True to life recording? - We are fooling ourselves!

[fas42]

8 hours ago, STC said:

 

I am speechless. Do you understand what psychoacoustics is? 

 

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. 

 

From experience, how I would put this is such - it's far, far easier to get a playback system to get key elements of SQ correct via headphones; for a variety of reasons. Most speaker playback is flawed, quite substantially, by comparison - and so all the detail is far too blurred to pick up correctly.

 

Every experience I've had with headphones, irrespective of cost, has been a solid negative - first of all they are physically unpleasant, and secondly they reveal less of what's going on than speaker replay; the headphones chain has not been 'debugged', and so come a clear second in the race.

[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.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, STC said:

 

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

 

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.

[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. 

[Blackmorec]

17 hours ago, STC said:

 

I am speechless. Do you understand what psychoacoustics is? 

 

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. 

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?

[STC]

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.

 

 

[Blackmorec]

45 minutes ago, STC said:

 

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

 

 

Well i don’t have a Masters in it, if that’s what you mean. Psycho-acoustics is a very complex subject, but what it does (as it applies to this discussion) is to enable my standard, 2 channel stereo to deliver huge, room-busting 3 dimensional sound-stages from absolutely regular Quboz music streams. Literally millions of albums with complex, gorgeous acoustics made crystal clear by the brain’s ability to ignore/exclude extraneous signals that confuse and interfere with directionality. 

But that’s only one example of psycho-acoustics. If you think about the different ways you can listen to music, pick out a voice in a crowded room, pick out warning sounds on a busy street etc. you’ll find many more examples. 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. 

 

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

[STC]

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. 

[Blackmorec]

52 minutes ago, STC said:

 

 

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

 

No, there are all sorts of psycho-acoustic effects. We are talking about a particular one, so perhaps I should have said “no law of the first wavefront” is applied.  But hey,at’s what we call nitpicking. 

 

52 minutes ago, STC said:

 

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. 

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  . 

[STC]

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. 

[fas42]

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?

[STC]

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.

[Blackmorec]

9 hours 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?

Actually Frank and I are not far off on agreeing on most things actually because I hear this sonic picture where loudspeakers as a source totally disappear, replaced by high focused images of instruments playing in free, independent space, according to where they were placed by sound engineers.  I also find this ability to hear the sound differently is like a switch....its either there or not, like a switch,  rather than it slowly coalescing from the ether. And I realise that in order to achieve this sonic Nirvana, you have to remove a lot of the extraneous noise, distortion and inaccuracies from your system.  Once you do, the sonic picture changes entirely and you get a highly focused soundstage with width, depth and height differentiation. But this illusion isn’t static. It can be brought into greater focus, its timbral information can be improved,  the air between instruments can be imbued with sonic character,  instruments can change from being sounds in space, to sounding like actual instruments playing the music or actual people singing the songs. 

So is this some kind on alchemy? No, of course not. Its electronics, physics and psycho-acoustics and is the goal of most audiophiles and audio manufacturers  Now Frank says that i’m obsessive about reflections and room treatments but that is not entirely correct. I really only use diffraction on the wall behind the listening position because I find it really takes away a fairly obtrusive room identity to the sound caused by delayed reflections,  and leaves a very neutral space that will support rather than mask whatever acoustic is on the recording. 

 

But now we get into areas that Frank and I disagree. Frank believes that once you get the illusion, suddenly nothing else, like speaker position, listener position etc  matters. The listener hears the magic no matter where they sit/stand etc.   Now I do get this, partially, in that when I move I don’t suddenly hear 2 loudspeakers as sources. Rather sounds are still independent of the speakers....there’s not suddenly 2 loudspeakers playing music, but when I move, the depth, the width, the height, the image specificity, the acoustically charged air between instruments, in other words, the entire soundstage collapses, or at least makes a lot less sense.  Now for me, getting that soundstage, something that can sound altogether bigger than my room, with acoustics that are all about the venue and nothing about the room was a labour of several decades, this despite buying equipment with no obvious shortcomings. But, and here Frank and I agree again, I did do a few simple things during those decades that enhanced my SQ far beyond the £££ paid. Dedicated earth was one, dedicated mains with really good quality cabling another, a really good rack to avoid vibration a third, improved power-supplies for my network etc.  And most probably soldering interconnects would be up there if I was prepared the sacrifice $000,s and never again sell the gear I own (or sell it for 0,0x on the $ 😫. 

