The Tacet Thread (Reviews/Latest News & Releases/General Discussion)

[wanners]

Here's a little more. this is really good stuff. Between Morten and Andreas, maybe there is good future at least for multichannel classical.

"A senior Norwegian HiFi journalist visited our studio recently. Prior to our listening session I explained to him how we recorded MOZART and DIVERTIMENTI with the orchestra in a circle, all musicians facing each other – surrounding the listener. He rose from his chair and wanted to leave. I begged him to listen - and he stayed for three hours; leaving us with the conclusion: “Now I need to go home and write an article apologising all my readers for the thirty years I have misguided them in stereo. Surround sound is the real thing.”

However, it is the team's attitude to surround sound, which they started working seriously in 2000, that puts them in a completely different league from most multi channel classical engineers. They're not scared to experiment and to put the listener in the thick of the music rather than in a seat at one end of the hall. They've made recordings with the orchestra in the front and the choir behind and the musical results are remarkable. Planning and discussions with the musicians create trust and a sense of occasion and excitement that translates onto the recordings. "The tools we have even with a good surround set up is not a perfect way to bring an audience to the concert hall; we still have to work the art of illusions," says Morten Lindberg. "This is one of the ways to do that - to bring the listener into the music and in among the musicians to be a part of it." That's not to say that they won't record in a more traditional surround format but they allow the venue, repertoire and musicians to suggest a configuration to them. It's a healthy attitude towards multi channel that doesn't hide behind the usual excuses of worrying about integrity of listener's loudspeaker layout. They're recording surround for those who want to listen in surround and the stereo layer of the hybrid disc is there for those who don't.

 

[SoonerCaniac]

NEW RELEASE:

Auryn Quartet - Haydn: String Quartets op. 74, nos. 1-3 (Auryn's Haydn: op. 74, Vol. 12 of 14)

Regards,
Josh

 

[wolfram]

Thanks Josh. I've been meaning to post this for a while now, didn't get around to it. These Haydn quartets really come in quick succession. Great. I still have to spend some more time with the second disc before I get this one. I'm pretty sure I will like it as well.

By the way - this is probably too late for anybody of the readers – starting on Friday November 6 until Sunday November 8 I will present TACET recordings during the "klangBilder" show in Vienna, Austria on the Sony boost. I plan to compare 4 different sound carriers with identical musical takes, the Vivaldi 4 Seasons in tube only stereo on vinyl and on CD, in TACET Real Surround Sound on SACD and in Moving Real Surround Sound on DVD-A. Next occasion: High End in Munich/Germany in May 6-9, 2010.

Andreas Spreer

Herr Spreer, are you going to do this presentation on all days at the High End in Munich? It's quite likely that I will go there in May and I wouldn't want to miss that.

 

[TACET]

It's good news to read or hear about other producers doing similar things. We need competition desperately! I try to contact Morten Lindberg.

The TACET release schedule was: Vol. 4 of "Auryn's Beethoven" on DVD-A (string quartets both in TACET Real Surround Sound and Moving Real Surround Sound) in december and Beethoven symphonies 3 & 4 in TACET Real Surround Sound on SACD in january. Unfortunately we have to shift them both for one month. "Auryn's Beethoven Vol. 4" in January and "3 & 4" in february. I am sorry!

 

[jmserre]

It's good news to read or hear about other producers doing similar things. We need competition desperately! I try to contact Morten Lindberg.

The TACET release schedule was: Vol. 4 of "Auryn's Beethoven" on DVD-A (string quartets both in TACET Real Surround Sound and Moving Real Surround Sound) in december and Beethoven symphonies 3 & 4 in TACET Real Surround Sound on SACD in january. Unfortunately we have to shift them both for one month. "Auryn's Beethoven Vol. 4" in January and "3 & 4" in february. I am sorry!

Thanks for the update, I am looking forward to earing the moving surround mix on the Vol 4 of the Beethoven quartet. Also Symphony no 3 is my favorite from the 9th (It is like the rite of spring in 1909 but in 1803-04)

In the mean time I just got in my mail box an order of 9 SACDs including 2 from TACET, so I will have a lot of good stuff to listen during the vacations.

Merry Christmas to all on this thread. :sun

 

[Luong Ngoc Vo]

Greetings, fellow TACET fans.

