recording method vs sound reproduction

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Stereo recording is as old as the hills now. Yes, there are different mike techniques, some of which, like two-mike coincident pair and binaural, have theoretical advantages. But, they have flopped commercially and they have other practical and theoretical problems that have not been solved. There are few such recordings that are recent and take advantage of the better, higher resolution equipment we have today. Two-mike is also anathema to the recording of pop music where multitrack mixing of different performers on their own separately miked tracks has long been preferred in order to be able to create an "artistic" mix.

 

I am a classical music guy and I finally came to the realization that stereo itself was the limiting factor. Yet, it persists in popularity in spite of the realization by many sophisticated listeners that stereo still leaves a big gap in recreated realism vs. the live event. I think that is true no matter what one does in milking with stereo or even with the fanciest playback gear. So, I think trying to "perfect" the stereo recording/playback process is a lost cause. The gap vs. live music still remains and it will continue to do so because the listening models in stereo, even at their best, have important weakness and limitations.

 

Discretely recorded multichannel is the biggest step forward toward better recording/playback realism in my book since the advent of stereo itself. It is a small niche commercially and primarily used via hi rez SACD and for music on BD-A or -V. But, there are thousands of available recordings. I have about 3,000 such discs myself, and there are thousands more I do not have, yet at least. Some practitioners use a minimalist 5-mike technique - Channel Classics - while many more use multi-mike - Polyhymnia and many others. I have many excellent examples of both techniques and I have no clear favorite.

 

So, I sold off much of my stereo gear 8 years ago and I have never looked back. I just do not listen to much in stereo any more, except for the occasional important archival performance. Since then, I have heard no stereo even at ridiculous prices rivaling the cost of a decent house that comes close to the sound of my system or those of close friends with quality Mch systems. We all go to a lot of live concerts and to us, stereo just does not cut it any more.

 

And, I have not heard it, nor is it guaranteed to commercially succeed, but sonic realism might be on the threshold of getting better still via Auro 3D, which expands recording and playback into a true 3rd dimension, closer to what we actually hear live in the concert hall.

 

Stereo recordings cannot even dream of reducing the gap with a live event even vs. today's 2D 5.1/7.1 Mch recordings. But, the myth persists that somehow some great breakthrough or refinement of 2-channel stereo will do the trick. Sorry, stereo had its chance and improved though it is since the 1950's, it just ain't' gonna get there.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

George - just a couple of things. First, the Mercury's and RCAs of the 50's were originally released to consumers on mag tape in 3 channel, which is how they were originally recorded. 2-channel playback was a compromise introduced later because that was the best they could do with the LP and the 45/45 degree cutting process. So, everything was down mixed on those labels from the get go, as they continued to record them in 3-channel. There are SACDs containing hi rez remasterings of many of those in both 2- and 3- channel. It is just no contest that the 3- channel sounds much better.

 

Second, as is clear, I was not born yesterday. I have many man-years of stereo listening experience dating way back before I discovered Mch. I have heard probably all the stereo recordings you have cited and many more on very good playback systems. My Mch system, which is very carefully calibrated and of very high quality, also plays excellent stereo when called upon. I can easily switch back and forth. I do not know exactly what you have heard in Mch or what the degree of your live concert attendance is. But, everyone who listens in my room who has good live concert experience strongly prefers the Mch vs. the stereo version of the same recording. They find it much more true to the live concert experience, as do I.

 

Your summary of the state of the quality of Mch recordings also betrays very superficial and apparently trumped up knowledge based on what appears to be little experience with classical Mch media and sound systems. Great sounding Mch recordings are not few and far between at all. One of my closest friends reviews many Mch recordings for a couple of major magazines. You would know his name. He does not share your dismissive view which is clearly based on precious little experience.

 

 

IsoMike - yes I have them all. Good, yes, but there are better which happen not to be minimally miked. In any case, ISoMike did not set the world afire and the label is defunct after only a few releases. Meanwhile, labels like BIS, Channel Classics, Pentatone, RCO Live, Harmoni Mundi, and many more small, European labels dedicated to Mch continue to turn out really excellent classical recordings as they have done for years.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

I am a location recording engineer. I have probably recorded more symphony orchestra concerts than most people have attended. I have recorded in 4-channel, 2-channel and both digitally and analog. IOW, my experience isn't just listening to music, it's capturing it as well and it's extensive.

