One of the most fascinating resources I've ever come across. Each individual instrument is recorded with a total of 22 mics in an anechoic chamber, with the musicians wearing headphones and watching a video of a conductor for proper timing.
Watching an RTA with a mic in front of a speaker is pretty revelatory for seeing fundamentals and harmonics of each instrument without the influence of a room acoustic. Make sure you put the RTA on it's quickest setting(8khz FFT)and the mic as close as possible to the speaker(Within reason🙂)
I imagine that it's been posted on this forum before, but I couldn't find it with a basic search, so..
Anechoic recordings of symphonic music - Department of Media Technology
Watching an RTA with a mic in front of a speaker is pretty revelatory for seeing fundamentals and harmonics of each instrument without the influence of a room acoustic. Make sure you put the RTA on it's quickest setting(8khz FFT)and the mic as close as possible to the speaker(Within reason🙂)
I imagine that it's been posted on this forum before, but I couldn't find it with a basic search, so..
Anechoic recordings of symphonic music - Department of Media Technology
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This is for the accompanying literature that requires a fee..
A method for recording symphonic music with acoustical instruments in an anechoic chamber is presented. Excerpts of approximately 3 minutes were recorded from orchestral works representing different musical styles. The parts were recorded separately one at a time in order to obtain perfect separation between instruments. The challenge was to synchronize different takes and parts so that they could later be combined to an ensemble. The common timing was established by using a video of a conductor conducting a pianist playing the score. The musicians then played in an anechoic chamber by following the conductor video and by listening to the piano with headphones. The recordings of each instrument were done with 22 microphones positioned evenly around the player. The recordings, which are made freely available for academic use, can be used in research on acoustical properties of instruments, and for studies on concert hall acoustics. This article covers the design, installation, and technical specifications of the recording system. In addition, the post-processing, subjective comments of musicians as well as potential applications are discussed.
A method for recording symphonic music with acoustical instruments in an anechoic chamber is presented. Excerpts of approximately 3 minutes were recorded from orchestral works representing different musical styles. The parts were recorded separately one at a time in order to obtain perfect separation between instruments. The challenge was to synchronize different takes and parts so that they could later be combined to an ensemble. The common timing was established by using a video of a conductor conducting a pianist playing the score. The musicians then played in an anechoic chamber by following the conductor video and by listening to the piano with headphones. The recordings of each instrument were done with 22 microphones positioned evenly around the player. The recordings, which are made freely available for academic use, can be used in research on acoustical properties of instruments, and for studies on concert hall acoustics. This article covers the design, installation, and technical specifications of the recording system. In addition, the post-processing, subjective comments of musicians as well as potential applications are discussed.
Wow. That is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing!
I've heard about Tapio Lokki using isolated tracks for each instrument (with separate loudspeakers to reproduce each track) for studying certain aspects of auditory perception and acoustics, but it's really cool that he's sharing those tracks. There's some interesting things that can be done with this!
I've heard about Tapio Lokki using isolated tracks for each instrument (with separate loudspeakers to reproduce each track) for studying certain aspects of auditory perception and acoustics, but it's really cool that he's sharing those tracks. There's some interesting things that can be done with this!
John Berry and Les Barcus (the geniuses behind Barcus-Berry piezo instrument pickups)
did a bunch of recordings on their Repeat Records label in the 60s. Recordings were done on a big Ampex 2 track analog tape machine. Piezos were used on each instrument, from fiddles to fifes. Their pickups had quite a high level of sonic fidelity, and being contact mics, no ambient sound whatsoever was captured. I still have one of the records somewhere around here.
I never did any spectral analysis on the tracks, but I can tell you that the recordings had a unique dead sound to them! Really horrible to listen to.
Les and John were adamant that the playback room should give the listener all of the ambient clues that he/she needed to experience a realistic performance. Sadly, it didn't work so well.
did a bunch of recordings on their Repeat Records label in the 60s. Recordings were done on a big Ampex 2 track analog tape machine. Piezos were used on each instrument, from fiddles to fifes. Their pickups had quite a high level of sonic fidelity, and being contact mics, no ambient sound whatsoever was captured. I still have one of the records somewhere around here.
I never did any spectral analysis on the tracks, but I can tell you that the recordings had a unique dead sound to them! Really horrible to listen to.
Les and John were adamant that the playback room should give the listener all of the ambient clues that he/she needed to experience a realistic performance. Sadly, it didn't work so well.
These sound terrible too, obviously, but it's interesting to note just how important an(Original) acoustic environment is to the sound of all instruments. Even a million dollar Stradivarius would sound absolutely horrid. (I'm not saying that a Strad is any better than any other great modern violin, but still..🙂)
What was the purpose? What problem they were trying to solve?
I like Mercury Living Presence orchestral mono records. They were made with a single highest quality microphone placed in the sweet spot of the concert hall. No mixing or any other sound adulteration of any kind.
I like Mercury Living Presence orchestral mono records. They were made with a single highest quality microphone placed in the sweet spot of the concert hall. No mixing or any other sound adulteration of any kind.
The purpose of anechoic recording is for research only, you can't expect to have good sound.
