# Ear training



## Chris (Jun 1, 2010)

I was discussing Karajan's classic recording of Honegger's symphonies 2 and 3 with an elderly friend. I told him I couldn't listen to the CD because of the degree of background hiss. He told me it didn't bother him because he had grown up in the era of 78s, when all recordings had a backdrop of hiss, crackle and pop. He had learned to aurally filter out background noise. This made me think of live recordings. l can see the advantages of a live recording, not least the fact you are hearing something more natural than a recording assembled from takes. But I have never bought a live recording because I am sure the inevitable audience noise would annoy me. But is it possible to train one's ears to filter it out, like my friend with his scratchy 78s? If you listen to enough live recordings does that cough in the pianissimo fade to a mere fleabite?


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## graaf (Dec 12, 2009)

Good for him, don't know how well he can ignore the background noise, but I'm not very good at it. To be more precise, if the noise is uniform throughout the recording, then it is much easier to ignore it - it is coughing and similar from time to time noise that I simply can't learn to ignore (so I rarely listen to Celibidache's Bolero, for example, although he is one of favourite conductors of mine).

I don't regard any recording more unnatural than any other. The only natural thing for me would be live performance, since it can't be repeated - anything else is unnatural. That said, I usually do not think in those terms anyway.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

The surface noise in many 78s from the 30s is pretty steady, and does seem to fade into the background after a few minutes listening. The Pearl release of Schnabel's Beethoven sonatas is an excellent example of the phenomenon.

I have read the claim that this steady hiss has the psychological effect of extending the perceived frequency range of the recording. I don't have an opinion about that.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

The whole world is full of background noise. In a concert hall there is constant sound from elsewhere - people breathing, shuffles, coughs, sweets being unwrapped (!), furniture creaks, etc etc. Do you lock yourself away in a sound-proofed room to listen to music? That sounds pretty extreme to me.

Perhaps I am lucky; I can filter-out all sorts of extraneous sounds when listening to music. I can even tolerate bad intonation once my ears have adjusted. I'm not sure what to suggest to help you, except perhaps to listen to more live recordings and live broadcasts on the radio. Eventually, your brain should learn to ignore the sounds you don't really want to hear.


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

It's fairly easy for me to filter out audience noise if it's a darn good performance. Take Dmitri Mitropoulos and his legendary Mahler 8 with the Vienna Philharmonic way back in the '50s. To make matters even worse, it was an open-air concert, and somewhere in the beginning of the second movement an _air plane_ flies overhead, and it doesn't distract me one jot, and I think it's that the performance is simply riveting. Horenstein's version of Mahler 6, though, was a real problem for me, because I couldn't figure out what the heck Horenstein was trying to do and the horns were cracking off their notes half the time (a minor problem compared to the missed entrances and such in the Mitropoulos, but in this case plenty to derail me).


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## graaf (Dec 12, 2009)

Delicious Manager said:


> Do you lock yourself away in a sound-proofed room to listen to music? That sounds pretty extreme to me.


Headphones. It's not extreme, and it does the job.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

When you are listening to headphones, where does your brain tell you the music is coming from?

For me, the instruments are behind me; this is not particularly satisfactory.


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## Chris (Jun 1, 2010)

Delicious Manager said:


> The whole world is full of background noise. In a concert hall there is constant sound from elsewhere - people breathing, shuffles, coughs, sweets being unwrapped (!), furniture creaks, etc etc. Do you lock yourself away in a sound-proofed room to listen to music? That sounds pretty extreme to me.


Actually I do lock myself in a soundproof room as far as resources allow 

But there is a difference between live noise and 'recorded live' noise. When you are at a concert the noises are random. You aren't waiting for them and they come and go. But when some bronchitic octagenarian lets out a great wheezy catarrhy spluttering cough at the quietest and tensest moment of a recorded live performance, you remember it. And every time you play the CD you will be waiting for it. Like the Chinese water torture, where you are waiting for the next drip, you know this cough is coming and there's nothing you can do to stop it! Aaagh!!!



World Violist said:


> It's fairly easy for me to filter out audience noise if it's a darn good performance. Take Dmitri Mitropoulos and his legendary Mahler 8 with the Vienna Philharmonic way back in the '50s. To make matters even worse, it was an open-air concert, and somewhere in the beginning of the second movement an _air plane_ flies overhead


 This must be unique in recording history.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

graaf said:


> Headphones. It's not extreme, and it does the job.


Of course, listening on headphones could well exacerbate the background noise issue. I used to listen on headphones a lot, but grew to find it too artificial an experience. I now reserve headphone listening for times when there's no option. Loudspeakers for me every time, if possible.