 

I have a Sony XA777ES multi-channel SACD player and I have scores of SACDs with surround channels on them. My main system is set up with 4 identical Martin-Logan Vantage ES speakers and I can and have listened to all of my multi-channel SACDs in surround mode. So your characterization of my "precious little experience" is incorrect. Sorry about that. Better luck next time!

 

 

Now we get to the crux of the debate. You see, I happen to believe that any classical recording not minimally miked is wrong. This is a matter of taste. But those titles that you find "better" than IsoMike recordings because they are not minimally miked, I dismiss out of hand as sounding terrible. I don't really care that you know some reviewer who happens to agree with you, If he thinks that surround recordings made with a forest of microphones sounds like real music, then his tastes and yours are antithetical to my own.

 

Irrelevant. BTW, IsoMike was merely an example of correctly made surround. There are, of course, others.

 

Some are, some aren't. Some of the best surround I have ever heard was recorded using a British system called Ambisonics. This system used a tetrahedral microphone array called a Soundfield mike. The British record company, Nimbus used it a lot in the late 70's and 80's. What was good about it was that the microphone captured the space that the performance occupied, not just the instruments themselves. Images were stable, and life-like and the hall ambience was extremely realistic. It was not a commercial success either. While these recordings sounded very good, I found that Nimbus' approach resulted in a somewhat distant perspective with which I don't really agree.

 

Just to be clear, my initial post was not to criticize surround sound, but to counter your mistaken (and "very superficial and apparently trumped up knowledge" of the subject) belief that stereophonic sound and surround sound are two different animals and that stereo is passé. Correctly done surround IS stereo in that it fulfills the actual definition of stereophonic sound by "fleshing-out", as it were, the three-dimensionality of a real listening experience.

George - I respect your experience. However, it is clear that you are missing something by insisting on 4.0 rather than 5.0. The ITU standard using 5.0/5.1 is the de facto standard used by most classical recording teams today. The major exceptions are many releases on the LSO Live and Hyperion labels and a few others. But, you will find that those efforts are not highly regarded sonically for that and other reasons, and not just by me. Our ears have very high directional sensitivity front and center, so the center channel becomes important for best imaging vs. a phantom center. It also "anchors" the image in spite of slight, conscious or unconscious turns of one's head.

I have also had this same 4.0 vs. 5.0 argument with Peter McGrath, who, like you, insists on bucking the current trend and living in the quad-era past. There is 25% more information conveyed by the center channel vs. 4.0, and it is not simply the redundant sum of Front L+R.

And, just for the record, I am quite aware of the true definition of "stereo". I have used the word as most people understand it, which is to mean 2-channel sound.

I understand and lived through the dark days originated mainly by DGG of the highly multi-miked, "multiple mono" stereo recordings. I also have great respect for Jared Sacks at Channel Classics and his minimalist 5.0 milking. He does produce many excellent recordings that way, from chamber to symphonic scale. But, I have just as much respect for the output of Polyhymnia, Sound/Mirror, Jack Vad, Michael Bishop, and many other engineering teams who use extensive multi milking.

I have no exact explanation for it, just a layman's theory, but the old characteristic signature of multi-milking just does not show up to my ears in countless modern Mch recordings. I could provide a list of hundreds, but check out most anything on the RCO Live label, mainly Polyhymnia engineered, such as the excellent Mahler 3rd with Jansons and the Concertgebouw. Also, check out the BD-Vs of the Abbado Bruckner 5th at the Lucerne Festival or any of the San Francisco Keeping Score BD-Vs with MTT (except the Shostakovich 5th from the Albert Hall, which is poor). You can even see all the spot mikes in the videos, but the sound is really quite excellent with no audible trace of the multi milking.

There was also an interesting transition that occurred in the technical team that recorded the Mariinsky Orchestra under Gergiev. The first two releases had been engineered by Sound/Mirror in 5.0. Shostakovich's The Nose and his 15th were those releases and they received very high accolades for sonics. Sound/Mirror were then replaced by the Classic Sounds Ltd. team, of LSO Live infamy, who use a 4.0 technique. If you look at the trend of reviews and user responses at sa-cd.net, there is a clear drop off in perceived audio quality on that label. There were undoubtedly other factors than just 4.0 that contributed to this. But, the sound became run-of-the-mill, as is typical of the LSO Live Mch catalog?

Your praise of ISoMike is consistent with your 4.0 mindset. But, if you try the Mandelring Quartet's Shostakovich cycle on Audite or any of the 2L string quartet releases, all in 5.0, I think you will find them to be superior sonically to ISoMike 4.0's with the Fry St. Quartet.

