Topic: Zoom F8 for Classical recording

[WiFiJeff]

Since I record acoustic classical chamber music, most of the samples posted of F8 recordings don't help me.  I finally got a chance to try out my new F8 yesterday, in what I hoped would be a gentle test - recording only two tracks stereo of piano with a Josephson C617 pair with Gefell LD omni caps (MG102.1) on a Jecklin Disc.  These are really hot mics so require not too much help from the interal pres.

First, I need some help understanding the gain of the F8.  I have been using the Josephsons on piano directly in to a Sound Devices 633, last week with a rather muscular young Russian pianist.  The stubby gain knobs on the 633 line-in run roughly from 7 o'clock to 5 o'clock and add from +22 dB to +72 dB, last week I had them set just short of 9 o'clock so I figure about 30 dB of gain.  For a loud pianist this was just about perfect, the wav kissed zero once.  So yesterday with a quieter pianist I started around 30 dB on the F8, but during rehearsal found I had to cut to +15 dB on the mic-in of the F8.  The wav took a 1.7 dB boost in post to peak at 0.  The position of the piano and the mic stand may not have been identical, but were close enough.  Any idea what is going on here?

The headphone amp was okay after I got used to it.  Most of the issues I had with setup had to do with learning the ropes of a new machine (even though I have played around with it at home).  Luckily I left myself enough time.

Okay, so how does it sound?  Given that I didn't do a direct comparison and that different pianists do record differently, and also the possibility that after 10 years I finally hit the super-sweetest spot yesterday, I can't be sure.  But it is one of the best sounding piano recordings I have made, very impressed with the F8.  Next week I will tape a string quartet using a Josephson C700S, three tracks.  Not as sensitive a mic, and strings are quieter than piano, so will use more gain from the F8 pres.

Jeff

[voltronic]

Would you please share some samples?  There is precious little Team Classical action here lately.  Not only that, you're using some great mics that don't get much discussion over here either.

[WiFiJeff]

Here's the F8 recording:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/bXBaSmI5NmNEa1hyZHNUQw

[voltronic]

Here's the F8 recording:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/bXBaSmI5NmNEa1hyZHNUQw

Wow, that is really a beautiful recording, and very sensitive interpretation by the pianist!  Well done to both of you!

What was your placement / spacing / distance?  It's clearly fairly close, but I can't tell by the imaging if you're near-spaced right in front or if it's a tail placement.

Also, what was the piano?  If it's a Steinway, it sounds like it's an old one - the treble register is really brilliant but the middle register seems somewhat softened and that says an early 1900s instrument to me.  A beautiful instrument regardless.  (Curious classical pianist here).

Thanks so much for sharing!  You should also put this up on the Gearslutz Remote board for the classical folks over there to hear how well the F8 does with this.

[WiFiJeff]

Thanks.  The stand was towards the end of the piano pointing into the strings, about 6-7 feet up and maybe 5 feet from the piano.  The C617s were spaced the canonical distance from the Jecklin Disk (mine has a little string to check the distance).  The piano is a very nice Steinway on loan from the company, not sure of the age but I'll check next week.

[404 Not Found]

Thank you for the sample!  I am looking forward to your take & results on the F8 with the String Quartet.

[Ozpeter]

So yesterday with a quieter pianist

.. which makes a handy test - allows us to hear the noise all the better!  (Not that there is any of any consequence).

I have to say I was amazed when I heard the audience applause at the end - I had thought I was listening to a studio or room recording rather than an auditorium.  Sounds like a very dry place.  But the silence before the applause was also handy to hear.

(Nicely played but he (?) doesn't quite get away with the pianissimo arpeggios - some notes not quite sounding.  The fact that this is clearly audible - or rather inaudible - on the recording speaks well of the system).

Looking at the specs and assuming they are correct, I wouldn't expect to hear anything adverse from these preamps.  The EIN is (for the purpose of music recording) more than adequate, and the frequency response is for practical purposes flat.

