True to life recording? - We are fooling ourselves!

[STC]

@Blackmorec, I will post my reply a little late. Before that, could you at least agree that a sound captured by microphones very close to your ears ( left and right) would represent a reasonable accurate reproduction of sound that you hear at the spot?  

[STC]

12 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

so no psycho-acoustics were applied

 

I am speechless. Do you understand what psychoacoustics is? 

4 hours ago, STC said:

 

Now, you are slowly agreeing that accurate phase is no longer relevant. The point is the stereo "ACCURATE and WELL SET UP" loudspeakers could not produce the accurate position due to crosstalk. I have another track where the male and female voice would appears to be coming from the centre but with headphones the male will be on the left  and the female on the right. No stereo system could reproduce that accurately. There goes the reality and accuracy.

 

Looks like you are not interested to find out how this is even possible. Either the loudspeaker positional information is correct and the headphones playback wrong or vice versa. 

[STC]

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

ST, could you possibly post a snippet of that track, please - I would be interested in what it shows.

 

Check my link in the profile/signature. Thanks for your interest.

[STC]

12 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Interesting music!

 

Okay, through my laptop's internal speakers there's no problem registering that the female voice is way left of the male; as compared to the first segment - headphones were not required, at all.

 

This points to your speakers FR imbalance. Listen again, the female voice is also on the right to the male. 

 

I have another one with musical instruments. With separated by depth and width. Audible with headphones and XTC implemented loudspeakers but not with stereo playback. 

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12 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

In an argument or debate when one of the parties attacks the other instead of providing counter argument,  it usually means they can offer no credible or plausible arguments like facts, statistics, references etc. You may want to bear that in mind when posting stuff like the above.  

 

Again in a debate, when a reaction is ‘over-the-top’ aggressive, this is known as ‘pushing someone’s  buttons’ and very clearly I pushed yours, interestingly with some fairly basic physics, neuroscience and logic. Clearly this thread “True to life recording? We are fooling ourselves” is designed to give you a platform to champion some concept, idea, cause or product. Does the idea of  ‘true 3D from standard stereo” kind of rain on that parade?

 

I guess that’s another way of saying you do not know what psychoacoustics is.

 

 

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31 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

Essentially psycho-acoustics are pretty much anything that has to do with humans’ perception of sound.  Psycho-acoustics are what gives meaning to and makes sound pressure waves reaching the ears understandable to a conscious mind. 

 

 

20 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

No, unfortunately I can’t agree,...…... Why? Because the brain identified 2 separate sources, so no psycho-acoustics were applied

 

 

You don't see yourself contradicting to what you asserted earlier? 

 

 

Quote

Blackmorec said: So, as we say in Yorkshire, ‘Let’s get down to brass tacks here”. What is it you are promoting or championing that requires you to discredit standard stereo’s abilities? I’m curious

 

I am championing against the audiophile snake oil and BS. Reminding new members to this wonderful hobby about the basics of stereophonics and psychoacoustics. As an example, you wrote something about headphones, head movements and room acoustics in an futile attempt to explain why and the tearing of paper in the money track which you failed to ask yourself what if that experiment was conducted in an anechoic chamber with the head fixed. 

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1 minute ago, Blackmorec said:

 

Aha, so that’s what it is. Got it. You’re an anti-snake oil and BS man. A sort of Audiophile evangelist. Fair enough.  Then let me give you a little advice, if I may.

Firstly politeness and consideration will get you a lot further and win you a lot more support than simple, dumb personal attacks. 

Likewise, presenting facts, figures, stats in a well constructed and logical argument instead of making personal attacks generally bestows you with a lot more credibility. 

Third, attacking what you see as the competition instead of presenting your own arguments and benefits is a surefire  way to fail. Why? Because it gives your opposite number licence to present all their arguments and demonstrate why your counter arguments  are just so much bum fluff.  

Finally, some of your arguments just border on the ridiculous. Building a wall down the middle of your face for example or making a recording of a recording and comparing that to human hearing is not going to sway a lot of people. Anyway, now I’ve sorted out your motives and given my advice, for what its worth,  I’m really done. I’m here for fun, not self flagellation and that’s what perpetuating this discussion is getting to feel like  . 

 

That’s hard when one pretends to know the subject matter and when asked a question he goes on lecturing on manners. 

 

Stop BS. Either answer or stop posting here. Go rant in another thread. 

