Jump to content
IGNORED

Recording Methods and Fidelity


semente

Recommended Posts

There is something about live, acoustic music that no sound system can come even close to mimicking no matter how sophisticated or expensive. This is the reason why If I go into a concert hall and see sound reenforcement equipment anywhere about the stage area, I turn right around and walk back to the box office and demand my money back. I can listen to better speakers than those on the stage in my own home and probably able to play better performances of the works being played that day as well. I go to concerts to hear real, un-amplified acoustic instruments playing in real space, not listen to somebody's sound reinforcement system!

 

Exactly George, nothing changed much since Paul or JGH was making those observationss 30-40 years ago.

Thing is that I don't believe you have to restrict it to un-amplified music. Put a single guy on a Stratocaster playing into a Fender or Marshal app, Mic his amp and record it, then play it back on the Hi Fi of choice. I still don't think people can be fooled. I have no idea what it is but something very basic is stll being lost in the reproduction chain. :(

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

Link to comment
Exactly George, nothing changed much since Paul or JGH was making those observationss 30-40 years ago.

Thing is that I don't believe you have to restrict it to un-amplified music. Put a single guy on a Stratocaster playing into a Fender or Marshal app, Mic his amp and record it, then play it back on the Hi Fi of choice. I still don't think people can be fooled. I have no idea what it is but something very basic is stll being lost in the reproduction chain. :(

 

I don't think anything is being lost in the chain. It is the inherent limitations of stereo recording on the input end and even bigger limitations on the other end where speakers output sound to the room. Everything in between can be nigh on totally transparent and effectively perfect as far as human ears are concerned.

 

Because of that there are no magic components in between that are going to supply what is being lost.

 

Take your example of a Fender into a Marshall amp. No problem to record what normally goes into the Marshall amp. Play that back and get the same result if the amp is in the same place in the same room. You likely couldn't tell the difference if a good enough mic recorded the amp itself were you like the AR demos to record in an anechoic environment. Then play it back with a good speaker in the same position in the same room as you might have a Marshall amp. Now play that back in your home, and it won't sound the same due to the room in the original recording not being your room.

 

We are lucky that stereo with two speakers can take advantage of our hearing mechanism to work as well as it does. It can be generally accurate. Overlaying your room with the sound of another room and the musicians is a hybrid that isn't likely to sound real for fundamental reasons. Stereo is a tricky illusion not really a reproduction of sound at the original event in totality. When you hear a centered vocalist between left and right speaker you perceive that location though no sound is emitting anywhere near that location.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

Link to comment
I don't think anything is being lost in the chain. It is the inherent limitations of stereo recording on the input end and even bigger limitations on the other end where speakers output sound to the room. Everything in between can be nigh on totally transparent and effectively perfect as far as human ears are concerned.

 

Because of that there are no magic components in between that are going to supply what is being lost.

 

Take your example of a Fender into a Marshall amp. No problem to record what normally goes into the Marshall amp. Play that back and get the same result if the amp is in the same place in the same room. You likely couldn't tell the difference if a good enough mic recorded the amp itself were you like the AR demos to record in an anechoic environment. Then play it back with a good speaker in the same position in the same room as you might have a Marshall amp. Now play that back in your home, and it won't sound the same due to the room in the original recording not being your room.

 

We are lucky that stereo with two speakers can take advantage of our hearing mechanism to work as well as it does. It can be generally accurate. Overlaying your room with the sound of another room and the musicians is a hybrid that isn't likely to sound real for fundamental reasons. Stereo is a tricky illusion not really a reproduction of sound at the original event in totality. When you hear a centered vocalist between left and right speaker you perceive that location though no sound is emitting anywhere near that location.

