BUT!, and this is a big but, you have to be able to pull OB speakers about 4 feet into the room away from any walls.  Less than 4 feet and the reverb is too close to the original front-firing signal, and it gets smeared and washy, and tonal balance gets screwed up.  At 4 feet (or more), the delay is long enough that the reverb adds richness and depth.

Your room will NEVER sound like a concert hall.  What you're describing is just a distortion of the recording.

I'll keep my "conventional" speakers rather than introduce a distortion.  A good RCA, London, Decca or Mercury recording straight from the groove is just fine for me. 

[Tyson]

It sounds more like a concert hall now than it did previously with direct radiators (of which I have had many).  All acoustics in all rooms are distortions.  An OB speaker is just one way of working "with" the room and how our hearing works, rather than against it.  Duke over at AudioKinesis actually had some very lucid posts on why it works as well as it does.  Personally I don't care "how" it works, as long as it does. 

[JohnR]

Article by Duke on bipoles / room interactions:

http://www.hifizine.com/2010/06/the-controlled-pattern-offset-bipole-loudspeaker/

[jimdgoulding]

Your point is well taken about the placement of dipoles or OB's, Ty.  Of course, the same or similar is common practice for forward firing speakers, too.  I personally use as little room damping as my room permits (at the first reflection point on my sidewalls) with my forward firing speaks for the reason you describe- I don't have overly abundant bass- as it pleases me.

Good reference, JohnR. 

[Pez]

Very fun topic, I'd weigh in, but I think the info here is sufficient. I reread that article every once in a while and it always interests me.

[Quiet Earth]

Have you ever made a recording of some music being played on your stereo where the mics were far enough away from the speakers to capture the sound of the room? And then played that recording back on a different stereo system in a different room? It's kind of weird. You can hear the sound of the first system plus the sound of the original room, but mostly you just hear a mess because now it's on a second system playing into another room.

Now, what if you had to make a similar recording on a larger scale to distribute to many different people with different sounding systems and different sounding rooms? I'll bet you would try to minimize the original room characteristics and lose some of the live music perspective so you could get a better translation of the musical content to the next listener. I think it's a fair trade off.

Recorded music. It is what it is.

[S Clark]

Many years back when I bought a pair of omnidirectional Design Acoustics D-12 speakers,

 it was the way that they reproduced the sound of the auditorium as well as the instruments that sold me.  Some 35 year later, they still do orchestral music better than many modern designs that focus on a girl and a guitar.  For large scale, they were only recently replaced with LS9s.

[JohnR]

Cool. If I could figure out how to make a dodecahedron I'd love to make a pair of omni speakers with the 3" Aurasound drivers on sale at Madisound.

[JohnR]

Recorded music. It is what it is.

A point often forgotten. I wish Russell would weigh in here... but to the earlier comments about "distortion" I'd beg to differ. The ear-brain needs to hear sounds in the environment around you - the reverberent field referred to in Duke's article. While I've never been able to try it, all reports are that listening in an anechoic chamber sounds weird and unnatural. Playback of recorded material in our room is thus inescapably a combination of what's on the recording and the behaviour of the loudspeaker-room system. A "conventional" speaker exhibits some very odd behavior in that regard, which is why dipoles, bipoles, and omnipoles are of interest - to at least some of us - as they all attempt to provide a more uniform acoustic behavior over the frequency range.

[canzld]

It sounds more like a concert hall now than it did previously with direct radiators (of which I have had many).

+1 -this has been my experience too. Open baffle gets much closer to concert hall ambiance than any boxes I've had (admittedly a limited number). In my case, I don't know if its the reflected/direct ratio that is critical as I prefer sitting quite close to the orchestra, for a more direct sound experience and this is the acoustic I aim for in reproduction - perhaps it's more the uniformity of sound field mentioned by JohnR.
Agreed with the at least 4 feet off the back(front?) wall - I use a minimum of five for serious listening.
On the comment by Quiet Earth regarding recording of a room and play back - non-studio classical recordings are typically made in large spaces where reflections are well down in dB on the direct sound, which is unlikely the case in a typical room and probably causes the issues described.
After having used OB for a while, I feel the format does tend to minimize the recording venue acoustic a little and that my room reflections dominate, but this is more than compensated by their advantages .
As to the necessity of reflections mentioned by JohnR, the book I linked to above by Toole on speaker design goes into considerable detail on the preference of most people for a highly reflective environment in home stereo reproduction - although interestingly, musicians and people professionally involved in audio preferring a higher direct to reflected ratio than average.