So you can't just tell us, but you need to send spam mail too?

Wow, that's some spin!

I'm not buying into this. 99% of a great recording is the space, the artist, the instrument, and LASTLY the gear and the engineering. (If you can't get a great recording with the gear available these days, with the kinds of geat halls and great talent out there, I don't know what to tell you....)

If people are neurotic enough to think changing the sample rate (again!) to a ridiculously higher number is going to get them somewhere, then go ahead, spend your $ on this and let me know how your investment holds up in five years. The first thing I'll want to know how many folks are going to jump on this and beat a path to your door over it.

There's nothing provable with a statement like this: In an international blind-test 34 out of 50 listeners chose Marianne Thorsen and TrondheimSolistene as their favourite, over established references in Mozart's violin concertos: Uh, perhaps they liked Marianne's PLAYING over the other recordings as well? Maybe the hall itself? Maybe the mic placement and pre amp choices? How on EARTH could one compare use these three recordings against each other, and then claim it's the sample rate making one better than the other???

Making a comparison like this with three different violinists, in three different halls, done by three different engineers/producers is comparing apples, oranges and pears. And then claiming one is better over the other just because of the SAMPLE rate/bit depth used is utter nonsense.

What's not being tested in that "blind-test" would be a true, toggled A/B comparison of a good 24/96k recording vs. stuff like this, done where the only difference is right after the preamps to the converters - one going to the DXD and one going to a PCM system (24/96, etc.). Chances are, at that high end of quality, there's not much left to hear in terms of difference. I doubt I could hear it myself. And even so, the difference becomes so negligable, it's not worth the hassle.

Who in the real world has got the ears or the playback system to even hear a difference at this point?

Last night, (Saturday) I recorded Jennifer Koh in a state of the art, 650 seat recital hall (http://www.kimmelcenter.org) with DPA 4006 TLs and KMi84's running through Grace preamps to Sequoia V8 24/96. She played a 1727 Ex Grumiaux Ex General Dupont Stradivai, and the concert grand played by her accompanist was a 9' Steinway. Their sound was gorgeous, with simply stunning musicianship. At this level of concert hall elegance, great acoustics, A-level world class talent and instruments, I don't for one second think my gear is adding or changing much of anything. My gear is simply keeping up with the standards I'm capturing. The magic is out there on the stage, not in my gear's sampling rate.

Sunday afternoon (today) I recorded a B-level local chamber orchestra in a local church roughly 1 block away from the Kimmel Center, with traffic noise leaking in, wheezing air handlers, coughing patrons, and considerably less than ideal acoustics. I used the same gear as Saturday night, but it really doesn't matter; the gear could have been half the quality, so much else was a compromise on this, unlike Saturday's recital.

Put the two up next to each other, and it's night and day. Same gear, entirely different music, hall, performers and instruments. Do I think for one second a higher sampling rate would make today's performance any better? Please....

The folks making the REALLY great recordings around the world understand this equation: Good musicians, good instruments, good space, good mic choice, placement and LASTLY - pre's and converters.

I'm sick to death of people spouting old misconceptions and 80's-era, no-longer valid complaints that digital is cold, sterile or hard and blaming it on the process itself. Baloney. If you can't get a great recording with 24/96 and today's gear, IMHO you really should consider another career, not a higher sample rate.

Seriously.

On the other hand, go blow your cash and enjoy yourself. :roll:

You are still talking about PCM encoding at higher rates. Screw that! Then you have to down convert to Direct Stream Digital. What's the point? That's like a 24 cylinder car engine is three times better than an eight cylinder engine. Who cares? Is it going to change the performance? No. Willie enhance the performance? No. Is your stereo bigger than my stereo? Probably.

Size and speed doesn't matter
Ms. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD wrote: You are still talking about PCM encoding at higher rates. Screw that! Then you have to down convert to Direct Stream Digital. What's the point? That's like a 24 cylinder car engine is three times better than an eight cylinder engine. Who cares? Is it going to change the performance? No. Willie enhance the performance? No. Is your stereo bigger than my stereo? Probably.

Size and speed doesn't matter
Ms. Remy Ann David

:lol: Willie. That damn speech recognition is acting up again!

Nirvalica wrote: So you can't just tell us, but you need to send spam mail too?

how about laying off the guy. His intentions are not bad..so let him be. I welcome the news.

God forbid someone should get excited about a new technique and want to share it with the community at large.

I hate spin and gimmicks as much as the next guy(and find the survey quotes silly), but shouldnt we, as engineers, reserve any sort of judgement for such time when we have heard the recording?? I mean..theoretically it may look horrible, an absolute waste of time..but scientists havent quite nailed down the ear-brain connection well enough to be able to explain why things sound good when they shouldnt...

I hate to see anyone get hammered without due cause, for the mere mention of a concept that obviously is exciting to him.

I dont really see it as spam. I am a skeptic, but spam..no. I wish hed just posted the recording info, how to buy it or listen, etc..

Even though it uses all millennia preamps(can you say exciting as watching paint dry :o ) which I dont care for at all, it may be a good piece of work!

:P

I think the issue here is the tone of the original post. Obviously Lindberg is excited about his technology and he may have done a great sounding recording (not that I can tell here on my laptop).

Lindberg- the forum is not for spamming and the tone of your post comes off that way. Why don't you try editing your post and rephrasing so that it doesn't come off as a blatant ad. At that point one of the moderators can help clean up the thread.

Thanks!

--Ben

It's not this post that bugs me.... that's the telling us part of my statement. He sent an emailto me with this same stuff on it. That is what I didn't like...