 

I'm not sure bud, I have my doubts that stereo even has anything to do with it, Stereo's cool for creating a image that makes that sweet spot listening position such a great place to listen, creating a magical illusion all its own. But walk outside the room-house and down the street and the missing recreation of the true sound of a real instrument is not effected by that stereo image. If the true elements of High Fidelity were in place I would think that a mono system could do just as good a job as a stereo system in cloning the sound of real instruments playing live. A Fender amp doesn't need to be stereo to sound like a electric guitar. LOL

I do believe a large part of the problem is the speaker designs that have become popular today. The systems of the 50-60s like the Klipschorns, Altec VotT, etc that could easily create a large wave-front, very low in distortion, are in many ways better than what many are using today. When PS Audios Paul McGowan built his new listening room he went looking for a 30 year old Infinity IRS V, a more modern design but again a design capable of creating large unstrained wave-fronts of sound.

Problem is all these speakers have a very poor wife acceptance factor. LOL But as PWK always said you can't change the laws of physics. You can make small to mid size speakers with flat response, time aligned, phase correct, and all the rest sound very nice. But REAL, now that's another issue.

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

Link to comment
I'm not sure bud, I have my doubts that stereo even has anything to do with it, Stereo's cool for creating a image that makes that sweet spot listening position such a great place to listen, creating a magical illusion all its own. But walk outside the room-house and down the street and the missing recreation of the true sound of a real instrument is not effected by that stereo image.

 

Well of course it is. Walk outside of a venue with live instruments, and the soundfield inside is very different than if that same venue had two speakers playing a stereo recording. My point about the phantom center image is there is no sound there. In real live events there actually is sound. All of that makes the total soundfield from real vs stereo very very different. No wonder it sounds different and recognizably so.

 

If the true elements of High Fidelity were in place I would think that a mono system could do just as good a job as a stereo system in cloning the sound of real instruments playing live
.

Mono might well be better. It doesn't suffer from comb filtering caused by two spaced sound emitters (speakers). But mono can't recreate the original soundfield which is the difference between live and recorded.

I do believe a large part of the problem is the speaker designs that have become popular today. The systems of the 50-60s like the Klipschorns, Altec VotT, etc that could easily create a large wave-front, very low in distortion, are in many ways better than what many are using today. When PS Audios Paul McGowan built his new listening room he went looking for a 30 year old Infinity IRS V, a more modern design but again a design capable of creating large unstrained wave-fronts of sound.

Well IRS Infinity speakers other than playing really loud when needed don't seem to have the same general sound as the old K-horns, Altecs and Voits. And a large wavefront doesn't mean it recreates the original any better. What actually happens with IRS and those horns is being somewhat directional they excite fewer resonances and the reflections are lower in level than the sound directly from the speaker.

 

If you recorded 4 tracks of a quartet, placed speakers in the same position as the musicians were and played back the recording you would get a big step closer to real. While the speaker radiation would not be an exact match for the musician and instrument it would be in the correct place, putting background energy from each location back into the correct room location. This would be a considerable jump in fidelity vs reality. Its directionality and room sound wouldn't depend upon a sweet spot listening position. The main parts you are interested in would be real sound sources and not phantoms. You would move, walk around etc, and the bulk of that reality would remain. Of course there are obvious impractical qualities to such playback. But phantom sound sources vs real sound sources even real reproduced sources is where much of the reality is lost.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

Link to comment
George,

 

You really aren't helping me not spend money on this. :)

 

I likely will get one in time. Seems too useful and by all accounts works very well.

 

On the price of the modern production, yikes, zeroes matter. $30k, wow, would like to hear a performance of the ck40 and the $30k mic done concurrently.

 

Me too. It would need to be A LOT better than than the CK-40, to justify costing 50X more, and I doubt that it is THAT much better!

George

Link to comment
Exactly George, nothing changed much since Paul or JGH was making those observationss 30-40 years ago.

