Relative importance of differences in stereo systems

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3 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Not in my experience as a proselytizer for multichannel.  The biggest objections are that there isn't enough room for more amps/speakers and that spreading the available budget over 5.1 or more channels would mean that the cost per channel would decrease as would quality.  They offer this as an argument against MCH without realizing that its advantage over stereo trump any such concerns.

As someone who voiced those same concerns for far too long let me agree. 

 

5 channels with appropriate material makes a real and sizable difference.  Not always blow me away differences, but enough your loss of quality using slightly lesser products for more channels is a positive trade off for the listening experience.   Pony up for a good sub or three and the other speakers have less to handle and can be somewhat 'lesser' without really much compromise for the range they cover. 

 

Now I agree with STC, that some believe good enough 2 channel obviates the benefit of more channels when that isn't so.  But the primary complaint is the one Kal espouses here. 

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Where I see the MCH vs stereo issue being off kilter is not apartment dwellers or people with small rooms that don't have the space.  It is for people who have large rooms with large sums of money spent on polishing up stereo when going to MCH would be quite an improvement.  In time many of those people spend significant money on very peripheral issues which at best make very marginal differences when the same money to add other channels to what they have would be significant improvements.  

 

OTOH, mainstream it is a sound bar world.  In that world you get fake pseudo-surround and very compromised stereo. 

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1 hour ago, The_K-Man said:

 

Nope!  I just tend to speak - and correspond - in full words as much as is practical.  Makes the conversation easier to follow, that's all.

 

But when I see/hear individuals from my age(late forties) and up communicating in alphabet soup, I find it discouraging and depressing.

Odd for the user named The_K-man to eschew acronyms.

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4 minutes ago, The_K-Man said:

 

K-Man contains an actual word, so technically it is not a pure acronym.

 

It developed out of the inability of many people to correctly pronounce or spell my name.

I thought it was in reference to Dave Katz and his K system because of your avatar.

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15 minutes ago, The_K-Man said:

 

"Dave" Katz?   DAVE Katz?

🤣😂🤣😂🤣

 

You mean BOB Katz, who I have met personally and own some of his books.

 

Figures an audiophile would get the name of a nationally known mastering engineer wrong.

 

Is it Bob?

As someone who does a little recording I think of him as Mr. Katz.  But then we have one of those acronyms involved again which will depress you as I'm over 40.  Maybe far enough over my memory falters sometimes.

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I blame @John Dyson for getting us of topic so early. I don't hold it against him. He's some interesting things to contribute.  I think they need their own thread.

 

The op is exactly right. The speaker is by a wide margin our biggest issue. Why isn't it paid more attention? The circle of confusion as described by Toole.  He and co-researchers have made a good start. But in the world of speakers everyone still has their own piece of the elephant. Ironic that by embracing blind testing the blind man could see. Instead he remains blind and goes about this speaker business by feel.

😚

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Hmmmmmm, if we can't agree the speaker is the biggest problem in the reproduction chain I'm not sure what to think.  

 

OTOH, anyone not discussing this issue, telling us it isn't a problem with no data or evidence is off topic. 

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13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Speakers are the biggest problem in the obvious, physical ways, that are easily measurable.

 

They are relatively unimportant in the subjective registering of the sound, when areas of the remainder of the reproduction chain, which are difficult to measure, are behaving correctly.

 

We're back with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy - or, "I'm only going to look for the causes under the strong street light - because, I can see better there!"

 

If you were a student of mine, I'd have you stay after school and write 500 times:

 

I will not misapply the McNamara fallacy.

 

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

 

 

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2 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Listen to Stradivarius violin  ( from a fixed distance) being played in a gym, bathroom concert hall, cave, open field, in your bed room, kitchen and etc etc. 

 

None of them is going to sound similar and only one or two going to sound great. Replace the violin with a boom box and listen again. At the same loudness level; the best sounding venue will be the same for the violin and boombox. So which one should be more important? Room acoustics or speakers?

Speakers. 

 

You've gone and done the dreaded false equivalency here.  

 

I agree the room is very, very important.  I'd place it second after the speakers in things we can control on the playback end. 

 

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59 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Everyone knows tyres are the most important thing about cars - because they're the bits that make sure the car actually follows the road; they're so obviously, in your face, necessary! ... all one has to do is use the 'perfect' tyre, and any car will be a dream to drive ...

 

It's a good thing to keep in mind, that the obvious things are also the most important things.

False equivalency #2 in recent postings.  Everyone is doing great on this. 

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10 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Exactly! Can you control the violin sound? You can’t. The level is more or less the same but the venue’s acoustics determine the performance SQ. 

 

The most common excuse during big audio show for poor performing state of the art speakers is the room. A reasonably a good pair of speakers can outperform  the  worlds best speakers placed in acousticly poor room. 

 

In the real world of orchestra musical performance, you hear 90% of the surrounding acoustics than the direct aound of the orchestra. That’s a fact. 

 

 

 

 

Your ideas seems to be shifting.  Why couldn't a good boombox outperform the real thing in an acoustically poor room?

