Blue or red pill?

[gmgraves]

Just now, mansr said:

Show me the maths.

I don't know the maths, but I can visualize the model but, I'm not going to draw it out (even though I could) because I'm really not interested in convincing you of anything. You have your belief system, and I have my experience of more than 40 years of making live recordings. If that's not enough for you, then so be it. I don't want to argue with you and generate enmity between us. In many things we discuss here, I agree with you. Just not this!

[gmgraves]

5 minutes ago, mansr said:

Well, that settles that.

Well, thanks the gods for small favors. Have a nice day, mansr. See you in another thread.

[gmgraves]

1 minute ago, STC said:

There is another way to ask the same question. Since George placed the microphone way up above the musicians, can we expected the sound to appear to come about 2 or three feet below the speakers?

 

 Not when they are pointed down at the orchestra and from about 10-15 feet back behind the conductor's head.  

[gmgraves]

23 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Actually, I have confused this thread to the Sanity Check thread. I was still thinking about the picture you posted.

 

 

 

Now that you say when you pointed the microphone down but IMO even if you had pointed the microphone straight, the recording would sound weak and far away but the perception of sound coming from bottom of the speakers will not happen.

 

Anyway, in this picture of yours, the microphone is significantly higher than the musicians. AND if a microphone could record elevation information without the aid of pinna(e) then the sound from this recording should sound to be coming closer to the floor than at the ear level.

My word, you are a pedantic little devil aren't you  ?

I would think it should be obvious that when I talk about image height and pointing the mikes down at the orchestra, that I'm talking about a concert symphony recording, not a small jazz ensemble in a club or restaurant. Just as obviously, I would treat each of those situations quite differently with respect to microphone placement. And no, the mikes are not significantly higher than the musicians, here. In fact, they are around chest or, in some cases (for those sitting down) about face level. No, there is no height factor in a small, closely miked ensemble like this. Everybody is at the same level - the floor, and there are no triangles floating above the orchestra because there's no orchestra.OK?

[gmgraves]

Thanks, Semente,  for the Linkwitz information on recording. It was a very interesting read!

[gmgraves]

10 minutes ago, STC said:

That is the defect of stereo. That’s something known from the very beginning.  But after close to 100 years this is no longer an issue to most and readily accept them that it is the standard of stereo playback. It has been discussed before. 

No, it's not a "defect of stereo". It's a defect of multi-miked, multi--channel monaural sound. Stereo uses TWO microphones, one for each channel and there is no bleed. In stereo, each mike picks up the entire ensemble, just from a different perspective. The term has, over the years been perverted to mean two playback channels, but that has little to do with stereo.

[gmgraves]

2 minutes ago, STC said:

 

You can create stereo recordings even with one microphone by mixing different instrument and pan potting  them. 

Godammit, STC, That's NOT STEREO. That's multi-channel\multi-miked mono! Just calling it stereo doesn't make it so!

[gmgraves]

14 hours ago, STC said:

 

It doesn’t matter whether they were multi miked or recorded at different time. What matters is if you are good recording and mixing engineer, you could pan pot those recording and create a stereo recording which when played over a stereo system will still create the illusion of soundstage and phantom image. Do you think norah jones Come away vocal was recorded with a stereo microphone?

Frankly I don't know what a Norah Jones is, and I don't care. If it isn't recorded with a stereo pair of microphones then it isn't stereo. If you call it stereo, then you are using a misnomer. multitrack, multi-mike recordings where things are "pan-potted" into position simply are not stereo. They do not meet the criteria for the definition of stereo, and are no more stereo than a 78 RPM shellac record is!

[gmgraves]

5 hours ago, STC said:

 

I don’t think so. A mono recording is still a mono even if you use stereo mode.  The stereo is the same sound with different level and phase over two speakers.  One mono on the left and another mono on the right can be argued as mono.

Actually it's two-channel mono (and sometimes three-channel mono)! There is an old saying that I think has a great deal of validity: "The beginning of wisdom is to call all things by their proper name." Calling a giraffe a rhinoceros will not make a giraffe into a rhinoceros, and calling a two-channel recording mixed-down from a number of monaural feeds, stereo, will not make it stereo. It really is that simple. 

