Sounstage-----What is it??-----What affects it??

[stuwee]

That is flat out wrong! Wnen I see those bugles it reminds me of... let me see; alpine meadows, edelweiss, and short blonde-haired sheep herders. Or something from a Dr. Seuss storybook.

Nando.

 

[speakerman1]

LMAO

Larry

 

[jbeckva]

Or something from a Dr. Seuss storybook.

Nando.

I will NOT have green eggs and ham, Sam

I will not have them! LOL

Yeah, same here Nando... hehehe

 

[orange]

http://www.pbs.org/wttw/soundstage/about.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Long before music television filled the airwaves, the WTTW series Soundstage sparked the nation. In an impressive run from 1974-1985, this innovative and prestigious program achieved widespread critical acclaim and featured the artists that defined the era, including such luminaries as Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bonnie Raitt, Al Green, the Doobie Brothers, Harry Chapin, Dionne Warwick, the Temptations and Kenny Loggins.

This was a really good one from the original show.

For all those who loved the original series, Soundstage was reborn in 2001 thanks to a new partnership between WTTW National Productions and HD Ready, LLC. Director (and founder of HD Ready) Joe Thomas’ vision was to combine the one-hour musical performances of the original show with state-of-the-art high definition video equipment and innovative Dolby 5.1 audio.

The majority of the concerts are filmed before intimate studio audiences at WTTW’s Grainger Studio in Chicago, but Soundstage occasionally hits the road. In previous seasons we’ve taped at Red Rocks in Colorado; the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas; the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet, Illinois; the Genesee Theater in Waukegan, Illinois; the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City; the Rosemont Theatre in Rosemont, IL; Tsongas Arena in Lowell, Massachusetts; the Fleet Center in Boston; the Germain Amphitheater in Columbus, Ohio and Madison Square Garden in New York City among others.

Since Soundstage has been reintroduced, performers have included the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Joss Stone, Robert Plant, Wilco, Sonic Youth, the All American Rejects, KT Tunstall, Train, Alison Krauss, Alanis Morissette, Daughtry, John Fogerty and countless more of today’s premiere artists.

Apparently PBS viewers affect Soundstage

 

[laatsch55]

Seriously affects it!!!!!!!!!

 

[stuwee]

I adore the Bee Gees !!!!

 

[laatsch55]

GEEK!!!!!!!!!

 

[stuwee]

GEEK!!!!!!!!!

Closet Case!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[orange]

I still miss Capt. Lou.

 

[jbeckva]

BG's were cool with some of their oldies... pre "Saturday Night", of course. IMHO

 

[laatsch55]

i'D LOVE TO SPEND SOME TIME IN ONE.

 

[orange]

And the monitors were?

 

[stuwee]

And the monitors were?

They sure look like Yammie's ta me

 

[speakerman1]

Sound stage? Do you mean externally? Or what? Your equipment? A lot of things can effect. The position of your speakers. Getting the tweeters and woofers in phase with each other. Some speakers you tilt back so many degrees. Others you don't. What is on your wall, carpet or not on the floors. There are so many things that can affect it. Like Rex said the recording also.

Larry

 

[stuwee]

And the monitors were?

The near fields are those crappy Yamaha NS-10's. SOme of the worst speakers ever but someone at Yammy was a genious in the way they got them such a following. A neat marketing story actually. The others are powered Genelex. Those big dudes built into the wall are custom made monitors by Sony for Michael Jackson when he was tracking. That board was actually Metallica's 4056G+ out of the Record Plant. I know they used it for the Black Album and maybe a few more. The poor plastic monitor screen built into the desk was so scarred from lines of coke that you could hardly read the screen. 56 channels with compression and gates built into all. A very cool desk.

The relly cool stuff was behind me. That is where all the cool gear was housed and the 2", 24 track, Studer A827.

What a cool story!! Real studio engineers used mirrors on stands for the blow

 

[mlucitt]

I spent a little time in a recording studio in the San Fernando Valley. I remember Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" gold record was on the wall, so it must have been recorded there. All I know is there is a frequency component to the sound stage. Bass is non-directional and does not contribute to the sound stage. Mids to some degree, but mostly higher frequencies because they are more directional. When you can close your eyes and point to the crash cymbal, you have sound stage.

I can also ask my cousin's wife, she works at The Record Plant in LA and worked on at least one of Barbara Streisand's releases.

 

[orange]

Bass may be non-directional but it's energy definitely contributes to a soundstage/field. If audio were truly segmented and distinct like we wish to define it then it would just STOP at wherever we defined it to.

If there were no harmonics you would have a very flat and thin mess. Harmonics add the character, depth, color, timbre, yada yada, create the sound's qualities along with the room/area the recording is made in. The engineer then enters the situation to decide to best methods to make a useful recording and then mix it down to a form a listener will be able to use and enjoy.

To dismiss bass in the soundstage doesn't really work,

Or NIN would sound boring.

 

[mlucitt]

We can agree to disagree. I was using my definition of soundstage, that it is frequency dependent. The rest is physics - high frequencies travel faster and are absorbed into the air by friction; this is what makes them directional. The stereo mix uses left and right high frequency components in certain phases to "place" the source of the sound where it occurred in the original recording (if done correctly). Low frequencies travel slower and over longer distances but get absorbed by furniture and carpet as they spread out from the reproducing source. The bass frequencies will bend around corners because the waves are longer and it becomes harder to "place" the recorded source in the original recording.

Now when you listen to "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin, you can hear the music jump back and forth from left to right. This is not soundstage! This is just a stoned recording engineer playing with the master balance control on the mixdown to stereo tracks.

On the other hand, when you listen to "Hey Jude" on the Remastered album the piano is clearly on the left (stage right) and the tambourine comes in exactly between the piano and the drum set, which is precisely in the center. That is what soundstaging is (to me anyway). You need a system with good stereo separation and correctly placed speakers (or use headphones). When things are set up correctly you can pick out sounds beyond the speaker's boundaries because of the way the harmonics mix together over the time interval from the speaker driver to your ears. Your ears hear the delay and your mind decides that the sound came from a place that would form a triangle if you drew it from both of your ears to the direction of the sound. It's very cool.

You mentioned harmonics. These are frequencies above the fundamental base frequency that occur at a specific multiple and they do add to the overall sound but you cannot mix a harmonic into or out of the recording, you can only filter out the base frequency. Of course, you can cut the entire frequency band, but you would lose everything and not just the harmonic. For example, a piano is almost all fundamental frequency with some harmonics above 5kHz. A pipe organ is all fundamental frequencies from 30 Hz to 16 kHz, and cymbals are almost all harmonics from 900 Hz to 15kHz.

 

[laatsch55]

Then soundstage is exactly what I thought it was, what i mdidn't know was the extent it could be trifled with.

 

[orange]

Now when you listen to "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin, you can hear the music jump back and forth from left to right. This is not soundstage! This is just a stoned recording engineer playing with the master balance control on the mixdown to stereo tracks.

Wouldn't that be Jimmy Page doing whatever Peter Grant let him?