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In Reply to: RE: Update on accoustically enhanced concert halls posted by Amphissa on March 08, 2011 at 12:24:14
God is great.I know I said that I'd leave this site and never return, but the current situation compels me to respond. I have spoken to a representative of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra [CSO; some of you may've heard of it]. I have been assured that there is no electronic enhancement, manipulation, or any electronic intrusion of any kind for concerts of the orchestra. A PA system exists for other types of music concerts [the hall has jazz and some pop-type concerts], and microphones are in place for archival recording of concerts [which are also broadcast on WFMT].
This has lifted a massive, monumental weight off of my shoulders. I feel as though I've been let out of a POW camp along the lines of Hotel Hanoi. Light and hope have entered the world.
Concertgoers in Chicago, and those from around the world, may come to Orchestra Hall, Chicago, and hear the orchestra, along with any visiting orchestra, in pristine, unadulturated, uncomtaminated, tamper-free, virginal acoustical purity.
There are 3 other halls in which I attend concerts around Chicago. I've long thought about posting a concert hall acoustics and listening guide, and now I'm going to do it for sure.
Finally, I would urge everyone here to investigate the situation of concert halls in their cities. If you confirm that a hall has electronic manipulation, post it here. I've suggested before that a great holiday would be a music holiday, in which one would travel to different cities to hear their orchestras and hall acoustics. Electronic intrusions would make this silly and moot.
Edits: 03/10/11Follow Ups:
It's a wonderful looking hall and I heard that it was a great sounding hall as well. Have you heard the sound in it? The acoustics were done by Louis Sullivan's partner Dankmar Adler. Adler was also the acoustical consultant on Carnegie Hall, but I've heard rumors that the Chicago Auditorium is the better hall acoustically.
Ah, a man of architectural awareness.Also known here as The Auditorium Theater. It's a larger hall than the CSO Orchestra Hall. Regretably, it's true acoustics are unknown, at least to me, since the orchestra doesn't play there. It mostly holds pop [amplified] events. Pity. Beautiful hall.
Edits: 03/10/11
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I'm seeing Robert Plant's Band of Joy there in April. Beautiful venue. I'll post what I think about the acoustics after the show.
A truly great space. Carnegie Hall is a lovely place, but the Auditorium is magical.
I think this photo captures the atmosphere of the place better. I'm sorry, but Carnegie Hall doesn't come close to this.
GORGEOUS!
Thanks for posting, I really do love this hall - I've had many joyous experiences there.
I haven't heard any orchestras at The Auditorium recently except for ones in the pit. The sound has always been excellent and I assume it still is.The sight lines are fabulous - it's a great hall for dance.
Yes, when those twinkling little lights in the ceiling start to dim before a perfromance the hairs rise on the back of your neck - as you say, magical.
Edits: 03/10/11
Did you ever attend concerts at orchestra hall before the first remodeling?You would be shocked to hear how the hall has gone down hill since the Reiner days. It still is a good hall especially with that great orchestra but once was one of the best halls in the world
Alan
...in the early 90s at the difference in sound from when I was a subscriber in the 70s.
I was a regular at Orchestra Hall for a few years while in school, from 1972 to 1976, as well as for a fair few years after that. We would drive up from Indy regularly to attend a few concerts and recitals every year until the early 80s. A good friends brother-in-law was on the board and had great seats. After '82 I didn't go back until the 90s.
I've been in a few halls around the country and always thought Orchestra Hall was wonderful (if not perfect) - great orchestra in a great hall.
When I heard Gil Shaham play there in 1990-something I was totally shocked at how "dark" the hall sounded, and how the dynamics seemed slightly compressed. Where was the clarity I remembered? Where was all the glorious sound of a great orchestra in full cry that I remembered from my youth? Were my memories of the old CSO conducted by Solti and Guiliani that off?? Had I gone deaf? I dunno.
I am, BTW, used to listening to the electronically enhanced sound at the Circle Theater in Indy, home of the ISO, which is one of the driest sounding halls in the US - it is absolutely beautiful, a little jewel box, but a very strange sounding venue unless you're in the first or second mez.