I would like to start the new year by remembering how I sought out and got hooked by TACET.

Eleven years ago, I was accidentally exposed to the real-life immersive music at the center of a full orchestra. At that time, high-resolution multichannel music recordings and hardwares were not yet available for the market, and DTS-encoded discs were rather poorly engineered. I was staying in a small town on the Gulf Coast. I volunteered to help with moving the stage furniture during the rehearsal of a little known regional orchestra (Southeast Texas Symphonic orchestra). The conductor was "Maestra" Dianne Wittry, also an unknown name outside the conductors' circle. They were playing Tchaikovsky's piano concerto No.1 with pianist Tzimon Barto. At one point I was squatting practically next to the maestra's podium and I was looking at the orchestra in the same way she did, i.e., with the whole orchestra encompassing me in a horse shoe pattern, and with the concert grand completing the circle at my back. That was an important revelation moment in my life: the sound that I was hearing on stage is nothing like the restricted frontal wall of sound that I perceived while sitting in the audience area. Near the conductor, I could hear distinctly the voices of different instruments coming in from 360 degrees around me. I was acutely aware of the moment and the location where each voice came in, answered the theme,played along, or faded out... thanks to the positioning of the musicians and the directionality of different sounds. I did not have to try to listen, nor strain my brain to follow the development of the music. The perception came to me so clearly, effortlessly. I was in sonic paradise. I really enjoyed it. I would not want to go back down to the hall seats.

After that experience I stop buying orchestral music CDs because they always remind me of what I am missing. When DVD-A and multichannel SACD came to the market with the promise of surround sound, I hoped that those high resolution sound media would help recreate that real surround, on-stage sound field. Again, I was in for a quest of frequent frustration and disappointment. The majority of classical DVD-A and SACD are engineered to reproduce the audience perspective, not the among-the-musicians position as the word "surround" suggests. IMHO, the conductors go along with label producers in this "best seat in the audience" approach because they do not want to alienate many concert goers who believe that no position can be equal to or better than that of the middle rows in the hall. The conductors know very well that the best position to appreciate the music of the orchestra is not down there in the hall, but somewhere on stage, with musicians around one's position, or practically at the conductor's spot. This rampant deception persists even in many modern BluRay and HD-DVD of orchestral performances where, in long scenes, the conductors are shown full frame frontal,mesmerized by the music from the musicians around them, pointing the baton passionately to different sections of the orchestra to usher the parts in... The sound one hears during those moments, in fact during the whole disc, is from the audience perspective, not the conductors'. Advertising audience-perspective discs as surround discs, therefore, amounts to cheating the consumers. By the same token, not producing "real surround" discs is at best, paternalistic arrogance from artistic directors/producers in the tune of "the hall seat is good enough for you"; at worst, a conspiracy to deprive the public of a marvellous way to listen to orchestral music, a way that has never been possible to buy ticket for, now made effective and affordable in private homes by consumer softwares and hardwares.

This is where TACET comes in. I appreciate TACET's production of high quality real surround discs. All 16 TACET DVD-A and SACD "real surround" that I have bought so far are excellent in every aspect of performance and sonics. TACET considers my perception of a coherent 360-degree sound field a priority so supreme that the tonmeister sometimes arrives at a sound field configuration that focuses on me rather than on its feasibility for a public live performance. In other words, TACET aims to satisfy my flesh-and-blood ears/brain first and imitate the acoustic signature of brick-and-mortar music halls second. It is 100% satisfaction, all pleasure and zero guilt for me, I should say. TACET is consistent in its real surround approach whereas other labels that I have listened to (Pentatone, Telarc, Bis, Hyperion, Linn, Naxos, Silverline, Exton, MDG, DTS-ent ...) vary and usually fall short of my expectation in the way of the surround treatment in many of their multichannel discs . For example, label AIX Beethoven 6th/Respighi Pines of Rome double-sided DVD-A, conducted by Znedek Macal, has a DTS-encoded side that is, as stated by AIX, supposed to reproduce the stage perspective. By the look of rows of musicians and arrays of dozens of microphones circling Mr. Macal, I thought that I would hear what he heard on stage. However, the sound I heard is flat, incoherent. The AIX Beethoven 6th is inferior to TACET's Beethoven 5th & 6th. It is obvious that on discs, musicians and conductors, no matter how talented, will sound only as good as the sound engineers allow them to. Oh, I am so spoiled by TACET.

