IC. That piece that I listened to is testament of the extreme dynamics and I did not sense compression as it did sound very good in the terms of instruments separation.
I am now very interested in what it would sound like on as for an example some monster vintage JBL home speakers that have vast dynamic range and efficiency as well as prodigious amounts of low end. The room filling aspect of that listening would be I suspect amazing and less stressful that Sennheiser headphones.
+1 to everything Frank said. And now I have Mahler’s 5th banging away in my head, and will until I listen to it two or three times.
I heard that work played live in Austin by the Chicago Symphony while on tour. This was back when Bud Herseth played the opening trumpet solo and Arnold Jacobs was still in the tuba chair, so we’re talking middle 80’s.
The CSO had drama that day. The truck that was carrying the larger instruments crashed and overturned on Interstate 10 in West Texas and many instruments were damaged or destroyed. The concert was delayed for two hours while they scrambled to find instruments locally they could borrow. Then, the replacement trucks arrived with the damaged instruments and they spent another hour letting the musicians look them over.
Fortunately, Mr. Jacobs’s York tuba was in a sturdy flight case and was undamaged.
The concert started well after 10 PM. But the delay meant I got to hear Jake instead of his understudy using a borrowed instrument.
The performance was in what was then known as the Performing Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Sitting in front of me in the audience was the tuba professor there who also played in the Austin Symphony, whose wife at the time was a work colleague and therefore they were close acquaintances.
I thought the 3000-seat room too big for orchestral music and a bit dead-sounding, based on the Austin Symphony performances I had heard there.
I was wrong. The CSO woke that room up! The dynamics of the music were dominating. After the concert, I resisted the temptation to announce that perhaps it wasn’t the room after all.
(Tuba players try not to be like trumpet players.)
It takes more than good recording to capture the dynamics of Mahler. It takes an orchestra with the tonal breadth. Any orchestra can play loud, and most can play soft. But playing loudly without sounding edgy and strained isn’t so common. And mastering everything in between in a smooth continuum to be summoned at will separates the great orchestras from the merely good.
But maybe the story will explain my penchant for big amps and speakers that can play loud. It’s not rock or pop driving those requirements.
Rick “now motivated to experiment again with stacked Advents and a pair of amps in the secondary listening room” Denney
