My Visit to Audiophile Style HQ — Another Take on Immersive vs. 2ch Audio

23 minutes ago, austinpop said:

There are no additional speakers behind the front L-C-R speakers, so how would 7.1.4 enhance soundstage depth behind the front speakers?

I'm not a Photoshop guy. Just put the whole symphonic in Atmos space like JW in Berlin. And this is the reason why surround L and R are so important same as main L and R.

25 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

There are no additional speakers behind the front L-C-R speakers, so how would 7.1.4 enhance soundstage depth behind the front speakers?

If we look at this from a technical standpoint, the soundstage depth capable from stereo speakers is also possible from the speakers surrounding the listener in an immersive setup. Nothing prohibits this. The possibilities of depth all around are there, if the recording and mixing engineers want to use them. 
 

I prefer to look at this differently. Trying to recreate something with something else, is a fools errand. There’s no need for the something else. Immersive is a different animal. We shouldn’t expect the same things. 
 

I know of nobody creating music who thinks the commercially released recordings are an accurate representation of the real event. It comes down to which illusion one prefers. It’s my belief that immersive can reconstruct the stereo illusion, if desired, and much more. The reverse can’t be true. 

5 minutes ago, El Guapo said:

I'm not a Photoshop guy. Just put the whole symphonic in Atmos space like JW in Berlin. And this is the reason why surround L and R are so important.

Sorry, you lost me here. I don't understand what point you're making. Let me try again. I did some light annotation on the picture. Say I'm sitting where the picture is taken. If this were a home system instead of a concert hall, the red L/C/R boxes would be speakers. The green arrow is the dimension I want conveyed with the most realism. 

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

But I still think for classical music, especially symphonic music, the current 7.1.4 layout does not really serve the needs of the music.

25 minutes ago, austinpop said:

This is the listener perspective in a classical concert. All the music is originating in front of you, but instruments are laid out on a stage that has depth. This is what you want reproduced well.

You are incorrectly thinking in only 2  dimensions. It is all originating in front of you,  but a large portion of what reaches your ears is coming at you from every direction, the hall is reverberant, you hear the reflections, you are IMMERSED in sound.. Even though the instruments may be  arranged the same in 2 different halls they will sound very different due to these reflections. This is what makes one hall great and one not so much.  This is what you are attempting to re-create with immersive sound, It simply can't be done with 2 channels

From my experience at the symphony this immersion is much more important than depth of the soundstage. I would have to go back and concentrate to be sure, and I will, but I don't recall any sense of depth, no sense that the horns in the back are further away than the violins up front. Perhaps our hall does not support that perception ?

3 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Sorry, you lost me here. I don't understand what point you're making. Let me try again. I did some light annotation on the picture. Say I'm sitting where the picture is taken. If this were a home system instead of a concert hall, the red L/C/R boxes would be speakers. The green arrow is the dimension I want conveyed with the most realism. 

 

This is a fun discussion. Good exchange of thoughts and experiences. 
 

In the photo above, we are counting on three front speakers to reproduce the ambiance of the hall’s side and rear walls and ceiling. By definition that seems crazy. Using actual speakers in all the locations, to reproduce what the mics picked up in those locations seems like a much better starting point for me. 

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

If we look at this from a technical standpoint, the soundstage depth capable from stereo speakers is also possible from the speakers surrounding the listener in an immersive setup. Nothing prohibits this. The possibilities of depth all around are there, if the recording and mixing engineers want to use them. 
 

My point here is if classical music were an area of focus, and reproducing soundstage depth were a priority, why not change to configuration to have LFS and RFS speakers to aid in that?

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I prefer to look at this differently. Trying to recreate something with something else, is a fools errand. There’s no need for the something else. Immersive is a different animal. We shouldn’t expect the same things. 
 

I know of nobody creating music who thinks the commercially released recordings are an accurate representation of the real event. It comes down to which illusion one prefers. It’s my belief that immersive can reconstruct the stereo illusion, if desired, and much more. The reverse can’t be true. 

Actually, I think for classical music, we are in fact trying to recreate the concert experience. At least, that is what I look for, and many good recording deliver a very satisfying result. Not the real thing, obviously.

