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Dynamics - What have you done to approach live sound


Wrinkles

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Everybody wants dynamics and clarity in their systems. What have you done to get closer to live music?

I do not believe i can ever get to the realism of live music, only closer for sure.

While giving my daughter away in a marriage ceremony this past week in Queens, I visited a Jazz club in Manhattan. The band played Caribbean Jazz. The female singer was from Port Au Prince and unforunately, the bands name has left me for now. The band was made up of piano, keyboard, trumpet, drums, two saxiphone players and of course the female band leader. I sat about 20 feet back centered to the band. An excellant location for listening. Also, behind the band was about a 150 foot glass wall where the NYC landscape could be observed while dusk turned to night. Any poster you have seen does not do justice to this view.

The sound was real and the dynamics were amazing.

While the music ranged from interesting to pretty good to most outstanding, I realized I was getting my ears retuned to what live sound actually sounds like.

I am looking for ideas. I'm usually slow to change equipment because you do not always get the changes you expect when doing so. Plus the ole "Your Mileage May Vary" is so true. Hence my question to the listening music lovers of the Klipsch Forum.

Presently, my 2 Channel system is fundamentally outstranding (my opinion). I run a turntable (with phono preamp) or a CD player through an Intact Audio volume control transformer (passive setup) which takes care of the clarity aspect. Followed by the signal being fed to EV DX38 and on to two Crown D75A amplifers and then to my Jubilee speakers with Faital drivers in the upper horns.

Turning up the volume and removing amplifier gain limitations of the amps I believe has helped bring the realism closer, but it is not what I heard at the club.

So, what do you think?

Thanks

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I think live offers a Spatial quality that can not be matched by much other than larger format speakers.

We can get close with resolution, clarity, detail, separation etc by using all the tricks of the trade... but unless there is that special Dimension and Presence with big speaker, I think all we are doing is listening to a GREAT RECORDING.

Larger format speakers seem to have an ease to them, relaxed and not compressed.

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First, you need well recorded music that has a wide dynamic range. The database mentioned in the following thread tells you what you need to know about that:

https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/143320-loudness-war-and-the-dynamic-range-dr-database-some-observations/page-1

Next, your equipment needs to be able to reproduce that dynamic range. For that you need to have equipment that will produce a sufficient sound pressure level at low audible distortion, and a listening room that has acoustics which will allow that to happen.

The quality of the recordings is the most important factor.

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Everybody wants dynamics and clarity in their systems. What have you done to get closer to live music?

I do not believe i can ever get to the realism of live music, only closer for sure.

I don't want the realism of live music, I want my system to sound better than that. :D

Your point is well taken, and I agree, I want a piano to sound like a piano, and I want a sax to sound like a sax. But there are two points I'd like to address.

First, with rare exception (like violin quartets) you don't listen to live music in its un-plugged form, you listen to it through the sound system. Everything is mic'd these days, including drums and cymbals. I know what the attack, sustain and decay of a ride cymbal sounds like, but frankly, it is articulated better when mic'd.

Second, some listening experiences like symphony orchestras sound BETTER than live through sound systems. When sitting 100-200 feet away from an orchestra, everything blends together. You don't hear the nuances of a trumpet playing next to a flugal horn, or the real chest cavity shaking resonance that a tuba makes when you are standing in front of it. I love bringing that sound closer to the audience, and hearing it the way the conductor probably does.

You don't get those things live, but you can get them that through a good recording on good playback equipment.

It's better than live! (but not better than being ON the stage sitting with the musicians. :) )

Edited by wvu80
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If you have decent equipment, the source is very important. To get the spatial images the mains have to be spread out. I thin that is why so may people like the k-horn. I have my mains somewhere between 15-17 ft apart. The imaging is excellent. Hi-res digital sources are great sometimes depending on how well it was recorded. I can't speak about record or cd's for the most part, I am all digital at this point.

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I have Klipschorns at home that can reproduce an "almost live" sound for me, but just for fun I go listen to real live music a couple times a week. Most of these music events have large, premium sound reinforcement systems that sound extremely good, and I think the main "hard to duplicate at home" factor of that big sound is the big space. The excitement of watching and hearing a live performance makes the experience sensational, but I have also heard some of the DJ (disc jockey-no live band) events produce that big live sound in the dance clubs.

Some might sugget that you get more power, more speakers or use signal processing for ambience effects ( I use all three at home at times, depending on my music choices), but if you just want your current high quality stereo to sound more dynamic, you should study the effects of your room acoustics.

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Everybody wants dynamics and clarity in their systems. What have you done to get closer to live music?

  1. Getting Jubs in the room's corners in front of horn-loaded subs that can go sub-20 Hz helped greatly in creating a feeling of lf presence

  2. Putting better hf drivers on the K-402s by replacing the stock K-69-A compression drivers--this had a very big positive effect. I don't how Faital Pros sound, but the TADs represented a quantum leap upwards.

  3. The JFET single-stage amplifier from Nelson Pass (First Watt) on the HF drivers helped almost as much as the TADs themselves.