Also, for chamber scale, try Sound/Mirror's superbly engineered Profanes et Sacrees with the Boston Chamber Players in multi-miked 5.0. Or, try their superb Beethoven Piano Sonatas with Peter Takacs on a Boesendoerfer. Or, for symphonic scale, their Brahms German Requiem with Levine and the BSO is quite excellent. I do not know of a better recording for large orchestra and chorus than that. I visited with Sound/Mirror at Symphony Hall, Boston several years ago and I got a guided tour of their extensive multi-mike setup, which is what they prefer everywhere. Yet, I do not hear the evidence of any inferiority of Mch mult-milking with Sound/Mirror engineering or a host of other excellent teams' recordings.

My examples only skim the surface, of course. But, it seems to me you need to get around more and listen with an open mind to a lot more modern, Mch recordings in true 5.0. Not saying your mindset was not once correct, but I think it gets in your way in appreciating what has been going on in discrete Mch. Great things have been happening over the past 10 years or more in Mch music recording. Ambisonics has been dead for a long time and is only a sentimental memory, like myth. There is absolutely no need for it, nor could it survive commercially, given what we have in discrete Mch recording today.

I also have 7 Martin Logan 'stat hybrids all around with a JL f113 sub, all fed by my PC, Dirac Live and the superb Exasound e28 DAC and some very good amps. This is beyond the sound I had only dreamed of for decades as a stereo-centric audiophile.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Strictly speaking accuracy during playback with crossed figure 8's would be improved somewhat if the speakers were angled at 90 degrees.

 

You're making the classic error in viewing microphone pickup patterns as if they worked like camera lenses. They don't. There is actually little or no correlation between speaker placement and microphone arrangement. There are simply too many variables on both ends of the chain to make such a simplistic analogy.

 

Well, George, believe what you want. But, Kavi Alexander, for one, who exclusively uses coincident pair recording for his Water Lily recordings, would strongly disagree with you. sixaugfb is right. Check also Robert E. Greene's audio blog. REG is a strong proponent of the Blumlein mike technique, and he has worked with Kavi on numerous recordings. And, it says so right on the Water Lily album covers. Professor Greene could prove it to you mathematically and he has a second listening chair at the +- 90 position in his listening room just for that reason.

 

Sure, you can listen without doing that, but that negates the spatial advantages of the coincident pair technique. It is part of the reason that mike technique has flopped commercially, since it requires a different speaker positioning.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

 

I suspect that we listen for different things in our pursuit of high-fidelity.

 

George - you got right.

But, when I add up what you have said, I think you are inflating your Mch experience both in recording and in listening. I am not aware of any commercial Mch recordings you may have done. Please correct me if I am wrong.

You think you know all about Mch classical recording, but you clearly do not. You strongly object to some modern Mch recording best practices, whether minimally or mult-miked. You are unable to play them back as intended in 5.0 ITU. You also have a blasé attitude about speaker placement, which is fairly critical for best Mch sound. And, your actual listening experience with a decent sized sample of modern Mch recordings played on a properly set up system is suspect. Yet, you rush to judgement on all of them, citing doctrines and beliefs of your own, whether you know how they were made or not.

My main complaint is very apparent in most of the commercial surround recordings that I have: They don't have any image because the multiple mikes are pan-potted into position, and that is an electronic artifice that has no depth and can only move instruments laterally.

In the process, you cite bogus issues such as "pan-potting", which does not occur in best classical Mch music recording practice. That does occur in Mch remasterings from multi-track pop recordings, such as Dark Side of the Moon, agreed. But, so what? It is not an issue with classical recording, which we were discussing. You have invented a non-existent issue merely to bolster your weak argument.

What can I say about "they don't have any image"? Yeah, well, that can happen if you disregard proper ITU speaker layout. But, it does not happen on my system or on numerous others I have heard. The frontal image simply collapses in both width and depth and hall ambience is greatly diminished on switching between hi rez Mch and stereo. It is quite a compelling demo on any properly set up system.

So, others may choose to believe your sweeping dismissal of classical Mch, which is their right. But, I will stick with Mch myself, thank you. That is true whether or not Mch is "popular". Classical music is already a small niche. And, hi rez Mch classical an even smaller one. But, the recordings keep coming. Check out HRAudio.net (formerly sa-cd.net) for a complete catalog, non-classical genres as well, which identifies recordings in Mch.