[gmgraves]

7 hours ago, adamdea said:

You seem to be saying that

a. a pure stereo mic pair records everything direct and  indirect sound at that point in space.

b. if this is reproduced it will reach the listener and his head can do the work just as it would do if his ear was at the same pont in space as the mic.

 

That part is right. But the rest of your post is over-thinking the process. The simple result is that at somewhere between the musician(s) playing on the stage, and the back of the auditorium (or other venue), a pair of stereo microphones intercepts the sound field being projected by the musician(s). Both of the two microphones see the entire sound field (in a stereophonic recording) but they see it from a different perspective. This difference contains three different parameters which mark the difference between the two channels: intensity differences (between the two mikes), time arrival differences, and phase differences. For instance, both mikes pick up the same trumpet on the left side of the stage, but the nearest mike "hears" it first, "hears" it slightly louder, and "hears" it slightly out of phase from how the right microphone "hears" it. If you think about it, that's how humans (and much of the animal kingdom) localizes sounds as well. When one plays that recording back, on speakers, the speakers maintains and projects that same relationship. Those three sound characteristics wash over our heads and ears, and the three characteristics reconstruct that sound field that the microphones intercepted, and we respond to it by being able to localize the component parts of that sound field from those cues within our own brains.  

 

Also, while I'm thinking about it, let me clear up another point. Stereo recordings have two totally different goals depending on the musical performance that one is trying to capture. Goal number one is to transport the listener to the space where the symphony orchestra, wind ensemble, jazz dance band, or any other large musical ensemble is playing. I want to hear the Vienna Philharmonic playing in the Vienna Symphony Hall, for instance. On the other hand, goal number two is to bring a small, intimate ensemble such as a string quartet or small jazz group into the listener's living room. These two disparate requirements require wildly different techniques, yet they can both be done, and done well with a simple stereo microphone setup. One just has to use them differently. Obviously the mikes have to much closer for that intimate sound that's going to bring the small ensemble into one's room, and they're going to have to be a longer way away, accepting more ambience into the microphones to give the sense of being transported to the place where the performance is taking place.

 

Lastly, and hopefully entertainingly, It takes practice and experimentation to know how to do both large-scale and intimate well, and believe me I've made a lot of mistakes over the years!

How about getting the cylindrical stereo mike 180 degrees backwards? Making the whole recording with the mike facing the audience with it's back to the music? How about while using a laptop running Audacity to capture a performance, getting interrupted by a well meaning patron who wanted to to talk about recording while I was setting-up? The result? I forgot to point Audacity, in software, toward the FireWire port which was connected to my ADC from my mixer! Halfway through the first number, I noticed that the R & L Vu-meters on Audacity were both registering as if they were receiving a mono signal! A frantic look around showed me what I had done. Audacity was "looking" at the laptop's built-in voice microphone, not at the mixer/ADC via the FireWire port! Luckily, I used a Zoom H2 wired directly to the mixer and set to 24/96, as a backup recorder so all was not lost. The client thought the recording sounded fine, but I knew that it wasn't as good as it would have been had I captured the performance to Audacity on the laptop! Believe me, there have been many more, my friends; many more!

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Don't know why this is even an argument. I have a simple EQ unit that will generate variable phase and level differences between left and right channel, even when fed mono input. Isn't this an example of mono recording to stereo playback?

 

Not recorded using a stereo mike technique? Not stereo. Stereo means "solid"; three-dimensional as in height, depth, and width as in stereophonic or "three-dimensional sound". It does not mean "two"! 

A multiplicity of mono channels mixed down to two channels can only do width. Therefore, it's not stereo. This is not really debatable. You might as well argue that the word "Democracy" (another Greek -derived word just like "stereophonic") doesn't mean a government where the people vote for leaders and/or laws. It's pretty well proscribed.