I didn't get to attend during the hall's golden age, but I've certainly heard about it's pre-renov acoustics. An aquaintence spoke to someone who had been an usher during the Reiner era. He said that everything just gelled: great conductor, great orchestra, acoustics to die for.
I started seriously attending in the 90s, prior to the mid 90s renov, and of course since then. I can say the following:
Pre mid 90s renov sound - rather dead, occasionally boxy [depending on where you sat]. However, the hall had clarity and a dynamic range that could kill. Cresendos and triple fortes were astounding.
Mid-90s renov - the initial renov was a mixed bag. Some improvements, but not entirely. More spaciousness, but less clarity and dynamic range.
Subsequent tweaking to the present day: I think the sound is quite nice. It doesn't have voluptuous richness, or ultra dyamnic range or hyper-clarity. Instead, it has a very natural sense of clarity; you can hear everything in most spots in the hall. Bass is clear and present. The overall sound is neutral.
Getting good acoustics with physical design isn't easy. It may not be right when the hall is first commissioned, and refurbishments don't always fix things. Add to that the initial design and construction are expensive, as are subsequent refurbishments.
That's not an argument against physical acoustic treatment, and I'd definitely rather see/hear a hall with good physical acoustics. I'm just making the point that good physical acoustics aren't as easy to obtain or as common as its proponents would like to present in debates such as this.
In addition, at least here in Brisbane, Australia, where I live, it seems as if quite a few performance spaces are actually conversions of buildings intended for other uses. We have one purpose designed concert hall complex with good acoustics but the other main indoor performance spaces are conversions. One is a conversion of an old power generating station, complete with concrete floor, ceiling and walls and seating on industrial scaffolding. That gets used for some local chamber groups who can't draw the audiences and demand the ticket prices necessary to justify hiring a hall in the concert hall complex. It's a simple economic fact that it's cheaper to convert a large existing space than to design and build a new performance space. And while the acoustics you get with conversions aren't always that good, those spaces are essential for the survival of a lot of local performing artists who form an important part of the classical and other music scenes.
Further, while big cities can often afford and support at least one good, acoustically designed performance space but that certainly isn't the case with smaller centres which often make do with less than ideal spaces.
If you live in a large city with a good concert hall and you don't attend concerts in other spaces because the type of music performed there isn't to your taste, then it's really easy to say that you don't want electronic acoustic correction and hold out for a good hall—after all, you've got it. Unfortunately most of the world doesn't live in big cities with acoustically superior performance spaces and what they get is much worse than what you get in your Orchestra Hall. They also aren't in a position in their communities to design, build and support such a hall.
It's all very well for you to say "Concertgoers in Chicago, and those from around the world, may come to Orchestra Hall, Chicago, and hear the orchestra, along with any visiting orchestra, in pristine, unadulturated, uncomtaminated, tamper-free, virginal acoustical purity." but do you think a lot of people from around the world, or even from elsewhere in the US, can afford the ticket to Chicago plus accommodation on top of ticket prices to listen to a concert in "pristine, unadulturated, uncomtaminated, tamper-free, virginal acoustical purity"? A hell of a lot of them can't.
And as I pointed out elsewhere in this thread and Chris' earlier one, electronic acoustic correction doesn't necessarily involve reproducing the actual direct sound of the music through speakers—only an acoustic correction signal need be reproduced through the speakers. The level of adulteration involved can be a lot less than you think and the actual direct sound of the performers can be as "pristine, unadulturated, uncomtaminated, tamper-free, virginal acoustical pure" as the direct sound in your local hall.
You and others present the debate as an either/or debate—good if it's all acoustic, bad if there's any electronic correction. In the world outside the good acoustically designed halls, the picture is a lot different to that. It can be bad if it's all acoustic and a lot less bad with electronic correction. Do you want to suggest that electronic acoustic correction should never be used under any circumstances and that concert goers everywhere should put up with what the unvarnished physical acoustics of their hall deliver, no matter how bad that is when it's bad?
Do you want to suggest that those concert goers in locations with bad halls should boycott those halls and travel to locations with better halls in order to hear live music? If classical music is financially challenged now, that will make it even more financially challenged as live audience totals nation-wide and world-wide drop due to reductions in audience size in smaller centres. That's a great solution to the problems of classical music.