Hi Rajiv, now that I think about it, it would’ve been really fun to turn off all the speakers except front R and L, then see what we hear for depth (while immersive is playing). I wonder from a scientific point of view, how much the other channels change our perception of what we hear front the front. 
 

Really cool stuff to think about. At least for me. 

13 minutes ago, austinpop said:

why not change to configuration to have LFS and RFS speakers to aid in that

Here's the immersive sound stage looks like (sorry the pic cannot show Lrs and Rrs). The gentleman in front of you is the center. The L, C and R are very far from you, almost the rear wall of the stage.

2 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

My point here is if classical music were an area of focus, and reproducing soundstage depth were a priority, why not change to configuration to have LFS and RFS speakers to aid in that?

 

 

 

 

Actually, I think for classical music, we are in fact trying to recreate the concert experience. At least, that is what I look for, and many good recording deliver a very satisfying result. Not the real thing, obviously.

That would be a really cool speaker config. I wonder if the science behind such a depth layout would pan out to what we hear and/or if that depth can be mimicked identically as long as the sound comes from the front. Way out of my league, but cool stuff. 

I once asked Constellation Audio why its preamps have a balance control. The answer was that people like to adjust it to better reproduce their exact seat location in a certain hall for concerts. Taking this a step further, and seeing people sitting behind the musicians in Rajiv’s photo, it would be really cool if we could rotate the immersive soundstage or move the listening position to wherever we want. 

@El Guapo Ah thank you, I see what you're saying. Interesting thought. I'm sure the recordings we heard at Chris's did not mix in such a way -- where the rear of the stage is coincident with LCR, and all the instruments are placed in front. But perhaps that would be a cool way to do this.

15 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

That would be a really cool speaker config. I wonder if the science behind such a depth layout would pan out to what we hear and/or if that depth can be mimicked identically as long as the sound comes from the front. Way out of my league, but cool stuff. 

I know, right! This a question for the creators of the format, and the creators of the mixes.

I should stress that my observations were based on a small set of classical albums (<10) that I listened to at Chris's. At the end of the day, I am merely expressing my point of view as a listener, and what the attributes are that I value most. I did not hear these attributes particularly well enhanced in the subset I tried at Chris's. Perhaps better mixes are coming. I remain open minded about the possibilities.

Especially as it will give me an excuse for another session at Chris's!

48 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Sorry, you lost me here. I don't understand what point you're making. Let me try again. I did some light annotation on the picture. Say I'm sitting where the picture is taken. If this were a home system instead of a concert hall, the red L/C/R boxes would be speakers. The green arrow is the dimension I want conveyed with the most realism. 

 

Two speakers will do this. You don't need the centre, and the L and R can be moved about a third of the way towards the centre, from where they are in that altered pic. The sense of depth is already encoded, because of the pickup of reverb by the microphones - unless the whole thing has been savagely manipulated by misguided audio engineers ... this photo is actually a very good representation of what it sounds like, with convincing replay.

Why this doesn't happen with less capable setups is because the low level detail is too blurred - one's hearing can't work out the clues, and the sense of space is missing. A better SQ allows the volume to be adjusted to realistic levels, and then the full immersive experience just happens. Automatically. If your system can't be set  to the right volume to do this without you flinching, then its standard is not high enough to recreate the contents of the recording accurately.

18 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Interesting thought.

DG's recent releases of classical recordings already implemented such way. Very enjoyable! ☺️

@Kurvenal said "Two examples that I have found interesting in this respect are the track Exhalation performed by cellist Johannes Moser and Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint performed by Mats Bergstrom"

I'm a huge fan of Steve Reich and have been privileged to attend a number of performances of his work by the Steve Reich ensemble and other performers. I'm currently reading Conversations, where there's discussion about the importance of the exact placement on stage of performers/groups of performers within each hall they performed in, as to the whether the piece was experienced by the audience as intended. I'm referring in particular to conversations between SR and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Of course Steve Reich has had the freedom to pursue different arrangements than the conventional classical configurations.

Thanks for the recording recommendations.

Gee, I am having a problem here. So a two channel stereo system can create depth but a system with three fronts, surrounds and height speakers can’t. Sure it can, it is up to the mixer. There is a great Atmos mix at TRPTK that creates incredible front depth. 