 

[Quadro-Action]

That is the point, who is also mine. Me must habe a surround-reproduction by classical music from the view of the conductor, who is always listening true surround which means around. May be,that they are jealous and dont' allow, that the usual listener can have the same surround pleasure as they self have. That is a point for a needed change in the surround recording philosophie.
Tacet and also L2 (the Norwegian label) are on the right way. But sometimes I feel,that this classical surround could sound some more clear with better locating of the instruments. When the microphones are fixing in a height of 4 or 5 yards above the musicians the sound of the instruments could not recordes clear and separated. In those microphones are playing too much neighbourhouded instruments. So the sound is too smeared. But important is, that the producers should start real surround music productions. They should also listen live from the place of the coductor to convince them from real surround productions.

Dietrich

 

[SoonerCaniac]

Greetings, fellow TACET fans.

I would like to start the new year by remembering how I sought out and got hooked by TACET.

What a wonderful first post Luong! You have written very articulately and have explained well how I feel about the merits of "Real Surround Sound". There's a reason it's called "Real".

Thank you very much for sharing your story. Please continue to offer your insights on the various Tacet releases.
Josh

 

[SoonerCaniac]

Folks...I realize I started this thread back in May and I know I've been advocating Tacet's surround sound approach for a while, but I have to be honest and admit that only until recently have I finally listened to an entire Tacet release front to back. Until now I've only sampled tracks here and there to whet my appetite while I spent my time finding and acquiring Tacet releases (not always an easy task!) not to mention while acquiring and listening to other surround sound releases in other genres. I felt comfortable advocating Tacet despite not being intimately aware of Herr Spreer's mixes because I was so impressed by the tracks I had heard and because the philosophical approach to multichannel mixing was so similar to my preferences not only in classical music, but in other genres as well. Most importantly, I wanted to motivate others who were more familiar with this label to share their experiences. So far, I think the thread has been a great success, most notably thanks to the surprise participation of Herr Spreer.

It was personally important to develop a better understanding of the "traditional" approach to classical multichannel. Over the past several months I acquired familiar or potentially appealing but unfamiliar classical music "traditionally" mixed and have listened to several discs in their entirety. While I've been impressed with the music often, and wowed by the dynamics and fidelity many times as well, the "concert hall" approach to multichannel mixing is leaving me seriously underwhelmed. Granted, these mixes, IMO, are often a substantial improvement over 2-channel listening, but I have to admit classical isn't the genre I gravitate towards first, and I'd heard too many inventive and exhilarating pop and rock discs to prevent a bias towards that mixing philosophy. Nevertheless, with a good exposure to traditional classical multichannel, I was hopeful my excursions into Tacet multichannel would have a greater impact and be better appreciated...

...and that brings me to the exemplary SACD of Beethoven's Symphonies 1 & 2. While undoubtedly a classical novice, it was readily apparent that the musicianship and fidelity were both top-notch. Of course, the mix is what makes this release shine brighter than most. I think what impressed me above-all was how seamless the mix was, even for a less-than-ideal speaker system/set-up like mine. The speakers were rarely identifiable as the music enveloped all 360 degrees. I was nervous that my home-theater 5.1 placement would detract from the experience, but I am happy to report that if I was ever fortunate enough to be sitting in the middle of an orchestra, I could believe it'd sound very similar to my experience with this SACD. The mix was so immersive, and the recording so intimate, that if I've ever desired for a separate music room, with five full-range floorstanders, I do now more than ever. Beethoven's energetic Symphonies undoubtedly completed the experience, making this a disc that will get many repeated listens.

I'm convinced now more than ever that even if you are not a classical fan, but you love "true" surround sound (ooh, them's fighting words!), you owe it to yourself to give Tacet's approach a try.

Please keep the reviews and comments coming. I continue to appreciate differing opinions, and I look forward to these comments as well.

Until the next disc,
Josh

 

[wolfram]

Hi Josh, great to hear that you like the releases of that label for which you started a fan-thread half a year ago.

Try the Beethooven Septet/Octet or the first String Quartets next...


PS. These new emoticons sure are weak!

