Why Haven;t You Tried Immersive 3D Audio Yet?

[Sam Lord]

Oh! You guys are building entire spaces for listening using planars. Well that's a whole different world... I meant my comments to apply only to pistonic drivers covering specific bands.

 

Of course no setup can make its *entire space* cohere, but I now see that you could construct a coherent longitudinal line or planar section in a room. Too rich for me, but more power to you. Tailspn has a mastering room with, IIRC, six big Sound Labs mounted in the walls... should nearly do the trick.

 

Thanks to you and witchdoctor and Ralph for clarifying.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Computer Audiophile mobile app

[STC]

Oh! You guys are building entire spaces for listening using planars. Well that's a whole different world... I meant my comments to apply only to pistonic drivers covering specific bands.

 

Of course no setup can make its *entire space* cohere, but I now see that you could construct a coherent longitudinal line or planar section in a room. Too rich for me, but more power to you. Tailspn has a mastering room with, IIRC, six big Sound Labs mounted in the walls... should nearly do the trick.

 

Thanks to you and witchdoctor and Ralph for clarifying.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Computer Audiophile mobile app

 

 

Only Ralph is using all planar speakers. I am using only 1 pair of planar and the rest are cheap HT speakers.

[witchdoctor]

Witchdoctor, there is a simpler non DSP option. Start with your two main speakers. And if you are married, get you wife's permission to use the mattress. Choose your favourite classical track. Disable the sound effects, if any. Move your speakers closer to less than 1/3 of your stereo setup. Put the mattress in between, right up to your face. You probably need two or three mattresses. Hear the 3D sound. Then you can use the DSP (available for free) or the MiniDSP and remove the mattresses. Get a good binaural microphone to record the sound with the mattress and with DSP. Do a blind test. If you think the DSP degrades the sound then drop the idea.

 

But sometimes when something is free or cheap it may not be palatable to people.

 

Thanks, I don't own the Yamaha unit but was just getting opinions.

What do you think of Carver Sonic Holography? I use it in my desktop system and it sounds great in the nearfield.

[witchdoctor]

Oh! You guys are building entire spaces for listening using planars. Well that's a whole different world... I meant my comments to apply only to pistonic drivers covering specific bands.

Of course no setup can make its *entire space* cohere, but I now see that you could construct a coherent longitudinal line or planar section in a room. Too rich for me, but more power to you. Tailspn has a mastering room with, IIRC, six big Sound Labs mounted in the walls... should nearly do the trick.

Thanks to you and witchdoctor and Ralph for clarifying.Sent from my Nexus 6P using Computer Audiophile mobile app

 

I can see you have put a lot of thought and effort into building the system in your signature line. Do you have any pics?

[witchdoctor]

Only Ralph is using all planar speakers. I am using only 1 pair of planar and the rest are cheap HT speakers.

 

GREAT link to the website with your setup. My hat;s off to you for going the extra mile. Here is my setup;

 

I use a combo of a PC, Fire TV and a Sony UHPH1 front end to a Marantz 7702 processor. 14 Paradigm Active Reference speakers and a Sunfire TSEQ 10 sub, Power by Monster HTPS 7000, Virtual Dynamics Power Cords, the cables and vibration control by Mapleshade. (Sam Lord, the Mapleshade Bedrock speaker stands do an AMAZING job time aligning your speakers, I was gobsmacked!). I have wide channels which are not used in Auro but I do use them with other surround formats I can choose with my processor. I have a projector for video which is why you don't see a TV on the wall. Having an all active speaker setup unleashes a LOT of power and I saved $$$$ on amps and speaker cables. Each speaker is internally biamped. I would have had to buy 28 channels of amplification and who knows how much speaker cable to accomplish that with passive speakers.

 

 

'

[semente]

The stereo loudspeaker 60 degree triangle is now 86 years old. Even its inventor (Alan Dower Blumlein) indicated it was not psychoacoustically perfectable. The idea that nothing now available can improve on the stereo triangle is a myth and no longer supportable. Improvements may not be perfect in the sense of attaining concert hall realism but the standard should be: are things like Ambisonics, Wavefield Synthesis, Ambiophonics, BACCH, Auro, Dolby, DTS better than the stereo loudspeaker 60 degree triangle.