On 4/4/2023 at 10:32 AM, ted_b said:

Geoffrey, I have been on the QQ forum for years, and visit and post on it daily (so do several folks here).  It's a go-to for immersive recordings.  👍

Is there any section on QQ forum that focuses on “native” immersive recordings with “immersion built into the entire process, with player, instrument and mic placements all set up for the best immersive capture possible” as you described in your post above?  Who else is doing this besides 2L and IAN?  Would love to find a way to promote these types of efforts since the quality of immersive remixes from archival recordings is so variable…

7 minutes ago, The Immersive Frame said:

This is indeed a very interesting discussion going on here and from a professional engineer's perspective I am delighted that this kind of conversation is happening among music lovers!

 

Exactly. When listening to classical music live in a concert venue, the acoustics are enveloping us from all directions. Even if mostly subcontious, our human hearing perceives sound reflection patterns with their distinct directionality. Together with diffuse reverb this gives us a sense of the space we find ourselves in. There is also very interesting research pointing out the emotional aspect of sound envelopment and the importance of reflection patterns for the perception of clarity and balance within an orchestra. In some halls you might additionaly hear very interesting localization effects of a french horn all of the sudden sounding from behind you when closing your eyes. Not even speaking of repertoire that acually makes use of discretely placed instruments (thinking of Berlioz' Requiem, Mahler's 3rd, venetian polychoral style, etc.).

 

Classical music throughout history evolved in very different kind of rooms but very often a certain genre or type of composition is closely connected to a certain type of venue. Sacred music often is laid out in a way to embrace the long and dense reverb of large cathedrals wheras we might not so much enjoy a string quartet in a large venue with very little reflective surfaces around the ensemble, just to mention two examples. Within the orchestral repertoire itself there has been a huge development: whereas concert venues still sounded much different during Beethoven's time (rooms with a close proximity to the audience, high acoustic gain values to name a few parameters) the late romantic repertoire with huge instrument counts would never be imaginable without the appropriate spaces to accomodate them. This illustrates how closely repertoire, ensemble and the acoustics of a venue are connected. Some may even say the room is an extension of the musical instrument itself.

 

Coming to the recording side of things, music transmission technology for a long time has allowed us to capture sound at a specific point in the room and play it back through one speaker. Stereo together with very advanced recording and mixing techniques has later allowed us to create a remarkable sense of depth and space in recordings but we can never forget that this is still a reduction of the actual acoustic experience in a concert hall to one frontal plane.
Here lays the actual challenge in stereo recordings: making wise decisions how to translate the space into two channels while maintaining both, a certain acoustic feeling and clarity.

 

A full, natural acoustic envelopment is finally possible in music recordings with immersive audio formats. When done properly it is quite astonishing how much the additional ambience sound coming from the side, rear and height speakers can add to the sense of depth, the clear presentation of musical structures and the natural apearance of instrument timbres. Still I couldn't agree more with Chris when he writes

For immersive recordings this is true aswell and the final outcome is a series of aesthetic decisions during the entire recording process. In a way a recording will always be an interpretation and maybe an enhancement of reality. The only things that matter in the end are if it is enjoyable and if it does justice to the music itself.

 

---

I'd still like to address one observation described by @austinpop:

 

 

To say at first, there is no technical reason to lose any achivement we made in Stereo. In the most simple case you can do the same you did in Stereo with the L/R channels of a 5.1, 7.1.4, 9.1.4 or whatever multichannel system and add somthing to it. But immersive formats offer so many more great possibilities to further shape parameters like depth and distance: one aspect for example is that we can afford much more diffuse sound without loosing detail and transparency as the "reverb" of a hall can suddenly be presented "correctly" in terms of directionality. This highly contributes to the perception of depth. Of course this requires a "native immersive" approach – as @Kurvenal puts it – from the very beginning of making a record. For a proper immersive recording you have ideally an advanced setup of room microphones in the venue capturing all these natural reflections and reverb patterns.

