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


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You do realize that the Gabrielli and the Biggs are just the kind of surround titles that I'm complaining about most, don't you? The Biggs recording, especially, is almost 40 years old and was recorded for Columbia SQ in the bad old days of Quadraphonic sound. If the Gabrielli is the one I'm thinking about with the 4 brass choirs, then it is just exactly the kind of exaggerated 4-channel sound that made me ultimately give up on Quad back in the day. Sorry.

 

I don't claim to be an artistic reviewer of 3D mastering creations. I am only concerned with reproducing exactly what was engraved without localization distortion. The four organs in Freibourg are far apart. That is the way they sound when you play them back Ambiophonically. If you play them back using 5.1 with rear speakers at 110 degrees and the fronts with LCR you are in no position to judge what was really captured by the microphones. It is hard to understand that mic arrays don't know that what they faithfully pick up will never be reproduced by stereophiles or 5.1 home theaters. Almost all vinyl is 40 years old or older but audiophiles still think they are superior to CDs. So I suppose most vinyl engaged audiophiles will think SQ vinyl is better than any DTS/Doilby/etc. surround medium.

 

I don't find the four brass choirs unnatural and Gabrieli did want at least two (antiphonal) very far apart. Of course Columbia put the brass groupings in four different spots to sell SQ LPs but that certainly still makes it easier to hear the contrasting themes and think what St Marks must have sounded like. Putting all the brass together in the front 60 degrees doesn't make much sense to me. You can turn off the decoder when you play this disc and compare frontal stereo to Ambio surround. So far no guest has preferred antique stereo. Of course with Ambiophonics you can also have Envelophonics going and large hall ambience surround. That sort of makes up for the 40 year age. Of course I have some 50 classical SQ LPs and they come with all kinds of rear and front stages some subtle some not.

 

You can spurn color pictures because the color is slightly exaggerated and thus stick with black and white. Likewise, you can stick with stereo because some surround recording producers put some direct sound too far to the side or rear. Perfectly reasonable artistic position. My job as a computer audiophile is just to allow everyone to reproduce precisely what the mastering engineer engraved, artistic or not. Plain stereo reproduction cannot do that even for perfectly artistic 2.0 mastered recordings.

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The Ambiophonics, Princeton, Ambidio, Neutron MP, Amtra, Aria 3D software and the dozens of others that are sure to follow are close relatives and are all Binaural loudspeaker technologies. Both RACE and BACCH are programs that eliminate crosstalk between two speakers. Think of the loudspeakers as big earphones. This is s way to listen to any two channel LP or CD without the frequency response and localization cue distortion of the normal 60 degree speaker arrangement. Or you can think of this as a way to get earphone advantages without the distprtopms of earphone listening. But both RACE and BACCH do not need dummy head binaural recordings to work although many such recordings are much more realistic reproduced using loudspeaker binaural instead of earphones. There are of course also extreme measures that can be employed to use RACE and BACCH with earphones but it is a lot easier with loudspeakers.

 

Normal hearing is binaural and so to the extent that Ambiophonics is meant to provide a normal sound field at the ear, I would classify Ambio as a binaural technology as opposed to a stereo one. Stereo does not rely on the normal localization mechanisms, it is not binaural it is a sonic illusion like an optical illusion. As an illusion it is far from perfect, with narrow stage width, nonlinear stage localization, limited listening area, poor frequency response, pinna vs ITD and ILD localization cue contradictions, and all ambience wrongly frontal. (But never fear, Stereophonics Magazine and TAS assure us that vacuum tubes, silver cables, 192/24 resolution, Vinyl, room correction, and flat response at 22,237 Hz will make stereo sound like binaural hearing.)

 

Yes The RACE equations and speaker spacing used in Ambiophonics systems does make it possible to hare two speakers work better than earphones or a physical barrier. You can just use two speakers for say pop music like small combos in small rooms. But if you want a sense of envelopment and ambience for classical music or direct rear sound from surround 3D movies you should think about adding some speakers at the rear. This is a question of budget and technical talent. You can further enhance plain 2.0 classical orchestral music reproduction by actually creating a concert hall in your living room by using surround speakers. Ambiophonics is very flexible, and its principles can be used with a lot of different sonic media like games, virtual reality, 3D movies, electronic music, and to construct domestic concert halls or rock venues.

 

Nothing is perfect or perfectly transparent, but Ambiophonics provides a lot more psychoacoustic verisimilitude than loudspeaker stereo, 5.1 home theater, Atmos, Dolby, etc. The NYU listening panel and the R. Miller panels both overwhelmingly preferred Ambio to stereo and this was just the two speaker version.

 

Yes crosstalk cancellation works with just about any speaker type. You can see a variety on the Ambio website. The speakers just need to be symmetrical about the center line in the horizontal plane. As long as the axial dispersion is the same for both speakers that does not matter. I have systems here with ESL panel, MBL radial, bookshelf, and soundbar speakers. The above comments seem to imply that nobody has ever set up one of these systems, but there are hundreds out there now and if there were any glitches we would all know about them. Anybody in the NYC area can come here or send a witness and hear for themselves that Ambio works and there are lots of witnesses to BACCH as well.

 

Ambiophonics does not extract anything, delay anything or filter anything. The front left signal gets to the left ear and the front right signal gets to the right ear unchanged, unlike what happens in stereo. That is the simplest form for Ambiophonics, what I call a single Ambiodipole. That may be all you want or need. But since most 2.0 classical recordings lack envelopment and proper hall ambience you can employ what I call Envelophonics, which uses a second Ambiodipole behind the listeners but still using just the same unaltered 2.0 media file again processed by RACE so now you have two binaural loudspeakers going in the same room playing an LP or CD. Why this produces envelopment is still being investigated. Then you can use yet another Ambiodipole with the rear pair from 5.1 and have a full circle of direct sound for games, movies, virtual reality, and classical symphonic music or opera.

