Hi Ed,
I had a chance today to listen to both tapes and they are fantastic, you’ve certainly raised your already amazing sonic bar. The immediacy and clarity of the piano combined with the fantastic transient response are the very best I’ve ever heard. Then there’s the dynamic range and power that never sounds bounded or truncated; it just sounds real. I’m curious where you placed the microphones for this recording?
My wife came downstairs and said, “That sure sounds like a real piano”. Her mother was an accomplished amateur pianist and she grew up hearing a live piano. It’s the transient response, that ability to reproduce the leading edge without overshooting or ringing and to simultaneously reproduce all the much smaller transients with out burying them, letting them be heard alongside the huge spike of the dominating transient. It would be like a camera system that would let you take a picture of a light house beam with a single lighted candle directly beside it. In your tapes you can hear the vibrating strings, supported by the resonating soundboard and the character of the room reflections all with their proper proportions. Then there is the natural weight of the piano, its solidity and definition and natural body structure that’s never captured as well by a record or digital format. Your choice of painstakingly assembled tube electronics and connecting cables and fine tuning the entire recording process all adds up to the best, most realistic, sound anyone’s ever captured. You should be extremely happy!
Thank you for all your efforts! I can’t wait for the next recording.
Kindest regards,
Ken