EarSpace!!!!

[kumakuma]

4 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Would love to hear the process for doing this! Does it involve rewiring?

 

I'm sure Frank has some strongly held opinions in this area. 

[mansr]

8 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Would love to hear the process for doing this! Does it involve rewiring?

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

[fas42]

Haven't you heard the term, "down under"? We're hanging upside down, the blood rushes to our heads - job done!

[kumakuma]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

Haven't you heard the term, "down under"? We're hanging upside down, the blood rushes to our heads - job done!

 

Explains a lot...

[fas42]

Objectivists may require sensitivity implants, of course ...

[pkane2001]

17 minutes ago, mansr said:

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

 

Turns out there are DIY kits available on the web. I wonder if this will become the next audiophile tweak?

 

[Ralf11]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-0114.t01-1-00156

[fas42]

Nothing more scary than an enthusiastic "expert" ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jackson_Freeman_II

[Ralf11]

did he "tune you up"?

[fas42]

Perhaps it's better to live in a completely detuned place ... rumour has it that many do so, all the time .

[esldude]

2 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

Would love to hear the process for doing this! Does it involve rewiring?

Well one of Frank's big ideas is soldering all connections.  So that would mean soldering all the connections between neurons.  Which will take some time.  Frank speaks about it taking lots of time.  It also means the normal plasticity of the brain to re-wire its connections would be impacted.  Which might lead to repeating the same thing over and over and over until you didn't realize there was anything else.  

[esldude]

Okay, so getting back to this IR convolution thing, we'd need the IR for left speaker at left ear position, plus a lower level mix of right speaker at left ear position.  This mix would become the left channel?  Then IR for right speaker at right ear position, and a lower level mix of left speaker at right ear position.  Which becomes the right channel.  

 

So does this get us to me hearing your room over my headphones?   Already sounds like there could be so much fine tuning it isn't much better off than binaural.  We would have the convenience of playing any music as we choose thru such processing. 

 

Have any of you done this and have anything to report?  I've listened to 'canned' reverb profiles using convolved IR.  It does give you a sense of another space, but I don't know if that is going to work more or less accurately for remote hearing another system.  

 

Remember my jumping off point was the OP video is not a representation of hearing the Devore speakers.  Nice try, good intentions, but pretty awful.  Or at least I hope so.  If Devore speakers sound that way I don't want any. 

 

 

[esldude]

The best series I've seen in terms of being a bit useful are those done by this outfit SonicSense. 

 

They record 1.5 meters from the speaker with a very flat omni microphone in a studio (presumably with reduced reflections and somewhat dead).  I wish there were more of the music and different types.  I've found with this approach you can hear the basic frequency balance pretty much as you would hear it at your house.  Or more so since your phones will alter the results, it works to hear relative frequency balance between two speakers.  

 

Now there is the idea our brain lets us mostly hear the direct sound of speakers and filter out the room other than low frequency issues below the Schroeder frequency.  So such an approach isn't too bad.  Even if our room had various issues above the Schroeder frequency our brain will ignore it and hear the speaker anyway.  

 

So if these guys instead of recording their music, recorded a sweep to get the IR of the speaker, they could convolve it and give us the result.  After which we could hear it over phones and play the music of our choice.  Presuming our brain would filter out the room whether my room, your room or wherever, it would let us compare speakers usefully over phones.  If the recorded system has any interaction with the speakers like a tube amp altering FR or something that would get included in the recorded IR as well. 

 

This still wouldn't reproduce all info about the speaker in terms of directionality effects.  Nor could it sound like it would in a huge space as in such conditions our hearing in my experience is less able to filter out longer timed reflections, and the sense of a large space.  But comparing basic sound character of a given amp and speaker it might not be missing too much.  The binaural presentation seems useless to me nowhere near what this simple approach can manage. 