Thing is that I don't believe you have to restrict it to un-amplified music. Put a single guy on a Stratocaster playing into a Fender or Marshal app, Mic his amp and record it, then play it back on the Hi Fi of choice. I still don't think people can be fooled. I have no idea what it is but something very basic is stll being lost in the reproduction chain. :(

 

Maybe, but since I have neither interest nor regard in any electronically amplified instruments, especially electric guitars, I've never actually thought about that as a possibility. You will have to discuss this aspect of the subject with others, as I can provide no input.

George

Link to comment
Maybe, but since I have neither interest nor regard in any electronically amplified instruments, especially electric guitars, I've never actually thought about that as a possibility. You will have to discuss this aspect of the subject with others, as I can provide no input.

 

Wow, that's a shame. 99% of the music created in the last 3/4 of a century has been written for electric instruments (guitars and keyboards, etc) whether it be rock, jazz, r&b, country, etc, etc. Your missing out on a lot of great music.

With absolutely no disrespect intended I totally can't understand the whole classical thing. How people can retain interest and excitement in hearing the same 200-300 hundred year old pieces of music being performed over and over and over just by different musicians I just don't get. I've watched it die a slow agonizing death over my entire lifetime?

But each to their own I guess.

Merry Christmas All and God Bless

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

Link to comment
Well of course it is. Walk outside of a venue with live instruments, and the soundfield inside is very different than if that same venue had two speakers playing a stereo recording. My point about the phantom center image is there is no sound there. In real live events there actually is sound. All of that makes the total soundfield from real vs stereo very very different. No wonder it sounds different and recognizably so.

 

.

Mono might well be better. It doesn't suffer from comb filtering caused by two spaced sound emitters (speakers). But mono can't recreate the original soundfield which is the difference between live and recorded.

 

Well IRS Infinity speakers other than playing really loud when needed don't seem to have the same general sound as the old K-horns, Altecs and Voits. And a large wavefront doesn't mean it recreates the original any better. What actually happens with IRS and those horns is being somewhat directional they excite fewer resonances and the reflections are lower in level than the sound directly from the speaker.

 

Well maybe if we could put our heads together and figure this out we could become very wealthy before we croak.

For all the tweaking we've done over the last 100 years of music reproduction what the world still needs is a good Hi Fi system, one that actually sounds like real instruments. ;)

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

Link to comment
Wow, that's a shame. 99% of the music created in the last 3/4 of a century has been written for electric instruments (guitars and keyboards, etc) whether it be rock, jazz, r&b, country, etc, etc. Your missing out on a lot of great music.

 

You need to think about that statement a bit, I suspect. Let me help you get started. Think about something you despise: broccoli, perhaps or brussels sprouts, or rhubarb all of these are foods that many people profess to not liking. Since you don't like these (or perhaps other) veggies, you avoid them. Now, you mention this to someone who looks at you very askance and says, "you don't know what you are missing!"

Now, are you missing these things? You don't like them, you get no pleasure from consuming them, how could you possibly miss something that you avoid because you do not like it? I don't like rock, r&b, country, reggae, or any other kind of music that includes electric guitars. I have a large jazz collection, but none of my jazz records have an electric guitar on them and, no, I'm not missing anything. Like most people, I don't listen to music forms that I don't like.

 

With absolutely no disrespect intended I totally can't understand the whole classical thing. How people can retain interest and excitement in hearing the same 200-300 hundred year old pieces of music being performed over and over and over just by different musicians I just don't get. I've watched it die a slow agonizing death over my entire lifetime?

But each to their own I guess.

Merry Christmas All and God Bless

 

Well, you see, that's taste again. I don't understand pop music (in most any of it's forms) to me, it all sounds alike, and it's simpleminded and boring - I've always called it pablum for perennial musical adolescents. And classical has not been "dying a slow, agonizing death" your entire life, SAL1950. There are more fine pianists, violinists another players than ever before. Todays orchestras are more technically proficient than any that came before, most concerts are sold out. With all due respect, the reason that you don't understand "the whole classical thing" is because you don't realize how incredibly complex classical music can be and the layer upon layer of intricacy of rhythm, phrasing, tempo, and voicing that make two renditions of the same work seem so different, so fresh and new, and alive with promise. And to address your comment about "200-300 year old pieces". Romantic and post romantic era classical music (what I mostly listen to) is less than 200 years old, and some less than a 100. Many pieces were written in my lifetime: Bernstein, Vaughan-Williams, William Walton, Aaron Copland, Gian-Carlo Menotti, etc.

