Anybody know concert halls?
Robert Morein
My limited experience comprises Verizon Hall in Philadelphia's Kimmel
Center, and a small hall, seating about a thousand, formerly used by the
Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, located in the Philadelphia Convention
Center. I'm not sure it's still in use.
I was privileged to hear the Skampa String Quartet in the small hall. To the
rear of the quartet, there was a curved baffle, possibly made of mahogany.
The sound was warm, vibrant, expansive, magical. Every positive subjective
term ever conceived by an audio writer would apply to the sound. The
scraping of the bows was ever present, but not with the crudity of a Red
Book recording. The actual angle subtended by the performers was no more
than 30 degrees, yet an ineffable ambience made it touchable, palpable, as
if accompanied by a ghostly, holographic projection. In this hall, a
volumetrically small event is transfigured into a large one.
Verizon Hall is quite different. Perhaps the newest major concert hall in
America, the design benefits from state of the art acoustic design. It has
been boasted that everyone in the hall hears the same rendition. This I know
to be an exaggeration, since I have had a variety of seats. For the past few
years, I have sat in the orchestra, at about the 14th row. I have never
heard a complaint about sound in this hall, but it might be a
disappoointment to those accustomed to the presentation of their home audio
systems. At the 14th row, the sound is neatly contained within a thirty
degree angle of arc. Ambience is detectable, but as a vague fog, rather than
hard reflections. A reproduction system with these characteristics would be
admired by only a small coterie of concert goers and musicians, perhaps
those accustomed to a similar hall. It also brings to the fore something
that I know too well: precise reproduction of a modern orchestra CD does not
result in fidelity to what those in the concert hall hear. One has only to
note the positions of the microphones used by the Orchestra for their new
series of recordings: a multi-mic array, suspended from fine wires, with
only one one pair of close-spaced mics, suspended directly above the
conductor.
This divergence of recording technique and sound reproduction is the
classical music lover's analog to compression and other techniques used on
popular CDs. It is no less a concession to the taste of the customer, and no
less dishonest, unless compensated for in some way by the playback chain.
Perhaps it is also one of the motivations of a High End phenomena;
reproduction systems that are not technically accurate, but conveniently put
some of the feel of the venue back into the listening experience.
Is anyone familiar with the sound in Boston Symphony Hall, once reputed to
be the best in America, or of the several major venues in London?