Sound check

CHRIS PASLES didn’t tell us anything about the sound of the Fauxharmonic in Sunday’s short item about its Beethoven symphony project [“A Sample of What’s in Store for Music?” Aug. 27]. I logged onto their website and listened to a bit of the two samples. We weren’t warned how unimpressive and tinny the “virtual orchestra” really is. One might give a little credit for the woodwind sound in the first few bars of the “Tristan” prelude, but the string parts and the full ensemble in both excerpts sounded like an AARP synthesizer in the bad ol’ days. I wonder what the perpetrators of this are expecting to accomplish. It is surely no substitute for a vast array of real orchestral renderings available on all of the current state of the art media. Orchestras of the world need not look to their laurels on this account, at least. And if composers need it to hear what their new works sound like, perhaps they need to reread their orchestration text books.

JOHN WRIGHT

Los Angeles