 

The output from you DAC is analog and can go into a miniambio before it goes to your amplifiers. It can go to two miniambios if you want Envelophonics.

Thanks for that.

I still have some questions, though, and for the purpose of our chat please note that I listen to classical music in two channel stereo and have no particular interest in adding extra speakers to my setup for I don't feel the need more "envelopment" only better imaging.

 

But first I would like to disagree that there is no sense of "envelopment and ambience" with two channel stereo.

When speakers (re)produce sound in a room some of it goes direct to the listener's ears and some is reflected by the room boundaries reaching the listener from all sides with a certain amount of delay.

It's not an accurate recreation of the original experience but it does produce a certain amount of "sense of envelopment and ambience", that you otherwise wouldn't get outdoors or in an anechoic chamber.

 

My first questions have to do with crosstalk cancellation, which I understand as the right speaker getting sound from the right channel and the left one idem but there seems to be more to it because my source and amplifier are already doing that.

Could you elaborate on that?

Then there's the question about avoiding the sound from one channel reaching the opposite ear, which I've seen done using a purposely built panel.

How does Ambiophonics prevent speaker dispersion bleeding (and let's ignore the fact that even with the panel you'll get reflections from both speakers to both ears)?

For illustration purposes, this is how a "conventional" box speaker radiates sound:

 

why-you-must-calibrate-your-audio-monitor-speakers-and-how-to-do-it-12-728.jpg

 

 

You also mention that "most 2.0 classical recordings lack envelopment and proper hall ambience you can employ what I call Envelophonics".

Will this produce "proper" recreation of the original acoustics or just a psychoacoustic effect?

 

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)

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Stereo does not rely on the normal localization mechanisms, it is not binaural it is a sonic illusion like an optical illusion. As an illusion it is far from perfect, with narrow stage width, nonlinear stage localization, limited listening area, poor frequency response, pinna vs ITD and ILD localization cue contradictions, and all ambience wrongly frontal. (But never fear, Stereophonics Magazine and TAS assure us that vacuum tubes, silver cables, 192/24 resolution, Vinyl, room correction, and flat response at 22,237 Hz will make stereo sound like binaural hearing.)

 

Regarding stage width, "pure" 2 channel stereo will only recreate sound sources within the space located between the two speakers.

In a live orchestral music concert the width of the orchestra, let's call it direct-sound field-of-hearing for it has parallels with photography, depends on where you are seating but I would agree that it would be wider than the usual 60º of two channel stereo if one were seating at a reasonable/adequate distance from the stage.

But in classical music, the instances where you will have sound sources to your sides are quite rare, again if one were seating at a reasonable/adequate distance from the stages/sources (I have attended some sacred music performances where the choir would be position 90º from the organ or even facing it).

So, the need for speakers to the sides or behind the listener are marginal at best because they'll only be adding ambience to the sonic picture.

And in that case I would rather have them reproduce sound that was picked up by specifically thought out and positioned mics and respective channels.

Which I don't because I find that the room reflections tend to provide enough sense of "immersion".

 

 

As I have written previously, I haven't yet been able to experience proper multi-channel stereo reproduction; for some reason I have always been faced with demos of cinema but never of classical music but personally I cannot justify the cost, complexity and space-taking of such systems and I agree with @gmgraves that more speakers in a room will create more problems.

Getting better focus and depth would be nice, although I still fail to understand how this can be achieved from 2 channel stereo recordings and without the binaural partition between the speakers...

 

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)

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It is difficult to explain if you do not want to experiment for yourself.

 

The improvement in my system goes like this.....

 

Stereo - 2 speakers Ambiophonic - 4 speakers Ambiophonics- 4 speakers Ambiophonics with convolution surround.

 

The improvement between Stereo and 2 speakers Ambiophonics is night and day. Will pass DBT with 100% score.

 

Learning curve can be steep as finding the compromised setting for poor recordings too me a while. Furthermore, the system is tuned to individual preference and visitors must have the patience to adjust the setting to suit theirs.

 

You also must remember that after so many years of listening to Stereo some may not able to digest the 3D experience immediately. Now, I usually reduce the 3D effect when auditioning to audiophiles.

 

 

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It is difficult to explain if you do not want to experiment for yourself.

 

The improvement in my system goes like this.....

 

Stereo - 2 speakers Ambiophonic - 4 speakers Ambiophonics- 4 speakers Ambiophonics with convolution surround.

 

The improvement between Stereo and 2 speakers Ambiophonics is night and day. Will pass DBT with 100% score.

 

Learning curve can be steep as finding the compromised setting for poor recordings too me a while. Furthermore, the system is tuned to individual preference and visitors must have the patience to adjust the setting to suit theirs.

 

You also must remember that after so many years of listening to Stereo some may not able to digest the 3D experience immediately. Now, I usually reduce the 3D effect when auditioning to audiophiles.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

What interests me at this point is to learn how the 3D effect is achieved.

 

In 3D films you have to wear those weird glasses and the accuracy in parameters such as colour, tone and contrast are (greatly) affected...aspects that I find more important.

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

 

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

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What interests me at this point is to learn how the 3D effect is achieved.

 

In 3D films you have to wear those weird glasses and the accuracy in parameters such as colour, tone and contrast are (greatly) affected...aspects that I find more important.

 

Take a cushion put it in between your desktop speakers. Bring the speakers closer. Move your face towards the cushion and you tell me what you hear.

 

Or

 

 

 

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Take a cushion put it in between your desktop speakers. Bring the speakers closer. Move your face towards the cushion and you tell me what you hear.

 

Or

 

 

I've done that a few times in the past.