I have a degree in music (viola) and in my last years of music school I used to have the lessons with my professor in a room that was heavily damped with soundproofing material. It wasn't a fully anechoic room obviously but something very similar to it. It was clearly an error because subsequently other similar rooms were treated differently. Anyway playing in that room wasn't pleasing at all, the sound was extremely dry, so much different from what was the natural sound of my instrument in any room (and the concert hall). The fact that every little errors or not perfect sound was exaggerated in that room was a minus too...
Ralf
I have a degree in music (viola) and in my last years of music school I used to have the lessons with my professor in a room that was heavily damped with soundproofing material. It wasn't a fully anechoic room obviously but something very similar to it. It was clearly an error because subsequently other similar rooms were treated differently. Anyway playing in that room wasn't pleasing at all, the sound was extremely dry, so much different from what was the natural sound of my instrument in any room (and the concert hall). The fact that every little errors or not perfect sound was exaggerated in that room was a minus too...
Ralf
As giralfino said, the purpose is for research.
There's a newer concept in the field of acoustics, that a feeling of being close to to a sound source is of high importance for our preference of an acoustic space. And that can't be studied with recordings that already have a room sound embedded in them.
David Griesinger talks a lot about this. On his website, Griesinger cites a study where "seventy-five percent or more of the preference could be explained with a single perception – Proximity".
There was a Denon quasi-anechoic CD released in the 80s. Very handy test material and well documented with levels, mics and so on. I've played it a few times for people and they know something is wrong, but most can't figure out what. 🙂
Years ago, I looked into purchasing that cd, used, and they were going for more than $150 on Ebay. Um...No thanks🙂
Recording of September 1989: Denon Anechoic Orchestral Recordings | Stereophile.com
Recording of September 1989: Denon Anechoic Orchestral Recordings | Stereophile.com
Yes, out of print and not many copies makes for a high price. I haven't downloaded the new recording yet, have you?
Pano
In regards to the Finnish tracks? If so, yes. I have a purely computer based, five way stereo system that is ideal for this. I have listened to each instrument while also using a mic/rta to examine the FFT spectral components of each(One of the reasons they made these recordings is for doing just that). It was not fun, but it was very interesting and informative🙂 I'll keep them just in case I can think of another reason to use them, but for now, I'm Finnished(Yuk Yuk)
In regards to the Finnish tracks? If so, yes. I have a purely computer based, five way stereo system that is ideal for this. I have listened to each instrument while also using a mic/rta to examine the FFT spectral components of each(One of the reasons they made these recordings is for doing just that). It was not fun, but it was very interesting and informative🙂 I'll keep them just in case I can think of another reason to use them, but for now, I'm Finnished(Yuk Yuk)
What sample rate was used for the recording? I'm always curious about the spectrum bandwidth of all these instruments and the requirements placed on audio reproduction to faithfully replicate them. I can't imagine enjoying an anechoic recording of instruments like this. Even with one conductor guiding it all, you still don't have the interaction and acoustical cues of other musicians working together, listening to each other. Many expensive experiments like this are just a novelty and satisfaction of curiosity.
On a side note, has anyone ever heard a decent binaural recording of individual instruments, specifically a grand piano played by a good jazz pianist? Binaural can sound really good on speakers if done with a Jecklin disc or similar mic setup. That expensive sennheiser dummy head isn't always the best solution.
On a side note, has anyone ever heard a decent binaural recording of individual instruments, specifically a grand piano played by a good jazz pianist? Binaural can sound really good on speakers if done with a Jecklin disc or similar mic setup. That expensive sennheiser dummy head isn't always the best solution.
Yes, those recordings are quite superior even today.
But, apropos of this thread, it is important to correct something you said: "the sweet spot of the concert hall". Instruments and orchestras have their sound "geography" all around. The room has no sweet spot. The Mercury engineers identified a spot (no doubt, hanging in mid-air) that made recordings that led to people playing the recordings to say, "Great recording".
You can't take the forward mic recording in an anechoic room and play it back through an ordinary non-omni speaker and call it "the sound of the cello".... unless you are using a Karlson-15 which happens to always sound like a cello.
B.
I don't know how this was done, but on the Denon recording the orchestra members wore headphones. Anechoic would be uncomfortable to play, maybe worse than playing outside.
My mic is good to 24khz(48khz usb mic) and the RTA show a brick wall at just over 20khz, so I'm assuming a 44khz sample rate.
I downloaded some of these and was a bit surprised at the format. They are 48 Khz sample rate, and 192 kb MP3 - each track recorded about 20dB lower than it ought to be. Then I realized that you are meant to do this multitrack and mix them together. Strange, but useful perhaps.
The Denon anechoic CD is 44.1/16 of course, and already mixed into stereo.
The Denon anechoic CD is 44.1/16 of course, and already mixed into stereo.
Angelo Farina, a spatial sound researcher at the University of Florence, has the Denon CD on his server. I am unsure about the legal status of that, so I won't paste the link here, but some googling gets you there.
Some parts of it are actually quite unsettling, like Bruckner fanfares that stop cold. It does make you think about the space as an instrument. Thanks Remlab for pointing to the Finnish tracks!
Some parts of it are actually quite unsettling, like Bruckner fanfares that stop cold. It does make you think about the space as an instrument. Thanks Remlab for pointing to the Finnish tracks!