How to listen to speakers?

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In stereo, the sweet spot is where the best place the stereo illusion takes place. That can happen only when you are placed exactly in the centre between the two loudspeakers. The only way for you to extend this spot is by using DSP where you can control the level and timing of the speakers at off centre position. A wide dispersion speaker, can sound better off centre just like a mono speaker but it cannot give you the stereo perception unless you use DSP or complex drivers arrangement from the opposite speaker aiming at the off centre listener. 

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15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

because it happened otherwise for me 35 years ago.

 

Be glad that it only happened once in 35 years, otherwise it would warrant a mandatory check in. 

 

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2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

It's not the "once", nor the 35 years ... it's being able to do it over and over and over again, through the decades, with all sorts of gear, and different listening environments.

 

You should check out some live music making, now and again - just for a change - to see what the fuss is about ...

 

On further reflection, I think the illusion you are describing is not related to the stereophonic illusion of creating phantom image. 

 

It is possible that we may come across surreal experience when listening to music. This is just the sound itself without any positional information. A monophonic sound or sound that fills the entire venue.

 

In a stereo system, you may experience rich sound irrespective of the position for mostly centred sound, and the illusion you refer to describe such an experience is entirely subjective. It is as good as enjoying a good single speaker. 

 

I am am referring to sweet spot of stereo where the phantom images emerge. The whole purpose of stereo sound is to create this experience by giving a “stage” where different source is located laterally. 

 

 

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15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The ears certainly need two speakers, with different content, for perceiving lateral positioning - how true mono material comes across, identical signal to each speaker, is that the soundstage "follows you"; the ear is adjusting for the phase information, and translates that into an illusion which is always "in front of you". Any sense of lateral positioning of sound within that image is quite weak; and would correspond to how the ear/brain interprets echo cues.

 

I do not know what you are saying. You can feed identical content to both speakers and by adjusting the level you can move the image. 

 

Try sitting close to one speaker and ask another person to pull the wires from the OTHER speaker. See if you can hear the difference. And if you do check at which volume, the difference in distance between the two speakers to you. 

 

The moment you move away from one speaker and approaches the other, one speaker is going to sound louder than the other. When the difference is more than 6dB, you need a very acute ears to differentiate the less than 1 dB difference. However, since the sound from the other speakers will arrive much later than 1milliseconds, you can sense the difference in the spaciousness. This is an old topic and can be repeated by anyone to confirm. 

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29 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The concept is, stand centre to the speakers - with a half decent replay you should see a soundstage in front of you, midway between the speakers and hopefully with a sense of distance. Then move sideways to a point 3/4 of the way between the speakers, either left or right - you're half way between one speaker and the centre of the stereo pair. Now, normally the soundstage will dive into the nearest speaker; you are aware of the drivers working of that nearby speaker - but what happens if the illusion is fully formed is that the sound doesn't do this, you still see the same soundstage in front of you as you did earlier, when in the "sweet spot".

 

 

The sense of spaciousness remains constant, because the illusion doesn't vary as you get closer to the nearer, louder speaker; the ear/brain automatically compensates for the changes in level, and phase. This seems almost miraculous when working to a high order; but is a natural result of the speakers not drawing attention to themselves, by producing too much audible distortion of the wrong type. Of course, if the SQ is not good enough then no such illusion occurs; and the results will be as you describe.

 

What is soundstage?

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12 minutes ago, fas42 said:

original recording space and the placement of the performers within it.

 

How does the placement of the performers determined by us? Why mono sound couldn’t produce the placement?

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22 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

It would obviously be hard to to confirm the accuracy as regards the actual situation at the time of the recording - but good soundstaging to me means that I get a very strong sense of where a particular sound element is situated, on the "stage" beyond the speakers. In the same way as if you had a real stage, with a fine curtain in front of it, and people behind that visual barrier played an instrument, talked or made some other noise - in that real world situation most listeners would be willing to judge that they knew where the person was on that stage; our ear/brains are highly attuned to picking up on all the aural cues ... and that's what I find happens with high quality reproduction.

 

Mono sound gives excellent depth placement, but for lateral positioning there are less clues available - there's a 'fullness' to the sound, but I wouldn't be confident about getting the placement sideways right.