But nowhere along the way have I EVER felt that the room doesn’t matter, because with or without the illusion, the room will always DOMINATE proceedings if its colorations, and it ALWAYS has colorations are not sufficiently benign to allow the recording acoustics to dominate.   Essentially you are always listening simultaneously to 2 performances, the musicians as they played on the recording and the recording as it plays in your room. The recording contains a portion of the recording venue’s acoustics and the recording playback contains all your room’s acoustics. If the latter is too intrusive, it will overpower and blot out the former. This is just logic. 

In the end, this is ONLY about the soundwaves reaching our ears, nothing else. All this room treatment, speaker placement, vibration control, reworking mains supply etc etc is only so we can deliver GOOD vibes to our ears such that our Psycho-acoustic system can create a believable illusion of musicians playing instruments and singing songs. The better and more accurate the vibes, the better the illusion....also just simple logic. 

 

 

 

[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. 

 

 

 

[fas42]

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Actually Frank and I are not far off on agreeing on most things actually because I hear this sonic picture where loudspeakers as a source totally disappear, replaced by high focused images of instruments playing in free, independent space, according to where they were placed by sound engineers.  I also find this ability to hear the sound differently is like a switch....its either there or not, like a switch,  rather than it slowly coalescing from the ether. And I realise that in order to achieve this sonic Nirvana, you have to remove a lot of the extraneous noise, distortion and inaccuracies from your system.  Once you do, the sonic picture changes entirely and you get a highly focused soundstage with width, depth and height differentiation. But this illusion isn’t static. It can be brought into greater focus, its timbral information can be improved,  the air between instruments can be imbued with sonic character,  instruments can change from being sounds in space, to sounding like actual instruments playing the music or actual people singing the songs. 

 

Thanks for that rundown, Blackmorec, it gives me an excellent handle on where you're at.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

So is this some kind on alchemy? No, of course not. Its electronics, physics and psycho-acoustics and is the goal of most audiophiles and audio manufacturers  Now Frank says that i’m obsessive about reflections and room treatments but that is not entirely correct. I really only use diffraction on the wall behind the listening position because I find it really takes away a fairly obtrusive room identity to the sound caused by delayed reflections,  and leaves a very neutral space that will support rather than mask whatever acoustic is on the recording. 

 

Not obsessive ... people could, would say I'm obsessive in worrying about system integrity - it's merely that one has "cornered" a key factor about what's important, and so a lot of effort is spent on dealing with that.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

 

But now we get into areas that Frank and I disagree. Frank believes that once you get the illusion, suddenly nothing else, like speaker position, listener position etc  matters. The listener hears the magic no matter where they sit/stand etc.   Now I do get this, partially, in that when I move I don’t suddenly hear 2 loudspeakers as sources. Rather sounds are still independent of the speakers....there’s not suddenly 2 loudspeakers playing music, but when I move, the depth, the width, the height, the image specificity, the acoustically charged air between instruments, in other words, the entire soundstage collapses, or at least makes a lot less sense.  

 

There's an excellent, historical reason for why I think the way I do - when it happened for me, I got the whole shebang; there was no collapse or diminution of soundstage when I moved around, none whatsoever ... I lucked on getting a 'premium' version straight off - there appeared nowhere to go, in terms of "making it better!"

