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Playback Listening
Topic: Eventually!

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 06-07-2025
The genuinely great bass is Black. Not the 50 shades of gray, as most of you have, but black. Try to purify and cultivate within yourself this notion of absolute blackness, and you will see how far off your bass is.

A lot of music has no blackness, and most of the playbacks/rooms can't support the intense blackness. A true blackness alters time/space, allowing consciousness to arrive at the moment of an intense consumption blackness in its own unique way. To me, the time feels like it slows down, and when the blackness strikes, it feels like there is no time, no space and no matter. There is only a pressure that emanates from the depth of blackness. In a way, it feels that behind each intense sonic blackness, there is a miniature black hole.

Try this. Get Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, conducted by Günter Wand with the NDR recorded live in 1987 at Lubeck Cathedral, the second movement , the Scherzo.  Turn on all reverberation channels up. Play it loud and observe how frequently those back holes form and collapse…

If the level of your bass darkness is not too deep, not too black but dark gray, and you do not experience the gravity of that deep-black singularity, then shut down your playback and switch to the collection of stamps

Posted by Paul S on 06-07-2025
Romy, I have not tried this with your test perameters yet,  but which of your systems are you using to establish this example? Is it 15" sealed over 18" Aurasounds, or are you saying the 15" corner horns do this with RI, or what?

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by rowuk on 06-07-2025
Great deep bass to me is more like vacuum instead of pressure. I get sucked in, not blown over. I think that general talking about bass applies more to midbass slam instead of the huge cloud (or black hole) that I believe low bass to be.In the concert halls or churches where I perform, the lowest octave (<40Hz) feels more like something gently touching me rather than making my pant leg flap.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 06-07-2025
I think from a level from which I approach the subject, the vacuum and the pressure are the same Force. They might be linguistically presume different polarity of the force by the nature behind is the same: contractiveness to something endless. When we stay at the very age of Grand canyon and looking for a mile down do we experience the gravity of this depth by force or by attraction? I think they are the same.  We are certainly loaded with a sentiment where are physical defined presence projected to endless and unreachable vacuum of nothingness and this vacuum of nothingness is a force. Not an acoustical way but rather in a perceptional way. I'm very far from presenting in concept of audio black matter. Hypothetical astronomical black matter is force which impact matter. The presence of all audio absolute blackness does not impact sound. However, in my view, it's greatly impact our perception sending us a message of gruesome seriousness of an auditable event.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 06-08-2025

Paul, I am ntentionaly not going in the dive into the techniques how I did it. This is kind of irrelevant. What is relevant that the state of that absolute blackness exist? I recorded a video when I examined it in details a week ago, but I decided not to post it. In the video I described how to identify the state absolute blackness and distincted from endless amount of gray shadows of bass. To make it very brief and simple here are the main concepts. Any version of gray bass emanates something toward to listener. The absolute black base does not emanate anything. It completely free from any radiation and kind of might be described as rowuk's vacuum. 


However, vacuum is a passive force but my observation that absolutely bass does radiate something. The fourth that it sends is a strange sense of endless fear. The depths of this blackness should be high that it's become literally  like a singularity of the black hole into which you do not want even to look. However, this fear is not the fear of the black hole itself but a fear of losing our own attachment to anything that we know. So the black hole become a bottomless well of uncertainties which obviously make us uncomfortable.


So, listening music, we are traveling over our reality and the presence of absolute black bass remind us that there are spaces in our soundstage where our control collapses and uncertainty become. This became slightly difference listening. This new listening is stopping to become an esthetical or ethical ceremony and become rathe and explorative philosophical journey. I have three level of bass blackness in my listening room and when I activate them then I clearly see that philosophical value of my music has direct correlation with the blackness of my bass. It is one of many aspects of audio which highlights my beloved transformation between physical and spiritual


Posted by Paul S on 06-08-2025
Well, I certainly hear/experience this transformation with Bruckner, also Mahler, at times, but I have not applied myself to listing who else put this into their Music to begin with. This is a big part of why I listen to this sort of Music, in the first place.

Paul S

Posted by steverino on 06-13-2025
I'm a bit unclear if the discussion is centered around deep bass on recordings or live in concert halls as well? The problem of deep bass (low organ notes or synthesizers below 30 Hz) is that they vibrate the room. In a concert hall there is no discrepancy because you are sitting in the room that is vibrating. If a recording then you are in a room either not vibrating or vibrating differently; so now there is a mismatch. (I'm leaving aside headphones.) If the bass is above 30Hz or so then a system should in the best case have a seamless integration of the bass with the midrange and treble.  But I assume you are not talking about typical orchestral bass?

Posted by Paul S on 06-14-2025
Steve, the kick-off remarks included references to the celebrated (CD) Wand/NDR Bruckner 8 at Lubeck, 1987. One hell of a performance of a spectacular symphony that took good advantage of a special venue. I am not clear about the black bass vs. stamp collecting part, but this work is a wormhole.

