majnuunNavid
Oud Junkie
Posts: 622
Registered: 7-22-2013
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Mood: Dude, where's my Oud?
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$500 vs $3000 Oud: Can you tell which is which?
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
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Jody Stecher
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1373
Registered: 11-5-2011
Location: California
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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.
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majnuunNavid
Oud Junkie
Posts: 622
Registered: 7-22-2013
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Mood: Dude, where's my Oud?
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Excellent points Jody.
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naf
Oud Addict
Posts: 28
Registered: 9-14-2021
Location: Damascus - Syria
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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.
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kampanas
Oud Maniac
Posts: 52
Registered: 6-14-2020
Location: London, United Kingdom
Member Is Offline
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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.
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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.
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