Ambiophonics the latest of these, certainly is and is quite affordable, as affordable as any stereo system or in its surround versions a lot les costly than most 5.1 systems. As to the quality of a variety of Ambio apps and components, you can read the testimonials and NYU listening panel results, or this review in German, below. All Ambiophonic components and apps are quite low priced or even free. The most expensive component is about $120 for the hi-rez miniambio. Perhaps this is why Ambio is so slow to replace stereo. It is also hard to break old habits and resist all the audiophile dogma out there. Also no advertising or patent revenue and it is for homes not movie theaters, http://www.lowbeats.de/test-software-app-xivero-amtra-und-amtra-play/

 

 

I am not defending "traditional" 2 or more channel stereo, merely expressing my reservations with regards to digital processing as a means to "transparently" achieve crosstalk-free reproduction (assuming that one is using binaural recordings).

 

If I understand correctly, binaural listening needs absolute 0 crosstalk and this requires headphones since no loudspeaker has a perfectly linear dispersion and a partition can only go so close to one's face (before it ruins the listening pleasure).

 

 

Besides, once you get a handful of speakers in a room they'll not only interact negatively with the room (something than you can correct to a point with DSP) but also amongst themselves (and there's nothing we can do about it).

 

R

[STC]

Thanks, I don't own the Yamaha unit but was just getting opinions.

What do you think of Carver Sonic Holography? I use it in my desktop system and it sounds great in the nearfield.

 

I have no opinion since I have never tried it before. The audiophile DNA is still in my system and I hate any kind of signal manipulation. The only exception I made was for the RACE filter. That too after many blind tests with the mattress.

 

Furthermore, you cannot achieve full cross talk cancellation without moving the speakers closer. I think BACCH was the exception.

 

 

 

 

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[witchdoctor]

I am not defending "traditional" 2 or more channel stereo, merely expressing my reservations with regards to digital processing as a means to "transparently" achieve crosstalk-free reproduction (assuming that one is using binaural recordings).

If I understand correctly, binaural listening needs absolute 0 crosstalk and this requires headphones since no loudspeaker has a perfectly linear dispersion and a partition can only go so close to one's face (before it ruins the listening pleasure).

[ATTACH=CONFIG]33058[/ATTACH]Besides, once you get a handful of speakers in a room they'll not only interact negatively with the room (something than you can correct to a point with DSP) but also amongst themselves (and there's nothing we can do about it).R

 

Semente, my general impression is you are complaining about things based on your imagination rather than experience. Please post a picture of your setup. You have access to a diverse set of members in this thread who have experience with these 3D systems directly. You need to EXPERIENCE 3D audio in your home before you can really get it. You are not trading in your current setup, you are upgrading it with choices. You will always have the choice to use what you have now through your remote control. You just add another choice of 3D audio.

This interview does a better job explaining Auro than my post:

http://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/auro-3d-interview

[STC]

GREAT link to the website with your setup. My hat;s off to you for going the extra mile. Here is my setup;

....

 

Nice setup and I am sure you like they way they sound. How do keep track of the changes in the sound with each upgrade?

 

 

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[witchdoctor]

Nice setup and I am sure you like they way they sound. How do keep track of the changes in the sound with each upgrade?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Good question, I proceed slowly. When I got the new processor I kept my old one in the rack for comparisons. Then I just added height speakers in the front for a few months and compared 7.1 with DTS-Neo X and Audyssey DSX. These are 11.1 codecs that engage front height and wide channels. After a few months I got the rear height channels to comapare Atmos with Auro 3D. Finally I added the top surround or VOG speaker that is the white speaker pointed down above my sofa for Auro 3D. So I went slowly, went back and forth a few months and I would just find myself listening to one format more than others. Some sound better for movies than music, some sounded better for studio recordings, some for live recordings. Sometimes it depends on the quality of the source material. When I finally arrived at a full auro setup it pretty much always sounded the best for music. Some studio recordd material still sounds better in 2 channel but mostly I prefer Auro. With movies I find the really old movies sound better with my wide channels engaged and I like Audyssey DSX. If it's a movie with a lot of chase scenes and back surround channel engagement I might like atmos. But roughly 80% of all content just sounds more "live" sounding in my room with auro. My next thing to check out will be SACD's in native format and then upmixed.