 

[SoonerCaniac]

Hi Josh, great to hear that you like the releases of that label for which you started a fan-thread half a year ago.

I definitely deserved that. (Hey, it looks like Jon improved the emoticons!)

There's no doubt I have a very particular approach to my surround sound hobby. Out of consideration to everyone else, I won't explain it. There was no point in delaying a fan thread and making everyone else around here put up with my idiosyncrasies.

Back to our regularly scheduled discussion...
Josh

 

[wolfram]

Ta-Dah!

NEW RELEASE:

The Auryn Series

Auryn's Beethoven

String Quartets · Vol. 4 of 4
op. 130, 131, 133, 135
total playing time: 239 min
Auryn Quartet
TACET Real Surround Sound / Moving Real Surround Sound
http://www.tacet.de/main/seite1.php?layout=katalog&language=en&filename=production.php&bestnr=01303


Will get this one pretty soon.

 

[dr. simple]

I'd like to thank SoonerCaniac for starting this thread and, of course, Andreas Spreer for doing what he's doing. I'm now the proud owner of three Tacet surround titles and I couldn't be more tickled. Great, great, stuff.

I just got the Brandenburg Concertos, which was Tacet's first DVD Audio from all the way back in 2000! It's actually a 4.0 disc, with 5 different mixes for the 6 concertos. A diagram of what's where is provided in the booklet (this is actually true for all three of the titles I have).

I also have the SACD of The Four Seasons, and the Schubert String Quintet is a real treat, with each of the 5 instruments in a different speaker.

Thanks again to everyone involved!

 

[wolfram]

And TACET just keeps them coming.
:banana::banana::banana:

NEW RELEASES:

TACET's Beethoven Symphonies

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphonies No. 3 & 4
Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, Wojciech Rajski
TACET Real Surround Sound & Stereo
Tube Only / Transistorfrei
http://www.tacet.de/main/seite1.php?layout=katalog&language=en&filename=production.php&bestnr=01714

The Auryn Series Vol. XXV

Robert Schumann

Piano Quartet op. 47
Piano Quartet op. 44
Auryn Quartet
Peter Orth, piano
TACET Real Surround Sound
http://www.tacet.de/main/seite1.php?layout=katalog&language=en&filename=production.php&bestnr=01443


Looks like I will have to make a bigger order pretty soon.

 

[SoonerCaniac]

Thanks for the updates Wolfram! I've been out of town a lot lately, and I've not been keeping track. What a nice surprise to see so many new releases!

 

[Luong Ngoc Vo]

Thanks to wolfram for pictures of new TACET releases You obviously have the advantage of being so close to the location of this disc manufacturer. I am green with envy ...

 

[Luong Ngoc Vo]

Dear TACET fans, I would like to add this question to our forum. I hope Mr. Andreas Spreer of TACET will read this too:

Is TACET ready to produce a piano concerto disc (a la TACET, "real surround", of course)?

I have this suggestion for a new release: concertos for piano. These are my reasons:

1) TACET sonic reproduction is clean, sensuous and faithful in all instruments: string, brass, wind, wood, and of course, piano.

2) TACET real surround sound, stage-perspective, or conductor-perspective sound reproduction can take me repeatedly to where I have gone only once before! ( I am not talking about travelling to a distant star system here , but about the shock and awe of listening to the music on stage, that is, being next to the conductor at the middle of a full orchestra with the concert grand at my back.) Of course, Mr. Andreas Spreer can place the piano wherever he sees fit, not necessarily at the back.

3) TACET does a great job reproducing the sound heard at the center of, not only small chamber ensembles, but also a symphonic orchestra as evidenced by its discs of Beethoven 1st&2nd, 5th&6th, and 7th&8th. I have not listened to the 3rd& 4th yet. I am thrilled to hear that the 9th is coming out.

4) TACET has issued discs with piano solo and in small chamber groups, but no disc of piano in concert with full orchestra yet. Piano concertos are very appealing to a large portion of classical music listeners. TACET is not shy about affirming its mark of real surround sound on such commonly recorded works as Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Mozart's Night Music. I think it will come up with a disc featuring popular piano concertos that will wow listeners with its new perspectives on familiar pieces.