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1 hour ago, fas42 said:

ST, note that Blackmorec has achieved most of the behaviour displayed by competent playback through careful choice of the hardware, and plenty of extra effort in refining its setup - exactly the philosophy I espouse. Of course he has his own slant on what is critical, in that he believes somewhat extreme fussiness in dealing with reflections is essential; as a contrast, another enthusiast who achieved truly invisible gear had the attitude that it was all about the speakers - since his interest was in the design and building of speakers it made perfect sense that he would think this way ... now, what's that story again of trying to understand what an elephant was in the dark, and depending upon where you felt, your opinion was completely different? ... underneath it all there is always the integrity of the elephant, and it's always remains so, irrespective of what people think they've got ...

 

The simple truth is that recordings have all the information for full blown, immersive presentations to be generated - no prettying up, makeup is necessary ... just the data of what's been captured is good enough - can you handle it?

 

I think you have been long enough in this forum to notice that the most vehement objection to any form discussion about crosstalk cancellation or spatial hearing will come from equipment designer/manufacturer who make a living by claiming how their design could bring palpable 3D audio.

 

I started this thread with clear examples of audio samples to show how we can fool ourselves into believing non existent sound by prior knowledge. Review the thread and see for yourselves. Stop fooling ourselves thinking that by putting million dollar speakers or equipment going to make a significant difference. If you cannot prove that in DBT or measurements then it doesn't exist except with suggestion and expectation. That's why you usually hear difference in your own system and within your circle of friends.

[STC]

I started this thread to show how once you have prior knowledge of a sound, your brain always recreate a meaningful sound to give some definition based on your audio memory bank. It cannot be undone. This is evident in speech where we will fill in missing words to reconstruct a sentence. 

 

The audio scene created by stereo playback takes whatever available cues and reconstruct the placement to equate what should have been the reality. The cues may not be correct and could be different but if you already known the scene it will always projected in your mind as such. 

 

It would be nice to be on topic and engage in sequence instead of every new post comes up with more confusion to justify what you have been hearing. 

 

@fas42, did you hear the male on the left. Try the headphones. The stereo cues presented there are 100% accurate as encoded in the recordings. 

 

 

 

[STC]

Summarized version of our subjective evaluation. 

 

 

[STC]

On 8/20/2019 at 5:16 PM, STC said:

 

Now, you are slowly agreeing that accurate phase is no longer relevant. The point is the stereo "ACCURATE and WELL SET UP" loudspeakers could not produce the accurate position due to crosstalk. I have another track where the male and female voice would appears to be coming from the centre but with headphones the male will be on the left  and the female on the right. No stereo system could reproduce that accurately. There goes the reality and accuracy.

 

 

Here are 2 original tracks. Do you hear any difference with loudspeakers?  Do these two tracks sound identical? Listen again with headphones do you hear the female's voice is on the left in A1 and on the right in track A2. Why is this information can only be heard with headphones and not with loudspeakers?

 

 

A1.wav

 

A2.wav

 

 

 

Now listen again to the same track with loudspeakers? Do you hear clear separation and different position between the male and female singer?

 

B1.wav

 

B2.wav

 

 

[STC]

And here are two more samples with XLO reference and generic interconnects. 

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On 10/26/2019 at 8:19 AM, fas42 said:

Hmmm ... looks very quiet around here, 😄.

 

Talking about liking reverb, what many don't seem to appreciate is that you can have a recording that is a mix of two acoustics - one extremely intimate, "right there" in a tiny spot in front of you; combined with a massively deep space, that extends "for miles". The two co-exist, and your mind has no trouble seeing the two very precisely, with no confusion between the two - this is a type of Art, and is pleasurable to experience.

 

Sorry for the delay to respond to this.

 

Reverbs and the relation of its use is far too complex. Even Blauert cautioned in his book that the observation detailed in his book was only correct under lab condition. I have given the recording technique used in your reference YouTube videos. They were manipulated with a lots of reverbs (echoes). No one here (including me) could accurately tell the depth of an instruments accurately based on the reverbs of an instruments as they do not provide accurate information of depth but only an approximation. You will use your learning experience to fix an arbitrary depth. I will not respond to your reply unless you want to take up the challenge where you can identify the depth of an instruments in the sample that I provide.

 

 

 

On 10/26/2019 at 8:19 AM, fas42 said:

 

However, an ability of the playback to resolve the detail that maintains these two auditory spaces is essential - attempting to manipulate what comes from speakers, by multi-channeling in some fashion, is doomed to failure of course, if the intention is to improve the presentation - because separation of of the combined spaces that the recording contains would have to be done first - currently close to impossible, even with the best software.

 

A speakers should not manipulate. It should produce the same. How is multi channel related to this? Are you one also in the category that who believes a recording is capable of capturing all the spatial information accurately?