  4. Putting sound absorption on the front and side walls near the Jubs helped by the largest amount, by far. Now I have imaging that I didn't have before.

  5. EQing the speakers and subs flat with a house curve-rising lf response of about 3 dB/octave (since laid into the Dx38s and XTi-1000s) down to sub-20 Hz. It took about a day of fumbling around to accomplish, and helped immeasurably

  6. Getting better dynamic range recordings identified in the DR Database helped as much as any single factor - especially finding excellent high data rate/high bit depth/high dynamic range recordings. Most of these recordings were made within the last 10 years.

  7. Realizing that multi-channel sound from a "two channel" setup creates a much more involving sound field--if the recordings are done well, but good two-channel sound can come close to good multi-channel at times. This means that if there is a multi-channel version of the recording, that's the one that I try first. I don't use "synthesized listening modes" at all on my preamp - only native format to the speakers.

  8. Getting the center Belle tri-amped and time-aligned properly, and raising the speaker's tweeter/midrange height to near-level with the K-402 centers

  9. Getting the entire setup time aligned and gain-balanced per channel using Audyssey helped integrate the entire collection of equipment into an integrated system that sounds like a single sound field

There are other more controversial topics that can be thrown in, but I'll stop there for now.

The above items represent the lion's share of improvements--the ones that I wish that I knew when I started rather than learning them the hard way. :huh:

YMMV

Edited by Chris A
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The above items represent the lions share of improvements--the ones that I wish that I knew when I started rather than learning them the hard way.

But you have written many important technical articles here on the forum, and I imagine much of that knowledge was learned the hard way, so I thank you for sharing the results of your good work.

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Thanks to ALL for your input and wisdom.

Answers:

1.The group was amplified.

2.I have no CDs from this group.

3.I only had two beers.

4. Club was dark, so no idea of the equipment, but all had microphones.

5. Room was kinda like a half circle with the flat edge at the glass wall.

6. This club has regular performances of different bands and is well known in Manhattan, so the sound system system must have pretty decent.

I appreciate ya'll.

Mike

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My shop system does live better than anything else. It is big, no acoustic treatment, cement, drywall, and steel. The speakers are 25-50' apart, and the ceiling eves are 24'. When I play any live sound, this place does it very well.

I love watching live performances on the system, or listening to live recordings.

The shop has the crappiest acoustics ever on Earth. But it can do live very well.

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I don't want a live orchestra in my listening room. I can't handle that. I want good recorded music played back at a comfortable level. Trying to recreate a concert in your living room is not a good idea. YMMV.

IMO, a live orchestra does play at a comfortable level (not a rock band, though), and to make an orchestra sound "live" or to recreate the concert in my living room -- to me, a good idea -- requires approximately the same SPL at the listener's ears, with some differences due to reverberation, etc. As someone else said on another thread, if it is to be high in fidelity, the SPL needs to be similar. :)

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While giving my daughter away in a marriage ceremony this past week in Queens, I visited a Jazz club in Manhattan. The band played Caribbean Jazz.

So, what do you think?

Thanks

I think that you should have stayed for the whole wedding, at least the ceremony. Did you make it down the aisle or did you actually leave while giving her away? :o

Listening to live music for audio quality is really limited to orchastra music and accoustic performances. Otherwise, you are listening to a processed signal through speakers, and in almost every case, you have better equipment in your living room (especially with the speakers that you have).

How about this, does the hair stand up on the back of your neck when you listed to a well recorded recording? probably a better test of your enjoymnet of the system.

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After going to a local Jazz club a few weeks ago, I can attest to the PA having a small portion of the sound, but the majority was acoustic. Only one mike per musician. Drums, electric or Acoustic bass, sax, guitar, and piano. PA was not loud and only added to the acoustic sound, it didn't over power it. I was about 12-15 feet back, just like at home.

Since we are talking about different instruments with different locations and different sound dispersion patterns (drums and cymbals come to mind), I find it's almost impossible to recreate 5 discrete locations of acoustic insturment Assuming you consider a guitar with a small amp or a bass guitar with a small amp as the equivalent of an acoustic bass. Basically all levels were brought up to equal the drums and sax, which were the loudest. Since the PA was widely space speakers running mono, the piano was the only instrument that sounded super wide. Everyone else sounded like they were where they stood when I closed my eyes.

Cymbals are the hardest thing to get reproduced because of their omnidirectional soundscape in a room vs. 80 degree tweeters.

Nothing is as good a a live Jazz ensemble in a 100 people room. All we can do is attempt a better ILLUSION that it's as good as live but it's impossible to do with only 2 speakers. And Yes I own some incredible recordings.

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I use my DBX 5BX 5-Band Computer Controlled Dynamic Range Controller for this very purpose. The five independently adjustable bands of impact restoration lets me sharpen a snare drum or give more sparkle to a high hat. Klipsch speakers by themselves are inherently "live" sounding but the range controller lets me add back in what was lost during the sound engineering portion of the recording. Additionally, with modern recordings now pushed into the distortion range the compression ability lets me tame the aggression. It does make a huge difference in the right hands. I can't seem to post photos or literature but a search of the forum should turn up some of my previous postings.

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