Sennheiser was an essential part of the process, providing 12 sets of Series 5 headphones for the small audiences. The quality audio of these headphones enabled Lundahl & Seitl to blur the lines between recorded and live sound, making a dramatic experience even more immersive.
"Our specific need was a pair of headphones with open backs, which would not isolate the visitors from natural spatial sound and the live piano play, and also gave us the best binaural playback," explained Christer Lundahl. "In the beginning of the project we were researching binaural and 3-D sound and found a website called 'binaural source'. For the best headphones to play out a binaural recording on, they recommended Sennheiser's 5 Series."
Sennheiser was involved in the production process too. UK technical support manager John Willett (well known for his magic touch in the field of piano recordings) was sufficiently intrigued to volunteer his considerable expertise for the project. Armed with Nagra VI hard disk recorder, a Jecklin Disk and a pair of Sennheiser MKH omni microphones he recorded all the piano parts and large part of the effects and speech used in the event.
"I went down to Steinway Hall about a week before the project to record various bits," says Willett. "The footsteps, a lot of the voices and the piano were all recorded by me. I remember Christer telling me that the test audiences didn't believe what they were hearing was recorded sound. It genuinely sounded like people were in the room with the audience playing pianos."
"The recording session we made with John was absolutely amazing," agreed Lundhal. "John has a sense for making natural sound, sound natural, and we learnt lots of simple principles in audio recording. Apart from a really professional playback sound, the session inspired us as artists, giving us ideas on how to manipulate perception of time space and objects by the effect of a high quality sound."
(Jim Evans)