None of the active classical concert goers I know - who are all smart, experienced and sophisticated audiophiles, by the way - disagree with me that properly done, discretely recorded Mch is the closest recordings have yet come to reproducing the realism of the live event in the concert hall. Mch simply captures several times more information from the live event than 2-channel, and it successfully reproduces that to our ears in the listening room given a properly set up system.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

And a somewhat companion (same snapshot of 2009 BIS) reply to Petry's :

Brinkmann too is currently of Take5 Music Production

 

This article on Brinkman must be older. BIS has shifted to 96k/24 for the past year or two. I am anything but a sampling rate fascist. BIS recordings, even at 44k/24, are invariably excellent, multi-miked though they may be. Yes, their approach goes more in the minimalist direction, but it includes spot mikes. Listening on a good system, rather than beliefs and mind sets, demonstrates that excellence to a tee.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

 

You don't need to say anything. If you think these wholly artificial presentations have any real imaging, then you don't understand what actual soundstage is at all!

 

My god, you just insist on making what started out as a simple discussion about stereo vs surround into some adversarial argument. As I said before, My contribution to this thread was merely to explain to you that two-channel stereo is neither dead nor passé, and that properly recorded Mch is still stereo. My mistake was to continue to engage you after I corrected your misconceptions.

 

Christ, you don't read for comprehension, do you? Where have I disagreed that "properly done, discretely recorded Mch is the closest recordings have yet come to reproducing the realism of the live event in the concert hall"? It's the "properly done" part and what each of us considers "properly done" that seems to keep our views apart. This is going nowhere. I've tolerated your half-baked and often erroneous misconceptions about recording history and procedures, and put up with your insults long enough on this thread. Go, enjoy your Mch. believe your misconceptions, and enjoy them both in peace, but enjoy them without me. I won't respond to any more of your nonsense. So let's just agree to disagree, OK?

George - I think the adversarial argument started with you. I stated my listening impressions with Mch vs. stereo and on the work done commercially by some very good, very knowledgable classical music recording engineers, some of whom I know personally. They all cut their teeth on 2-channel recording and they have decided that Mch is just better for classical music.

 

I alluded to my long prior experience with live concerts and with stereo listening so that people could understand where I was coming from. You blasted my opinions and those recordings and how they were engineered, even the whole concept of Mch, based on your own recording experience and listening to some of them.

But, it is now clear that your own experience with Mch recording is amateur or semi-pro, at best. You really have no clue how those recordings are made commercially, and you are unable yourself to make a Mch recording that even satisfies you. But, you blast away at commercial Mch recordings and their technique, nonetheless. Did you ever consider the notion that you just flat out do not understand Mch, are doing it wrong and that the pros, who make a living in a competitive market for recording engineers, know some stuff that you do not?

You listen to those commercial recordings in a system not set up to the same ITU standards. And, you consider them as sounding like crap. You even listen to just the surround channels alone and conclude they do not sound any good, as if you actually knew what the surround tracks alone should sound like, given that they contain sound from distant mikes with tons of hall reflections. George, that's just nuts. It is even worse than judging a 2-channel recording by just listening to the left channel.

Suggestion: get hold of a Channel Classics SACD, like the recent Mahler 9th with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Jared Sacks, the owner/engineer of Channel, uses only a pure 5-mike omni recording setup. (I am a good friend of a Grammy-winning classical Mch recording engineer who works for Jared. I have learned a fair bit from him.) Anyway, that should appease your minimalist mike dogma. Set your system up according to the ITU angular configuration, with equal volume settings for all channels. (You could look up the ITU standard.) Phantom center is not best, but it will have to do in your system. But, do not just throw the center channel information away. Reroute it, if you can, to mix with the front LR channels, as you said you could. The fronts of ML surround dipole speakers, by the way, should be pointed at the sweet spot, just in case you were doing something weird with them.

I am perfectly comfortable with you not liking Mch for whatever reason. But, you have now provided clarification of what your opinion is based on, and it is clear that you never listened to it as it was intended and by the standards it was engineered to. Even if you had done that, and you still did not like it, what could I say?

Actually, I would say this. Dismiss my opinion, but consider the well endowed, world class orchestras who have formed their own private labels, like the Concertgebouw, the San Francisco and Boston Symphonies. There are others in Europe, mainly. They could have chosen any media, recording teams and recording techniques, and could have adopted any approach they wished. Any engineer would have died to record these prestigious orchestras. And, the quality of those recording efforts would have been paramount to properly showcase the artistry of those fine orchestras. They just do not settle for crap.

