CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Music and Recordings => Topic started by: knerian on December 27, 2014, 02:39:22 AM
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Anyone listen to this label?
I got the Mahler 5 Temirkanov and the Svetlanov piano concerto paired w/ Scriabin 3rd and the Shosty 7th. Sounds different than most recordings, they record their records in the Blumlein configuration. It's in their CD insert, in fact they list what equipment they use for monitoring, recording, even list their interconnects etc, so i assume they really put an emphasis on their attempt to capture a natural (neutral?? adherence to high fidelity) sound. They emphasize not post work is done.
Just curious if anyone was familiar with their records, they also do a lot of Indian classical.
On a side note I bought the Svetlanov (Evgeny) piano concerto from Berkshire Record outlets many many years ago for an absurdly low price, it was recorded by the composer (conductor) at piano and podium, first time I knew he composed, and I loved his music! Super cheesy, super russian, great brass, etc and I just loved it. Super strident trumpets (it was some Russian label i forget the name)! Anyone who likes late romantic, kind of cheesy, and very Russian music would like this stuff, he has another disc with some tone poems and short orchestral works as well. Good, I think, for people trying to bridge over to classical from say movie music.
It was just recently when I was searching for other recordings of this piece that i came across Water Lily. Never seen any other recording of this piece.
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Hell yes, I have a number of Water Lily Acoustics. Those are my reference recordings for testing earphones. The Indian classical recordings were done in a little church with excellent acoustic properties.
I recommend Ajmer with Ustad Imrat Khan playing surbahar and sitar with his youngest son, who is a fine tabla player, accompanying the sitar.
Tabla Rasa is one of the few world fusion albums I'd say is really done right with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Bela Fleck and a few others. Well worth checking out as the musicians really play beautifully.
So far, all the WLA albums I've gotten have been good.
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Love their recordings and use them for reference as well. Mahler 5 is one of their masterpieces. Kavi Alexander created the label and was behind most if not all of their famous recordings. He was also involved in recording some of the reference CDs for Stereophile.
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Big fan.
The big secret behind the awesome sonics....engineers who know how to mic properly with a minimalist set-up. :)p6
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It says they don't do anything, just record it? It says "no noise reduction, equalization, compression or limiting of any sort"
Im curious, how similar is the Blumlein recording configuration to binaural recording?
In a big concert hall where they are playing a symphony where would they typically place the mics for this type of recording? I see in most symphony videos that mics are right up on stage, but it doesn't sound like that from the 3 Water Lily recordings I have.
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It says they don't do anything, just record it? It says "no noise reduction, equalization, compression or limiting of any sort"
Correct.
Im curious, how similar is the Blumlein recording configuration to binaural recording?
Very different, although it can be confusing since binaural and Blumlein both meant stereo at one time.
Modern Blumlein stereo miking involves placing two figure-8 microphones at right angles to one another with the diaphragms as close together as possible. The two microphones are mounted on separate stands, one above the other. The advantage of this technique is that the figure-8 mics pick up signals from both the front and back. This produces a natural sound. You also don’t have to contend with proximity effects (enhanced bass response due to being close to the sound source) because figure-8 mics don’t produce these effects.
Binaural dummy head recording is associated with the use of a physical synthetic head with pinnae, sometimes called by the German word "Kunstkopf". By using a replica of the human head and ears, a binaural dummy head recording effectively mimics the stereophonic time delay differences we naturally hear when listening to a sound and by using pinnae, a dummy head effectively encodes directionality cues missing from holophonic microphones (like a dummy head minus pinna). The advantages are the realistic presentation of the spatial environment at the time of recording. The disadvantages are the inability to "fix it in post" and the extremely sensitivity of microphone placement and the lack of a "universal" presentation.
HERE is a dummy head recording done recently. (http://www.changstar.com/index.php/topic,2013.0.html)
In a big concert hall where they are playing a symphony where would they typically place the mics for this type of recording?
Depends on the budget and who is calling the shots. IMHO, the best way of recording in a big concert hall is with either a two or three set microphone set-up the way RCA, DECCA, or Mercury used to record in the 50's and 60's.
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I hate classical with noise reduction. That's the veil or greyness that drives me nuts on most classical recordings.