 

I am interested in understanding how I can do it without the cushion. :)

 

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)

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I don't claim to be an artistic reviewer of 3D mastering creations. I am only concerned with reproducing exactly what was engraved without localization distortion. The four organs in Freibourg are far apart. That is the way they sound when you play them back Ambiophonically. If you play them back using 5.1 with rear speakers at 110 degrees and the fronts with LCR you are in no position to judge what was really captured by the microphones. It is hard to understand that mic arrays don't know that what they faithfully pick up will never be reproduced by stereophiles or 5.1 home theaters. Almost all vinyl is 40 years old or older but audiophiles still think they are superior to CDs. So I suppose most vinyl engaged audiophiles will think SQ vinyl is better than any DTS/Doilby/etc. surround medium.

 

I don't find the four brass choirs unnatural and Gabrieli did want at least two (antiphonal) very far apart. Of course Columbia put the brass groupings in four different spots to sell SQ LPs but that certainly still makes it easier to hear the contrasting themes and think what St Marks must have sounded like. Putting all the brass together in the front 60 degrees doesn't make much sense to me. You can turn off the decoder when you play this disc and compare frontal stereo to Ambio surround. So far no guest has preferred antique stereo. Of course with Ambiophonics you can also have Envelophonics going and large hall ambience surround. That sort of makes up for the 40 year age. Of course I have some 50 classical SQ LPs and they come with all kinds of rear and front stages some subtle some not.

 

You can spurn color pictures because the color is slightly exaggerated and thus stick with black and white. Likewise, you can stick with stereo because some surround recording producers put some direct sound too far to the side or rear. Perfectly reasonable artistic position. My job as a computer audiophile is just to allow everyone to reproduce precisely what the mastering engineer engraved, artistic or not. Plain stereo reproduction cannot do that even for perfectly artistic 2.0 mastered recordings.

Ralph - your comments have been interesting above and in other posts. However, I do not think that rehashing old Columbia "remastered for Mch" recordings gets us anywhere closer to achieving better sound that puts us closer to recreating the perception of a live sonic event. For example, I have the Biggs Freiburg SACD. Clearly, the Mch version is a repanned version of the original mike feeds intended for Quad, so it is a totally different mix in stereo vs. Mch. It achieves what the producers wanted to achieve, which is a total artifice, not a better or more natural sonic picture of the organs in that Cathedral. This is analogous to what happens with Mch remixes of pop/rock hits with instruments or other effects panned into surround channels vs. the stereo original.

 

And, please. The whole Quad era was a sonic disaster that deserved to die. Today's discretely recorded, hi rez Mch recordings are in a different league entirely.

 

I remain highly skeptical of the notion that 2-channel recordings contain sufficient natural spatial information that merely needs to be "unlocked" in Ambiosonic playback. I do not think you can take any old stereo recording and with proper technique and/or DSP create a reasonably satisfying replica of the live musical event. Yes, you can create an interesting new sound from it in this way. There is your way or many other ways by Dolby, DTS, Auro, Binaural, etc. going back to Sonic Holography or even the Hafler circuit of old.

 

Some people may find these artificially imposed effects novel, interesting and enjoyable, but like Kal Rubinson's earlier comment, I have not heard anything that sounds more like a real live classical concert. I have not heard Ambiophonics or BACCH. Maybe someday out of curiousity.

 

I have no doubt the effects they produce are stunning, if not natural sounding. But, I find that recordings done over the past 15 years or so in discrete 5/7.1 are highly statisfying. Best yet, IMHO. Synthesis from 2.0 does not come close. I do not see how it can or how your way can be better. It lacks too much information compared to discrete 5/7.1. I also do not see that discrete 5/7.1 requires any augmentation via crosstalk elimination, since it was recorded mixed and mastered without any crosstalk elimination or manipulation.

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I still have some questions, though, and for the purpose of our chat please note that I listen to classical music in two channel stereo and have no particular interest in adding extra speakers to my setup for I don't feel the need more "envelopment" only better imaging.

But first I would like to disagree that there is no sense of "envelopment and ambience" with two channel stereo.

When speakers (re)produce sound in a room some of it goes direct to the listener's ears and some is reflected by the room boundaries reaching the listener from all sides with a certain amount of delay. It's not an accurate recreation of the original experience but it does produce a certain amount of "sense of envelopment and ambience", that you otherwise wouldn't get outdoors or in an anechoic chamber.

My first questions have to do with crosstalk cancellation, which I understand as the right speaker getting sound from the right channel and the left one idem but there seems to be more to it because my source and amplifier are already doing that.

Then there's the question about avoiding the sound from one channel reaching the opposite ear, which I've seen done using a purposely built panel. How does Ambiophonics prevent speaker dispersion bleeding (and let's ignore the fact that even with the panel you'll get reflections from both speakers to both ears)?

For illustration purposes, this is how a "conventional" box speaker radiates sound:[ATTACH=CONFIG]33113[/ATTACH]You also mention that "most 2.0 classical recordings lack envelopment and proper hall ambience you can employ what I call Envelophonics". Will this produce "proper" recreation of the original acoustics or just a psychoacoustic effect? R

 

A lot to cover. Most of this is, of course, in papers and tutorials at Ambiophonics.org. Envelopment is indeed a vital part of better imaging. Part of knowing where something is is placing it in a normal space, be it a room, closet, hall, outdoors etc. Also if you add Envelophonics, it greatly reduces the influence of the listening room. But unless you have XTC in front there is no point in having Envelophonics at the rear.

 

Everything is relative. Of course there is some small sense of ambience with mono and stereo recordings in some rooms, but there is a lot more and better with other techniques. Yes, in sepia there is some color but Kodachrome is a lot more colorful. I thought audiophiles were not so easily satisfied. Do you really feel you are in a concert hall with plain stereo when it is clear this hall is not anywhere near realistic. There is something called "They are Here" reproduction where, for say a vocalist and a guitar, one can get the feeling that they are in the room with you. In this case the static nature of the room reflections and their limited timing range is not so audible. But I am exclusively concerned with "You Are There" recording and reproduction which is better for movies and classical music or any large ensemble or space. I think honest mono is better for a vocalist and guitar than faulty stereo.

