Wavac review and stereophile

Archived from groups: rec.audio.high-end (More info?)

outsor@city-net.com wrote in message news:<cd4dos01to9@news3.newsguy.com>...
> What had always been a thin and familiar-sounding, dismissible shadow
> of a disconnected flute floating just above the music bed suddenly
> became a compelling performance by an actual human being standing
> there blowing air through his lips. The SH-833s reproduced the sound
> of the flute with more of the tonal, textural, spatial, and
> presentational cues heard when you hear a flutist performing live."

Hilarious. But not altogether unexpected. I'm a flute player myself so
I know what a live flute sounds like. And I've been fooled in the past
with recordings that have a certain type of distortion (whether from
the mics, the processing or whatever) which makes them sound more like
a live flute.

Many notes on the flute are close to a pure sine wave but there are
certain notes (with which any flute player is familiar) which have a
distinctly different tone quality with audible whistling or buzzing HF
overtones. Because of this, a good flute player can identify certain
notes immediately upon hearing them without needing perfect pitch. For
whatever reason (maybe the mics are too far away), many flute
recordings don't pick these up and the notes end up sounding the same,
the tone quality lifeless and artificial. But the Wavac's clipping
distortion may add some HF ringing that restores the HF "presence"
which was lost. It could hardly be called "fidelity", but purely by a
lucky accident (or in this case intent) it restores some resemblance
of that live sound which was lost.

I would imagine the above applies to lots of other instruments too,
especially trumpets and bagpipes.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.high-end (More info?)

B&D <bromo@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On 7/15/04 7:55 PM, in article 8QEJc.82999$JR4.67297@attbi_s54,
> "mike@mclements.net" <mike@mclements.net> wrote:

>> I would imagine the above applies to lots of other instruments too,
>> especially trumpets and bagpipes.

> ARGH! I cannot believe that someone on a High End group is referring to
> BAGPIPES in the same post as hifi recording! What;s the point! :-)

Of topic somewhat...

I had bagpipes and organ when I got married. A piece on an old bagpipe and
organ LP called "Death of the Chief" was used because I liked it and an
organist friend and his wife (the piper) dictated it from the recording.
But we called it 'Salute to the Chief' so the parish officialdom wouldn't
get upset that a wedding processional was actually a death march. It was
quite a hit, actually.