 

Why are you giving this?  

 

I am asking how placement which is one of the elements of soundstage is constructed by us based on the sound cues?

 

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7 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Are you asking me how the human hearing system is able to place heard sounds? That's a subject that books are written about, by researchers in the field - I bow to their in depth knowledge, .

 

All I'm doing is making sure that the sound cues captured or manufactured in the recording, that matter, are reproduced with very high fidelity; the mind does the rest ...

 

There are many ways how not to answer a question.

 

You talked about soundstage. You talked about sound following you. You quoted Holt for the definition of soundstage. So all I am asking how placement is recreated by stereo system? Do you know or not? 

 

 

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10 hours ago, davide256 said:

There are no "depth" cues with mono

 

I think he is referring to the distance of different instruments in the recordings. It is possible to assign an arbitrary distance based on the level and difference in the high frequencies. This is reliably only for sound that you are familiar. 

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7 hours ago, Lone Mountain Audio said:

Anything delayed by a longer path to you creates out of phase information that when added back to the original direct sound, will cancel part of the direct sound.  if the timing /phase is shifted out of phase exactly 180 degrees it will totally cancel the 0 degree in phase sound.  Since the reflections have all kinds of different paths to take to bounce around your room before the land at your ears, they are time shifted in many different ways ( arrive at lots of different times) and will not all be the same delay,  they will be lots of different delay times

 

 

If the reflected sound is already delayed then how is it possible for out of phase signal to cancel out the original direct sound which would have reached the ears at least 1ms earlier? 

 

A wide dispersion speakers benefits the users by creating lateral reflection which is important  for musical experience. It doesn't change imaging. The most accurate imaging is possible when you use spot light speakers which are highly directional. 

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3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

That's how it works with conventional quality playback - the brain can't distinguish the room information from the information that is being conveyed about the spaces that the recordings captured, or has encoded.

 

Says who? ( I mean who besides you)

 

 

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16 minutes ago, HIFI said:

I am going to try and answer this....

 

Same signal, delayed from boundary distance cancelation or sums, is easy to hear and understand.  Most listening rooms suffer and bass cancelations/sums, to my ears, are the most noticeable   Midrange and high frequency information as well.  

 

 

 

This is going to need a long reply but I will confine to points raised by Lone Mountain Audio explaining the virtues of wide dispersion speakers.

 

Sometimes we overlook that we receive sound input not from a single point but at least two. Let's ignore bone conduction and others for now.  A 100Hz is about 3.4meter long. The difference in phase and level between the two ears is hardly noticeable . In a room, the original direct sound of LF will have enough energy  and will be within the 360 degrees cycle so that the phase difference results in peaks and dips. This is where a narrow dispersion speakers may sound better in a room with high reflection.

 

However, when you talk about mid and HF, we are talking about frequencies with short wave length. These frequencies  gone several cycles of 360 degrees and would reach much later than 1ms and adds envelopment or spaciousness. They all arrive at different time which is outside the original direct soundwave that hit the ear drums. This will not cancel out or add to the original sound wave although the delays have other effects. Toole's Sound Reproduction book is a good reference to understand this subject better.

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19 minutes ago, HIFI said:

It didn’t take long for me to realize such a design would make the sweet spot even smaller.

 

Sweet spot is a spot where the phantom images created by the stereo speakers is accurate reflection of the original event.  Sometimes, sweet spot term is used to describe where the sound is sweet without taking into the account of the imaging accuracy. Musically, sweet spot for accurate phantom image is not important. However, if the obsession is to recreate the soundscape of the actual instruments placement than the sweet spot will get progressively smaller. That is a spot that we receive exact left and right signal of the speakers.

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3 minutes ago, HIFI said:

I do believe my ears. I have heard summing (booming) and cancellations (drop out) in lower frequencies and have heard relief of both after addressing those issues with room treatments.  I can’t say that I have heard summing or cancellations as obvious in mids and highs but I have heard the difference after room treatment was in place.  

 

I am saying the same. 

 

1) In a room, the original direct sound of LF will have enough energy  and will be within the 360 degrees cycle so that the phase difference results in peaks and dips.

