I love the intensity and passion of good classical music, and, as with the best of rock, I love to crank it; I like to feel the growl of cellos in my gut and delight in the snarl of brass and the piercing zeeee of the high strings. When I really want to get blown away, I’ll put on Rimsky-Korsakov or Holst or Wagner and max out what the speakers can handle from the amp and sit in front of it (until the cops show up and force me to turn it down )
So anyway…why do so many classical recordings sound so dead? No treble response, no presence, no bass oomph, just flat and dull? Is it because the recording companies don’t put much effort into it? The volume is often less than half when the amp is put to the same settings as other music.
Recently I’ve discovered the same trend evidenced in MP3 classical files: I have to open the files in SoundEdit and emphasize and amplify and emphasize and amplify again to get any life out of them!
And another thing (to hijack my own thread): what IS with music stores and classical music anyway? If you went in to get the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers album, you would not be satisfied with an album of the same songs covered by the Bee Gees; and if you wanted Marvin Gaye singing “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”, the Creedence Clearwater Revival version would not be interchangeable with it even if you agree that it is a good recording in its own right. But I’ll go in and explain that I want the Eugene Ormandy & Philadelphia Orchestra doing Wagner on a Capitol album called “Magic Fire Music” and the schlub at the music store tries to sell me Zubin Mehta guest-conducting the St. Petersburg String Orchestra and Marching Band on an album titled “Da Phat Lady Sings: Wagnerian Oom Pah Pah for EZ Lissening” because most of the tracks overlap. No, that isn’t it…
I will no doubt be flamed again, but I will give it a try.
Although classical music is very popular, it is not that popular with the teens and young hip-hoppers who have the largest amount of disposable income. Record companies pander to the money.
But there are technical problems as well. Listening to a live performance is much different than recording one because the recording equipment, even with a mixer online, cannot record the subtle nuances of each instrument in an orchestra. An 8 piece rock band, yes. The London Philharmonic, no. The fact that the recordings are often made on only eight or 16 tracks further means that digitally remastering cannot bring out the beauty of the harmony that orchestras provide.
Even if there were a microphone for each instrument it would be almost no better, because the acoustical effect of the auditorium cannot be recorded accurately from the position of the instrument.
So, in addition to the monetary considerations, the physics of producing a quality recording is another problem entirely.
I would guess that most orchestras prefer to play truer to how the music was originally played (1812 aside, I guess it was probably not cranked). Also, I think there is more emphasis on the subtleties of technical skill. Then there’s chamber music vs. full-scale symphony. Anyway, as you noted, there is lots of classical music that is still crank-able.
Whilst some classical recordings are just poorly engineered, the answer in the main is compression.
When you are recording rock, many parts and often the entire track are fed through a compressor. This makes the soft bits louder and the loud bits softer. Think of a rock song with a quiet patch - say just a guitar and vocals for a while.
When the rest of the band comes back in, the guitar and voice diappear back into the mix - this is because the track is compressed (particularly noticable on radio - they tend to add more compression for broadcast).
Rock is done this way partly because it sounds good on radio and partly because compression happened naturally with multiple instruments on analogue tape, and we are used to hearing that way.
Classical recordings (and many accoustic jazz recordings) use much less compression. The idea I guess is that the recording replicates the concert-hall experience, where the quiet bits are just audible, and the fortissimo bits blow your head off.
Without compression, the relative volumes stay the same, so when the orchestra is playing along normally at MF, it doesn’t sound punchy in the way a rock track does.
Classical orchestra tend to play music in the current style of classical orchestras, not the way it was originally played. Beethoven, for instance, wrote for smaller orchestras than are commonly used. In addition, techniques are different. Violinists use more vibrato and get extra volume by pressing harder on the bow instead of moving the bow across the strings faster.
I once went to a concert where the orchestra was set up the same way as in Beethoven’s time and used historically accurate techniques. A much different sound than I was used to.
The problem with most record stores is that Classical doesn’t sell all that well and the clerks are rarely knowledgeable about it.
It’s possible, too, that many recording media simply can’t handle the dynamic range of good classical music. I’ve got a tape with Also Sprach Zaruthstra on it, and the timpani roll at the beginning is lost in the background hiss, while the "Dah-dum!"s are straining the tape. CDs, I imagine, could be made to handle the range, but by the time that CDs appeared on the marketplace, rock in its various forms was the clearly dominant genre, and I’ve never heard a rock song with nearly the range of the good (read: Knock you out of your seat pounding) classical works. Hence, when CDs were designed, they were designed to handle a rock range, not a classical range.
I was also wondering about the OP.
Not to hijack, but I’ve also noticed that all new cds are recorded louder than just a few years ago. I have a 5 disk changer i like to put on shuffle and the new bands are so much louder it’s ridiculous. Let alone putting mozart in the mix, you won’t even hear it unless you want to hear the latest Morphine album blow your speakers.
And even if the recording medium were capable of handling the full dynamical range, one’s audio equipment may not be. The low C on the organ at the beginning of Also Sprach, for example (the opening fanfare of you have now gotten stuck repeating endlessly in my head, Chronos), is barely within human hearing range, to say nothing of the range of the average poor college student’s equipment. Not to mention that even a good speaker setup won’t get your whole body vibrating quite the same way an organ in a cathedral or concert hall will.
As others have suggested, your taste in orchestral sound has probably been influenced by the rock music you listen to.
You mention an Ormandy recording (out of print or fictitious just for the sake of example?) in your hijack. Since Ormandy was director of the Philadelphia Orchestra until 1980 and died in 1985, it’s possible he made few or no digital recordings.
So your recoding example would probably be analog and would contain distortion and equalization not present in a digital recording. This may be what you want more of.
Also, a bit of distortion tends to make an analog recording sound “warmer.” The absence of this distortion in digital is a factor in some complaints that CDs sound “harsh.”
When I began listening to CDs the lack of distortion did take took a bit of getting used to but now I appreciate it. When I listen to 1960s recordings re-issued on CD, I can tell the difference immediately.
My brother in law has a Victrola. Now, THAT’S a warm sound. Good lord, it’s just astonishing. He’s also a world-class violinist, and is a member of the Orion String Quartet. Once, after I asked about the difference, he played a 78 of the Busch Quartet ( one I had found in a junk shop on Canal St in NYC, back when there WERE junk shops on Canal St ). I listened, then he played me another Busch Quartet recording, done in analog ( of course ) but released again as a CD. Oh my god. Truly amazing differences…