George

Link to comment

Problem is all these speakers have a very poor wife acceptance factor. LOL But as PWK always said you can't change the laws of physics. You can make small to mid size speakers with flat response, time aligned, phase correct, and all the rest sound very nice. But REAL, now that's another issue.

 

 

No, one can't change the laws of physics, but on can change one's marital status to meet one's listening needs! Sounds like a good enough excuse to get "un-hitched" to me*. :)

 

*This advice from someone who never made the same mistake ONCE.

George

Link to comment
No, one can't change the laws of physics, but on can change one's marital status to meet one's listening needs! Sounds like a good enough excuse to get "un-hitched" to me*. :)

 

*This advice from someone who never made the same mistake ONCE.

 

I've done that three times now, no more. They just didn't understand B B Kings - Payin The Cost

 

I'll drink if I want to

And play a little poker too

Don't you say nothing to me

As long as I'm taking care of you

As long as I'm workin baby

And payin' all the bills

I don't want no mouth from you

About the way I'm supposed to live

You must be crazy woman

Just gotta be outta your mind

As long as I foot the bills

I'm payin' the cost to be the boss

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

Link to comment

Well, you see, that's taste again. I don't understand pop music (in most any of it's forms) to me, it all sounds alike, and it's simpleminded and boring - I've always called it pablum for perennial musical adolescents.

 

Taste is a funny thing, heck I even love my spinach. But I won't eat no fish. My daddy always told me "if it smelled like fish, don't eat it!"

But your music is bought with your 2 cents, so

As long as you be payin the bills

You payin the cost, to be the boss.

LOL

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

Link to comment
Well maybe if we could put our heads together and figure this out we could become very wealthy before we croak.

For all the tweaking we've done over the last 100 years of music reproduction what the world still needs is a good Hi Fi system, one that actually sounds like real instruments. ;)

 

Well following my rather safe conjecture that real sound sources sound more real than phantom sound sources the solution is obvious. Never listen to more than one vocalist/musican per channel of music. We then need to take one of two approaches. Develop more music that has fewer musicians let us say 4 or less. Or develop workable systems with lots more speakers. Lots more.

 

Possible workable solutions:

 

Just some links to show I am not making it all up. Just most of it.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound

 

What is a parametric speaker? - Soundlazer

 

You have an ultrasonic carrier wave at very high level. With several you can project and place demodulated real sound sources anywhere. A bit of DSP involved. You could at least in concept place more sources in the audible range than you have ultrasonic emitter arrays. Perhaps 4 could do 2 dimensional and 6 might do fully 3 dimensional sound. All you need is a file with however many channels were used and positional information for each channel. You then could position multiple sound sources which are real sources in any position within the room. You also could rotate or alter perspectives of those sources in time for creative effects. Think Pink Floyd on mega steroids.

 

The other idea is an old one from Bell labs days. Wavefront reconstruction. At one point in the 1930's they used 64 microphones which fed 64 speakers in a listening room to recreate the frontal wavefront. You probably see the difficulty for consumer playback there. But what if ultrasonic speakers allowed us to do the same thing now without really having 64 speakers instead having maybe 2 or 3 with the ability to create 64 real sound sources?

 

See you and I are almost rich already. If not for the Devil. The devil is in the details.