 

If, in your system, the left speaker is only audible to the left ear and the right speaker is only audible to the right ear, you have no crosstalk and so do not need cancellation. But since the right ear does hear sound from the left speaker and the left hear does hear sound from the right speaker there is a problem that has been known since 1931. This is a mechanical acoustic problem, nothing to do with amplifiers or the type of speaker. Originally, I used a panel to keep the sound waves from reaching the wrong ear, but now it is much better done with DSP or computers. I don't know what speaker dispersion bleeding is. But every speaker beams some direct sound to the head. Other sound from the speaker doesn't matter since it arrives later and comes from different directions just like in concert halls or jazz clubs. I use MBL speakers which radiate all over the place but have no problem with cancelling the crosstalk and having a great stage including envelopment from two small rear speakers.

 

There is a full tutorial on Envelophonics on the Ambio site. But 2.0 recordings only provide frontal sound, even if some small part of it is ambience. The brain does not like this. Early reflections must come from the sides for the brain to sense envelopment and these reflection vectors must retain their interaural level and delay localization values for each frontal direct sound source. I know this is complicated but it is easy to try if you have two spare speakers and a miniambio. Envelopment mimics a small part of the original acoustic and it is by definition a psychoacoustic property of the human hearing mechanism. You can either use the front pair to get envelopment or you can go to a multichannel media and record it. I doubt a listening panel could tell the difference.

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There are a bunch of computer apps and a high rez component that you can use archived at Home Page it is neither costly or complex. Ralph

 

Thanks, I'll look into it.

 

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)

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Ralph - your comments have been interesting above and in other posts. However, I do not think that rehashing old Columbia "remastered for Mch" recordings gets us anywhere closer to achieving better sound that puts us closer to recreating the perception of a live sonic event. For example, I have the Biggs Freiburg SACD. Clearly, the Mch version is a repanned version of the original mike feeds intended for Quad, so it is a totally different mix in stereo vs. Mch. It achieves what the producers wanted to achieve, which is a total artifice, not a better or more natural sonic picture of the organs in that Cathedral. This is analogous to what happens with Mch remixes of pop/rock hits with instruments or other effects panned into surround channels vs. the stereo original.

 

And, please. The whole Quad era was a sonic disaster that deserved to die. Today's discretely recorded, hi rez Mch recordings are in a different league entirely.

 

I remain highly skeptical of the notion that 2-channel recordings contain sufficient natural spatial information that merely needs to be "unlocked" in Ambiosonic playback. I do not think you can take any old stereo recording and with proper technique and/or DSP create a reasonably satisfying replica of the live musical event. Yes, you can create an interesting new sound from it in this way. There is your way or many other ways by Dolby, DTS, Auro, Binaural, etc. going back to Sonic Holography or even the Hafler circuit of old.

 

Some people may find these artificially imposed effects novel, interesting and enjoyable, but like Kal Rubinson's earlier comment, I have not heard anything that sounds more like a real live classical concert. I have not heard Ambiophonics or BACCH. Maybe someday out of curiousity.

 

I have no doubt the effects they produce are stunning, if not natural sounding. But, I find that recordings done over the past 15 years or so in discrete 5/7.1 are highly statisfying. Best yet, IMHO. Synthesis from 2.0 does not come close. I do not see how it can or how your way can be better. It lacks too much information compared to discrete 5/7.1. I also do not see that discrete 5/7.1 requires any augmentation via crosstalk elimination, since it was recorded mixed and mastered without any crosstalk elimination or manipulation.

 

Your concern has already been addressed. You add nothing new. Ralph already addressed using multi channel with ambio.

 

Ralph, I know there are about 26 speakers in your main system. Have you done 5.1 or 7.1 or 11.1 with and without Ambio?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Everything is relative.

Of course there is some small sense of ambience with mono and stereo recordings in some rooms, but there is a lot more and better with other techniques.

Yes, in sepia there is some color but Kodachrome is a lot more colorful.

I thought audiophiles were not so easily satisfied.

Do you really feel you are in a concert hall with plain stereo when it is clear this hall is not anywhere near realistic.

There is something called "They are Here" reproduction where, for say a vocalist and a guitar, one can get the feeling that they are in the room with you. In this case the static nature of the room reflections and their limited timing range is not so audible.

But I am exclusively concerned with "You Are There" recording and reproduction which is better for movies and classical music or any large ensemble or space. I think honest mono is better for a vocalist and guitar than faulty stereo.

As mentioned previously I listen predominantly to classical music, which would put me in the "you are there" club, and I do enjoy getting a sense of the acoustic space where the performance took place.

But I don't find that nearly as important as other aspects of reproduction.

 

Perhaps I have gotten so used to the shortcomings of 2 channel audio that I am able to perceive some kind of "realism" in the illusion that is stereo that is satisfactory despite the lack of spatial verisimilitude.

The extra cost (or the spreading of a limited budget over more elements) and the size of European living rooms are also important factors weighing in.

 

If, in your system, the left speaker is only audible to the left ear and the right speaker is only audible to the right ear, you have no crosstalk and so do not need cancellation. But since the right ear does hear sound from the left speaker and the left hear does hear sound from the right speaker there is a problem that has been known since 1931. This is a mechanical acoustic problem, nothing to do with amplifiers or the type of speaker. Originally, I used a panel to keep the sound waves from reaching the wrong ear, but now it is much better done with DSP or computers. I don't know what speaker dispersion bleeding is. But every speaker beams some direct sound to the head. Other sound from the speaker doesn't matter since it arrives later and comes from different directions just like in concert halls or jazz clubs. I use MBL speakers which radiate all over the place but have no problem with cancelling the crosstalk and having a great stage including envelopment from two small rear speakers.

