bitflipper

CDK

bitflipper
Ever attended an actual symphony? Did they hand out spatial enhancers at the door?
 
There's the apocryphal story of the audiophile who'd never actually been to a live concert, so his friend took him to one. As they left, the friend asked "how'd you like the concert?", to which the audiophile replied "needed more treble".
 

Thanks. So what's your point?

In a perhaps overly-obtuse way, I was merely attempting to gently challenge your basic assumption, that spatial enhancement is warranted for orchestral music.
 
As jsg notes above, the concert hall experience, like any live performance, is quite different from listening to recorded music. But isn't the goal of recording to try our best to replicate that experience? Sure, not in all genres, some of which have no connection to reality at all. But acoustical music is firmly grounded in the real world. 
 
The placement of instruments and the acoustics of the hall make the classical orchestra inherently stereophonic. If you're lucky enough to be seated in the sweet spot of a concert hall, the sound will completely envelop you in a most pleasing way. Replicate this in your recordings and there's no need for electronic trickery to deceive the ear.
 
I hope my point is clearer now.
 

Sort of, but in order to replicate this in recordings,  spacial enhancement, or what you're calling "electronic trickery", is often the best way to accomplish it.  Still not sure what you're getting at....
 
Jerry
 

I have not done any chamber group pieces, let alone orchestral work, but I would imagine that coming up with a mental (or do it on paper if needed) image of the ensemble and then carefully panning all the instruments to sit in the stereo field where they would be in a real group would be the strategy I would employ. Also, sending everything to a reverb bus to give the sense they are in the same physical space I would think would add to the realism, if that is indeed what you are going for.

 

 
...in order to replicate this in recordings,  spacial enhancement, or what you're calling "electronic trickery", is often the best way to accomplish it.  Still not sure what you're getting at....
 
Jerry

 
The best orchestral recordings I've ever heard were recorded with either two microphones or a Decca tree. No post-processing, no EQ, no enhancement of any kind. Just a good, clean recording of a real event.
 
Of course, such recordings benefit greatly from a well-designed acoustical space, a luxury we don't have. Consequently, artificial reverberation is often employed to emulate the reflections within the concert hall. That's a reasonable "trick" because its goal is to make the instruments sound more like they would in a real space.


What we don't generally do is separate the mid and side components so that the L-R differences can be exaggerated. We definitely don't use Haas effect delays or complementary comb filters to create an illusion of greater width. The concert stage is 60 feet wide, after all. Are there other spatial enhancement techniques I don't know about, that might be appropriate for orchestral music?
 
 
 
 

bitflipper
 

 
...in order to replicate this in recordings,  spacial enhancement, or what you're calling "electronic trickery", is often the best way to accomplish it.  Still not sure what you're getting at....
 
Jerry

 
The best orchestral recordings I've ever heard were recorded with either two microphones or a Decca tree. No post-processing, no EQ, no enhancement of any kind. Just a good, clean recording of a real event.
 
Of course, such recordings benefit greatly from a well-designed acoustical space, a luxury we don't have. Consequently, artificial reverberation is often employed to emulate the reflections within the concert hall. That's a reasonable "trick" because its goal is to make the instruments sound more like they would in a real space.


What we don't generally do is separate the mid and side components so that the L-R differences can be exaggerated. We definitely don't use Haas effect delays or complementary comb filters to create an illusion of greater width. The concert stage is 60 feet wide, after all. Are there other spatial enhancement techniques I don't know about, that might be appropriate for orchestral music?
 
 
 
 

Yeah, good orchestration and creative panning.  Orchestration decisions can make or break a piece, a good orchestration, whether acoustic or digital, has transparency, all the parts contribute to the whole and are balanced in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  In the virtual world, starting with a skillful orchestration is bound to produce a better end-result (recording) than trying to fix stuff in mixing and mastering.  A poor orchestration lacks balance, variety, clarity, transparency and often lacks good contrapuntal voice-leading. 
I don't necessarily pan my virtual instruments the way acoustic players might sit on a concert stage, I pan them based on the musical considerations of the piece I am working on.  
 
If this part of the creative process is given sufficient attention, the decision to use or not use spatial processing, and how much or how little, becomes clearer.
 
Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com
 
 
 

bitflipper

CDK

bitflipper
Ever attended an actual symphony? Did they hand out spatial enhancers at the door?
 
There's the apocryphal story of the audiophile who'd never actually been to a live concert, so his friend took him to one. As they left, the friend asked "how'd you like the concert?", to which the audiophile replied "needed more treble".
 

Thanks. So what's your point?

In a perhaps overly-obtuse way, I was merely attempting to gently challenge your basic assumption, that spatial enhancement is warranted for orchestral music.
 
As jsg notes above, the concert hall experience, like any live performance, is quite different from listening to recorded music. But isn't the goal of recording to try our best to replicate that experience? Sure, not in all genres, some of which have no connection to reality at all. But acoustical music is firmly grounded in the real world. 
 
The placement of instruments and the acoustics of the hall make the classical orchestra inherently stereophonic. If you're lucky enough to be seated in the sweet spot of a concert hall, the sound will completely envelop you in a most pleasing way. Replicate this in your recordings and there's no need for electronic trickery to deceive the ear.
 
I hope my point is clearer now.
 

Thanks. I've been doing this for a number of years but have never used spatial imaging in any of my recordings so I wouldn't call my post a 'basic assumption' that it's required. Merely something that came to mind after recently reading some texts on MIDI orchestration.
 
Thanks for your advice.