5) TACET still has this new horizon to venture in: BluRay. Filming the recording sessions in HD for possible BD version is a reasonable precaution. With its high definition video coupled with high resolution 5.1 audio, BD outclasses both DVD-A and SACD. It would be a strong selling point if TACET manages to couple real surround sound with HD video of the performance on a TACET BD. Come on, TACET, label 2L with its hybrid BD+SACD is gaining on you. OK, OK, I know I am too pushy here.

6) TACET should not have much difficulty in securing the performance of a pianist from Germany, Poland or elsewhere... For example, I recently saw the Ukraine-born, now US-citizen pianist Valentina Lisitsa on YouTube. The clips show her performing Rachmaninov, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven 's piano concertos with many orchestras in and outside of the USA. No label has finalized a contract to publish her new works. So videos of those performances are uploaded to YouTube as a way of advertisement. As seen through the (poor) video/audio quality of YouTube, she is on the same par (?!) with Horowitz, Cliburn, Gould clips. In addition to the clips where she performed with orchestra, there are clips of her practising Rachmaninov piano concerto No.2 without the orchestra. It is interesting for me to hear the piano part alone for the first time as I have never read the music score of the Rach No.2 before. The point is that if TACET can handle the logistics of producing the Beethoven 9th, then it surely can find a pianist that will fit its settings.

So I contend that it is now prime time for TACET to produce its first piano concerto disc, whether it be BD, DVD-A, or SACD.

Mr. Andreas Spreer, thank you for your excellent recordings

 

[SoonerCaniac]

NEW RELEASE:

Auryn Quartet - Haydn: Op. 71/No. 1-3, String Quartets (Auryn's Haydn: op. 71, Vol. 11 of 14)

Update your wishlists!
Josh

 

[TACET]

Dear Quadro Fellows,

thank you so much for all your comments, ideas and - patience! My last entry is a couple of months ago and I am very sorry that it was not possible to continue earlier.

In the meantime there happened so much! Most news are good ones. The only bad thing is we had to shift the recording of Beethoven 9th symphony for about one year. We are not yet satisfied with the choice of singers and other artists. This shows again that in most cases it is no good idea to talk too much in advance about future projects. Very often things develop a bit different from how they are expected to do. This causes more irritations than necessary. (Another good example is the stereo version of Haydn string quartets op. 55 which should have been released on CD half a year ago. When the musicians had listened to the first cut they were not satisfied with the result, more recordings were made and the whole was delayed until this week.) Apart from that extreme example I'd say: when the recording session is done it is time to speak about release schedule.

There are so many more interesting projects in the pipeline! Big orchestra recordings, solo concertos as were suggested here, different style of music like jazz or tango and last not least more classical chamber music recordings. Not only because I grew up with that music and know it better but also because this genre offers the highest and most thrilling complexity of composition structures and therefore is most suitable for enacting in Real Surround Sound.

We do not plan: videos! Did I mention this earlier? Every sort of picture limits your the listeners phantasy more than any other mean. Listen to any part of TACET's Four Seasons by Vivaldi: Each movement is a scenery with comments by Vivaldi about what he was thinking about when writing the score, scenes like a thunderstorm, drunken people sleeping, a hunt and so on. Every listener can imagine these scenes how he wants to. Nobody's phantasy is narrowed by a picture that shows what he has to imagine exactly. The Real Surround Sound version changes nothing of that freedom for the listener. The "Moving" version does a bit more: In the case of Vivaldi's Four Seasons it offers a sort of acoustical painting or movie. The second movement of the "Spring" places the sheperd (solo violin) left behind the listener and the "flowers and plants in the wind" (played by the tutti strings) in the far front. The barking dog (viola) runs around the crowd of sheep according to the scale position in the score. This enacting leads your phantasy a little bit but not much, nothing compared to visual pictures. If you do not know anything about the program idea behind the work you can imagine something completely different.