So, what did they choose? They opted for the much more complex and costly approach of hi rez Mch, with RBCD and hi rez stereo spin off mastering derived from that. Those three orchestras all use multi-mike Mch engineering, by the way. The results speak for themselves, and they are uniformly excellent. So, do we believe you, with your very limited and tainted experience, or do we believe those orchestras are all a bunch of idiot lemmings? You are, of course right, as usual, and everyone else wrong, including me.

But, don't listen to me. Look at countless Mch recording reviews at sa-cd.net, in Andy Quint's TAS column or his Fanfare reviews or in Kal Rubinson's regular Stereophile column. More lemmings, I suppose, who do not understand proper imaging.

Of course, hi rez, classical Mch will never rule the world commercially. Who ever said it would? So, if commercial success is the litmus test for best sonics, listen to pop MP3s for heaven's sake.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Ok, George. Hopefully, we are done here. But, do try Channel Classics in Mch with a correct speaker setup. As I said, they are minimally miked, just 5 omnis, and also in pure DSD, if that matters to you. But, though you protest, I still do not believe you have any clue how truly professional hi rez Mch recordings are made. Yes, that varies somewhat from label to label and from team to team. But, I am having the time of my life with them. I never thought audio in the home could be this good. But, of course, unlike you, my sense of proper imaging is seriously handicapped, in spite of all the 2 dozen or so live concerts I attend each year. Vive la handicap!

 

BTW, Ampex made a 3-channel tape machine back in the 50's:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_multitrack_recording

 

Yes, I realize it was a pro machine, and consumer versions for playback of 3-channel RCAs and Mercurys from tape never quite came to fruition. That idea was quickly overwhelmed by the appearance of the stereo LP, when standards for that medium were finally agreed upon, rather suddenly as I read in an archival copy of Audio Magazine. 2-channel LP technology was not new, but there were differing proprietary standards. Finally, there was industry-wide agreement in the late 50's using the Westrex 45/45 degree cutter head. And, of course, the LP was much cheaper to manufacture than tape reproductions. Unfortunately, we lost the center channel in that Faustian bargain in the interest of better market penetration. So, the rest, as they say, is history.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Incidentally' date=' with your esteem of Channel Classics, Jared Sacks (also in 2009) wrote :

And, recently, some thoughts regarding his own approach to recording :

 

Thanks, Willhelm, for the quotes. Yes, I remember you well from sa-cd.net forums and some private emails.

 

I do esteem the sound of Channel Classics sound very much. They are one of the very best. However, I am not a pure DSD Nazi. Nor, do I place their minimally miked sound, Grimm a/d converters, etc. on a pedestal above others. Personally, I am just as happy sonically with RCO Live, BIS or most anything recorded by the Polyhymnia or Sound/Mirror teams, to name but a few. There are many others. These include a cross-section of teams using lesser or greater multi-milking, some in pure DSD, some not. There is more than one way to skin a cat or to engineer an excellent disc.

 

 

I think if you avoid rigid mind sets, open your mind and ears, there can be some great rewards, sometimes where you do not expect it.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

That's somewhat simplistic, but yes. But it's not just one microphone per channel, it's the kind of microphone and how those mikes are arrayed. Spaced omni's, for instance, to me are wrong. You'll never get phase coherent stereo out of them. Coincident mikes using figure-of-eights or cardioids, in XY, AB, ORTF or MS configuration are, on the other hand the only correct way to record for stereo. Most minimally-miked surround, for instance is five channel; with a single omnidirectional mike for each of the five channels (with or without a point-one for the mono bass*): right front, center front, left front, and right and left rear. The three front channels screw the stereo up beyond redemption! Even though it can "sound good" and even spectacular, it fails at what I can only believe to be it's primary goal which is to transport the listener to the venue where the performance took place. Yes, the real "thing" has the room ambience coming from behind the listener, but the real thing also images the musicians giving a realistic soundstage where the listener can close his/her eyes and pick out each instrument in its actual location on the stage - side-to-side and front to back. Spaced omnis (whether two or three) cannot give that kind of pinpoint stereo. Most people don't notice it because they've rarely (if ever) experienced it, but once one does experience and recognize it for it is, it gives people goosebumps.

 

* OK for surround movie soundtracks, wrong for classical music.

 

The argument for omnis vs. directional mikes goes way, way back. And, different engineers, some with terrific credentials and recordings to their credit, prefer one way, the other way or a mix of the two. Same goes for single mike/channel vs. multi-mike. So, while there may be one and only one absolute answer for you, others have found a different one and been successful with it. I think each recording needs to be judged on its own merits, not in terms of dogmatic adherence to a particular ideology, much like audio equipment.

