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If you one of those who feel that playback make difference then  I do not think that better playing  of Bruckner music  would require any different playback efforts than an y other better playback. Still, practicing “better playback” and loving to see the playback efforts through the Bruckner prism I would like to share some of my views in the Bruckner Sound and how it relates to playback.

Bruckner Sound is an ultimate enemy of any intermodulations. No sound like intermodulations but with Bruckner the anti- intermodulations methods I feel are the most result effective. The more independently operating channels you have then better it will be. Of course I am talking about the properly implemented independently operating channels, not the pile of accidentals crap that most audio people typically toss together and call it multi-channeling. The multi-channeling give the Natural Transient Resolution that I feel is so important in Bruckner. You do not want juts to hear “detail” but you want the dental to be properly sized in terms of color, contrast and volume on the Bruckner’s accordion background. The multi-channeling allows separating sounds and isolating them from each other. Think in term of cooking and use of individual ingredients. The combined channels will you a more or less proper balance of salt, paper, garlic and vinegar in your marinade.  The multi-channeling would permit you to discriminate each individual ingredient. The paper might not be just a paper but it might be a combination of black, red and some kind of other peppers. The important thing is that if you (of more precisely to say the conductor) decided to use gochujang (some kind of Korean pepper) then the tasted of the gochujang will be distinctly recognized in the final meal and it will not be mask out by other species.

Compression is a strange enemy of Bruckner Sound. If you expect that I will run against compression then I won’t. In fact I do feel that in some cases the slightly compressed Bruckner sounds much better. It is partially because most of the playbacks have very bad sound at very low dymick level and at very high dymick level. So, a moderate compression is fine with Bruckner as it adds some drama. Bruckner Sound does not like hard limiting however.

While playing Bruckner it is very important that playback does not change sound balance at very low dymick level. This is very important and very difficult to accomplish task. Yes, with volume drop all the way down the sound balance shall change. We all know about the equal loudness curves and a few other things. Still, one playback has one rate of change sound balance at low level and another has another rate. The closer the rate of change your playback will be to the way how sound change naturally at low volume the more “interesting” you will feel during the Bruckner’s dymick valleys.

The Absolute Tone. Read elsewhere at my site what I call “The Absolute Tone” – it has a very direct relation to Bruckner Sound. The Bruckner has not a lot of thing going on in orchestra. The instruments do not talk a lot in the sections and the sections do not talk a lot between each other. Bruckner is not Mahler and not Rimsky-Korsakov. Bruckner withholds in his instrumental expressivity and he use instruments more like “processes development” instead as “events”. The gipsy skirt Sound is very much how the Brucknerian. Here is why we need in my view the absolutely extreme Tonal capacity from a playback – it is not a lot of colors to begin with and therefore those colors that exist shall be shown with maximum level of color aristocracy.

Bruckner sound require very quiet listening room. The external noise, particularly a noise with harmonic or texture is not good for Bruckner. It is not just because the Bruckner Sound has a tendency to collapse to low dymick level but because noises make listener to want more instant gratification. This desire for instant gratification ruins Bruckner Sound.

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