 

Firstly, if at all a recording is capable of capturing ( I am confining to musical performance only) 100% then pick any of the live performance of the recording and ask them why the applause is coming from the front stage. A true accurate recording shouldn't be producing the applause of the audience which in most cases comes from behind the microphones. Yet you can see even accomplish recordists insist a single pair of stereo microphones captures accurate spatial cues and close to the original event.

 

I also would not respond to your reply to this unless you want to start with explaining why the applause is coming from the front when in the actual event it supposed be from the rear. (This probably will give you a cue why multi channel playback is more accurate).

 

 

[STC]

40 minutes ago, kirkmc said:

I haven't read this whole thread, which is quite long, but I think of this sometimes when I'm in a concert hall. There has long been an obsession with surround sound - from quadrophonic to 5.1 etc. - but has anyone done any serious work with, say, four equidistant front speakers?

 

Yes. It is known as domestic/virtual concert hall reproduction. A real concert hall RT is about 1.7second and it is impossible to create them unless you have a room that is capable of reproducing the long RT which means it is impossible with any typical room unless you do them artificially with multi speakers to recreate the long RT using real 360 degree concert hall impulse response . See my signature for more info.

 

There are other attempts of multi channel production but they all still limited to the physical restraint of reverbs and limited channels of reverbs. Having said that, they are more natural than a typical equidistant stereo setup.  

 

40 minutes ago, kirkmc said:

 

Naturally, this would require recordings to be made specifically for those four channels, but it would seem to me that this would blur the sweet spot a lot more than having back speakers. Even having a three-channel system would be an improvement on two speakers, but that would probably reinforce the central sweet spot. 

 

Or, perhaps most people just don't care and aren't obsessed with trying to hear music "as it sounds in the concert hall." 

 

Again, for music the extra channels are there to reproduce the rear ambiance which is part of concert hall experience. They are better than stereo but still more to catchup as the reverbs do not come from just the rear speakers location.

 

Centre channel got no role for music. It was invented for theaters.

[STC]

9 hours ago, zacster said:

guitar, or just my daughter playing our grand piano at home,

A good system should able to produce a grand piano in a concert hall sound reasonably well. However, to reproduce the sound of a piano like listening from 10 or 15 feet in a living room can be challenging. 
 

It depends on the recording, your room acoustics and if at all your system could produce close to the sound your daughter playing a real piano such system would sound over reverberant for solo vocalist. A real piano sound in a living room comes from 360 degrees. In a stereo reproduction, it is limited to the front sound only and very little of the other direction. 

[STC]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Here, you are confusing the competence of the listener, with that of the playback system - if I listen to your sample on a low grade setup, like my current laptop, I most likely will have problems with your "challenge". Conversely, if a high performing replay happens, then people who have not the slightest interest in such affairs will have little difficulty picking up the depth cues.

 

The point is, that competent playback renders the distance cues very clearly - this is one of the 'obvious' markers that occurs. Formerly confused information as to "what's going on" becomes startlingly clear - and the layering of the various sound elements is easy to 'see'.

 

 

All the spatial information that matters is captured. It won't be all the information, but it will be sufficient for the mind to decode it, completely unconsciously - if you haven't experienced the radical transformation that occurs in the subjective presentation when a rig is good enough, you won't understand this; having heard this for three decades is why I can listen to poor quality playback of some track and 'know' what it should sound like ... here, I'm consciously translating what I hear.

 

 

Whether the applause comes from the back or the front to me is irrelevant ... since it has nothing to do with the thrust of the performance. I'm far more interested in whether it "sounds like applause" - and actually, it usually appears like it's all around me - it fills the space I'm listening in; just like the real thing ... 😜.

As usual.  Evasive. You cannot answer the questions because you know very well you cannot prove what you claim. 

[STC]

15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Questions? You only asked two in the post I replied to - the first one was this, "How is multi channel related to this? " ... I responded by pointing out that adding an extra acoustic space, by multi-channel manipulation, will create a confusing auditory experience, with many recordings ... you disagree?

You cannot even remember what you read a few minutes ago or misread or misunderstood them and yet you are claiming to remember a magic that happened 35 years ago. 
 

 

 

[STC]

We all may have experienced that magic moment in our life. Mine happened deep in the jungle while camping. It has been pouring the whole day. With an old flame, on a motorcycle. Soaked wet. Camp fire, full moon, the roar of the waterfall and music from a small cassette player. 
 

I could never forget the music and the whole setting. Recently, brought my family there and I took the opportunity to relive that old moment. 
 

The music sucked. The waterfall noise ( although the water level is only one fifth of what it used to be) drowned the music. Either, they don’t make audio players like they used to or I was extremely high on hormone some 34 years.