By "speaker dispersion bleeding" I meant the overlapping of the sound "beams" produce by the two speakers, which is more noticeable with wider-dispersion speaker topologies.

I fail to understand how it is possible to prevent this without a physical barrier...

 

I tend to agree with @Fitzcaraldo215's scepticism regarding "immersive spatial reconstruction" from 2 channels and I am also expecting some degree of artificialness but I remain interested nonetheless.

 

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)

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Your concern has already been addressed. You add nothing new. Ralph already addressed using multi channel with ambio.

 

Ralph, I know there are about 26 speakers in your main system. Have you done 5.1 or 7.1 or 11.1 with and without Ambio?

Yes. But, what is not addressed is the question whether Ambio derived from stereo or from 5/7.1 is indeed better than simple discretely recorded 5/7.1 Mch without Ambio. I see emphatic theoretical claims and arm waving from Ralph that it is. But, I see no credible basis for those claims. Part of my point was that trying to find sonic truth in E. Power Biggs Quad recordings from the 1970's, as Ralph did, was ridiculous. Those recordings are and always were frauds.

 

And, if Ralph were to answer about comparative listening to modern, discretely recorded Mch, could there be any doubt that he would declare that his own brainchild, in which he has invested a great deal of time and effort, "sounds much better". So, what is your point?

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Regarding stage width, "pure" 2 channel stereo will only recreate sound sources within the space located between the two speakers.

In a live orchestral music concert the width of the orchestra, let's call it direct-sound field-of-hearing for it has parallels with photography, depends on where you are seating but I would agree that it would be wider than the usual 60º of two channel stereo if one were seating at a reasonable/adequate distance from the stage.

But in classical music, the instances where you will have sound sources to your sides are quite rare, again if one were seating at a reasonable/adequate distance from the stages/sources (I have attended some sacred music performances where the choir would be position 90º from the organ or even facing it).

So, the need for speakers to the sides or behind the listener are marginal at best because they'll only be adding ambience to the sonic picture.

And in that case I would rather have them reproduce sound that was picked up by specifically thought out and positioned mics and respective channels.

Which I don't because I find that the room reflections tend to provide enough sense of "immersion".

As I have written previously, I haven't yet been able to experience proper multi-channel stereo reproduction; for some reason I have always been faced with demos of cinema but never of classical music but personally I cannot justify the cost, complexity and space-taking of such systems and I agree with @gmgraves that more speakers in a room will create more problems.

Getting better focus and depth would be nice, although I still fail to understand how this can be achieved from 2 channel stereo recordings and without the binaural partition between the speakers...

R

 

The illusion that the entire orchestra is spread between your two speakers has to do with the phase integrity of the sound field. Of course, stereo, no matter how many channels, can't put a life-size symphony orchestra in your living room, it's going to be somewhat "miniaturized" - like sitting in the last row of the concert hall! But with the proper single-point stereo recording the illusion can still be very satisfying. I often think that the standard audiophile penchant for listening at lease-breaking levels is an attempt to overcome the limitations of a diminished soundstage caused by the fact that speakers are only 6-8 ft apart in a relatively small room. What was nice were Ray Kimber's IsoMike recordings (new ones are apparently, no longer being made, but the already released ones are still available). Only four channels, they brought just the right amount of spaciousness and hall ambience into an average sized listening room. No gimmicks, no artificial reverb added to the rear channels, just the actual sound of the venue in which the recording was made. What let the IsoMike recordings down, in my opinion, was the fact that with more than a single solo sound source (like the solo piano in the Mozart Piano Concerto set with Robert Silverman - I highly recommend this set, by the way!) the on-stage image became somewhat amorphous. I put this down to the use of two coincident omni-directional microphones separated by only a huge, heart-shaped sound absorbing "gobo" to separate the front mikes (if you use omni mikes in a normal coincident setup instead of cardioid or figure-of-eight mikes, you get dead mono because the two spherical sound fields of the omnis overlap completely). Even though the gobo does present some modicum of separation between left and right channels, the amount of separation is frequency dependent and below about 7 KHz, the separation becomes less and less until at the long wavelengths below 2-3 KHz, it's back to almost mono again. This doesn't hurt a single instrument sitting dead center in the sound stage like a large concert grand piano (or even a cello) but an instrument ensemble, to my ears, is less successful at throwing a stereo image. But like I said, the ambience is nice. But as Semente states, the cost, complexity and sheer clutter of such a system, is hardly worth the results in my estimation. Of course, YMMV :)

George

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Ralph - your comments have been interesting above and in other posts. However, I do not think that rehashing old Columbia "remastered for Mch" recordings gets us anywhere closer to achieving better sound that puts us closer to recreating the perception of a live sonic event. For example, I have the Biggs Freiburg SACD. Clearly, the Mch version is a repanned version of the original mike feeds intended for Quad, so it is a totally different mix in stereo vs. Mch. It achieves what the producers wanted to achieve, which is a total artifice, not a better or more natural sonic picture of the organs in that Cathedral. This is analogous to what happens with Mch remixes of pop/rock hits with instruments or other effects panned into surround channels vs. the stereo original.

 

And, please. The whole Quad era was a sonic disaster that deserved to die. Today's discretely recorded, hi rez Mch recordings are in a different league entirely.

 

I remain highly skeptical of the notion that 2-channel recordings contain sufficient natural spatial information that merely needs to be "unlocked" in Ambiosonic playback. I do not think you can take any old stereo recording and with proper technique and/or DSP create a reasonably satisfying replica of the live musical event. Yes, you can create an interesting new sound from it in this way. There is your way or many other ways by Dolby, DTS, Auro, Binaural, etc. going back to Sonic Holography or even the Hafler circuit of old.