 

But the high end should embrace it. You have seen how sample rates escalate. 96, then 192, now only 384 is close to enough, and maybe 768 khz is the only real deal. What if you could synthesize 64 channels, then 128 and surely the 256 version would be more real than real itself. Imagine the megabucks that would flow in. Not to mention tweaks beyond imagining. For all 256 sound sources we are creating. Initially you might need to shut down some of the supercomputers used for climate modelling and re-purpose them for the infinitely more sensible use as musical reproduction machines. But hey, sacrifices have to be made. If it is the future of humanity, why worry? Imagine the Blues music that will come out of that collective experience. Yet in time all is well. In time your cellphone (or planet wide networked brain implant) will handle the computational chores with ease.

 

You could also read this 200+ page paper on the matter. But that is not nearly as rewarding as my flight of fancy post is it?

 

http://last.hit.bme.hu/download/firtha/Irodalom/WFS_sys/The_Analysis_and_Improvement_of_Focused_Source_Reproduction_with_Wave_Field_Synthesis.pdf

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

Link to comment

I can see it now, the front wall of the listening room filled top to bottom and left to right with home theater sound bars. Plus all the DACs and other gear, theres a fortune to be made.

Lets get together on a PM and start laying out the spin for a Kickstarter program. If Neil Young can do it with Pono maybe we can too.

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

Link to comment
Taste is a funny thing, heck I even love my spinach. But I won't eat no fish. My daddy always told me "if it smelled like fish, don't eat it!"

But your music is bought with your 2 cents, so

As long as you be payin the bills

You payin the cost, to be the boss.

LOL

 

We certainly agree about fish. I'm not wild about it either. Oh, I like good fish and chips (and to me, "good" fish and chips means Icelandic cod). Funny thing though, my general boycott of fish does not include crustaceans and mollusks (except mussles don't care for them). Love clams, oysters, lobster, crab, shrimp, etc.

 

I also suspect that we agree on marriage. No, thank you!

George

Link to comment
I can see it now, the front wall of the listening room filled top to bottom and left to right with home theater sound bars. Plus all the DACs and other gear, theres a fortune to be made.

Lets get together on a PM and start laying out the spin for a Kickstarter program. If Neil Young can do it with Pono maybe we can too.

 

 

And how does one get stereo with an instrument per/channel approach?

George

Link to comment
And how does one get stereo with an instrument per/channel approach?

 

 

Ahhh! Grasshopper ask wrong question. Question is why we need stereo? When one answer that question one see, the unity of one channel per instrument is only way. All else is illusion.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

Link to comment

This is the perfect reply.

 

Stereo is actually an illusion, but one that is necessary if you wish to recreate the sound of an instrument playing in a resonant space.

Most pop and rock recordings don't have any spacial information to begin with, it's all fabricated in post-processing.

 

If you wish to create the impression of having musicians playing in your room then you'll have to do as Acoustic Research did.

Record each instrument individually in an anechoic environment with a single microphone and playback echo instrument through it's own speaker.

 

R

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

Link to comment

I think you guys are all missing an essential point in your speculations. If we are talking about listening to classical music in a good seat in a good hall, the sound one hears is not all just direct sound from the stage. It just appears to be that way as explained by the Precedence or Haas Effect.

The sound you hear is actually mostly sound reflected by the hall itself and it strikes your ears from the x, y and z dimensions, i.e., it is 3D. Actually, many experiments have shown that there is more total energy from the reflections than from the direct sound, going way back to Amar Bose and before. But, the direct sound's energy is over a narrower angular window. It is more concentrated or "denser", and it is first to arrive vs. reflections. Hence, it takes precedence and masks the apparent presence of the more diffuse reflected sound, in spite of the latter's greater total energy.

(By the way, forget about Bose's attempts to recreate the direct/reflected energy ratio he measured by having his speakers just put out huge amounts of reflected energy into your room. Your room is too small and too limited to possibly resynthesize the hall's sound. And, his scheme using 2-channel stereo lacked directional information, except across the front.)