My hats off to marantz that they can design a processor this capable. I waited for the price to drop and got it for 50% off, around $900. I added two speakers at a time at a very reasonable price for my height channels. Those tall speaker stands meant no drilling holes in the ceiling or brackets for the walls. All in all a great bang for the buck upgrade.

[audiventory]

Can somebody please explain why two speakers is the right number?

 

No right number of speakers. Number of speakers and its apperture define precision that virtual source may be placed. I.e. sound field on concert hall should be re-created in new conditions of listening room.

But without room space calibration virtual source can't be placed exactly.

 

Calibration here is not simple frequency level calibration.

 

I suppose, here need calibration by all directions with narrow apperture of spreaker and omny-directional microphone with controlled narrow apperture direction.

[STC]

.....

But without room space calibration virtual source can't be placed exactly.

 

.

 

.

 

Could you please explain more about room space calibration? Are you referring to the rooms Impulse Response ?

 

 

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[audiventory]

Could you please explain more about room space calibration? Are you referring to the rooms Impulse Response ?

 

Not only. Time delay and frequency (let it be as impulse) response by each acoustic ray paths.

 

Speaker radiate infinite number of the rays. The rays interfere each other, reflect by surfaces and interfere. In ear input we have summ of all rays around.

 

In concert hall we listen and record the summ. Let suppose, that we captured the summ for each ear in concert hall. I don't consider body perception even.

 

At home we try re-create we summ. We send the summ via speakers. But the rays, radiated by the speakers, are distorted (reflections, amplitude and phase distortions).

 

In this case we can use headphones only. It allow to avoid reflections and distortions. But body can't perceive wave field of concert hall.

 

In my opinion, it is a reason, why cool speakers sound differently than original sound of acoustic band.

[witchdoctor]

Bob Stuart's latest blog posts. I am a big fan of MQA and about to order a Bluesound Node MQA Dac/streamer for the desktop system:

 

MQA Playback | Bob Talks

[STC]

....

 

At home we try re-create we summ. We send the summ via speakers. But the rays, radiated by the speakers, are distorted (reflections, amplitude and phase distortions).

 

In this case we can use headphones only. It allow to avoid reflections and distortions. But body can't perceive wave field of concert hall.

.....

 

 

I think you are trying to say that despite the total sound captured by the microphone, the loudspeakers would not able to reproduce the sound accurately due to the inherent distortion. Correct?

 

Firstly, I think a loudspeaker should only produce the source sound faithfully. Let's forget about stereo. Let's take a mono recording of a single gun shot. If you were to record the single gun shot sound in a non damped hall, you are going to capture the reverberation and the original gun shot sound. Now, if you playback that sound through a single speakers, here you are getting the original sound plus the hall reverberation. The difference will be the original reverberation came from millions of direction in the hall but during the playback the sum reverberation is coming out from the single speaker.

 

I don't expect them to sound similar. However, if you were to record the gun shot sound in an anechoic chamber and play them in the same hall at the correct loudness with a speaker radiating the sound exactly like the real gun, I guess they both would sound alike.

[audiventory]

I think you are trying to say that despite the total sound captured by the microphone, the loudspeakers would not able to reproduce the sound accurately due to the inherent distortion. Correct?

 

Yes. Speakers + Listening Room.

 

 

Firstly, I think a loudspeaker should only produce the source sound faithfully. Let's forget about stereo. Let's take a mono recording of a single gun shot. If you were to record the single gun shot sound in a non damped hall, you are going to capture the reverberation and the original gun shot sound. Now, if you playback that sound through a single speakers, here you are getting the original sound plus the hall reverberation. The difference will be the original reverberation came from millions of direction in the hall but during the playback the sum reverberation is coming out from the single speaker.