 

2) in regards to HF - This will not cancel out or add to the original sound wave although the delays have other effects.

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8 minutes ago, HIFI said:

This is incorrect.  While you may not hear the cancellations as obvious you can hear the summing of delayed (added) signals in highs easy.  Frankly I find it rather easy to discover the timing delay (slap echo) of high frequency in a room

 

Slap echo is distinct late reflection of longer than 80ms. If you hear them then you need to treat the room. 

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21 minutes ago, HIFI said:

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Im not suggesting that we look for a speaker that beams to our ears nor am I suggesting that removing all high frequency summing that was created by our room boundaries.  I think we need our rooms to contain, for some period of time, what the speakers reproduce.  The information has to “blossom” so to speak.  I say this because I have listened in an over treated room.  It simply lacked life and realism.

 

You are 100% correct. Contrary to what many audiophiles say , the recordings only contains the frontal stage space/reverb information. The sound from the speaker is an event itself that need to be reproduced like how we would assemble the musicians in a good acoustics venue. 

 

The natural room reflection of the speakers enhances the realism provided the reflection characteristic is flat or ideally sloping. It is all how about how we use the reflection to create make believe realism during playback. 

 

I am only slightly disagreeing with the reasoning not the observation. 

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Exactly!  Wide dispersion and linear frequency response makes for a BIGGER sweet spot than would normally exist in a room with boundaries.  

 

 

D'Antonio suggested enhancing the "sweet spot" by using reflection phase grating. Philips suggested using DSP and additional drivers. The ITU standard is plus and minus 30 degree from the front speakers. If by the aid of reflection the corrupted sweet spot, what is the size of the mouth during vocal at realistic sound level? Is it natural? Technically, by averaging the sound of direct and reflected you can have constant level at a slightly compromised accuracy of a smaller sweet spot and can sound nice with big orchestra music for its ASW. In this sense,  wide dispersion and linear frequency speakers can give a bigger sweet spot as long as the difference in level is insignificant. More accurate for imaging? I may over overlooked the obvious. 

 

Play a good vocal recording and visualize the mouth size. Do you have the voice coming from a normal size human or a ten foot giant? Compare the sweet spot with the two different speakers dispersion.

 

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9 hours ago, Lone Mountain Audio said:

 

Comparing the size of a voice to the size of a sweet spot to determine if this larger dispersion is accurate is not the best example.   In a proper image, it should sound exactly like a voice, a real person singing from one spot.  The sound of the room in the recording, or the instruments surrounding the voice- that could be placed around the voice as the band is arranged by the mixer or placed as the real event if recorded live, these additional elements would give you the clue how large your sweet spot is.  If everything is down to a tiny point and voices instruments all appear to be coming form one small spot in space between the speakers, that is not correct.  That's what mono sounds like with two speakers.  Thats what a tiny sweet spot and poor speaker dispersion will do.  A wide dispersion speaker placed well in a reasonable acoustic space gives the playback listener a sense of a single voice in the middle of a larger band- all elements spread out with their own space, with the drums there, the bass over there and the guitar over there.  Patricia Barber live shows in NY recorded by Jim Anderson give you that if you have a nice system.   

 

Now to be fair, recreating the complete width of the band in the real recording space is not easily possible with a stereo, as the band could be spread out across a large distance as an orchestra is spread out across a stage.  For this we need more speakers spread wide in a  larger space PLUS additional mix channels - and that brings us to the next level of production: : immersive.  Object based mixing is happening for music (the underpinning of Dolby ATMOS or DTS X), I've already attended a mix session or two in LA that were mind blowing.   Very exciting stuff!

 

Brad

 

All my life, I have always strived for the realistic reproduction of the music that would match live unamplified sound as close as possible in terms of size of the stage, instruments and vocals. It is the very basics of good speaker's design. And I happy to able to enjoy the accuracy of size and with the freedom of head movement even swaying to left and right still could hold the phantom image fixed.

 

Obviously, we are on a different wavelength as far as the definition of sweet spot is concerned. A sweet spot is a point where the listener is placed so that the true spatial image emerges. A wider definition used by audiophiles is a place where the sound is as good as sitting in the mid point of the two speakers without consideration for accurate imaging, placement or the size of instrument/vocal. 