 

The problem here is that at this moment the market requires a huge amount of albums being presented in Dolby Atmos. Many of them have been recorded long before immersive audio was a thing and it is a huge challenge that is unfortunately often underestimated to create a proper Atmos mix for a long existing product.
Taking for example a record from the early 2000's, an engineer might be lucky having the chance to go back to the original multitrack. This as a foundation allows for an Atmos mix that can achieve a lot but it still is a quite complex ant time consuming procedure to make up for the lack of properly placed ambience mics. An engineer who is very considerate about his business might create something great in such situations but the production budgets often point in another direction.

 

On top of it, as @austinpop mentioned, many Atmos mixes are currently only available through lossy streaming. 768kbit/s for an entire immersive mix is just ridiculous and apart from the commonly known compression artifacts, the codec "eats up" a lot of the decorellated ambient information in the surrounding channels. This is another reason why many records might appear as "Stereo plus some hot air". This is very frustrating and we can only hope that the streaming services will sooner than later advance to any kind of lossless immersive transmission and that more major products are being released e.g. on Blu-ray.

Thanks so much for joining and contributing your perspective. 

13 hours ago, JoeWhip said:

Gee, I am having a problem here. So a two channel stereo system can create depth but a system with three fronts, surrounds and height speakers can’t. Sure it can, it is up to the mixer. There is a great Atmos mix at TRPTK that creates incredible front depth. 

I have to agree here.  I also felt that was strange as well. My guess would be that the Immersive Audio setup would have a much better potential to recreate a realistic sound stage etc.  

.

5 hours ago, The Immersive Frame said:

This is indeed a very interesting discussion going on here and from a professional engineer's perspective I am delighted that this kind of conversation is happening among music lovers!

Thanks for your fantastic insights.  Can you share how much Immersive Audio has caught on in the industry?  I am getting a few threads via Twitter on more and more engineers working on IA but it's still not a lot.

.

5 hours ago, The Immersive Frame said:

This is indeed a very interesting discussion going on here and from a professional engineer's perspective I am delighted that this kind of conversation is happening among music lovers!

 

Exactly. When listening to classical music live in a concert venue, the acoustics are enveloping us from all directions. Even if mostly subcontious, our human hearing perceives sound reflection patterns with their distinct directionality. Together with diffuse reverb this gives us a sense of the space we find ourselves in. There is also very interesting research pointing out the emotional aspect of sound envelopment and the importance of reflection patterns for the perception of clarity and balance within an orchestra. In some halls you might additionaly hear very interesting localization effects of a french horn all of the sudden sounding from behind you when closing your eyes. Not even speaking of repertoire that acually makes use of discretely placed instruments (thinking of Berlioz' Requiem, Mahler's 3rd, venetian polychoral style, etc.).

 

Classical music throughout history evolved in very different kind of rooms but very often a certain genre or type of composition is closely connected to a certain type of venue. Sacred music often is laid out in a way to embrace the long and dense reverb of large cathedrals wheras we might not so much enjoy a string quartet in a large venue with very little reflective surfaces around the ensemble, just to mention two examples. Within the orchestral repertoire itself there has been a huge development: whereas concert venues still sounded much different during Beethoven's time (rooms with a close proximity to the audience, high acoustic gain values to name a few parameters) the late romantic repertoire with huge instrument counts would never be imaginable without the appropriate spaces to accomodate them. This illustrates how closely repertoire, ensemble and the acoustics of a venue are connected. Some may even say the room is an extension of the musical instrument itself.

 

Coming to the recording side of things, music transmission technology for a long time has allowed us to capture sound at a specific point in the room and play it back through one speaker. Stereo together with very advanced recording and mixing techniques has later allowed us to create a remarkable sense of depth and space in recordings but we can never forget that this is still a reduction of the actual acoustic experience in a concert hall to one frontal plane.
Here lays the actual challenge in stereo recordings: making wise decisions how to translate the space into two channels while maintaining both, a certain acoustic feeling and clarity.

 

A full, natural acoustic envelopment is finally possible in music recordings with immersive audio formats. When done properly it is quite astonishing how much the additional ambience sound coming from the side, rear and height speakers can add to the sense of depth, the clear presentation of musical structures and the natural apearance of instrument timbres. Still I couldn't agree more with Chris when he writes

For immersive recordings this is true aswell and the final outcome is a series of aesthetic decisions during the entire recording process. In a way a recording will always be an interpretation and maybe an enhancement of reality. The only things that matter in the end are if it is enjoyable and if it does justice to the music itself.