 

Some people may find these artificially imposed effects novel, interesting and enjoyable, but like Kal Rubinson's earlier comment, I have not heard anything that sounds more like a real live classical concert. I have not heard Ambiophonics or BACCH. Maybe someday out of curiousity.

 

I have no doubt the effects they produce are stunning, if not natural sounding. But, I find that recordings done over the past 15 years or so in discrete 5/7.1 are highly statisfying. Best yet, IMHO. Synthesis from 2.0 does not come close. I do not see how it can or how your way can be better. It lacks too much information compared to discrete 5/7.1. I also do not see that discrete 5/7.1 requires any augmentation via crosstalk elimination, since it was recorded mixed and mastered without any crosstalk elimination or manipulation.

 

78 RPM discs in retrospect were a sonic disaster like SQ. But I play a lot of them Ambiophonically and Caruso never sounded so good but obviously far from perfect compared with any modern recording.

 

Well I am delighted to find an audiophile who does not think Vinyl sounds better than CDs. I agree that any old SQ surround recording is primitive in a lot of respects relative to what can be done today. But I do maintain that nobody in the 70's could have heard them at their best. I am just maintaining they are not as artificial and unrealistic as they were cracked up to be. It is nice to hear Ferde Grofe's donkeys stretching from full left to full right in a large hall, despite some ticks and pops. Bolero all around in front of you is also something rather impressive compared to a 60 degree flat stage without depth. There is also the issue that in those days, one could not use 64 spot mics, and pan pot them to oblivion. That is why some LPs do sound concert hall normal even if their frequency response is not perfect.

 

Yes the Biggs SACD is mixed differently than the original SQ LP and this was no secret at the time and is in the program notes. To me it matters little where a particular organ happens to be as long as the antiphonal nature of the performance and the spatial separation is as Biggs or a sonic mastering artist intended it be heard. You may not like the Fribourg acoustic, but at least you can hear most of it. In stereo you can't hear any of it. At the moment I think I am the only individual in the world that has heard all localization data on this SACD. I also have the Fribourg impulse response were that to be needed.

 

Most stereo mic arrangements pick up normal binaural values of interchannel level and time differences. So for example two omni directional or cardioid mics seven inches apart will record a time delay of about 700 microseconds for an instrument at the far side of an orchestra. That is also what you would hear if you were a few rows behind this mic. Now if these two left and right mic signals are not altered in some way by a console jockey, that is what will be on the stereo CD. When this is played back on speakers separated by 60 degrees, that 700 microseconds becomes a mere 220 microseconds interaural time difference and that is then followed by a bogus early reflection at 700 microseconds at one ear and a bogus 920 microsecond reflection at the other ear. There is a similar problem with interaural levels stored on discs but not delivered intact to the ears. So it is not XTC or Ambiophonics or even two channel recording that is the artifice, it is the use of the stereo triangle, which is exploiting a rather fluky sonic illusion.

 

 

So if you really want to hear what is on the average LP or CD as far as localization cues are concerned you need crosstalk cancellation. No synthesis is involved. There are also the pinna direction finding errors to consider which is why the speakers need to be closer together. Then Ambiophonic or similar playback algorithms can recover (not create) the latent data from most recordings. I do it all the time and it is gratifying to hear an orchestra sounding wider than 60 degrees. This is not an artifice, or artificially imposed, it is what is on the disc and what one hears with normal ears all day long. If is 60 degree stereo that is not natural sounding. I wish I knew how to take a bad recording with a poor ITD range of say 100 microseconds and an ILD range of less than 2 dB and make it uncramped and vibrant again with ITDs up to 700 and ILDs up to 10. Apropos the SQ LPs, they have very high concert hall like values of ILD and ITD that XTC is able to reproduce for the first time.

 

XTC is in no way related to Hafler, or surround sound. You could apply XTC to the front channels of Dolby, Atmos or DTS and get a much better front stage and never need a center speaker. I do it all the time when I watch 3D movies these days. If you apply XTC to a rear pair derived from Dolby, Atmos or DTS it gets even better. Ambience is not extracted or synthesized from ambience data in 2.0 files. Hall ambience for surround speakers in the ultimate Ambiophonic system is generated by convolving the pure left and right front channels with real 3D hall impulse responses from halls like La Scala, Concertgebouw, Sydney Opera House, etc. Believe me when you turn off the surround speakers you are not happy. But this technology is only for very advanced, dedicated or obsessed computer users.

 

There are lots of testimonials on the Ambio website from all over the world and the results of the NYU listening panel should settle the stereo vs Ambio realism issue for all time. BACCH has a similar following".

 

Of course, I prefer using Ambiophonics to play true surround recordings rather than just 2.0 ones. But it is essential that Ambiophonics work well with the existing library of LPs and CDs. It is also nice that adding XTC, Envelophonics, and sometimes convolved ambience to standard 5.1/7.1/10.2 media does improve their localization realism a lot. The LCR front of these new media still suffers from the same localization cue distortions of ITD and ILD values that 2.0 stereo does. Remember these formats were designed for theaters where people sit at all angles to the speakers. So it is not to wonder that one can make them work better in a home with a little effort.

 

I appreciate that going beyond stereo is not easy for a lot of people. Note that mono is still king after 86 years. Someday there will be a magazine called Ambiophile.

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I had a feeling that you would attack my system in response. Believe me, I didn't get here with the milkman this morning. My criticism of most surround titles is not compromised by the fact that I don't have more than a hundred or so surround titles. I can certainly tell that I don't like the way a recording is done in seconds by listening on my "severely flawed" surround system.