I certainly regard good physical acoustic design and construction as the ideal but it doesn't work in some cases and it's too expensive in others. Electronic acoustic correction has a place as well. Something that allows all concert goers, no matter how small their city or town is or how acoustically challenged their hall is, to hear good sound in a live performance is going to help keep them coming back for more live performances and audience size is something that classical music, and some other forms of music, need if they are going to continue to be financially viable. How much use are acoustically good halls going to be for classical music if the financial state of classical music continues to decline and live concerts become less viable as a result, and even disappear in some centres because local audiences simply cannot support them?
David Aiken
Firstly, David, let me assure you that I’m sympathetic to your plight to obtain good acoustics, and I admire your sincerity.
That said, I must disagree with your conclusions. “Getting good acoustics with physical design isn't easy”. It sure isn’t. But, with the cheap and relatively easy implementation of digital correction, hall builders won’t even try. Why spend massive sums of money on designing and then building an acoustically good sounding hall, especially when the outcome is such a gamble, when you can build a hall any way you want, and then literally generate the acoustics electronically, cheaply. This process will, no doubt, become easier, cheaper, and more powerful as technology advances.
But, how bad are the acoustics…in any performing space? Are the acoustics really unlistenable, or is it simply the case that people, or at least the people in charge, want concert halls to sound just like CDs. The digital sound. The CD sound with fake, digitally generated echo slathered in. I’ve personally met many folks who hate real sound – even in a superb hall. Having gown up on recordings, they demand the thin, digital-reverby sound they get on their home systems.
Look at Harmonia’s post. I gather from it that they thought that the hall in Indianapolis was too dead, so they pumped in some fake digital reverb [“correction”]. I suspect that the hall was actually quite good sounding, but it didn’t sound like digital recordings. So, look at what they did. Just like that, good bye real sound; hello digital.
Here’s the essential point. Unamplified music always sounds real, special, unique and uniquely real, no matter where it’s played. Of course it sounds indescribably, deliriously wonderful in excellent acoustics. But, good or bad, it’s special, endemically real qualities always exist – except when it is denatured by a contaminant. That contaminant is the electronic signal. Once it’s introduced, the richness of the purely acoustic phenomena is altered, compromised, and distorted from its original state.
But, beyond that lies an even more pernicious evil. An evil so corrupting as to beggar the imagination. It was outlined here by Amphissa: the use of digital enhancement to artificially generate the acoustics of some other hall. This goes well beyond correction. It corrupts the very purpose of live performances. It’s a symptom of the Playstation/X-box, computer games generation, and the mentality developed by a virtual, computer generated world and utterly perverted by it. As such, however, it comes entirely naturally to youth, who not only find no problem with it, but accept it and take to it as a fish to water.
So, if we simply swallow all of the arguments for allowing electronic manipulation of any kind in the concert hall, the future of live, purely acoustic music stops. It ends. The future becomes an electronic, digital one. Bad halls with no money will adopt it, and they already have. Great halls will adopt it because they think it’ll make them sound “better’, and because that’s the way the whole industry goes. Then, what happens to sound of actually acoustic instruments? What happens to the absolute sound?
A line has to be drawn somewhere. We’ve compromised on so many things in music. Not this. The sound of unamplified musical instruments is just too indescribably precious and beautiful to jettison for the sake of expedience or some corrosive, regrettable trend.
Usually when technology spawns convenience with anything in music, the convenience is always abused. Often in the form of substituting hard work for instant gratification. And an end product that can never hide the diminishment of the art.
And amen, brother.
IIRC, Artur Rodzinski left the CSO after one season because he wanted to move the orchestra from Orchestra Hall to the Medinah Temple (which now houses a Bloomingdales) for its supposedly superior acoustics and the board (understandably) wouldn't consider it. I've always liked Orchestra Hall myself. The CSO has made great recordings in both venues, but Reiner's famous audiophile favorite Also sprach Zarathustra was recorded in Orchestra Hall.
Carnegie Hall's remodeling was also controversial.
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