 

So thoughts or comments upon this?  If Jenna Dagdagan used this up close approach in future videos would it give us a clearer picture of the sound of someone else's gear?  There is the issue of recording too close on multi-way speakers, and not getting everything the way you hear it at a bit more distance.  

 

I wish the guys at Harman could give us insight into this using their spin-o-rama data.  

[STC]

14 minutes ago, esldude said:

Now there is the idea our brain lets us mostly hear the direct sound of speakers and filter out the room other than low frequency issues below the Schroeder frequency.

 

It doesn’t filter out although the term “filter” sometimes used in some papers. Indirect sound will always heard and interpreted.  Depends on the arrival time, it gives sense of space and reverbs. As long as the delay is not too long between the preceding sound, it will be interpreted as one. Otherwise, you will hear echoes. 

[esldude]

3 minutes ago, STC said:

 

It doesn’t filter out although the term “filter” sometimes used in some papers. Indirect sound will always heard and interpreted.  Depends on the arrival time, it gives sense of space and reverbs. As long as the delay is not too long between the preceding sound, it will be interpreted as one. Otherwise, you will hear echoes. 

That sounds like filtering to me.  Yes our ear responds to all of it.  But depending upon arrival time our subjective perception does not hear those early reflections or is only mildly heard.  Which is why I said in very large spaces the various reflected sounds are so late they'll be heard as a sense of space.  

[pkane2001]

29 minutes ago, esldude said:

Okay, so getting back to this IR convolution thing, we'd need the IR for left speaker at left ear position, plus a lower level mix of right speaker at left ear position.  This mix would become the left channel?  Then IR for right speaker at right ear position, and a lower level mix of left speaker at right ear position.  Which becomes the right channel.  

 

So does this get us to me hearing your room over my headphones?   Already sounds like there could be so much fine tuning it isn't much better off than binaural.  We would have the convenience of playing any music as we choose thru such processing. 

 

Have any of you done this and have anything to report?  I've listened to 'canned' reverb profiles using convolved IR.  It does give you a sense of another space, but I don't know if that is going to work more or less accurately for remote hearing another system.  

 

Remember my jumping off point was the OP video is not a representation of hearing the Devore speakers.  Nice try, good intentions, but pretty awful.  Or at least I hope so.  If Devore speakers sound that way I don't want any. 

 

Don't know how this can be evaluated, unless you compare headphones+IR to your own speaker system. I can share my IR, but how would anyone know if it's at all accurate?

 

I wouldn't fine tune IR with cross-feed, at least not initially, which is what's being suggested here. While it may help a bit with making the sound move out from inside one's head, I find that it tends to muddy the sound. 

 

When I have a chance I'll upload my IR file and you can tell me what you think. No processing was done to it, and I listen to it without cross-feed.

[esldude]

10 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Don't know how this can be evaluated, unless you compare headphones+IR to your own speaker system. I can share my IR, but how would anyone know if it's at all accurate?

 

I wouldn't fine tune IR with cross-feed, at least not initially, which is what's being suggested here. While it may help a bit with making the sound move out from inside one's head, I find that it tends to muddy the sound. 

 

When I have a chance I'll upload my IR file and you can tell me what you think. No processing was done to it, and I listen to it without cross-feed.

Yes, you can tell us how well it correlates with your sound.  As I can do once I do this on my end.  Then share the IRs.  

[STC]

26 minutes ago, esldude said:

That sounds like filtering to me.  Yes our ear responds to all of it.  But depending upon arrival time our subjective perception does not hear those early reflections or is only mildly heard.  Which is why I said in very large spaces the various reflected sounds are so late they'll be heard as a sense of space.  

 

If what you are saying then the sound in anechoic room should be the same as the sound in a room with early reflection. 

[esldude]

50 minutes ago, STC said:

 

If what you are saying then the sound in anechoic room should be the same as the sound in a room with early reflection. 

Yes or something close to it. 