 

---

I'd still like to address one observation described by @austinpop:

 

 

To say at first, there is no technical reason to lose any achivement we made in Stereo. In the most simple case you can do the same you did in Stereo with the L/R channels of a 5.1, 7.1.4, 9.1.4 or whatever multichannel system and add somthing to it. But immersive formats offer so many more great possibilities to further shape parameters like depth and distance: one aspect for example is that we can afford much more diffuse sound without loosing detail and transparency as the "reverb" of a hall can suddenly be presented "correctly" in terms of directionality. This highly contributes to the perception of depth. Of course this requires a "native immersive" approach – as @Kurvenal puts it – from the very beginning of making a record. For a proper immersive recording you have ideally an advanced setup of room microphones in the venue capturing all these natural reflections and reverb patterns.

 

The problem here is that at this moment the market requires a huge amount of albums being presented in Dolby Atmos. Many of them have been recorded long before immersive audio was a thing and it is a huge challenge that is unfortunately often underestimated to create a proper Atmos mix for a long existing product.
Taking for example a record from the early 2000's, an engineer might be lucky having the chance to go back to the original multitrack. This as a foundation allows for an Atmos mix that can achieve a lot but it still is a quite complex ant time consuming procedure to make up for the lack of properly placed ambience mics. An engineer who is very considerate about his business might create something great in such situations but the production budgets often point in another direction.

 

On top of it, as @austinpop mentioned, many Atmos mixes are currently only available through lossy streaming. 768kbit/s for an entire immersive mix is just ridiculous and apart from the commonly known compression artifacts, the codec "eats up" a lot of the decorellated ambient information in the surrounding channels. This is another reason why many records might appear as "Stereo plus some hot air". This is very frustrating and we can only hope that the streaming services will sooner than later advance to any kind of lossless immersive transmission and that more major products are being released e.g. on Blu-ray.

Thank you so much for joining the discussion and contributing your insights. They make me much more optimistic that the format itself is capable of rendering the attributes I described as desirous, even if precious few mixes currently available today do that satisfactorily. 

16 hours ago, The Immersive Frame said:

On top of it, as @austinpop mentioned, many Atmos mixes are currently only available through lossy streaming. 768kbit/s for an entire immersive mix is just ridiculous and apart from the commonly known compression artifacts, the codec "eats up" a lot of the decorellated ambient information in the surrounding channels. This is another reason why many records might appear as "Stereo plus some hot air". This is very frustrating and we can only hope that the streaming services will sooner than later advance to any kind of lossless immersive transmission and that more major products are being released e.g. on Blu-ray.

Given the technical savvy inherent in this community, would love to hear thoughts on scenarios with a viable lossless immersive music ecosystem as the desired end-state...

Just now, Kurvenal said:

Given the technical savvy inherent in this community, would love to hear thoughts on scenarios with a viable lossless immersive music ecosystem as the desired end-state...

Can you say this in a different way? I think I follow, but I'm not sure and don't want to waste your time by writing a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't address the correct topic :~)

2 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Can you say this in a different way? I think I follow, but I'm not sure and don't want to waste your time by writing a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't address the correct topic :~)

Apologies for the vagueness, but I did not want to stifle creativity by being too direct in my questioning.  

There are no doubt technical hurdles impeding "lossless immersive transmission" by the streaming services, but presumably these can be overcome if there are sufficient commercial incentives for doing so.  Any parallels from the transition in two-channel streaming from mp3 to hi res that could inform how these incentives might be shaped?  

On the consumer side, what developments could drive an uptick in immersive installations in the home to make @bobflood wrong?  

On 4/9/2023 at 10:00 PM, bobflood said:

My personal opinion is that Atmos will find the most success in high-end automotive applications where you have a captive audience in a fixed position. I think home use will remain a  small niche due to the high cost and high complexity.

There are no doubt many other angles from which this problem could be approached, but I wanted to stimulate some discussion in the hope that we could create some momentum for change, or maybe even prompt the emergence of some change agents!