 

I don't expect them to sound similar. However, if you were to record the gun shot sound in an anechoic chamber and play them in the same hall at the correct loudness with a speaker radiating the sound exactly like the real gun, I guess they both would sound alike.

 

We capture sound field (sum of acoustic rays) in some point around the gun.

 

For producing same sound field we should place speaker directly ear input. There may be some distortions, usual for driver. But I will not consider it here.

 

If speaker placed at distance, need account its aperture - different sound field in different direction.

 

Both cases (original and record) we should listen with closed 1 ear (except listening via headphones).

[STC]

Yes. Speakers + Listening Room.

 

 

 

 

We capture sound field (sum of acoustic rays) in some point around the gun.

 

For producing same sound field we should place speaker directly ear input. There may be some distortions, usual for driver. But I will not consider it here.

 

If speaker placed at distance, need account its aperture - different sound field in different direction.

 

Both cases (original and record) we should listen with closed 1 ear (except listening via headphones).

 

I do not know much about acoustics but common sense tells me in cannot be correct. It is obvious that ambiance reflection arrives at your ears from many direction. Unless you are going to capture them at your ears like using a binaural microphone.

 

Let see if Mr. Glasgal want to shed some light here. He was the reason I am sending the convolution to the separate speakers and not to the main speakers like many others are doing.

 

 

 

 

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[audiventory]

I do not know much about acoustics but common sense tells me in cannot be correct. It is obvious that ambiance reflection arrives at your ears from many direction. Unless you are going to capture them at your ears like using a binaural microphone.

 

Let see if Mr. Glasgal want to shed some light here. He was the reason I am sending the convolution to the separate speakers and not to the main speakers like many others are doing.

 

I’m not expert in wave theory. I try understand general picture only.

 

Convolution (impulse response) is amplitude-phase frequency response in the time domain.

 

As far as I know, it used in some reverberators. Probably, it can account acoustic ray dispersion in the listening room for used speakers for single point of the room.

 

But it will work for single ear, because for each ear-room-speaker need own convolution, that isolated by each other.

[Ralph Glasgal]

Slight correction. In my lab where no compromises are made, I have one ordinary Windows computer driving 24 concert hall surround speaker surfaces (that is electrostatic panels). The 3D impulse responses that drive these speakers are from the La Scala Opera House in Milan. I also use Santa Cecilia, and the Sydney Opera House. These real hall responses were provided to me by Angelo Farina and Justus Verhagen. One of the best sets of these are on the Ambiophonics website for anybody to use. There are also instructions on how to use them in a computer using Voxengo, etc. or JRiver as STC has done. Neither the type of speaker nor their exact positions is critical. However, designing home concert halls is something that will make audiophile tweakers busy forever.

 

There are also six direct sound line source speakers in the ideal system for full surround from 4.0/5.1/7.1/10.2/etc. media and envelopment for 2.0 media. All this is explained in tutorials, but you do need to really want more exciting sound than ordinary stereo can produce.

 

Another six speaker system here is based on two frontal MBLs and four ordinary rear speakers in a very small very live room. These are driven by three miniambios. This system demonstrates that Envelophonics can swamp room reflections to the extent that no room treatment or room correction is really needed. Indeed the combination of the rear RACE processed envelopment ambience(which provides the kind of directional very very early reflections one has in a concert hall) with the later static room ones indicates that you really need the room ones to fill in the time gap as in a hall where distant seats and head provide this variety. Need a graduate student who is looking for a thesis project to codify this effect.

 

Then there are myriad small Ambio systems here involving from tablets, TV sets, PC speakers, cars, etc. So like stereo there are plenty of no high-end uses for Ambio or similar technologies.

[semente]

I think you are trying to say that despite the total sound captured by the microphone, the loudspeakers would not able to reproduce the sound accurately due to the inherent distortion. Correct?