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Listening on headphones always magnifies the sounds for me. I remember one particular time in which I played Colin Davis' latest recording of Sibelius' 5th symphony on speakers and didn't hear any of his humming people were going on about. Soon after I listened again on headsets and I could barely concentrate on the music, I was hearing all the moaning and groaning as though he himself were on loudspeakers in the concert.


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

World Violist said:


> Listening on headphones always magnifies the sounds for me. I remember one particular time in which I played Colin Davis' latest recording of Sibelius' 5th symphony on speakers and didn't hear any of his humming people were going on about. Soon after I listened again on headsets and I could barely concentrate on the music, I was hearing all the moaning and groaning as though he himself were on loudspeakers in the concert.


yes headphones in particular have an effect that makes you "zoom in" on the music so to speak. Your more likely to follow the subtle and supporting sounds than the main ones. Loud speakers and monitors are the normal way of listening to something as it were to be perceived.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I'm not an audiophile. I'm less interested in the sound quality than the performance. I think that if you focus too much on the sound quality of a recording, you probably will never be satisfied - is there such a thing as "perfection?" Many of the live performances I have on disc have no background noise whatsoever - not perceivable to me anyway. If you focus on the music, you will soon forget any background noise or blemishes in the recording. If you focus on the extraneous noises, you will just hear them. More bothersome to me are recordings where the microphones have obviously been misplaced - so you get a very unclear sound. I've only got one recording like this, thankfully most recording engineers know what they're doing. In other words, I'd rather have a bit of hiss or a cough than misplaced mikes...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Can't engineers these days "filter out" the background noise from a live recording? The recordings of Brahm's complete symphonies performed by the ORR/John Eliot Gardiner (on period instruments) that I bought recently come with no background noise, even though they were live recordings. Technology today can cut out the unwanted noise, if they bother with it.


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Can't engineers these days "filter out" the background noise from a live recording? The recordings of Brahm's complete symphonies performed by the ORR/John Eliot Gardiner (on period instruments) that I bought recently come with no background noise, even though they were live recordings. Technology today can cut out the unwanted noise, if they bother with it.


yes are there are certain methods of removing unwanted noise from recordings - particularly

- using a noise gate
- Alias filtering
- regular filtering

if someone has a good compressor plugin and a good filter plugin they can virtually remove the noise themselves - assuming you know how to work it on a basic level.

But thats not to say these solutions are perfect either - details in the sound itself can be lost by this as well, and dynamics can sound unnatural (especially if the noise gate is set to too high a threshold)


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## graaf (Dec 12, 2009)

Andre said:


> I'm not an audiophile. I'm less interested in the sound quality than the performance. I think that if you focus too much on the sound quality of a recording, you probably will never be satisfied - is there such a thing as "perfection?" Many of the live performances I have on disc have no background noise whatsoever - not perceivable to me anyway. If you focus on the music, you will soon forget any background noise or blemishes in the recording. If you focus on the extraneous noises, you will just hear them. More bothersome to me are recordings where the microphones have obviously been misplaced - so you get a very unclear sound. I've only got one recording like this, thankfully most recording engineers know what they're doing. In other words, I'd rather have a bit of hiss or a cough than misplaced mikes...


Well, by most standards, I'm hardly an audiophile with my low budget speakers, listening to MP3s (blasphemy!) from my computer with integrated sound card (MP3 alone is enough for most audiophiles to go into nerd-rage). But as Chris said, once I hear occasional background noise, I always expect it. Ages ago, when I was listening to tapes, I always had background noise of tape rotating, but that was easier to get used to, since it is constant noise, unlike coughs and such.


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## Hazel (Oct 23, 2010)

Delicious Manager said:


> The whole world is full of background noise. In a concert hall there is constant sound from elsewhere - people breathing, shuffles, coughs, sweets being unwrapped (!), furniture creaks, etc etc. Do you lock yourself away in a sound-proofed room to listen to music? That sounds pretty extreme to me.
> 
> Perhaps I am lucky; I can filter-out all sorts of extraneous sounds when listening to music. I can even tolerate bad intonation once my ears have adjusted. I'm not sure what to suggest to help you, except perhaps to listen to more live recordings and live broadcasts on the radio. Eventually, your brain should learn to ignore the sounds you don't really want to hear.


An excellent point that I'd not thought about. Turn it around and it is my answer to the person who asked how anyone could use background music while reading. It surely surpasses other types of background noises. :tiphat:


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