 

Mr. Fitzcarlo:

 

I forgot to mention that when I pull out my M-L Aeon-i speakers for rear channels. its for playing IsoMike recordings which are just 4-channel with ambience only in the rear. The fact that the setup can also play surround recordings from Telarc, Reference Recordings and Naxos (if I want to) is just gravy - gluey and tepid though that gravy might be :). When not playing Mch, my rear speakers occupy a closet. That is to say, my Mch setup (such as it is) is not a permanent part of my rig (although the Krell amp doesn't move and the rear speaker cables are permanently in place.

George

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By "speaker dispersion bleeding" I meant the overlapping of the sound "beams" produce by the two speakers, which is more noticeable with wider-dispersion speaker topologies. I fail to understand how it is possible to prevent this without a physical barrier...R

All speakers bleed sound to both ears to a greater or lesser degree. Even a wall can barely prevent this.

 

It took me 20 years to duplicate in software what a barrier can do so easily mechanically. If the two speakers are identical then you know the wrong direct sound signal reaching the ear around the head has a fixed delay and a fixed loss of level. So you just generate a new signal for the other speaker with such a delay, level and polarity that it will acoustically cancel that sound from the other speaker just as it is arriving at the wrong ear. Then you must cancel this sound gong back around the head to the other ear all over again and so on. There is a longer and better explanation on the Ambio website and a whole free book on the subject.

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78 RPM discs in retrospect were a sonic disaster like SQ. But I play a lot of them Ambiophonically and Caruso never sounded so good but obviously far from perfect compared with any modern recording.

 

To say that 78 RPM discs were a "sonic disaster" is like saying that black-and-white TV was a visual disaster, or that big network radio was a broadcasting disaster. It was all there was. 78's were the norm for the first 50 years of the 20th century, network radio lasted from the early 1920's until it was eclipsed by television in the early 1950's. These were technological steps, not "disasters". And if you ever heard any of the 12" British Decca (London) FFRR 78's from the mid 1940's you wouldn't even complain about their SQ. 30 Hz-15 KHz frequency response and they sound pretty damn good if they've been well cared-for and played on decent equipment with the proper stylus. The first time I heard a "virgin" one played back on a decent turntable through the proper EQ curve (not surprisingly called the "FFRR" curve) I was gobsmacked! Very quiet surfaces (thank you, FFRR EQ) good bass, excellent highs, real high fidelity!

George

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To say that 78 RPM discs were a "sonic disaster" is like saying that black-and-white TV was a visual disaster, or that big network radio was a broadcasting disaster. It was all there was. 78's were the norm for the first 50 years of the 20th century, network radio lasted from the early 1920's until it was eclipsed by television in the early 1950's. These were technological steps, not "disasters". And if you ever heard any of the 12" British Decca (London) FFRR 78's from the mid 1940's you wouldn't even complain about their SQ. 30 Hz-15 KHz frequency response and they sound pretty damn good if they've been well cared-for and played on decent equipment with the proper stylus. The first time I heard a "virgin" one played back on a decent turntable through the proper EQ curve (not surprisingly called the "FFRR" curve) I was gobsmacked! Very quiet surfaces (thank you, FFRR EQ) good bass, excellent highs, real high fidelity!

I was just exaggerating to counteract the comment that SQ LPs were a disaster. Obviously, everything has its time and place.

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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?

Thanks for asking. Sorry, used to have a pic, I'll try to find it again. As described in profile, narrow room with speaker/amp/sub frames about 7' apart in a narrow, about 11' wide room. Used rule of fifths, works fairly well. Spkrs and their full audio paths double as HT mains. No room treatment, cables run beneath floor. Each spkr/amp/sub set well over 200lbs, ~half being from stands.

 

I would do room treatment, mostly side absorption + diffusion, but need to make long-delayed upgrades first... like to compare apples to apples. My room opens wide into another, so bass loading is pretty benign.

 

Cheers

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Computer Audiophile mobile app

Mac Mini 2012 with 2.3 GHz i5 CPU and 16GB RAM running newest OS10.9x and Signalyst HQ Player software (occasionally JRMC), ethernet to Cisco SG100-08 GigE switch, ethernet to SOtM SMS100 Miniserver in audio room, sending via short 1/2 meter AQ Cinnamon USB to Oppo 105D, feeding balanced outputs to 2x Bel Canto S300 amps which vertically biamp ATC SCM20SL speakers, 2x Velodyne DD12+ subs. Each side is mounted vertically on 3-tiered Sound Anchor ADJ2 stands: ATC (top), amp (middle), sub (bottom), Mogami, Koala, Nordost, Mosaic cables, split at the preamp outputs with splitters. All transducers are thoroughly and lovingly time aligned for the listening position.

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Early reflections must come from the sides for the brain to sense envelopment and these reflection vectors must retain their interaural level and delay localization values for each frontal direct sound source....

 

I am still unsure of the side wall reflection importance. Audiophile magazines suggest that the first reflection point must be treated.

 

When I added rockwool on the first reflection point on the side walls it actually made the sound lifeless. I ended adding Diffuser's over the rockwool.

 

And now, adding the surround speakers at 45 degrees and compared to emphasizing the rear half yields better sense of envelopment. I just discovered this today. I remember reading Harman's research about the importance of side wall reflection but it looks like the rear side wall reflection is more important than the front rear.

 

Isn't this is different from concert hall experience where the front half of side walls should have more reflection due to the close proximity to the stage?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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I am still unsure of the side wall reflection importance. Audiophile magazines suggest that the first reflection point must be treated. When I added rockwool on the first reflection point on the side walls it actually made the sound lifeless. I ended adding Diffuser's over the rockwool. And now, adding the surround speakers at 45 degrees and compared to emphasizing the rear half yields better sense of envelopment. I just discovered this today. I remember reading Harman's research about the importance of side wall reflection but it looks like the rear side wall reflection is more important than the front rear. Isn't this is different from concert hall experience where the front half of side walls should have more reflection due to the close proximity to the stage?