I apologize if I have offended members of the forum with this posting and e-mail. In my naiveté I believed this to be exciting news based on the general intentions of this group. To show good will I would like to offer a set of promotional copies of the MOZART to members of recording.org. Send us an e-mail with your postal address to music@2L.no and the five first replies will be honored with a SACD by air-mail.

Good stuff, Lindberg! I look forward to hearing it.

Lindberg wrote: I apologize if I have offended members of the forum with this posting and e-mail. In my naiveté I believed this to be exciting news based on the general intentions of this group. To show good will I would like to offer a set of promotional copies of the MOZART to members of recording.org. Send us an e-mail with your postal address to music@2L.no and the five first replies will be honored with a SACD by air-mail.

MOZART has now been sent to Karl (LOS ANGELES, USA), Jeff (NEW YORK, USA), Patrick (SPARTA, NJ, USA), Teddy (GERMANY) and Benjamin (LOS ANGELES, USA).

Lindberg wrote: I apologize if I have offended members of the forum with this posting and e-mail.

No worries here, it has been an interesting thread to read, with some very valid points being raised. I just wish I got here before the five copies went out. Doh!

Can you tell us which makes and models of microphones were being used for this recording, and what stereo and/or surround techniques (if any) were employed? I find this kind of information very interesting, especially when hearing about recordings such as this one - with surround and stereo recording at the same time, along with high resolution. There are usually some interesting decisions made for these kinds of jobs...

For this project we wanted to optimize the multi-channel layer for the SACD-format. The stereo became second priority. Previously we have tried putting up individual microphones for the 5.1 and the stereo, but we find it practically very hard to monitor both on an equal priority. As you might see from the pictures in this article (http://www.lindberg.no/english/collection/007.htm) the orchestra makes a circle around the microphone setup very similar to the loudspeakers in a Dolby 5.1 rated for music only, scaled down to something of a quarter in distances. Left and Right are DPA 4003 (omnis) with the large acoustic balls bringing a slight focus and direction. Center is the DPA 4041 (makes a nice presence on the soloist) and Ls and Rs are DPA 4016 (wide cardioids).

The biggest surprise when we started the transition from stereo to multi-channel two years ago, was to find that the traditional ambience microphones did not do us much good as back-channels; all five channels are to us now equally important and need to relate to each other rather tight in time and colour.

As for the Lfe-channel we’re more on the conservative side; a cardioide spot (DPA 4012) on the double bass is delayed to fit in with the main set-up.

Lindberg wrote: Previously we have tried putting up individual microphones for the 5.1 and the stereo, but we find it practically very hard to monitor both on an equal priority.

I could imagine this being difficult. You'd really need two engineers, each using their own set of microphones, with one focusing on the stereo recording, and one on the surround, yes? They'd probably need to be in different monitoring rooms, too, because I would imagine you need a speaker system to properly monitor a 5.1 recording.

I have tried making 5.1 recordings with a Holophone and an HHB Portadrive, on location, and found it very difficult to judge the surround effectiveness of what I'd captured while monitoring on headphones. Mostly because (with the Holophone's approach to 5.1, at least) it is not easy to make a reliable stereo mix from the 5.1 signal. You can't just take, say, the Left Front and Right Front microphones and call them stereo, because they don't work that way - they're not a very good stereo technique at all (of course, they're not meant to be). So, I sometimes found it better to mix Left Front and Left Rear together and pan them to the left, Right Front and Right Rear together and pan them right, and pan the Centre into the centre. At least then I could hear everything I had captured, but sometimes there were mono compatibility issues between, say, the Left Front and Left Rear microphones.

Difficult to do with headphones!

So... how did you monitor the recording?

Lindberg wrote: As you might see from the pictures in this article (http://www.lindberg.no/english/collection/007.htm) the orchestra makes a circle around the microphone setup very similar to the loudspeakers in a Dolby 5.1 rated for music only, scaled down to something of a quarter in distances.

Very interesting pictures, thanks!

Were you trying to locate the listener *in* the orchestra? With direct sound coming from all around??

Lindberg wrote: Left and Right are DPA 4003 (omnis) with the large acoustic balls bringing a slight focus and direction. Center is the DPA 4041 (makes a nice presence on the soloist) and Ls and Rs are DPA 4016 (wide cardioids).

Nice... my recording partner has just bought a matched pair of DPA's new 4006TLs, with the monkey nuts... Er, sorry, I meant the APE (Acoustic Pressure Equaliser) balls. Extraordinary microphones, the removal of the transformer is a major thing, in my opinion, the LF extension is truly remarkable. And those APE balls are great, too.

Also very fond of the 4041, a wonderful microphone. Were you using the tube or solid state body?

Lindberg wrote: The biggest surprise when we started the transition from stereo to multi-channel two years ago, was to find that the traditional ambience microphones did not do us much good as back-channels; all five channels are to us now equally important and need to relate to each other rather tight in time and colour.

This is not surprising, come to think of it...

Lindberg wrote: As for the Lfe-channel we’re more on the conservative side; a cardioide spot (DPA 4012) on the double bass is delayed to fit in with the main set-up.

I wonder if you even really need the LFE channel for acoustic music? It seems unnecessary, and just adds more sonic clutter for the Bass Management to sort out! (I'm referring here to play back on the silly little 5.1 systems most people have in their lounge rooms, where there are five tiny little satellite speakers and a single subwoofer that does double-duty as an LFE channel AND a subwoofer to extend the LF response of the satellite speakers. But I guess this recording isn't aimed at that market...)