Equivalent input noise:    

−127 dBu or less
(A-weighted, +75 dB input gain, 150Ω input)

Frequency characteristics:    

10 Hz – 80 kHz +0.5 dB/−1 dB
(192 kHz sampling rate)

Looking forward to more samples in due course!  Thanks for taking the trouble.

[Bruce Watson]

Okay, so how does it sound?

Overall impression is just wonderful. Those Josephsons are amazing, especially the low end. And the pianist is amazing; heck of a left hand. The piano isn't bad either -- Steinway D? Finally, nice sounding hall, as in unobtrusive and nicely linear frequency response, with a sufficiently short T60 time; an excellent hall for piano work.

If I can quibble a bit, did you identify the source of the noise near the beginning of the recording? Since it's coming almost entirely from the left hand side, I'm thinking that's audience noise, and since you were in Decca Tail position, I'm doubtful that it's mechanical noise from the piano itself. But IDK, which is why I'm asking.

Also, it seems interestingly soft -- that is, the initial transients from the hammer strikes seem rounded off. C617s are exceedingly quick; transient response is what they have in spades. So I'm wondering where this softening / rounding is coming from. Mic capsules? Preamps? Piano itself? Any idea? Or is it just me?

Thank you for sharing this -- a little unexpected beauty on a Monday.

[WiFiJeff]

The piano is a NY Steinway D, about 10 years old.  The audience likes to watch the keyboard, so it is weighted to the left side of the hall (luckily the hall is not a rowboat), and the Jecklin Disk was pointed into the piano at about 45 deg., screening the right mic somewhat both from the audience noise and the HVAC (turned low but still not studio quiet).  I faded in the opening, but probably should have lifted out the brief remaining noise there.  Also used RX3 to get out some coughs.

I love the C617 on the piano.  The C700S is great for strings, if I set it up right the accuracy of the sound stage image is almost uncanny. 

Jeff

[voltronic]

Okay, so how does it sound?

Also, it seems interestingly soft -- that is, the initial transients from the hammer strikes seem rounded off. C617s are exceedingly quick; transient response is what they have in spades. So I'm wondering where this softening / rounding is coming from. Mic capsules? Preamps? Piano itself? Any idea? Or is it just me?

Thank you for sharing this -- a little unexpected beauty on a Monday.

I agree, but only for the middle register.  Now that we know this is a newer piano, what I hear is a difference in hammer felt hardness across the keyboard, with the mid-treble being by far the softest section.  The transients seem quite snappy to me in the bass and higher treble register, but the arpeggiated figure in the middle register that continues throughout the piece sounds "wooly" even in the louder sections.  The treble hammers are always going to have thinner felt on them so they have the hardness advantage, and the bass hammers are heavy and hitting heavy-gauge strings so they have the mass advantage.  But the midrange is where a technician may need to spend more time spiking or shaving the felt to get that balance consistent.  10 years is also about the time where hammers might start to get significant grooving from the strings, maybe even sooner for a heavily used concert instrument.

Combine that with the pianist's excellent balance of voices where he is purposely keeping that accompaniment figure very low in the mix, and I think that explains the soft midrange transients.  The missed notes Ozpeter correctly identified are a result of the pianist trying to keep an ultra-soft touch in that figuration, so much so that it isn't enough force to get the notes to actually speak, even though he's probably not really missing anything - the keys are indeed being pressed.  You may be hearing a keyboard that is also in need of regulation in that same register, or he was just playing a touch too light for this particular instrument.  (For non-pianists reading, "regulation" means adjusting the mechanical balance throughout the key mechanism so that they player has consistent control of the full dynamic range across the entire keyboard.  Adjusting the hammer felt is only one part of this; it gets much more complicated.)

[Ozpeter]

he's probably not really missing anything - the keys are indeed being pressed.

Indeed - and this provides an excellent example for the debate about digital recording of classical music.  The audience, at some distance from the instrument, might not be so aware of this technical problem and would be enchanted by the delicate interpretation.  Someone listening to the concert recording however, with its close focus which lets nothing go unnoticed, might be distracted by the unsounded notes.  The pianist indeed might be taken aback when listening to the recording as a performer often tends to hear what he or she intended, rather than the fine detail and hard reality of what was actually achieved. 