The reflected sound is also shifted somewhat tonally. Typically in a good hall, the reflected sound attenuates high frequencies more than low frequencies. So, the reflected energy is "warmer" in tonality, and adds that warmth to the net resulting sound field we actually hear. Stereo recordings often try to make this this adjustment in a variety of ways, including EQ or mixing in feeds from more distant mikes containing more hall sound.

So, you can throw all the channels you want across the front, even getting down to one channel/instrument. You might even get close to recreating their individual anechoic waveform fidelity. But, you still cannot get close to recreating the actual sound of an ensemble heard in the hall that way, nor can you recreate the enveloping sense of space one hears in the hall. For that, you need speaker channels surrounding you with discrete sound as recorded in multiple surrounding locations. Floyd Toole agrees with this, by the way. 5/7.1 does a really good job of this now, though Auro 3D might prove itself even better for this for music someday by adding the height dimension.

Link to comment

In my opinion and experience the best way to recreate the venue ambience and instrument positioning registered in the recording is done by reducing the playback-room contribution as much as possible (I'm speaking of recordings of live un-amplified music with minimal mic setups).

This means aiming the speakers at the listening point and listening as close to the speakers as possible (allowing just enough distance for the dispersion patterns of the drivers to integrate).

Besides listening near field, it is also convenient to use speakers with controlled directivity, exhibiting a progressive off-axis response attenuation in the upper-midrange and above such as that of the following examples:

 

unofig5.jpg

 

SFSfig5.jpg

 

1008harH40fig4.jpg

 

Horns, waveguides and wide baffles generally produce this kind of dispersion pattern.

 

When the recording is made in a non-reverberant studio there is no venue ambience, only the kind and amount of reverb added in post-processing by the producers.

In these cases many people seem to prefer pointing the speaker axis parallel to the side walls and listening from a longer distance in order do add a bit of playback-room contribution, resulting in an increased impression of "3D-ness" or "soundstage".

 

R

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

Link to comment

The sound you hear is actually mostly sound reflected by the hall itself and it strikes your ears from the x, y and z dimensions, i.e., it is 3D. Actually, many experiments have shown that there is more total energy from the reflections than from the direct sound, going way back to Amar Bose and before. But, the direct sound's energy is over a narrower angular window. It is more concentrated or "denser", and it is first to arrive vs. reflections. Hence, it takes precedence and masks the apparent presence of the more diffuse reflected sound, in spite of the latter's greater total energy.

 

(By the way, forget about Bose's attempts to recreate the direct/reflected energy ratio he measured by having his speakers just put out huge amounts of reflected energy into your room. Your room is too small and too limited to possibly resynthesize the hall's sound. And, his scheme using 2-channel stereo lacked directional information, except across the front.)

 

I amuse myself every so often when in the presence of audiophiles by turning and shouting into the wall, "The sound of Bose!"

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

Link to comment
I amuse myself every so often when in the presence of audiophiles by turning and shouting into the wall, "The sound of Bose!"

 

Oh, so you are that guy.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

Link to comment
In my opinion and experience the best way to recreate the venue ambience and instrument positioning registered in the recording is done by reducing the playback-room contribution as much as possible (I'm speaking of recordings of live un-amplified music with minimal mic setups).

This means aiming the speakers at the listening point and listening as close to the speakers as possible (allowing just enough distance for the dispersion patterns of the drivers to integrate).

Besides listening near field, it is also convenient to use speakers with controlled directivity, exhibiting a progressive off-axis response attenuation in the upper-midrange and above such as that of the following examples:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22807[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22805[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22806[/ATTACH]

 

Horns, waveguides and wide baffles generally produce this kind of dispersion pattern.

 

When the recording is made in a non-reverberant studio there is no venue ambience, only the kind and amount of reverb added in post-processing by the producers.

In these cases many people seem to prefer pointing the speaker axis parallel to the side walls and listening from a longer distance in order do add a bit of playback-room contribution, resulting in an increased impression of "3D-ness" or "soundstage".

