Mike's Oud Forums

$500 vs $3000 Oud: Can you tell which is which?

majnuunNavid - 12-9-2021 at 04:51 PM

Doing this recording and video really surprised me. I used a simple Zoom Handy recorder microphone, and only used compressor and limiter to pump up volume. Otherwise there is no equalization applied to this recording.

Hossein Behroozinia once told me that different Ouds might sound great in the studio and others sound better in person. And this video really showed me that is indeed the case. Goes to show you really can't be sure from digital recording how and Oud is going to sound and feel. I wish it was not so...

Tell me what you think.
https://youtu.be/CHgazGpxRqc

Jody Stecher - 12-9-2021 at 08:18 PM

What I have found is that each oud (or sousaphone or glockenspiel etc) is recordable in such a way as to produce a sound on the recording that is the best that the particular instrument is capable of giving (in the hands of the the particular player). But the microphones and mic placement that produces the best result for Oud A might not be the best for Oud B. It's just like with strings and risha and also with different players. Player X gets a great sound from oud A and a fair-to-middling sound from Oud B. And vice versa. And then when strings set W is removed from Oud A and replaced with string set X it turns out the mic placement for Oud B now works better for Oud A. So in your case the cheaper oud sounds better in every way in this video. But it is likely that the $3k oud will– with the right mic and right mic placement— record a whole lot better than the $500 oud does at its best.

majnuunNavid - 12-10-2021 at 11:24 PM

Excellent points Jody.

naf - 12-12-2021 at 08:36 AM

I would like to thank Navid for opening this topic. I have the same zeryab oud that Navid used in his video, and before a year, I had the same surprise and experience he had. I was trying to record a sound font and I sampled pitches from a very expensive oud, and also sampled pitches from this exact Zeryab oud. To my surprise, the samples recorded from the expensive oud were full of undesirable overtones compared to the samples from the Zeryab oud. The amplitude of the Zeryab oud was lower than the amplitude of the expensive oud, but its samples lacked the many overtones produced by the expensive oud.
This experience caused me to think. I tried to find an explanation for this issue, and after some research, I found a paper by Caroline Traube called: "an Interdisciplinary Study of the Timber of the Classical Guitar" published in 2004 as a partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at McGill University. In this paper Caroline produces graphs of the soundboard modes of a guitar and I think the same principle applies to ouds.

Here is the graph for the guitar sound board in mode 1,1 (fundamental frequency), which radiates the greatest sound intensity:



Here is the 2,1 mode, which is nearly a perfect fifth:



Here is mode 1,2: it should create an octave, but instead a near pefect fifth is produced in the vertical axis:



She continues showing the graphes for first 6 modes, but what was of interest to me is this:



This last graph shows one of the higher modes and as you can see, part of the wave is completely consumed in the sound hole, which makes the soundboard produce an octave of the fundamental frequency instead of another higher (undesireable) harmonic.

So my theory concerning this particular Zeryab model is that due to it's huge main sound-hole compared to the soundboard area, many unpleasant overtones are not produced because their waves happen to be inside the void of the sound-hole. so we get a cleaner pitch. On the other hand, because the sound hole is really big, the amplitude of the waves is much lower, hence it sounds quieter than other ouds.

It is just a theory, and I might be wrong, and again, thanks Navid for opening this topic.

kampanas - 12-13-2021 at 12:06 PM
Quote:

So my theory concerning this particular Zeryab model is that due to it's huge main sound-hole compared to the soundboard area, many unpleasant overtones are not produced because their waves happen to be inside the void of the sound-hole. so we get a cleaner pitch. On the other hand, because the sound hole is really big, the amplitude of the waves is much lower, hence it sounds quieter than other ouds.


It is an interesting take but you have to remember that bracing and voicing of the soundboard will have the biggest impact on the sound. The miraslute oud is a Turkish oud, so it's likely it follows Turkish-style construction (you can hear it). The difference in quality is a huge point too, specifically because the miraslute will have had its soundboard voiced by the luthier, as is standard practice with luthier-made instruments. The Zeryab ouds are mass-produced in a factory environment, so it's likely their more entry-level models, like the one in the video, don't have the same level of attention paid to their voicing (if any). This will account for the lack of volume and drier tone more than anything.

The other big point in recording differences that hasn't been addressed in detail is compression. I know Navid said he applied very little, but youtube imparts its own compression on the videos uploaded, so certain frequencies that the Zeryab lacks in the room may be lifted by youtube's compression algorithm.