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Virtual Reality Concert Audio

Posted by Amphissa (A) on March 7, 2011 at 13:13:16

Since Chris complained about the use of electronic sound manipulation to enhance? improve? alter? the audio environment of the admittedly problematic hall in Berkeley, and Botanico mentioned the imbalances that can occur naturally in a hall, depending on one's seat, I thought it might be worth considering a bit further whether technology has a place in classical music performance.

Just for the sake of fun conjecture, consider the possibilities for the symphony hall of the future.

It's 2018

VPO come to town and brings with them a small memory stick to plug into the audio system built into the concert hall during its last acoustic upgrade of 2015.

The audio system plays a set of recordings made from the VPO in performance in their own hall, its Musikverein in Vienna, capturing data regarding the acoustics of the Berkeley hall. These data are fed into the audio system to set equalization parameters for fine adjustments and enhancements to be made by the audio system during the performance this night.

As a result, what one hears during the performance is not VPO in the Berkeley hall, but VPO in the Musikverein, exactly as it would be heard by music lovers attending the performance in Vienna.

The next week, when New York Philharmonic arrives, they don't really want their concert to sound as if you are sitting in Avery Fischer Hall, which sounds as bad now as it did before the latest multi-million dollar renovation. Instead, they tune the Berkeley hall to replicate the sound of NYPO playing in the acoustically superior, cross-town Carnegie Hall.

Of course, this is sound manipulation. But is it necessarily an evil? You get to hear VPO as that great orchestra sounds in the Musikverein and NYPO as it sounds in Carnegie Hall. For the vast majority of the audience, they will never have the opportunity to hear those orchestras in their home hall. And given the choice of hearing the orchestras in an admittedly inadequate space vs having some tech adjustments to recreate the acoustics of the home concert hall -- I think we know what most would choose.

The question is, and this derives from the experience reported by Chris, if it is done seamlessly, properly and convincingly, is there a substantive justification for NOT doing this?

We accept without question the millions and millions of dollars spect building and renovating and fine tuning architecturally. This is all aimed at shaping the sound we hear in concert. And this is, in fact, technology of construction guided by technology of electronically produced audio. And new concert halls are now often modeled after existing halls with excellent sound, trying to recreate the acoustics of the great hall architecturally. So what's the big deal about correcting the inadequacies of a hall, or even more, recreating the acoustics of another hall, electronically rather than architecturally? It would certainly be a lot cheaper, and most likely a lot more satisfying to most people in the audience.

"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)

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