 

R

 

This is a good recipe for playback of stereo material. Somewhat where I got off on a different track was the talk about walking down a street and hearing sound while instantly knowing it was real or a recording. In that instance a speaker in place of musician would mostly fix that. Phantom imaging doesn't carry out a door and down a street. So I then wrote some about having a real image vs phantom images in playback which was mixing up the two conditions.

 

Your method described above works well, and is essentially how monitor speakers are used in studios. It still doesn't fix the limitations of stereo playback vs a great sense of realness.

 

Yes if you close mike or record anechoic conditions playback would sound as if the musician is in your room. Not in another venue. Now close miking would pick up some room sound, and if it were played back over multiple speakers in the correct positions you would be sampling the room sound enough to help quite a bit though it still would be less than the full sound of the room. You also could record just room sound in a square around the group being recorded and play it back over speakers dedicated to room sound with a good chance of providing that upon playback to some good effect. Of course you are back to the issue of multiple, multiple speakers.

 

I do recall a neat idea by Peter Walker of Quad. While developing delayed sections working on the ESL63, he had a neat idea. A strip of electrostatic panel across the listening room left to right. Each section would feed the next with a delay which approximated the speed of sound in air. You feed the left end the left channel, and the right end the right channel and let that propagate across the strip. You would get a wavefront eliminating any sweet spot and similar sound anywhere except right near the edges of the room. I believe he had a patent on it. Don't know if he ever built one or not. I can imagine such a thing with only two or three inputs being altered somewhat so you could create multiple actual sound sources anywhere across that single speaker strip. Some version of this idea might be more practical.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

Link to comment
Ahhh! Grasshopper ask wrong question. Question is why we need stereo? When one answer that question one see, the unity of one channel per instrument is only way. All else is illusion.

 

Maybe I need to explain what I mean. I lived through the era (late '60's - Early '70's) when it became plausible (and thus de-riguer) to place a microphone in front of each instrument in a symphony orchestra and feed that microphone to a separate track on a pair of "locked" 48-channel, 2-inch tape recorders. That gives 96 cassette-tape thin tracks (unless the recorders used needed to sacrifice a whole track to lock the two together, then you get only 94). The Philadelphia Orchestra recorded that way, as did a number of other orchestras. The thinking was, at the time, that you could just throw-up a forest of microphones, capture the "talent" and get those expensive musicians out of there. Then, at their leisure, the producers and engineers could vacillate over the final mix 'till their hearts' content! When they were happy with balances, they would pan-pot each instrument into it's "relative" spot from left-to-right on the "stage" and reduce the 96-channels to two. The problem was that the result sounded awful on several fronts. First of all, Close-miked instruments don't sound anything like they do when mixed in a concert hall and perceived by an audience as a part of the whole. This is especially true of violins, which need to sound like a "string section" instead of a dozen or so separate violins electronically mixed together. Thirdly, there is no soundstage. Instruments sound like they are lined-up across a stage from left to right in a single file! There is no depth to the image, no height, just a line of strange sounding musical instruments all playing together in an unnatural way. With a real stereo recording (using only two or maybe three mikes) one can close one's eyes and from right to left, pick out exactly the space that each instrument of group of instruments occupies during a performance. You can do this because that's what the microphones are capturing: the space that the orchestra occupies, NOT the individual nstruments themselves!. Each instrument has the correct feeling of "air" and space surrounding it that it would have in a live performance, and the entire ensemble interacts with the acoustics of the venue in which it is playing in a real and natural way. If you listen to any of the Philadelphia Orchestra's early stereo (or mono) recordings, made before the multi-track monstrosities, you can hear the lovely acoustic space that was the old Philadelphia Music Center. After the multitrack era, all of the ambience was artificial, and that wonderful bloom that gave the Philadelphian's strings their inimitable sheen and articulation was gone. I've never understood why Ormandy put-up with such awful sound. After all, he worked on that string tone for decades.

George

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...