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who are audiophile at the same time also have Grand Piano in the room, how close your audio system compare to live piano performance in the room?

Not sure if I understand your question, but how can a recording ever be anything like a live performance no matter how good the audio system is?

Unless you are using Memorex cassette tapes, of course.

Well, I'm not an audiophile, per-se, but I have recorded my piano playing and singing a good bit over the years, just for fun or making YouTube videos. The results have been mediocre to fair, and pretty good on occasion, in my opinion.

Some people really get into the recording thing and buy expensive recording equipment; of course, the better the equipment the better the recording, most likely. But I just want to have fun and entertain myself, and a few others, hopefully.

In regards to mic placement near the piano, you just have to experiment with it. Also, you just have to experiment with the recording volume/sensitivity and settings of the recording device, as well as the audio editing software.

If you are just doing instrumentals, you can use a boom type stand and place the mic(s) suspended over the strings, near the middle of the harp, about 2 feet away from the strings. Or, just to one side or the other of the piano. There are lots and lots and mic placement options, and that is why you experiment to decide on which one you like best.

Good luck!

Rick

Audiophile here! And to answer your question, piano through a high-end speaker still sounds NOTHING like being in the same room with a grand piano. I've often lamented over this fact. The piano is just too complex and dynamic of an instrument for mics and speakers I guess. It's funny because I can play an acoustic guitar through my $4,000 worth of speakers and you could swear it was there if you close your eyes. But not the piano...

But in a way this is also extremely exciting to me and i'll tell you why. If there is a particular piece of classical piano that you love, you will never hear it given justice by a speaker. Therefore your only option is to either see it live or learn to play it yourself on the piano. That's one of the great thrills of learning classical piano. To me, it's like bringing the composition to life and letting your ears truly hear and experience it for the first time. Almost as if you've only been able to hear a Beethoven sonata in 2D and black and white and now it's coming to you in full color 3 dimensions.

Awesome post and comments, dusty1920!

I would seperate Audiophiles in two groups:

1- Most audiophiles have a certain idea of sound and try to optimize their systems from the source to the speakers including cable optimisations and acoustic room treatments. The sound is usually impressive but nowhere near the original recorded sound. It is voiced to the liking of the audiophile. The costs for such equipments are at least the same as a grand would be... so depending on budget, there may be few that have both.

2- The second group tries to hear what was really recorded. The equipment is optimized towards a flat frequency response. This is isually achieved by professional equipment with active studio speakers etc. The sound is very clean and nothing is pronounced. Bad recordings produce bad sounds. This group is usually consisting of recording engineers or musicians who want to hear the real sound. Of course, closing the eyes, there is a gap between listening to a piano or a recoding, which in most parts is due to the fact that the recording room and microphone set up are not intended to be the same as to reproduce the piano in your living room.

I for long belonged to the first group and am now converting to the second. When I manage to sell my high end audio equipment, I will buy some high end studio recording and reproduction system. If I manage to realise the next dream, I will be able to play, record and reproduce the same Steingraeber grand in the same room. I am very much looking forward to answering your question then in maybe a year with practical trial and error. I am very curious already!!!

Not sure which group I belong to. Maybe a mixture between one and two. My audio equipment is surely not bad, but of course you can sped a lot more on it and then get even better quality. But as always, the hearing room limits everything. In my case my living room is my hearing room as well and it's not really big. Speakers are just about 25 cm away from the wall etc.
But still it's an experience. It depends how you set up your system. I have horn speakers, a tube amp, tube preamp for the turntable etc. So it's a special kind of sound. My speakers are basically reproducing very thoroughly what's on the the record, so as "Long Louis" sad, you will hear all the mistakes etc. as well.

I have a record that features a Bösendorfer. And it's incredible. You have the impression that it's in front of you. But does it sound like listening to a real one in front of you? Yes and no . Again, it's a record, I suppose that still a lot of realism is missing. And of course the Bösendorfer can only sound as well as the record and the room/equpiment are. I have never had an imperial Bösendorfer hier in my relatively small living room.
But still it's impressive and of course you get a lot of the characteristics a Bösendorfer has to offer.


German Perfection

Wer fühlen will, muss hören.

I have a pretty decent audio system in same room with my grand. To answer your question, you cannot compare two. With great audio system, you are basically creating acoustical space of the recording location in your room, which is of course totally different than your living room. No audio system can match the dynamics and impact of grand piano in same room, on the other hand your piano at home will not sound the same as Steinway D recorded at Concertgebouw. I think my audio system is pretty good at suggesting being at Concertgebouw. I have 5.1 multichannel system with full-range main speakers and setup is completely optimized for music (no tv at all). I play mostly multichannel SACD records (any stereo system has no chance of doing the concert hall acoustics justice).

@kre: Basically I agree. However, I think should have a two-way (2.0?) system if you want to replicate it close to the original. In other words: Keep it as simple as possible. Then it will be authentic. And horn speakers have a huge dynamic impact.

YUP.... Ditto everything above. Not even close, no matter how much money you throw at your system.

I will say that with really good loudspeakers, which are by far the weakest link in the audio chain, solo performances on smallish instruments can sound pretty convincing. But large scale orchestral stuff, that's hard to make really "real" in the average living room.

You do room treatment, spend at least 10k on speakers, etc., etc... but you'll still have to supplement that great sound (which assumes a state-of-the-art recording) with your IMAGINATION.

So what a great sound system does, I guess, is make it easier to remember or imagine the REAL thing.