 

STC has it right. Retreat to the rear. Because the stereo 60 degree loudspeaker triangle is a rather frail sonic illusion, the hearing mechanism is sensitized to things like room reflections that tickle the pinna with contradictory localization cues that contrast with such cues from the front speakers. No audiophile magazine or reviewer or indeed anyone in the world can codify this sort of interaction since each human and room interact differently with the sound rays coming from the two front speakers. Also no two speaker types have the same axial radiation pattern and thus the same room reflection pattern.

 

But the sense of space in concert halls has been extensively investigated and some decades ago it was determined that humans prefer directional reflections to come from the sides, the rear, the ceiling and the front in this order of declining importance. Stereo of course being frontal is thus the worst place for reflections to come from. The ceiling is not great because that kind of reflection is mostly mono and the brain likes halls that deliver uncorrelated sound (binaural ITD and ILD) to the ears. Obviously, a reflection from the side produces the largest difference in sound between the ears.

 

I would say that in an Ambiophonic system, the two front speakers do faithfully reproduce all the direct and indirect frontal sound on the recording with all their horizontal directional cues intact. That is, even the reflections of instruments or the rear hall from the back of the front stage are treated as direct sound. So you really don't need to have any additional ambience speakers in the front 180 degrees of your room. So, yes, the rear sides are where the first resources should go. Then the rear and then the ceiling if you are really a fanatic.

 

So in a primitive reproduction system like two speaker 60 degree stereo, it is often an advantage to have the side wall remain reflective, and maybe just as often not.

 

An Ambiophonic system also benefits from a second XTC speaker pair behind the listeners to correct a pinna problem, provide envelopment (which is not like what you need to sense you are in a concert hall), and what you need to prevent the static side wall reflections from inadvertently spoiling what Ambiophonics can do. What works in a particular stereo system may not make sense in other reproduction systems.

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Mr. Fitzcarlo:

 

I forgot to mention that when I pull out my M-L Aeon-i speakers for rear channels. its for playing IsoMike recordings which are just 4-channel with ambience only in the rear. The fact that the setup can also play surround recordings from Telarc, Reference Recordings and Naxos (if I want to) is just gravy - gluey and tepid though that gravy might be :). When not playing Mch, my rear speakers occupy a closet. That is to say, my Mch setup (such as it is) is not a permanent part of my rig (although the Krell amp doesn't move and the rear speaker cables are permanently in place.

Well, George. Happy that you at least like the Isomike recordings. You do know that they have not really caught on, even among classical Mch listeners. No more are being produced. I have most of them, and I do not consider them top notch sonically, myself.

 

Meanwhile, some mainly European companies that use the ITU 5.0/.1 standard for Mch keep on turning out terrific sounding discs - SACD and BD-A. Channel Classics, BIS, PentaTone, RCO Live, 2L, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi, and many others keep the Mch classical music niche very much alive. Many opera, concert and ballet BD videos in Mch are also quite excellent.

 

Your equipment is certainly adequate for the most part, but degraded since you lack a center channel. Unfortunately, other flaws in your setup for Mch also prevent you from hearing what they can actually sound like at their best. Your mindset apparently prevents you from realizing that.

 

Incidentally, my system also uses Martin Logan electrostats, 7 of them.

 

Happy listening.

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Well, George. Happy that you at least like the Isomike recordings. You do know that they have not really caught on, even among classical Mch listeners. No more are being produced. I have most of them, and I do not consider them top notch sonically, myself.

 

Whoa, there cowboy, I never said that I *like* the IsoMike recordings, I said that they were the best use of surround i've heard. Like I said, while the ambience retrieval is exactly what I think one should hear from a Mch recording, the fact that Kimber uses a pair of omnidirectional mikes for the main channels means that the actual stereo image isn't very good. It's OK for solo instruments, but as the frequency falls, the stereo directionality becomes less and less.

 

Meanwhile, some mainly European companies that use the ITU 5.0/.1 standard for Mch keep on turning out terrific sounding discs - SACD and BD-A. Channel Classics, BIS, PentaTone, RCO Live, 2L, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi, and many others keep the Mch classical music niche very much alive. Many opera, concert and ballet BD videos in Mch are also quite excellent.

 

I have some of all of those labels (I don't buy them, mind, but they keep getting sent to me by my magazine editor who doesn't care much for classical music), and I'm not impressed. Just last week I received a Naxos Blu-Ray of Wagner's Die Walkure,with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (!). Like most Wagnerian operas, it is long and (IMHO) boring punctuated with moments of excitement! But the surround tracks are so poor that it's hardly worth the effort.

 

Your equipment is certainly adequate for the most part, but degraded since you lack a center channel. Unfortunately, other flaws in your setup for Mch also prevent you from hearing what they can actually sound like at their best. Your mindset apparently prevents you from realizing that.

 

That doesn't stop me from being able to tell if the recording is done properly or not and you seem to not understand that for me, in order for surround to be worth my while, it mist start with a proper, REAL stereo recording and then add only hall ambience to the rear channels. A multi-miked mix with some Lexicon-derived digital reverb thrown into the rear channels is of no interest to me and since that seems to be what most producers do, I'm simply not motivated to go full blown Mch.

Incidentally, my system also uses Martin Logan electrostats, 7 of them.

 

Well, I'll bet it sounds spectacular! Just because I wouldn't want to live with such a system, doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to hear it!

But for me, I find that it's hard enough for commercial record companies to get two channel stereo right, and so my focus is on listening to correctly made 2-channel stereo recordings, and believe me even they are few and far between.

 

Happy listening.

You too!

George

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