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I don't know of any native Latin speakers that can confirm the original meaning of the word as applied to audio, but quite a few that can confirm the current English usage:

 

Wikipedia: Stereophonic sound or, more commonly, stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that creates an illusion of multi-directional audible perspective

 

Online dictionaries

 

stereo sound

reproduction of sound using two or more separate microphones to feed two or more loudspeakers through separate channels in order to give a spatial effect to the sound

 

stereo

Sound that is directed through two or more speakers so that it seems to surround the listener and to come from more than one source; stereophonic sound.

 

stereophonic

of, relating to, or constituting sound reproduction involving the use of separated microphones and two transmission channels to achieve the sound separation of a live hearing

 

stereo

a way of recording or playing sound so that it is separated into two signals and produces more natural sound

 

I too know of no native Latin speakers who can confirm the original meaning of the word "stereophonic". Why should they? It's GREEK, not Latin.

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, STC said:

 

Are you aware that the so called stereo microphones are nothing more than but a pair of mono microphones placed in different configurations?  

 

I quoted Come away with me because it won best engineering Grammy award and thought it maybe an album of interest in recording field. 

 

 

You're joking, right? Everybody knows that. Even people who don't even know what a microphone is, knows that when someone says "Stereo Mike" they are referring to either a single mike with two capsules arranged in a stereo configuration, or two separate mikes mounted as a stereo pair.  I can't believe that anyone would ask such an asinine question. I only have about 10 stereo pairs or single point stereo mikes.

 

I really don't have any use for studio produced pop music. Therefore, I wouldn't know  "Come Away With Me" or some performer named Norah Jones. Sorry.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, adamdea said:

I hope you won’t mind my saying in turn that your views are plainly down to under-thinking and over-investment.

“If you think about it”... the “perspective” of your mikes is not how humans localise sound (beyond ITDs and ILDs). 

Only by that thinking can we look at how far the stereo process resembles real perception. 

Unfortunately you have trapped yourself in a conceptual straight jacket that by definition stereo captures everything.

 

It’s a shame. You don’t need this self-imposed imprisonment. Stereo is quite good and for most systems it’s all we have. Perhaps, all else being equal purist stereo recordings are probably more reliable than manufactured  ones. Obviously this is not an ineluctable conclusion (once you let go of the argument from word-play). But many non-purist recordings are very good. 

 

But real stereo and 3D stage imaging is my interest. It's the reason I started recording in the first place. Frankly, I can't understand why anyone would want to do it any other way. It's so palpably REAL, and every other way of recording is so phony sounding. My assumption (right or wrong) is that recording engineers have all these toys to play with, and by-the-gods, and by-cheeses, they-re gonna play with them even to the detriment of the recordings they make!

[gmgraves]

20 minutes ago, adamdea said:

I’m very interested in how you get good results out of stereo. As a matter of interest do you ever slip in a bit of extra ambience, or a spot, or allow them to edit a flub?

Sometimes I use spotlight mikes, but they're always subverient to the overall stereo pair. I don't like to, of course, but I have learned how to do it so that no one can tell a spotlight mike was used, it's just that the instrument(s) needing augmenting are now a wee bit louder than they were without the highlighting.

I once purchased an expensive spring reverb unit because the venue that a symphony orchestra I was recoding was so dry., Something had to be done!

As far as edits are concerned to fix gaffs in the playing, the fact that I'm usually recording a live performance, generally precludes that. I have got to do it maybe a handful of times. The most notable was when the orchestra.that I was recording was asked to perform the world premier of Virgil Thompson's "Requiem Mass" and then, send the finished tape to the Pulitzer Committee as the work had been nominated that year for the music prize. I had to do a lot of editing and cleaning up of that performance for sure! No, I don't believe Thompson won, but I heard later that the committee liked the recording!

[gmgraves]

22 hours ago, STC said:

 

We are in this predicament because initially the inventor himself wrongly called it binaural. It is understandable for the confusion since stereo is non existent prior to the invention . 

