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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: Acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall

Post Subject: Acoustics of Avery Fisher HallPosted by jp on: 12/13/2009

Ive attended a half dozen performances this year and I find the acoustics of this hall quite terrible. Apart from some of the orchestra's lackluster and sloppy performance at times, the sound generally doesnt seem to carry well in this hall. It sounds washed, the details smeared and there is a general lack of dynamics. Ive sat in the "prime" orchestra level seats smack in the middle one time and another in the middle off to the side on orchestra level and they were all quite unsatisfying leaving me to feel that I much prefer listening to their live rebroadcast on FM. I found it odd that it didnt seem to bother the other attendees...

However, I attended the Bruckner 4 performance yesterday with Christoph Dohnanyi as conductor and sat on the first row off to the side and was finally able to hear details, dynamics and much of the nuance that Ive missed before. It certainly made the experience better, including being able to hear some obvious mistakes by the brass section and poor playing by the flutists...

These experiences are markedly different from my one experience at Boston Symphony Hall this year when I went to hear Haitink conduct the Brahms Symphony 1 and some yawn inducing piece by Ibert- Flute Concerto. I was sitting on the top balcony level off to the right side. The acoustics in this hall was wonderful in comparison. Did it help that I was sitting in the balcony level? Im not sure so I looked up Avery Fisher Hall to find out its history and discovered:

"The seating capacity is large (around 2,600 seats) and the sidewalls are too far apart to provide early reflections to the center seats. The ceiling is high to increase reverberation time but the clouds are too high to reinforce early reflections adequately. The bass is weak because the very large stage does not adequately reinforce the low string instruments."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery_Fisher_Hall

Well that explained things in part. In any case, I will be back in Boston a few more times this year, in particular to hear Yo Yo Ma in January, and look forward to attending again.

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