 

Firstly, I think a loudspeaker should only produce the source sound faithfully. Let's forget about stereo. Let's take a mono recording of a single gun shot. If you were to record the single gun shot sound in a non damped hall, you are going to capture the reverberation and the original gun shot sound. Now, if you playback that sound through a single speakers, here you are getting the original sound plus the hall reverberation. The difference will be the original reverberation came from millions of direction in the hall but during the playback the sum reverberation is coming out from the single speaker.

 

I don't expect them to sound similar. However, if you were to record the gun shot sound in an anechoic chamber and play them in the same hall at the correct loudness with a speaker radiating the sound exactly like the real gun, I guess they both would sound alike.

 

I think that if you want a more accurate domestic reproduction of the original reverb then you would need to listen in an anechoic chamber or at least a heavily damped room.

 

The opposite was done by Acoustic Research in their 60's live vs. reproduced demos - record outdoors and playback in a music hall:

 

[audiventory]

I think that if you want a more accurate domestic reproduction of the original reverb then you would need to listen in an anechoic chamber or at least a heavily damped room.

 

Anechoic room significantly simplify task of reproduction. Me seems closest system for reproduction of concert hall is a "sound projectors" (system of many spekers). Though the systems have frequency response issues.

 

May be electrostatic panels, that Ralph mentioned, is the best solution for now.

 

For restoring at home concert hall response, need do it for each sound source.

 

Example:

 

At stage we have 2 singers. Responses from each singer to single listener is different.

 

So we should transform these 2 responses to response for system [speaker-home room-listener place] and process the both singers separatelly.

[Ralph Glasgal]

I am not defending "traditional" 2 or more channel stereo, merely expressing my reservations with regards to digital processing as a means to "transparently" achieve crosstalk-free reproduction (assuming that one is using binaural recordings). If I understand correctly, binaural listening needs absolute 0 crosstalk and this requires headphones since no loudspeaker has a perfectly linear dispersion and a partition can only go so close to one's face (before it ruins the listening pleasure).

Besides, once you get a handful of speakers in a room they'll not only interact negatively with the room (something than you can correct to a point with DSP) but also amongst themselves (and there's nothing we can do about it).R

 

Everything is relative. Even if we assume that the Stereophile myth that DSP processing always produces some audible effect is always true, the fact is that two speakers at a 60 degree angle actually in fact never deliver flat response at the ear of a listener and the unavoidable localization cue distortion means that no stereo system can ever be psychoacoustically valid. Indeed some maybe minor DSP error is likely to be a lot less audible.

 

Despite Chesky, it is a myth that you need dummy head recordings to get the benefits of a binaural loudspeaker system like Ambiophonics. Almost any 2.0 file, LP or CD or SACD has ITD and ILD that needs to be delivered intact to the ear. Since the ear cannot tell the difference between 90% crosstalk cancellation and 100% cancellation when music is playing this perfection is not an issue. In any case, even 50% cancellation sounds better than normal stereo. Actually, RACE allows any ratio of stereo to Ambio to be tried.

 

Loudspeakers work much better than earphones for a variety of reasons involving the pinna. internalization, and the fact that the stage moves with head motion. You could use a Smyth Realizer to have Ambiophonics with earphones, but Smyth is not interested in this application so you would need to be an expert to use it. BACCH may do it. The moral is that just eliminating crosstalk is not all there is to it.

 

The surround speakers don't interact with each other any more than walls in a concert hall interact with each other. The surround speakers don't need to have low bass if that is an issue. Indeed Ambiophonics and similar have nothing to do with low bass room response, mostly because this is always mono. Again as I have pointed out above the rear Envelophonics speakers need the room reflections and the later large hall reflections from surround speakers to get the full benefit of concert hall ambience. In a concert hall one has room like reflections from seats yards away all around you.

[semente]

Anechoic room significantly simplify task of reproduction. Me seems closest system for reproduction of concert hall is a "sound projectors" (system of many spekers). Though the systems have frequency response issues.

