snip

So, let's see if we understand this: Mr. Ehnes, when he plays,
keeps his violing in precisely one spot, never moving it here or
there, not up nor down, narry left and certainly not to the
right. It is kept rigidly in place, locked in position, and
never slides back and forth.

And this reviewer noted this fact.

A couple of questions, if I may:

1. How does the reviewer KNOW that this is the way Mr. Ehnes
plays?

2. Why does Mr. Ehnes NOT play like every other violinist I have
ever seen, where the violin, at the hands of the supposed
master in chargem moves about?

3. How, possibly, could the reviewer EVER follow the music
played by a violinist who, through inconsideration it would
seem, moves the violin around, making it difficult to follow
the music?

4. How does the reviewer account for the fact that, possibly
with the exception of the violin played by Mr. Ehnes, an
apparently extraordinary instrument, the radiation pattern
of violins changes quite dramatically with frequency as
different vibrational modes of the violin are excited.
This, combined with the unpredictability of the recording
or performance venue, leads to a chaotic "image" at best
of where the violin "is."

5. Does this reviewer simply have too much spare time and not
enough productive work to occupy it?

When I sit down at my harpsichord, "where" the music seems to
come from shifts all over the place, if a position could be
identified at all, and not from a fixed point or even in some
orderly fashion like from left-to-right as one progresses
chromatically up the keyboard. The apparent source shifts even
as the note decays as some partials decay at rates different
than others, phase relationships change in a time variant
fashion and as I myself move about.

Now consider a review published some years ago in the Absolute
Sound, as I recall, where the reviewer claimed that some product
had such precise imaging that the notes played on the lower
keyboard and upper keyboard could easily be placed in two
definite planes, one lower and one higher.

Which is ironic, since the strings, the places where they are
plucked, the places where the cross the SAME bridge on the
soundboard are the same and, indeed, they are radiated
acoustically by the same soundboard (multiple keyboard
harpsichords have but one soundboard).

Actually, it's not ironic, it's foolish and stupid, because the
reviewer, who apparently had NEVER heard a live harpsichord and
quite apparently had never seen one, simply assumed that if they
had two keyboards, the sound MUST be emitted from two different
places, and then prejudiced his review on that incorrect
assumption.

I would encourage people who are complaining about why the image
on their speakers wander, or are imprecise, or who are suffering
from the dreaded "unfocused soundstage" to GO to a live concert
and LISTEN WITH THEIR EYES CLOSED and see exactly how difficult
it is to by sound alone pinpoint the source of the music.

And, if like this reviewer, you have difficulty following the
music because the violin shifts left and right, then, like this
reviewer, you made the wrong choice for a hobby, suz real music
played in the real world by real musicians on real instruments
don't sound like this reviewers audio Parnassus.

I only submitted this because it seemed relevant to this thread, I did not
do this review, so I am probably the wrong guy to stand up for these claims.

Fortunately it is not a problem that I have, or have noticed, in my systems.
It should however be possible to observe if a problem like this was related
to the recordings, the hardware or room acoustics, by doing some
experiments.

KE