piano on audio...doesnt sound good

[ManBearPig]

i listen to classical music sometimes and ive noticed that generally peices in piano dont sound nearly as high quality as the peices with violin and other types of instruments. is there any reason for this, or is it just a bad sample? its at 172 and some songs are 220 kbps so it cant be that bad, i dont think.

thanks

 

[keeleysam]

A piano is a much larger instrument to pick up sound from.

 

[Viper0329]

Piano is one of the most difficult instruments to record. It's very difficult to accurately reproduce all of the tones that come into effect in reality. I've yet to hear piano recordings that knock my socks off.

 

[NanoStuff]

Do you have Klipsch speakers by any chance? The high pass filter in some is known to cause significant distortion in piano-type harmonics/timbre in certain models. Not exclusive to Klipsch speakers, a piano is just a difficult sound to reproduce correctly because of the complexity of the sound.

It may be a limitation of the recording, or it could be a limitation of your system, or both. If it's common across many piano pieces then it's probably your system. Even on midrange professional monitor speakers I've found that piano pieces leave something to the imagination; which is why the piano can sound so fantastic if you have the rarity of a sound system that can reproduce it correctly.

 

[UncleWai]

It's not the equipments; it's the recording. Piano recordings always blow, unless someone can recommend me some.

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: UncleWai
It's not the equipments; it's the recording. Piano recordings always blow, unless someone can recommend me some.

Again, from your point of view they always blow because you're listening to them on a device that makes them do so.

It's common sense really, if ALL piano pieces sound bad, does it make more sense to assume ALL piano pieces are recorded improperly or it's your one sound system that's at fault?

A piano is difficult to reproduce properly, that's the problem. There is no specific piano recordings I could recommend, there are far more good ones out there than there are bad, any solo piano album will do just fine as a demonstration.

Rather than looking around for that one great sounding piano piece you will probably never find, I'd suggest to take the recordings you already have and bring them to a quality audio store and sample a few systems, you might be surprised.

Keep in mind that yes I know exactly what you're talking about when you say they sound bad, and I know why this is. I've compared the same music on several different systems ranging from multimedia to electrostatic and I've never come upon an instrument that has a more significant change in sound from system to system. If there's one instrument you want to compare the quality of sound equipment, the piano would be it.

 

[UncleWai]

Ok, while I am not a crazy "audiophile" that spends 10k+ on speakers, but I am not also the type that use some lame-wad Creative Labs speakers.
I was using Von Schweikert VR-1 Monitors with Pioneer Elite A-35R mosfet amp with E-mu 0404 soundcard as source.
I also use Sennheiser HD650 with a Pete-Millett Tube amp for critical listening.
My father is a classical aficionado and I myself like to borrow classical CDs from library to try stuff up.
Overall, piano recordings just blow chunks. They sound very distant and doesn't have spatial volume.
I much prefer my cousin or my friend playing a real piano.
Well, or may be I should go buy some 50k system to compensate for crap recordings.

 

[yhelothar]

Yup, piano's are ridiculously hard to reproduce.
But I think it has more to do with your sound setup than the recording. It's easier to get a good recording than to get good playback.
I found many piano songs to generally sound bright and harsh on my swan speakers.
But when I got my Etymotic ER4S/little dot micro+ earphone setup, the sound was amazingly clear and natural sounding. But there were still a few piano pieces, I've noticed, where the recording was noticeably worse.
My neighbor has a $15,000 audiosetup. Piano high notes shimmers on his speakers. But that's due to his faulty tweeter. However, what's surprising is that only piano music reveals this flaw.

 

[spikespiegal]

As per above, I'm a bit of an audio buff myself and blame the problem mostly on bad recording technique. Pianos are very difficult to mic correctly, often requring multiple mics to get the full dimension of the sound.

Speakers are another problem. There has been a trend over the years for smaller and smaller speaker systems and smaller and smaller drivers. Simple law of physics is that if it requires something as large as a baby grand piano to produce that much dynamic music you need a decent driver area to reproduce it. A pair of satellite speakers and 6" woofer in a plastic box *is not* going to do justic to a piano unless you are dealing with the unique circumstances of high quality head phones.

For that matter that best orchestra and classic recordings I've heard by far have been played on planar / electrostatic / ribbon type speakers that have a massive amount of driver area to reproduce all the transients. This is one example of when a $550 pair of Magnepans beat a $10,000 pair of cone speakers.