 

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Now to be fair, recreating the complete width of the band in the real recording space is not easily possible with a stereo...

 

That's what I do with stereo.  or multi channel.

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27 minutes ago, Lone Mountain Audio said:

Having been in loudspeaker manufacturing for a long time, I can tell you that they call the sweet spot where both the image and sound quality are at their peak- directly related to dispersion.

 

26 minutes ago, Lone Mountain Audio said:

are, it's where the speakers sound their best, image and response. If that's your seated spot then Hooray!

 

In a reflection free environment where do you think the sweet spot will be for wide dispersion speakers?

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2 hours ago, semente said:

 

They also reduce focus. A naked room is like a room full of mirrors:

 

 

 

 

We can always get perfect focus in an anechoic like room. Unfortunately, for music,  and even for normal conversation, the reflection is required for naturalness. 

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8 hours ago, Lone Mountain Audio said:

When things are right, with few room influences, you can move left to right and front to back within a few feet and it all sounds good.

 

Yes, it can sound good but the question is can the positional information reproduced accurately? That can only happen at the sweet spot.

 

 

Stereo relies on the intensity difference between the channels to create the phantom image. Although time difference information is encoded in the recording, it cannot be retrieved intact in stereo. For a phantom image to emerge at 0 degree of the listener, the signal from the left and right speaker must be identical, i.e., a = b. If you move to X,  in a perfect wide dispersion speaker, the signal d now has to travel a longer distance. When distance increases the level drops. When the distance increases, there will be a delay in the time of the signal arriving from the right speaker in the diagram. At the same time, c will be louder than a.

 

How can this be the same as the listener original position and at X which is the one and only  sweet spot although listening about 1 foot of centre may not sound drastically inferior with a wide dispersion speaker.

 

Sweet spot is when a = b.  My question to you how wide dispersion speaker can make c equals to d?

 

 

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30 minutes ago, HIFI said:

Maybe the real question is “what is the greatest distance one could move off center before image, detail, and spatial information collapses.  I think if you had your beaming spot light speakers the answer could be zero lateral movement from listening position.

 

Maybe, the real question is "what is the greatest distance one could move off centre" without perceptible changes in the position. We are not extremely sensitive to difference of delay of less than 10microseconds (the audibility of the delay is frequency dependent and therefore it could be higher too) and difference in the intensity level. For some even close to 3dB difference would not shift the position. Wide dispersion helps to keep the c and d within the window of inability to distinguish the slight delay and level difference and therefore the sweet spot extends and of course when the reflection is taken into account, the averaging of frequency maintains a bigger sweet spot and it can indeed sound nice and preferable.

 

 

 

30 minutes ago, HIFI said:

 

 

Is it possible that the lateral distance measured between listening spot and “X” is time related and therefore has more to do with width off front wall?  I’m thinking at some point of left or right movement the timing comes into play and we notice things collapsing. 

 

I am clear with this question. With stereo timing is fixed because of head shadow. For every sound that comes of the speaker at 30 degrees, produces unwanted signal that is delayed by 250microseconds. But this is not entirely bad as it also can produce nice bass. 

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31 minutes ago, fas42 said:

IME what happens is that the mind completely unconsciously adjusts for the changes in level, and phase - and maintains a sense of where the sounds are coming from, that correlates with the perceived positioning when listening in the "correct, central" listening spot.

 

I know that is possible and I have experienced it. You don’t need high fidelity or even a stereo for that. We are not discussion how the brain could be conditioned to enjoy  music. We are discussing how to make the sound production better by understanding how they work. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, semente said:

You can't confuse normal conversation (production) with playback (re-production).

 

I treat playback as an original event itself and make them perform realistic enough. No recordings contain all the cues that you would receive in a live performance. I say this despite tons of reviews and interviews by recording engineer themselves who claim they make the best effort to capture the sound as they heard in the venue. 

 

 

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16 hours ago, semente said:

Most domestic room are lightly treated if at all and in such cases wide dispersion is bad in my opinion and experience

 

 

That's true. More can be achieved if they can get the room right.