Fullscreen HTML5Med Res (??MB)HTML4

The Fox Report Barry Fox’s technology column Overamplification ruins the sound F or many years now, I have been sounding off about electronic amplification for live music; specifically, the mis-use of electronics. The generally accepted best definition of ‘hi-fi’ is the ‘closest approach to the original sound’. But how is it possible to judge electronic reproduction of musical instruments without knowing what live music sounds like? So I go to a lot of live music events. Classical music – solo piano, small group and full orchestra – remains mainly unamplified. Overloud amplification, and deliberate ‘fuzz’ distortion, has become an integral part of rock and pop. Jazz (including folk and blues) is where amplification is a choice. And all too often, live jazz is badly amplified. So the live reference point is distortion, mostly caused by system overload. The root of much amplification evil is the overlooked fact that most musical instruments, professionally played, will generate a higher sound level (100dB or more at a few metres) than a reasonably affordable stereo amplifier, unless it is turned up to a volume setting which distorts and clips the output signal. Affordable speakers will add their own distortion. Add to that the everpresent risk of feedback, with sound from a speaker getting picked up by a microphone to create howlaround. So the net result of amplification is all too often to make live music sound worse than a home hi-fi. Remember that performing musicians have no idea how the audience is hearing them; they rely on on-stage monitors or sometimes earpieces. If the speakers that fire into the audience are distorting, no-one on stage will know. Hall acoustics also play a big role in what the the audiences hears. For many years, London’s Albert Hall was infamous for the long echo caused by the high dome ceiling. Composers joked about an Albert premiere being the sure way to get a new work heard twice – once live and again a few seconds later! The Albert Hall echo was finally tamed by suspending ‘flying saucer’ Practical Electronics | December | 2024 sound absorbers high above the audience. Churches with high ceilings may be good for choirs and rolling thunder organs but they can be a bad place to hear most other music. I once heard the fine singer Willard White destroyed by the Alpine echo of a North London church. The world-famous Studio One at the Abbey Road Studios was built with seaweed sound-damping cladding on the walls, which could be removed to make the sound more live. It has long since been replaced by fire-safe foamy material, of course. The Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank was for years the opposite – ‘dry’ with inadequate echo – and relied on low level all-round electronic amplification. In the early days of jazz, in New Orleans and Chicago, there was no electronic amplification. Singers used mechanical megaphones and the bass came from wind instruments like tubas. When electronic microphones and valve amplifiers first arrived in the 1930s, they were used mainly by vocalists and for announcements. Listen to live recordings from that era and you will hear very little piano and next to no bass or rhythm guitar. One of the best examples is the seminal recording of the concert in Carnegie Hall by the Benny Goodman big band in January 1938. Although it became one of the bestselling recordings ever, and one of the first vinyl LPs, its commercial release was never planned. Goodman’s friend Albert Marx set up three microphones and cut lacquer discs that Goodman then forgot about for 12 years, before finally listening to them and authorising their sale in 1950. Benny Goodman never did learn how to handle amplification. Loren Schoenberg, a respected saxophone player, music historian and the driving force behind the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, organised and played in Benny Goodman’s last band from 1980 to 1985 (while archiving his memorabilia and music before they were lodged with Yale University). When I interviewed Schoenberg, he recalled: Benny would arrive for an open air concert where the sound engineers had Pete Long (clarinet), Anthony Kerr (vibraphone), Colin Goode (piano), Jo Pettitt (bass) and Bobby Worth (drums) recreating no-amp 1930s/1940s music at a venue in Sussex. carefully set up a dozen microphones. He’d wave his hand saying “I don’t want any of that” and then play without any amplification so that only a few people could hear him. I can personally vouch for that. When the “King of Swing” performed at the 1982 Knebworth open air festival, he ostentatiously ignored all the microphones on stage. The result was that only the first few rows of the audience heard anything of his playing. The 1938 Carnegie concert has recently been recreated live, with almost no amplification, by British bandleader/clarinettist Pete Long and drummer Richard Pite, for instance in London’s Cadogan Hall, which has excellent live accoustics. Long is now involved in similar no-amp re-creations of Benny Goodman’s smaller groups. Bass players in particular are now so used to relying on electronic assistance that only a few acoustic string bassists can handle the recreation job. If you like that kind of music and care about hi-fi, watch out for this type of recreation event. Who knows, the idea may catch on wider. The pop and rock world is already drowning in tribute bands recreating famous names. A final thought: there is a new and rather annoying industry based on sending out questionnaires to customers immediately after they have bought anything or been to any event. Avoid the temptation to simply bin or delete the question form; instead, grab the opportunity to tell event organisers when and why the sound you PE paid to hear was bad. 3