 

In my discussions with recording engineers who prefer omni mikes, they cite the frequency colorations in directional mikes as a major downside. Truth be told, I have heard these colorations myself in some famous recordings done with coincident pair, directional mikes. Decades back, there was a front cover of TAS featuring the Water Lily "In Nature's Realm", recorded at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Sawallisch. That was done by Kavi Alexander using crossed figure 8's, I believe. A fair number friends and I were quite familiar with the sound of that orchestra in that hall. One of my friends volunteered to help Kavi on the project, so he was there in the hall at the live session.

 

Yes, there was very good, dimensional image retrieval on that recording by stereo standards, provided one sat at +-45 degrees to one's speakers. But, the overall sound of the orchestra in the hall was disappointing and the recording quickly fell from audiophile favor in spite of the hype by TAS. It is a very difficult hall to record in, and it has seldom been used by any other label in the stereo era. My friends and I unanimously agreed, though, that the sound was just much drier than the real thing, which is dry in the first place, and it failed to accurately capture the sound we knew as orchestra subscribers. We did not think the recording was competive in capturing live orchestral sound compared to many multi-miked commercial recordings of the day.

 

This is but one isolated example, and maybe Kavi screwed up. I do not find his other orchestral recordings, such as those in St. Petersburg, to be that good either. The point being, minimal milking is no panacea that guarantees a great stereo recording. Conversely, multi-miking is not automatically doomed to produce a second-rate recording, though certainly there are many examples of where it has done so. It all depends ...

 

There have also been many audiophiles and a handful of recording engineers over the years who, like you, insist that minimally miked, coincident pair is the only "correct" way to record classical music. Yet, it has never managed to convince the main stream of audiophiles and engineers, in spite of the continued advocacy by you and others. The engineers I have talked to are quite aware of the techniques you advocate, but their considered opinion is you are quite wrong, all things considered.

 

And, I also think you are quite wrong about 3-channel Mercury and RCA stereo from the 50's-60's. It is far better than the 2-channel versions. Unfortunately, since you have no center channel in your setup, you have no idea based on actual listening. But, you have a strong ideological belief nonetheless.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Well said! I've had similar musings myself. The industry will, apparently, come up with anything to sell more amplifiers and speakers....!

 

I did in fact hear quite a few audiophiles, even well heeled ones with costly systems, say the same thing in the late 50's into the 60's. Except, then it was about the advent of stereo, which was, of course, awful compared to the mono they knew and loved. Stereo, they said, was a mere ploy to "sell more amplifiers and speakers".

[Fitzcaraldo215]

If the center channels were disabled, then it would no longer be 5.1, now would it? And if it was a 5.1 recording that the center channel was disabled for then it would be doubly wrong because one would then have a huge hole-in-the-middle!

 

Are you saying that stereo speakers at +- 30 degrees from the sweet spot is always wrong, since that is what the diagram says, after subtracting all the other channels for Mch? It seems to me that it depends on the speakers and the room. Also, many hi fi guide books recommend the equilateral triangle setup, which is the same as this, as a starting point for stereo.

 

Hey, if it actually produces a hole in the middle in a specific setup, I would be all in favor of moving the front pair closer to one another. But, it ain't necessarily so in all rooms with all speakers.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Hi,

 

I've generally found that the larger active ATCs (50s & above in a domestic listening situation) sound better when not toed in. I have never toed them in even 0.5cm... I know plenty of others who also have them set absolute straight.

 

Perhaps our theory is if you can paint a beautiful soundstage this way, it ought to sound better for others in the room, not just the (selfish) perfect place to sit.

 

Maybe it's the ATC mid that allows this, I'm not really sure.

 

;-)

 

Maybe so. Toe in is a completely different variable than speaker angular placement relative to the sweet spot. But, yes, it is also a factor in tweaking speaker placement that we have to decide on in set up. Personally, I prefer to optimize for sound at the sweet spot, which is how my system is listenened to 90% of the time. Even then, some speaker/room combinations and listener preferences might give different answers to the questions of angular placement and toe in.

 

But, speaker positioning is somewhat off topic relative to recording technique in this thread. Except, for Mch there are documented speaker angular placement standards assumed by recording/mixing/mastering engineers in making the recordings. And, for certain limited types of coincident pair stereo recordings, there is also an optimum speaker angular setup at +- 45 degrees, which is much too much for most common stereo recordings. But, mostly with stereo recordings, there is no standard or single definite answer to these questions, except listener preference.