 

I use room correction myself.  There are those who say it is a bad idea.  In theory a perfectly flat speaker when measured anechoically with controlled directivity so you don't have too much side wall reflection is ideal.  In domestic size rooms we are said to hear mostly direct sound with our brain ignoring early reflections largely.  Such people say only below the Schroeder frequency where you have peaks and dips related to room size should correction be applied.  This being 500 hz or lower in most listening rooms.  Such people say measured response at the listening position will be somewhat to heavily corrupted by room reflections so EQ based upon that would bend the ideal speaker away from ideal.  In that case the result is a degradation of what you'd otherwise hear.  The preferred sound would be without the room correction. 

 

It is probably too extreme to say speakers sound the same in room as with early reflections.  But some say the general balance we hear is tilted heavily in that direction.  And our opinion of speaker fidelity even considering the parts we hear different from anechoically wouldn't change our preferred speaker qualities.  

 

So doing measurements of the IR of a speaker close enough to mostly avoid the room effects (in the critical zone where most sound power is from the speaker and not reflections), but far enough for multiple drivers to integrate might be a good approach. 

 

This argument given what is known seems well conceived and rather convincing. 

 

However, having heard room correction do some amazing things in terms of improving heard results I've not been fully convinced.   Perhaps most speakers I've heard are so far from anechoically flat, even in room measures can push it closer toward flat instead of corrupting it. I've used Tact room correction gear, and Dirac.  I've never heard it worsen the sound of a speaker.  Either approach always resulted in an improvement by all I've witnessed hear it.  Dirac seems better than Tact.  

[STC]

8 minutes ago, esldude said:

In domestic size rooms we are said to hear mostly direct sound with our brain ignoring early reflections largely.

 

Can we sort this phrase first? Who are the we and some you are referring to. 

[esldude]

21 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Can we sort this phrase first? Who are the we and some you are referring to. 

Apologies for the ambiguity. 

 

We are we humans.  The way hearing is known to work.   Some are some speaker designers and engineers who don't favor room correction because they see it as wrong headed for the reasons I've (perhaps poorly) summarized.  

 

Floyd Toole is of the opinion make the speaker respond evenly and do correction only at low frequencies.

 

Sean Olive is of the same opinion with the caveat the speaker has to be well designed.  He has tested some RC software with a speaker he said was not of good even response or directivity, and in listening test correcting some of those deficiencies were preferred to not correcting. On the JBL designs he is involved with he says they mostly only correct for below 300 hz. 

 

 Linn doesn't like using microphones performing in room measurements for correction. Though not so stated at the link below, they mostly fix below 300 hz based upon room dimensions, and make some adjustments based upon expected reflections due to room dimensions that may effect timbre. 

https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/want-true-room-correction-drop-the-mic

 

I believe the late Mr. Linkwitz had the opinion you mostly wanted to correct in the bass and have constant directivity speakers above the bass range.  He did say later on that some of the modern correction algorithms that did more than simple EQ and measured several places in the room could have a good effect on the result.  

 

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/rethinking-room-correction

 

Some quoted people in this article and the author think RC a bad idea. 

 

https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.freshdesk.com/data/helpdesk/attachments/production/1002703322/original/RoomCorrection.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAJ2JSYZ7O3I4JO6DA%2F20181019%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20181019T052301Z&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Signature=04ef42c4cd237d801849329017e400fcc02d3605a9253b7657af812b42f92973&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=Host&response-content-type=application%2Fpdf

 

Why Meridian only corrects for 300 hz and below in their digital active speakers. 

 

 

The Sean Olive test in my mind shows that with speakers not having good dispersion and flat anechoic response good room correction is a plus.  At least that is the result of his double blind testing.  Would it be a minus with well designed speakers?  I don't know, but they must not think it a plus as their own JBL room EQ with their better speakers only works in the low end or so they tell us. 

 

All of which is getting far afield of our discussion.   If I want to remotely hear more or less how your playback system sounds, would up close speaker IR responses be better to use, or would IR responses taken at the listening position be better?

