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In Reply to: RE: Absolutely NO Electronic Enhancement In Chicago posted by ahendler on March 10, 2011 at 10:43:09
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.
Follow Ups:
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.
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