They played this week and I admit that I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye at the conclusion of every one of the 6 compositions, and that doesn't happen very often.
I'm sure that it is just a freak of human design that this particular church sounds so good, but such good sound and performance certainly grips the ears and emotions better than any of our precious stereo systems can, at this point in time.
At the end of the night I bought a CD and was quite keen to hear how my various stereo systems compared to the real thing.
On the drive home from the performance I was thinking about the sound at the concert and how it related to the type of speakers and systems we use to attempt to replicate such a performance. Next day I ripped the CD to flac and proceeded to play it on my various systems.
I think the defining difference between a live concert and a recording is the dynamics, so I wanted to first hear the recording on a reasonably high efficiency system, my Tannoy Gold Monitors.
They have almost enough dynamics to recreate the live performance, but as good as they are they still sound like two speakers and even with some digital EQ are not accurate enough to recreate an exact tonal representation.
My Lipinski studio monitors with subs with Acoustic Elegance TD15S drivers under them have the power and accuracy to come pretty close but again, they sound like speakers not musicians.
The other high dynamic system is of course the horn, and to this day I've never heard violins reproduced better than on Martin Seddons Azurra horns, but the overall frequency response is just too ragged and almost impossible to integrate good bass into a horn system. They always sound like "horns" unfortunately even if they do have almost lifelike dynamics.
IMO there is only one type of speaker that can really disappear and present a true recreation of a soundstage and that is the planar speaker, either electrostatic or ribbon or hybrids of these types of transducers. Unfortunately it is contradictory to talk of speakers disappearing when these types of speakers are of necessity physically big and dominating. And the typical planar has problems with dynamics that reduces a sense of "liveness" . I've overcome this to a certain extent by using fully active , crossover-less electrostatics (if going active and removing passive crossovers increases dynamics by a factor of 2 in a moving coil speaker ,it increase dynamics by a factor of at least 4-6 in an electrostatic system)
(Digital EQ and crossovers could be the answer to the horns dilemna , but at this stage the much better accuracy of stats is more appealing to me.)
Please realize that I am being super-critical in comparing these types of speakers to the real thing. All these types of speakers can sound exceptional, but what can really sound like the actual performance?
My bet is on this type of speaker to takes us as close as possible to real music reproduction-the planar speaker, either stat or ribbon ( or hybrid of both) with digital crossover, digital EQ , digital room EQ, and high power tube amplification- there is something about the harmonics of tube amplification that is "real" BUT only if the amps are capable of driving low resistive and capacitive loads. No romantic or warm sounding tube amps, they have to be modern designs that are accurate, powerful and capable of driving the most difficult loads-it can be done! Not many tube amps will drive stats though and the more difficult stats and ribbons will never work with conventional tube amps.
This type of system can convey the tone, which is really accuracy over the whole frequency response , invariant of the differing load at different frequencies. It can convey the expansiveness of the soundstage, although sometimes at the expense of beaming and being centre seated listening position. It can also convey the dynamics of a real performance.
Unfortunately no one has put all these parameters together to provide this package, but with the advent of digital prowess and past experience I wouldn't be surprised if it is not too far away.
For the time being my Martin Logan Requests, with lower midrange ribbons, DEQX crossover, and lots of power gets me as close to the sound of a chamber group better than anything else I have.
However, with good engineering and proper implementation many types of speaker have the potential to deliver very high class sound, getting them to sound like real music rather than a very good stereo system is still some time away .This is in regard to speakers with a maximum price of around $20k. Prices beyond this are just not realistic for the vast majority of us, there are lots of speakers beyond $100K but i've never read a review that claimed any of them could replace the real thing.
The other important factor to achieving realism, is the recording process. We all have recordings that sound great and I have plenty of music files in mp3 format that sound better than flacs simply because the original recording was so much better. A great recording in mp3 will sound much better than a poor recording in flac.
Some of the best recordings I have are 1960's recordings, full of dynamics and realism. Recording techniques seem to be not so well preserved in the digital age, there are some extraordinary examples but the vast majority of modern recordings are sub-standard. The recording industry needs to also be involved in striving for perfection if we are to really enjoy realism in the recordings we use on our systems.
My active stats/ribbons(actually planar-magnetics)/12" bass driver digital/tube system.