Paul S

Posted by steverino on 06-14-2025
The only recording I see for a Wand Sym 8 1987 NDR  recording is a live performance in the Lubeck cathedral. I could only find one video of the cathedral interior. It looks very long with immensely high ceilings but relatively narrow. I was trying to figure out where they put the large orchestra. In looking at the church seating, I counted only about 14 seats wide.
Has rowuk or any other poster here been inside the Lubeck cathedral?

Posted by Paul S on 06-14-2025
Yes, that's it. One might say that Wand conducted the orchestra so the Musical bass "times out" for the space. He has another performance there that was not as well-timed, IMO, whatever the reasons for that. Via my system/set-up I do not hear the space as narrower than my listening room (!), and if you are correct, I have no idea where they put everyone, except there is ample "depth" from the recording. Your notes on the space just fan the flames of Music vs. performance vs. space vs. recording vs. "playback". Whatever we do to Get the Message, let's just hope we aren't swamped with own sound in an effort to "recreate the space".  I have not looked for it, but I suppose there is a DVD of the '87 B8 performance.

Paul S

Posted by steverino on 06-14-2025
Paul,
I am attaching the link of the video so you can see for yourself. Apparently it is one of the longest churches at 132 meters. I can believe that this place would have a different reverb pattern than the usual space. But again I would like to find a picture of a symphony orchestra inside the space and see where they fit them!
https://youtu.be/cUrAxbjWTsg?t=38

Given the date there would not be a DVD of it, only a VCR but I can not find any such. I have two DVDs of Wand conducting Bruckner but they are from the mid 90s at a different venue.

Posted by Paul S on 06-14-2025
VCR? Anyway, here's a look at the orchestra in the space. Sure, modern German audiences are quiet, but in this case it's probably the dearth of listeners that explains the very low audience noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGk5VnCwanM


Paul S

Posted by steverino on 06-14-2025
Yikes the orchestra is really jammed in there.  There is no space behind them and a few spill out to the left side. The audience is similarly pushed right up next  to Wand and the orchestra. No wonder this has unusual sonics.  In 1987 there would only be VHS video cassettes unless the video was issued long after, but I can't find it. I only see Celibidache and v Karajan tapes.
I need to warm up my tube headphone amp for an hour and   then will take a close listen.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 06-14-2025
This is very cool. I never seen actually this performance visually. Thank you very much for sharing it.

Posted by steverino on 06-14-2025
Nice musical performance. My take on it (listening on Sennheiser headphones) is that there is a bit of extra bass reinforcement, not only because of the close seating but also the rather reflective, slightly curved backdrop right behind the musicians. I also get a sense of fairly narrow stereo, at least on the headphones. Then combine that  with a long narrow rectangular hall and very high ceilings. If you listen to the timpani on relatively quiet hits and rolls ( eg around 15:10) there is some added reverberance to them. But the added bass reinforcement is only constricted in one direction and the waves can expand outwards without truncation. The engineers did a good job to keep it from being a soupy mess. i couldn't see where the mics were. Thanks Paul for the video link. I searched but couldn't find it. Search terms are really finickey with YT.

Posted by Paul S on 06-14-2025
I think both Germany and Japan were recording digitally in 1987, and the Discogs link suggests this. If I've seen contemporary LPs anywhere (eg., Harmonia Mundi...), I do not remember it, although not many of those made it over here.

https://www.discogs.com/release/13258264-Bruckner-G%C3%BCnter-Wand-Sinfonieorchester-des-Norddeutschen-Rundfunks-Symphony-No-8?srsltid=AfmBOoqS-H2C32OgiLyUle3Tc73M5-6SrGvarI3hMc6_17mF8Ch4f-Ug

Paul S

Posted by steverino on 06-14-2025
The only Wand Bruckner LP set was on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi in the late 80s. I have some of those LPs. There was also a box set of the Symphonies. They were all with the Cologne Orchestra though.(Kolner Rundfunk Sinfonie)




Posted by Paul S on 06-14-2025
Thanks, Steve, I have seen that cycle on LP. I have a couple of performances on CD (one being the prior subject) that I would like to find on an all-analog LP, just to compare the formats in those cases. Not sure, but it seems like we've drifted off the black bass thing...

Paul S

Posted by steverino on 06-14-2025
Well I tried to give my explanation whether it convinces anyone. I think it is basically due to jamming a large orchestra into that church given its particular layout. I will have to get the CD to do  a comparison with the video. It does have a pleasing fullness at the cost of normal orchestral balance.

Posted by Paul S on 06-14-2025
Via my system, the subject CD provides an astounding performance with sound (and sounds) that just add(s), and this is particularly true (and moreso by contrast to other performances) with respect to the LF. Truly Special. Sure, give the engineers some credit, too, but one can hear that Wand knew what he wanted, and in this case he got it. (Synergy!) (I put that there just for Romy).

Paul S

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