 

 

[pkane2001]

9 hours ago, esldude said:

Yes, you can tell us how well it correlates with your sound.  As I can do once I do this on my end.  Then share the IRs.  

 

Here goes. My measured impulse response files linked below. Please try applying them using a convolution engine to your headphone playback and let me know what you think. I recommend not applying cross-feed initially, as that's how I listen. See if this helps you visualize/hear into my listening environment. Very curious about your feedback! 

 

IR was captured at my listening position, playing a sine-sweep using REW using a Behringer calibrated mic. REW was also used to create the IR files. Room is my basement, somewhat cluttered and irregular wall/door openings but no windows. Thinly carpeted cement floor, speakers are located about 5m from the listening position, with about 4m in between, with very slight toe-in. Hung ceiling is about 8.5ft high. Speakers for this test were PSB Stratus Gold, and headphones were HE-560.

 

To me, the sound is much richer, more 3-D than when used without IR. A bit bass-heavy for my taste, but not exceedingly so. Tonal quality is very similar to my speaker playback, and I hear a lot of the spatial dimensions that must be part of the reverberant space in my listening room. Whether or not this accurately represents my room is hard to say, but I find that the sound is much closer to the in-room quality than without the IR "correction".

 

Actual IR files:

Left IR

Right IR

 

Here's my HQPlayer convolver configuration:

 

Measured response (left is red):

 

IR (left):

 

IR (right):

 

 

[Blake]

11 hours ago, esldude said:

The best series I've seen in terms of being a bit useful are those done by this outfit SonicSense. 

 

 

 

Thanks for posting this.  I found that site a few years ago but had not been back to the site for some time and I was trying to remember what it was so I could post it here.  

 

What I am hoping is that this thread will result in some ideas Jana can implement for her EarSpace project in the future.  

[esldude]

6 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Here goes. My measured impulse response files linked below. Please try applying them using a convolution engine to your headphone playback and let me know what you think. I recommend not applying cross-feed initially, as that's how I listen. See if this helps you visualize/hear into my listening environment. Very curious about your feedback! 

 

IR was captured at my listening position, playing a sine-sweep using REW using a Behringer calibrated mic. REW was also used to create the IR files. Room is my basement, somewhat cluttered and irregular wall/door openings but no windows. Thinly carpeted cement floor, speakers are located about 5m from the listening position, with about 4m in between, with very slight toe-in. Hung ceiling is about 8.5ft high. Speakers for this test were PSB Stratus Gold, and headphones were HE-560.

 

To me, the sound is much richer, more 3-D than when used without IR. A bit bass-heavy for my taste, but not exceedingly so. Tonal quality is very similar to my speaker playback, and I hear a lot of the spatial dimensions that must be part of the reverberant space in my listening room. Whether or not this accurately represents my room is hard to say, but I find that the sound is much closer to the in-room quality than without the IR "correction".

 

Actual IR files:

Left IR

Right IR

 

Here's my HQPlayer convolver configuration:

 

Measured response (left is red):

 

IR (left):

 

IR (right):

 

 

Thanks Paul,

 

I've downloaded them, and will get around to trying them out later today I hope. 

 

Did a quick try in Reaper.  You can use REAverb to input impulse response, then listen to only the dry signal in that and get the impulse convolved to the signal.  It sounds reasonable at first blush.  Got things to do today so will play with it more later.  

[pkane2001]

33 minutes ago, esldude said:

Thanks Paul,

 

I've downloaded them, and will get around to trying them out later today I hope. 

 

Did a quick try in Reaper.  You can use REAverb to input impulse response, then listen to only the dry signal in that and get the impulse convolved to the signal.  It sounds reasonable at first blush.  Got things to do today so will play with it more later.  

 

HQPlayer has a very user-friendly trial, if you want a different player to try it. The app is fully functional and plays for 30 minutes at a time, after which time you'll just need to restart it.