 

 

We are in this "predicament" because in the late 1950's when stereophonic vinyl records came on the market, it was necessary to come up with a way to differentiate, in the marketplace, between monaural records which had no vertical component to their groove modulation and Westrex 45/45 (stereo) discs which had both vertical and horizontal groove excursion and needed a smaller than a one mil stylus - the norm being a 0.7 mil, although some 0.5 mils were available (this is before the elliptical stylus was developed). If one had a mono rig in those days and accidentally bought and played a stereo record with a mono stylus and cartridge, one play would ruin it! The record industry did two things to solve this problem, they charged a dollar more for the stereo version of any release than they did for the mono version, and they emblazoned the word STEREO in great big letters at the top of the record cover. It didn't matter what the contents were, the actual record was labeled stereo because it required special playback equipment to keep from destroying it! The habit was thus formed of calling anything with two channels, stereo. But it wasn't because the program material was stereo, necessarily, it was because the medium was stereo. Some record companies (like Capitol) would take earlier mono material and "re-channel" it for "stereo" (usually with a comb filter) to get that extra buck! It was not more stereo than today's latest pop hits, but the precedent was set, and it stuck.The convention is obsolete now as all media, whether vinyl, CD, or hi-rez file, is now, by definition, stereo and today's playback equipment doesn't care. 

[gmgraves]

22 hours ago, fas42 said:

"I just have never heard or believe any system can ever be engineered that will convincingly sound like live..."

 

And it's easy to understand why you would think that - very few people achieve it, because it requires everything to be in place; just plugging together a set of components, no matter how "brilliant" they are, is almost guaranteed to not be good enough. I got there by accident - if I had happened to not have been as enthusastic and focused as I was at the time, and the combo wasn't intrinsically good enough to deliver, I would believe as you do, also.

I'm afraid that this is stuff and nonsense. We can never get anything that will convincingly sound like live because it's not possible to record a sound field with microphones that will capture the sheer acoustic energy and presence of a live performance. FAS42 would have you believe that it's there, on the recordings, but you have to have "special knowledge" to know how to retrieve it from your recordings, and it can not be retrieved merely by buying the best components and stringing them together; I.E. you can't "buy" your way to audio epiphany, you have to use what I can only guess are special spells and incantations - and, oh, yes, dress your cables! 

The truth is with all of our sophistication, we simply cannot catch the essence of live music playing in a live space! And honestly, I'm not too sure that we would want to! Do you want the sheer acoustical energy of a symphony orchestra in your living room? Do you realize how loud that would be? Do you have any feel for how many Watts it would take to achieve that sound pressure level? We can't even come close to perfectly re-creating the sound of a single trumpet so that it fools someone into thinking it's real. Never mind larger ensembles. 

[gmgraves]

Just now, beerandmusic said:

 

space, separation, and direction are even more obvious that we will never obtain close to live

I can't believe anyone would suggest you can obtain "live" fidelity.

Me either. My only guess is that people who think that they have achieved audio nirvana never get to listen to live music and they have their systems "tweaked" to give what they think they like, rather than what sounds real (possibly because they don't know what REAL actually sounds like). I've run across many people who thought that super-etched highs, brassy midrange and big bass was what real music sounds like. They're wrong, that's what listener fatigue sounds like. But, hey, if one doesn't know any better...

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

Microphones do "capture the sheer acoustic energy and presence of a live performance" - and the answer is not "special spells and incantations" - the 'magic' is being able, firstly, to know when a system is audibly below par; and, secondly, have a set of methods and procedures to follow to hopefully circumvent the issues.

 

 

Do tell! And what microphones do this?  Because I've never seen/heard a pair in more than 30 years of recording, and that includes Neumann U87, AKG414, Sony C37P and C-500, Telefunken ELA-M-270, etc. Not only that but I've never known another recording engineer who has ever found these "magic microphones" of yours either, and I've known a lot of those.

And you're saying that this "set of methods and procedures" makes your system sound so much better than anybody else's system that it transcends the shortcomings of both recordings and other audiophiles' less than Olympian systems? Sounds like spells and incantations to me.