Last week we joined the High End show in Munich, Germany. This was a good occasion to show the quality of our recordings. We shared a booth together with Manger (high quality loudspeaker manufacturer from Germany) and Trinnov (acoustical enhancement system from France). Strange enough: this small box was the only multichannel demonstration of the whole show! The acoustics of a room like that is poor, very poor. It's rather a garage than a living room. However Trinnov made the best of it. I promise to get nothing from Trinnov for this statement: If anybody of you is not satisfied with the acoustics of his home listening room and can afford a system like this he should try it out. During the show the visitors were sitting in sort of a garage and listened like they were in a perfect ambience! Unfortunately there were lots of noises around and the KLIMAANLAGE did not work properly... Anyway this show was a success. So many people with no idea of our work came in and stayed. It was possible to play the first movement of the Eroica (over 13 minutes) completely and nobody went out. This is extraordinary for a show like this! And I learned that it is not longer necessary to make big explanations about how we work and why. Simply feeding the player with a Real Surround Sound disc and let people listen.

Because our booth was the only multichannel room on the show the BluRay demonstrations took place here, too. I had fruitful discussions with Stefan Bock of MSM Studios. He developped a good BluRay audio only program together with Morton Lindberg of 2L Norway. Some of you would like to know what I think about BluRay. Here are some statements:
1. BluRay sounds fine, just as SACD or DVD-Audio. All these formats are like empty coffee containers. If SACD has the size of a cup, DVD-Audio is a bottle and BluRay is a BADEWANNE. And what's the quality of the coffee?
2. BluRay adds another format to the both existing ones.
3. BluRay solves no problem but creates new ones.
4. BluRay still is more expensive than SACD, SACD is more expensive than DVD-Audio.
5. The surround sound market is still too small for big profits. When any format develops high sales TACET will immediately switch over to it.
6. As a company deeply involved in Surround Sound we have to try to reach as many listeners as possible with our formats
- DVD-Audio (with included Dolby Digital stream) plays on every surround sound system worldwide.
- SACD does not play on every surround sound system.
- BluRay does not play on every surround sound system.
7. There are good multi format players that play all three formats.

I have to stop now. Hopefully my next entry will not take so long...

Greetings to all 5 directions
Andreas

 

[SoonerCaniac]

Hi Andreas!

Thank you for your update, it is always a pleasure hearing from you. And no worries about the time between postings, it sounds like you keep quite busy! Any updates are better than NO updates, and I'm sure we are all grateful that you have decided to participate in the first place!

I for one am not disappointed in your delays because there is already a wealth of wonderful surround sound music on the Tacet label to keep me happy until any delayed project is complete! It is important to pay attention to the details, get it right, and not rush the process. I think most people would agree and appreciate your dedication to the recordings.

The inclusion of videos has its pluses and minuses depending on the music. The examples you provide are excellent ones to illustrate when videos are not a good idea. I for one get great pleasure sitting with my eyes closed in my media room while listening to surround sound music. I enjoy visualizing the music using my imagination so I can completely appreciate your perspective. However, I must also say I enjoy watching musicians perform, and this is especially true for classical musicians, as they often leave me in awe at their skill and talent. Therefore, in some respects, there are times the inclusion of video can be great fun. What I like about the AIX Records approach is that the option is there to do both. You can listen to the music in a lower resolution surround format while watching the musicians play or turn off the video and listen to the music in high-resolution surround. The fact that AIX can accomplish this at such a reasonable price is astounding. However, if I had to choose, I'd rather have the high-resolution surround than the videos any day and I would not probably be willing to spend more money to offset the increase in production costs. Therefore, your approach seems perfectly reasonable.

You offered several comments about SACD vs. DVD-Audio a while back and at the time I tended to agree with you that DVD-Audio is superior for the reasons you stated, and I think the same is true regarding Blu-Ray. While there are some that feel Blu-Ray is the next-best-thing, I disagree at this point and feel DVD-Audio is still the best medium for high-resolution surround sound especially in terms of production costs and compatibility. The one thing about SACD that I still go back to is that, with hybrid discs, you still have the option to play the disc as a standard CD for those times when you do not have access to a surround-sound system. This is why the mainstream CD+DVD-A releases still were the best compromise to the whole format mess, IMO. However, the cost of two discs is obviously more than one, and I am assuming this is at least partially why a hybrid SACD is more expensive to produce than a DVD-A.

These comments remind me that if there was one thing I'd like to see Tacet do with future releases it would be to include a high-resolution stereo version of the music for precisely those circumstances where I do not have access to a surround-sound system. In the absence of this, I can improvise..., but my solution is less-than-ideal.

Again thank you for stopping by and keep up the excellent work. I am especially looking forward to your future orchestral and jazz projects. It is all very exciting!
Josh