 

My thinking was the same space will likely sound best for both the real sound and a recording over a boombox (though I can think of potential exceptions).  But a good floorstanding speaker will also be experienced the same.  And the floorstanding speaker will outperform the boombox in all spaces and come in second to the real thing in all spaces.  So the importance of the speaker quality is still there without disagreeing that the space can greatly alter the quality of the sound .

 

The video I posted illustrates how much differently spaces can sound.  However, that isn't how our hearing would have performed.  Our hearing would reject much of the reflected sound and hear primarily the direct sound.  So hearing thru to the source of the sound in various spaces is what our hearing does and it reduces the effect of the space (reduces not eliminates). 

 

In big spaces like orchestras in a large hall, 90% of the sound  reaching our ears is reflected, but even there our hearing reduces the perception to favor direct over reflected.  In a large enough space the difference is smaller, but still there.  

 

In any reasonably doable space for domestic listening, you can't make a boom box sound as good as a well done speaker.  And the place to improve the most is still the speaker.   Even if you disagree with this, I'd think you would agree to flip things and say speaker is second biggest issue.  Which simply moves the question of the OP toward, "speakers being one of the biggest remaining issues with quality sound, why isn't more time spent on fixing that problem?"

 

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7 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Let me rephrase that - "The most common excuse during big audio show for poor performing state of the art speakers is the room. A reasonably a good pair of speakers  in a good acoustics room can outperform  the  worlds best speakers placed in acoustically poor room.  "

 

 

 

No dispute there. 

 

 

Yes. No dispute when the room acoustics and the playback level is the same.

 

 

Yes but the best speakers cannot perform better in a poor venue (acoustics wise) than a good speakers in a a good room.

 

 

IIRC, I was the first own who posted this video to illustrate how the surrounding acoustics can alter the direct sound. You are mixing up cocktail effect with precedence effect. 

 

 

Again, you are mixing up with cocktail effect. Toole's research on lateral reflection will show how important is the delayed reverberation to increase the spaciousness of a performance.

 

 

Speaker is second. Yes. 

No not mixing up cocktail effect with precedence.

 

An example, posted here somewhere, is where I recorded music at my LP from speakers.  And from very close to the speakers.  The LP position sounds nothing like how it sounds.  Everything sounds too distant and almost echoey.  Because the recording picks up the direct sound and reflections.  Our hearing ignores some few milliseconds of the reflections, but can't do that if the reflections are in the original recording.  Enough in a small space that much of the room reflection is ignored.  Toole shows that for reflections arriving long enough after the sense of space is effected.  In most domestic situations that effect isn't zero, but it isn't much.   The up close recording gets rather close to how it sounded at the LP because it is much more direct sound and much lower level for reflected sound. 

 

Again whether you agree or not all speakers have enough imperfections they all sound different.   Much more obviously than all other parts of the reproduction chain prior to the speaker excepting intentionally broken designs.  Improving that will improve the results in good rooms and poor rooms.  

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1 hour ago, STC said:

 

You got the principle right but the application to your example is incorrect. Most of  delayed sound should originates from a different direction. Only a small amount of reverberation that originates from the frontal stage should be in the recording. If you were to record at LP then all the reverbs will originate from the same source as the direct sound. The brain will now consider them as first event which affects the clarity. Even those using binaural dummy head do not record them at LP but much closer to the performance.

 

It is incorrect to say the brain ignoring the reflection from the room, it receives and process them differently as compared to to the same sound played through the loudspeakers.

 

 

That is what I was saying.  The delayed sound from speaker in room comes from another direction and delayed so your hearing processes it differently.  You can uncover that by recording with a microphone so that all those reflections come from the speaker as a direct sound.  So you are hearing the part your hearing has ways of listening past and ignoring. The early reflections, and the early reflections are a result of the room.  But those are largely not noticed by you compared to the level at which they really exist. 

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4 hours ago, John Dyson said:

I just uploaded some decoding examples using the DHNRDS decoder.  Please refer to the 'Lies about vinyl vs. digital' forum about what to expect/etc.  The DolbyA encoded material might not sound like what people think -- so read the section that I wrote if you are interested -- it will set-up the thinking process.  PS: this is meant to be informational only -- I am only talking about the decoder software -- and I am certainly willing to talk about most of the internal technology if anyone is interested.  A few sections of the technology are proprietary, and likely never been done before (the gain control is not just gain*signal, but takes a big part of a 4core CPU at realtime, being multithreaded (12 threads, 10 are active DSP calculations) with super complex math.)  (Technical paper will likely be written.)

 

Repo:

https://spaces.hightail.com/space/yDG3L339Rn

 

I've listened to the Eric Clapton "Wonderful Tonight".

 

The undecoded version has some obvious, pumping, well maybe not pumping, but dynamic inconsistencies.  The decoded version sounds very much like the Mobile Fidelity CD of this I have.  So I suppose they were using a master tape or something that was done properly.  

 

Thanks for these examples.  It is very interesting.