Sadly the highly technically correct performances emerging on CD from digitally edited sessions make this kind of essentially inconsequential imperfection much less acceptable than might have been the case 40 years ago.  In days gone by the interpretation carried much more weight than the technical realisation of the work.  Now in striving for technical correctness, the beauty of such an interpretation as we hear here is likely to be lost.

I know from experience what would be happening had this been a CD session - the producer would be red-ringing unsounded notes all over the page and drawing them to the attention of the pianist, who would then start either to get insecure and nervous and overplay the passages thus ruining the delicate interpretation, or the pianist and piano technician would start to be at loggerheads with the pianist complaining about uneven regulation of the action and the technician (in remarks probably made to the engineer out of earshot of the artistic team) would be claiming that the piano was fine but the pianist was where the problem lay.  And probably at a later stage the producer would be requiring the unlucky editor to hack together tiny bits from a number of takes so that in the finished result every note could be heard sounding evenly, but you'd actually be listening to a patchwork which didn't really represent what was actually played - end result, technical perfection but potentially a sterile interpretation.

All of which has little to do with the qualities of the F8 for classical recording, apart from it evidently having the ability to reveal very clearly every nuance of the performance - good and "bad".

[voltronic]

he's probably not really missing anything - the keys are indeed being pressed.

Indeed - and this provides an excellent example for the debate about digital recording of classical music.  The audience, at some distance from the instrument, might not be so aware of this technical problem and would be enchanted by the delicate interpretation.  Someone listening to the concert recording however, with its close focus which lets nothing go unnoticed, might be distracted by the unsounded notes.  The pianist indeed might be taken aback when listening to the recording as a performer often tends to hear what he or she intended, rather than the fine detail and hard reality of what was actually achieved. 

Sadly the highly technically correct performances emerging on CD from digitally edited sessions make this kind of essentially inconsequential imperfection much less acceptable than might have been the case 40 years ago.  In days gone by the interpretation carried much more weight than the technical realisation of the work.  Now in striving for technical correctness, the beauty of such an interpretation as we hear here is likely to be lost.

I know from experience what would be happening had this been a CD session - the producer would be red-ringing unsounded notes all over the page and drawing them to the attention of the pianist, who would then start either to get insecure and nervous and overplay the passages thus ruining the delicate interpretation, or the pianist and piano technician would start to be at loggerheads with the pianist complaining about uneven regulation of the action and the technician (in remarks probably made to the engineer out of earshot of the artistic team) would be claiming that the piano was fine but the pianist was where the problem lay.  And probably at a later stage the producer would be requiring the unlucky editor to hack together tiny bits from a number of takes so that in the finished result every note could be heard sounding evenly, but you'd actually be listening to a patchwork which didn't really represent what was actually played - end result, technical perfection but potentially a sterile interpretation.

All of which has little to do with the qualities of the F8 for classical recording, apart from it evidently having the ability to reveal very clearly every nuance of the performance - good and "bad".

All good points, and you've identified the reason why I find modern studio classical piano recordings overly sterile.  "Live" performances are almost always better, though not necessarily in sound quality.

Here's a great article from the NYT on my favorite pianist, whether or not you're talking studio or live performances: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/arts/music/sviatoslav-richter-enigmatic-pianist-playing-with-contradictions.html?_r=1

And here's a phenomenal live concert recording from the box set mentioned in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ2J1eFM-Rs

[Bruce Watson]

The missed notes Ozpeter correctly identified are a result of the pianist trying to keep an ultra-soft touch in that figuration, so much so that it isn't enough force to get the notes to actually speak, even though he's probably not really missing anything - the keys are indeed being pressed.