I've seen similar discussions about organs (both pipe and Hammond/Leslie) and I find that much of the answer lies with how the air is made to vibrate by both an acoustic instrument and by speakers. The area of the soundboard of even a small upright is much larger than that of a speaker. Our ears detect 3 things: varying frequencies, varying loudness, and sound direction. The total area of the vibrating surface seems to also play on the sense of direction, even though it might all be concentrated from the same general direction.

If you've ever been in a church with a pipe organ being played, you'll have a sense of presence that speakers won't give you, even if it's being played softly. The sound comes from multiple directions and the quantity of air being moved by the pipe's vibrations are something that you sense.

A similar situation arises with a Hammond organ and Leslie speaker. The Leslie produces a tremolo effect using rotating horns, and this causes the sound to come (and reflect) from various directions. There are electronic devices that now imitate the tremolo effect of a recorded Leslie to quasi perfection, but your ears won't be fooled when compared to a live Leslie being played in the room.

Our ears are very sensitive to sound reflections and an acoustic piano produces a lot of that. Someone mentioned that a guitar coming through an audio system sounds like it's there. Well a guitar's soundboard is much smaller than that of a piano. Same with instruments such as a clarinet or a trumpet. These don't move as much air as a piano.

Another rarely mentioned phenomenon is how a given piano can seem to sound differently when played by yourself vs by someone else. I think that our perception changes when we play it ourself, as we're busy evaluating how we're doing, making corrections in loudness, etc as we go. When someone else is playing it, there is an element of surprise that leaves us more open to actually listening to it. Kind of similar to how we can't tickle ourselves.

I think this largely due to the fact you're sitting in a completely different location when listening to someone else play. If you have a grand with the lid open, a lot of sound reflects off the lid towards the audience, but not towards the performer. This makes a massive difference to the sound IMHO.

Paul.

@pyropaul - in general, I agree with your statement. However, one of the ways that I have learned to record piano is with two omnidirectional mics, placed at the height of my head, one at each end of the keyboard pointing at each other, yields a result where the sound is ALMOST identical to what it sounds like when I am playing. The mics I use are SDC, very linear response, very low noise. What seems to make a difference is whether I listen to them on an aged pair of Koss Pro4-AAA headphones (uncomfortable, but the SOUND exactly like the music) or through the inexpensive Alesis monitor speakers I use.

As to hearing what was actually played, the less manipulation through post-processing that is done, the more it is like listening to the actual session. At least that's been my experience going back to early recordings with some good microphones and a Revox A77 reel to reel.

Great question and wonderful responses. I am an audiophile and jazz pianists (among other styles). I have spent years putting my audio system together. Bought most everything used. The audiophile stuff can be very expensive. Does it sound like my grand. Yes and no. My speakers get the tone and detail right. Dynamics nope. Enveloping sound nope. Grand pianos can be incredibly dynamic. The piano is one of the hardest sounds to reproduce accurately. Guitars are easier to reproduce. As much as I enjoy my audiophile system, there is nothing like hearing live acoustic music. Hearing a live orchestra. No system I have heard can reproduce that. Hearing a concert grand in a hall unamplified sounds incredible. We tend to listen on audio systems too loud. My ears have to reset and relax when I hear a live concert grand. Takes me about 10 minutes into a solo piano concert to relax, but when I do relax I finally hear the nuances, details and textures that I don’t hear at home on my system. Audiophiles spend big bucks trying to reproduce a sound that is pleasing to them, that sounds (to them) real. It can be a never ending quest. It is a hobby and I get that. Many of my musician friends could care less about the audiophile stuff. When they play their instruments they know what it sounds like since they experience that real sound every time they play. They have no desire to try and reproduce that sound through a high end audio system.
I get that also!

Capturing the sound as it was or would be performed is not even a goal of the majority of recordings made in the last 20-25 years. For such recordings, the pinnacle of audiophile quality is being able to hear what the mastering engineer heard on his or her monitors.

Not really. Ideally a good mastering engineer will make allowances for the characteristics of his monitors system and then adjust the mix so that on more typical speakers, not his monitors, the sound will be as close as possible to the original music. The pinnacle of audiophile quality should still be to get as close to the original sound as possible, and we usually fall far short of that.

I have to respectfully disagree here. Following same logic you would end up with mono system consisting of one speaker.

In concert hall you are mostly hearing reverbant sound from all directions. It is simply too much to ask for two loudspeakers to do this at home. It is a complex problem and "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong".

No, this is not really following my logic. What I said is keep it as simple as possible.

I'm referring to people with decades of experience, also in constructing and setting up speaker systems. Of course, there's always an exception to the rule.
Have you ever been to the worlds biggest Audio fair in Munich, which takes place once a yea .(HighEnd)? Basically all companies who demonstrate their best equipment there (which means speakers for over 150,000 Euro) follow exactly the way I just described.

However, I'm not here to impose my view on other people. Maybe I am wrong. I'm here to learn. Can you please say specifically which speakers you use?

Believe me, I've heard high-end costing several times my house on various high-end fairs over 30 years. Traditional high-end got stuck with two speakers and really has no way to go there anymore. There has been virtually zero progress with stereo audio equipment since digital audio was invented, and if we talk about speakers, even less so. At the same time movie industry went full steam ahead without the restriction of 2 channels.

The ear-opening thing happens when you get to try out hi-res multichannel material with same quality system as your stereo setup. I know it is almost unheard of, and all die hard stereo fanatics will cry out heresy, but keep your mind open.

BTW I'm currently using Gradient Revolution Actives with 4ch Ncore amps for my main channels. Bel Canto Pre6 & various sources (mostly Arcam DV139 for SACDs and Hegel HD20 for stereo).

Thanks. I will of course keep my mind open.
However, I’m very skeptical of the claim that (all) audio companies got it wrong.
Probably we just simply talk of two different ways of hearing.