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

An orchestral performance can reach 100 dB or so

 

Mansr, I've measured 112dB at the crescendo of Resphigi's "The Pines of Rome" myself, just in front of the stage apron, behind the conductor using a digital sound pressure meter. 100 dB might be some kind of average , but it sure isn't the peak. But that's not exactly what I was saying. A symphony orchestra in, say, Boston Symphony Hall, or SF's Davies Symphony Hall, or Chicago's Symphony Hall can fill that entire hall with sound and it is loud. Now, take your domestic speakers and your amplifier(s) to one of those halls and place the speakers on the stage  and try to fill that auditorium with your domestic hi-fi gear to the same level as a symphony orchestra. There is no way that your system can do that or even provide SR for an average rock group in a relatively small venue. That's what I meant when I asked the rhetorical question about whether one would even want the sheer volume of a symphony orchestra in their living room. 

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, STC said:

You cannot hear live like playback without  getting the second part of the equation which is the room reverberation correct. Room RT is a separate element that cannot be recorded in full and must be reproduced separately.  An organ will sound better in church where the RT exceeds way above 2 seconds than in most concert hall.  A quartet or studio recordings will sound better in a small concert hall than a big one unless they could bring down the ceiling to compensate the the direct sound level on a big concert room. 

You know, I don't disagree and in a perfect world, it would be nice to have that kind of immersive experience, I guess, but you know, I've done it. I've worked my way through the "quadraphonic" era, I've had Dolby surround, DTS, 5.1, and 7.1. as well as SACD (I have a multichannel Sony SCD-XA777ES), yet I was never satisfied with any of it. I now find that I can't really work up any interest at all for the reverb game. It's just not part of my listening agenda. I'm strictly a two-channel enthusiast these days. 

[gmgraves]

3 minutes ago, STC said:

 

It can be done. You have not seen people doing it. Maybe not at 130dB peak, although it can be done provided I have the right speakers, amplifiers and space. In normal rock concert producing 130db is a norm.  

I KNOW THAT! I'm not talking about Sound Reinforcement equipment, I made it perfectly clear that I was talking about home Hi-fi equipment (that's what the word "domestic" means in this context). I swear some you guys are so contentious that you'll argue about anything. I honestly believe that I could say that the suns comes every day and get an argument from somebody here!

 

[gmgraves]

1 minute ago, STC said:

 

I would be surprised if you say those method gave you a realistic immersive experience. It can’t be done with what you described but it is generally much better than stereo provided you have the correct material and correct setup. Seeing the number confusion about stereo recordings, loudness level, lack of proper listening room, unachievable correct RT, I would be surprised to see a proper 5.1 setup.   

I was never satisfied with any of them. That's why I gave up. But I suppose that you and only you do have the correct setup, right?

The best setup I ever had was a pair of Phillips components that I reviewed about 20 years ago. The main box was a A/V control unit. It had inputs for a number of video sources (alas only Composite video and so-called "S" inputs where Chroma and Luminosity signals were separated). It had a set of reverb parameters programmed into it, and it labeled them: Concert Hall, Stadium, Cathedral, etc. and it let you play with various parameters. The second chassis had five channels of 125 Watts RMS amplification. I wished I could have kept it just for the ambience generation! One particularly memorable night was around Christmas. The TV was showing the Kings College Choir from England in stereo and I decided to route the TV sound through the ambience unit and I set it on the "Cathedral" setting. It was glorious! Yeah, it was fake but it sounded better than any other surround sound I've ever heard before or since.    

[gmgraves]

11 minutes ago, mansr said:

Your typical listening space is much smaller than a concert hall, so it takes much less power to achieve the same loudness. If I raise the volume control on my system to anywhere near maximum, it gets painfully loud.

That's obvious. Again, It's not what I was talking about.

[gmgraves]

8 minutes ago, STC said:

What’s wrong with that! Who imposed this rule that you must be limited with two speakers only?

 

How many home Hi-Fi systems do you know that have multiple speakers in their listening room as in a typical sound reinforcement system? Most people have a pair (with maybe some smaller speakers for surround, but I don't know of many of those people. Most people who have surround have for it movies, not music).

 

Tune down the pedanticisim  about 3dB and you'll be fine