 

May be electrostatic panels, that Ralph mentioned, is the best solution for now.

 

For restoring at home concert hall response, need do it for each sound source.

 

Example:

 

At stage we have 2 singers. Responses from each singer to single listener is different.

 

So we should transform these 2 responses to response for system [speaker-home room-listener place] and process the both singers separatelly.

And then there's also the interaction between speakers...

[Ralph Glasgal]

Yes. Speakers + Listening Room.

 

 

 

We capture sound field (sum of acoustic rays) in some point around the gun.

 

For producing same sound field we should place speaker directly ear input. There may be some distortions, usual for driver. But I will not consider it here.

 

If speaker placed at distance, need account its aperture - different sound field in different direction.

 

Both cases (original and record) we should listen with closed 1 ear (except listening via headphones).

 

STC is correct. To amplify, yes, a domestic concert hall will not be perfect but neither is the human brain. The home concert hall may actually work better than many real ones for people not in the best seat. Yes, depending on the type of surround speakers, the hall reverb reaching the ear may not be what you would have in Carnegie Hall but that is no reason not to have surround speakers. Disney Hall does not sound as good as the Musikvereign in Vienna so should we boycott Disney?

 

It does not matter if the ambience speakers are closer or further away or their axial response. This is just changing the shape or position of a balcony wall. Also, most such processors have delay controls so you can compensate for this. Audiophiles will spend all their free time tweaking these controls and endanger their health so I hesitate to mention them.

 

There are two cases that must be considered. In a 5.1 surround recording, the rear pair may be the hall ambience so if you process this pair to cancel the crosstalk you have the directional dynamic rear hall ambience where it should be and you can do without convolved ambience. For 2.0 recordings there is no isolated rear hall ambience data so you need to place the front stage in a hall and this is where you need the rear and side ambience derived from a really good hall. The little ambience included in most 2.0 files is easily accommodated by the ear since it stays frontal and is swamped by the rear sited convolved signals. The sewer effect prevents any significant level of reverb being included in the front channels so this is not the problem that many obsess about. No need for anechoic recordings, etc. This is also why ambience extraction from LOs and CDs was never a good idea.

[semente]

Everything is relative. Even if we assume that the Stereophile myth that DSP processing always produces some audible effect is always true, the fact is that two speakers at a 60 degree angle actually in fact never deliver flat response at the ear of a listener and the unavoidable localization cue distortion means that no stereo system can ever be psychoacoustically valid. Indeed some maybe minor DSP error is likely to be a lot less audible.

 

Despite Chesky, it is a myth that you need dummy head recordings to get the benefits of a binaural loudspeaker system like Ambiophonics. Almost any 2.0 file, LP or CD or SACD has ITD and ILD that needs to be delivered intact to the ear. Since the ear cannot tell the difference between 90% crosstalk cancellation and 100% cancellation when music is playing this perfection is not an issue. In any case, even 50% cancellation sounds better than normal stereo. Actually, RACE allows any ratio of stereo to Ambio to be tried.

 

Loudspeakers work much better than earphones for a variety of reasons involving the pinna. internalization, and the fact that the stage moves with head motion. You could use a Smyth Realizer to have Ambiophonics with earphones, but Smyth is not interested in this application so you would need to be an expert to use it. BACCH may do it. The moral is that just eliminating crosstalk is not all there is to it.

 

The surround speakers don't interact with each other any more than walls in a concert hall interact with each other. The surround speakers don't need to have low bass if that is an issue. Indeed Ambiophonics and similar have nothing to do with low bass room response, mostly because this is always mono. Again as I have pointed out above the rear Envelophonics speakers need the room reflections and the later large hall reflections from surround speakers to get the full benefit of concert hall ambience. In a concert hall one has room like reflections from seats yards away all around you.

 

I think that there is always some form of interaction when you are using 2 or more speakers, you even get interaction between drivers of a single speaker.

 

I don't like listening with headphones, but it seems to me that they'd solve most binaural/immersive problems.

 

R