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I hate classical with noise reduction. That's the veil or greyness that drives me nuts on most classical recordings.
Yeah. I think that's the biggest problem with modern classical recordings.
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Depends on the budget and who is calling the shots. IMHO, the best way of recording in a big concert hall is with either a two or three set microphone set-up the way RCA, DECCA, or Mercury used to record in the 50's and 60's.[/font]
That reminds me that I got the RCA living stereo set that was released a little while ago. I haven't listened to it much yet but just popped an opera cd in, it's weird because one voice is only on one channel.
Then I put in the Munch/Boston recording of the Ravel Daphnis, it was recorded in 1955, sounds pretty good.
Binaural dummy head recording is associated with the use of a physical synthetic head with pinnae, sometimes called by the German word "Kunstkopf". By using a replica of the human head and ears, a binaural dummy head recording effectively mimics the stereophonic time delay differences we naturally hear when listening to a sound and by using pinnae, a dummy head effectively encodes directionality cues missing from holophonic microphones (like a dummy head minus pinna). The advantages are the realistic presentation of the spatial environment at the time of recording. The disadvantages are the inability to "fix it in post" and the extremely sensitivity of microphone placement and the lack of a "universal" presentation.
HERE is a dummy head recording done recently.
Thanks for the explanation, I recognize the opening, part from memory (from when I rode it as a kid), but much more recently i remember reading about binaural recordings a few years ago on some site and a recording of the Pirates ride was mentioned and put on the site as an example.
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I hate classical with noise reduction. That's the veil or greyness that drives me nuts on most classical recordings.
Is that where they filter out ambient noise like street noise, traffic, a/c?
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Is that where they filter out ambient noise like street noise, traffic, a/c?
Yup, and filters out the music too.
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Hell yes, I have a number of Water Lily Acoustics. Those are my reference recordings for testing earphones. The Indian classical recordings were done in a little church with excellent acoustic properties.
I recommend Ajmer with Ustad Imrat Khan playing surbahar and sitar with his youngest son, who is a fine tabla player, accompanying the sitar.
Tabla Rasa is one of the few world fusion albums I'd say is really done right with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Bela Fleck and a few others. Well worth checking out as the musicians really play beautifully.
So far, all the WLA albums I've gotten have been good.
Is this what you're talking about?
Ustad Imrat Khan — Ajmer — The foremost exponent of the surbahar plays rag Alhaiya Bilaval on surbahar and rag Imratkauns on sitar. On rag Imratkauns, Ustad Imrat Khan is accompanied on tabla by his son, Shafaatullah Khan.
(WLA-ES-17-CD)
You've piqued my interest, but it's $50 used on Amazon and only $15 new from WaterLily, but Water Lily, which is in California, can't sell to CA residents because they have given that territory to Amazon!!
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Is this what you're talking about?
Ustad Imrat Khan — Ajmer — The foremost exponent of the surbahar plays rag Alhaiya Bilaval on surbahar and rag Imratkauns on sitar. On rag Imratkauns, Ustad Imrat Khan is accompanied on tabla by his son, Shafaatullah Khan.
(WLA-ES-17-CD)
You've piqued my interest, but it's $50 used on Amazon and only $15 new from WaterLily, but Water Lily, which is in California, can't sell to CA residents because they have given that territory to Amazon!!
That's the one! Worse comes to worse, I can make a copy of mine and sent it to you or put it up on a rapidshare clone.
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That's the one! Worse comes to worse, I can make a copy of mine and sent it to you or put it up on a rapidshare clone.
Thanks, but I emailed Water Lily yesterday about the issue, hopefully they'll make an exception and just sell me directly. It's only 15 on their site, very reasonable for a CD. In the meantime I can just look on youtube, I have no familiarity with Indian classical music.
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Kavi Alexander is the man behind WLA. About once every two years or so, he gives me a call to ask about headphones. He first contacted me WAY back in the early days of HeadRoom. It's always a treat to chat with him. He gets it.
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Hmm, time to start an Indian Classical thread! In a few days I'll have something up.
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That's the one! Worse comes to worse, I can make a copy of mine and sent it to you or put it up on a rapidshare clone.
I have this one on vinyl. World class, stunning, you are there session!
Also have Indian Architexture which I have signed from Kavi Alexander himself :)