So that "clacking" sound I hear from the right hand [EDIT: that's the pianist's right hand, it sounds in the left channel of the recording] during the rapid pianissimo arpeggios early in the recording is caused by too light a press on the keys resulting in hammer throws with insufficient force to reach the strings? That's an interesting idea, and when I relisten I can hear the missing notes in the arpeggios. But why the clacking? If you get that kind of noise from pressing a key within insufficient force, wouldn't you also get it from pressing a key with sufficient force? I mean, the hammer gets launched from its catchment in either case, and it falls back to its catchment in either case, so I would have thought (wrongly apparently) that we'd get the same mechanical noise from either case. And yet we don't. Hmmm.... I'm just trying to understand how the playing (and, OK, the piano too) makes this particular noise.

And personally, I'll take that noise to get this performance. I would make that trade any day, absolutely. And given a choice, I'd certainly leave the noise in rather than contaminate such a nice performance (maybe attenuate it a bit if I can do it without leaving any audible artifacts). I guess this means I'll never make it as a record producer, eh? Oh darn.... 

[Gutbucket]

Thanks for the thread and the sample Jeff, looking forward to giving this a listen.

[voltronic]

The missed notes Ozpeter correctly identified are a result of the pianist trying to keep an ultra-soft touch in that figuration, so much so that it isn't enough force to get the notes to actually speak, even though he's probably not really missing anything - the keys are indeed being pressed.

So that "clacking" sound I hear from the right hand [EDIT: that's the pianist's right hand, it sounds in the left channel of the recording] during the rapid pianissimo arpeggios early in the recording is caused by too light a press on the keys resulting in hammer throws with insufficient force to reach the strings? That's an interesting idea, and when I relisten I can hear the missing notes in the arpeggios. But why the clacking? If you get that kind of noise from pressing a key within insufficient force, wouldn't you also get it from pressing a key with sufficient force? I mean, the hammer gets launched from its catchment in either case, and it falls back to its catchment in either case, so I would have thought (wrongly apparently) that we'd get the same mechanical noise from either case. And yet we don't. Hmmm.... I'm just trying to understand how the playing (and, OK, the piano too) makes this particular noise.

And personally, I'll take that noise to get this performance. I would make that trade any day, absolutely. And given a choice, I'd certainly leave the noise in rather than contaminate such a nice performance (maybe attenuate it a bit if I can do it without leaving any audible artifacts). I guess this means I'll never make it as a record producer, eh? Oh darn.... 

I'll try to clarify: I think the keys are being pressed, but the action in that register is not sufficiently "light" enough in touch to respond.  This may be a mechanical issue or just a peculiar thing about instrument - every instrument is quite different, especially Steinways which are mostly hand-built.  This pianist may be used to playing on an instrument with much lighter response. 

There is a point where the force applied to the key overcomes the mechanical inertia of the action parts enough to strike the string at an audible level.  Below that threshold, the hammer escapes the catchment but then returns without ever having struck the string.  If the string had actually been struck, the hammer would have rebounded off of the string and thus the mechanical motion of the hammer on its way back down would have had a different force entirely.  That, and the sound of the note itself mostly overpowering the action noise both could explain the difference in action noise you're hearing when the notes are not sounded.  Look closely inside a piano action while a note is being sounded versus a key pressed only lightly enough to raise the damper but not strike the string, and you'll see what I'm talking about.  On most pianos when you do this, I'd characterize the noise as more of a "thump", but then again my experience is in doing this on purpose in pieces that specifically call for it, such as Schoenberg, Ravel, etc. where they wanted specific strings undamped so that other struck notes could activate their harmonics sympathetically.

The clacking noise may not necessarily be this at all - piano actions can make all kinds of interesting(?) noises that may or may not be heard during a performance.  Worn felt bushings are a typical culprit.  The worst was when Steinway decided to change all of their felt bushings over to Teflon at some point in the 70s, since everything was Teflon so why not?  Teflon doesn't wear down easily from abrasion as felt does, which I think is what they were going for - fewer worn bushings requiring service.  Unfortunately, they didn't consider that Teflon also does not expand and contract with temperature and humidity the same way the rest of the wood action parts do, and you had loose clackety bushings all over the place depending on the environment you were in.  Needless to say, they quickly went back to using felt.  That's obviously not the case with this instrument - just an interesting example of widespread action noise due to a design decision.