 

The big drama for me was to stop the gear from losing that peak tune that made such happen - that's always been the battle.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

 

Now for me, getting that soundstage, something that can sound altogether bigger than my room, with acoustics that are all about the venue and nothing about the room was a labour of several decades, this despite buying equipment with no obvious shortcomings. But, and here Frank and I agree again, I did do a few simple things during those decades that enhanced my SQ far beyond the £££ paid. Dedicated earth was one, dedicated mains with really good quality cabling another, a really good rack to avoid vibration a third, improved power-supplies for my network etc.  And most probably soldering interconnects would be up there if I was prepared the sacrifice $000,s and never again sell the gear I own (or sell it for 0,0x on the $ 😫. 

 

You see, and very unfortunately ... that simple hardwiring of the whole chain could be the one last major obstacle to getting the next level of SQ. Every rig along the way that I've played with has always had that happen as the first step - because it's always transformed the playback from something that I couldn't tolerate for any length of time, to a status where most recordings could be thoroughly enjoyed at some volume level - plenty of issues still, yes, but the sense of 'musicality' was in the room.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

But nowhere along the way have I EVER felt that the room doesn’t matter, because with or without the illusion, the room will always DOMINATE proceedings if its colorations, and it ALWAYS has colorations are not sufficiently benign to allow the recording acoustics to dominate.   Essentially you are always listening simultaneously to 2 performances, the musicians as they played on the recording and the recording as it plays in your room. The recording contains a portion of the recording venue’s acoustics and the recording playback contains all your room’s acoustics. If the latter is too intrusive, it will overpower and blot out the former. This is just logic. 

 

That's the theory - but my experience is otherwise. The performance of the room is secondary, as far as the ear/brain is concerned - in the same way as if you had a live rock band - no PA - squeezed in to your living room; as compared to being set up on a sports oval, the sound of what you hear changes, but the integrity of the primary sound makers doesn't alter. In the case of a recording, the primary sound makers are the music plus the captured or manipulated acoustic; and that is what dominates - it nulls out the room contribution, subjectively.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

In the end, this is ONLY about the soundwaves reaching our ears, nothing else. All this room treatment, speaker placement, vibration control, reworking mains supply etc etc is only so we can deliver GOOD vibes to our ears such that our Psycho-acoustic system can create a believable illusion of musicians playing instruments and singing songs. The better and more accurate the vibes, the better the illusion....also just simple logic.

 

 

The soundwaves reaching out ears are split, by our mind - one lot is attached to the recording event; the rest is the reaction of the room to the former. In the same way someone can talk to you at the same time as you listen to live music, and you will never mistake that as being part of the music making - so also can our minds discard what it evaluates as not being part of the primary sound of the recording.

 

The big problem normally is that the mind has to work too hard to separate these two sound streams, so it gives up - it's too much of a jumble; so then you have to apply acoustic treatments, solutions to aid the listening brain focusing on what you want as the primary stream. But, the good news is that if one achieves a high enough attenuation of distortion artifacts in the replay chain, then this is adequate for the mind to do full separation, without acoustic aids.

[fas42]

13 hours ago, STC said:

 

@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. 

 

 

 

 

Couple of points: the replay quality of the laptop is never going to be a bit above reasonable; the imaging in fact pulls quite strongly to the left with many recordings, appearing to occur in the range from strongly left to centre of the speakers - which appears to a combination of the relative quality of the channels, and all the bits and pieces of stuff around and almost over the laptop - and finally, the only headphones I have are very, very, very ordinary, old ones; they are far too irritating, and awkward to use with current gear.

[STC]

Summarized version of our subjective evaluation. 

 

 

[Blackmorec]

15 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Thanks for that rundown, Blackmorec, it gives me an excellent handle on where you're at.

 

 

Not obsessive ... people could, would say I'm obsessive in worrying about system integrity - it's merely that one has "cornered" a key factor about what's important, and so a lot of effort is spent on dealing with that.

 

 

There's an excellent, historical reason for why I think the way I do - when it happened for me, I got the whole shebang; there was no collapse or diminution of soundstage when I moved around, none whatsoever ... I lucked on getting a 'premium' version straight off - there appeared nowhere to go, in terms of "making it better!"

 

The big drama for me was to stop the gear from losing that peak tune that made such happen - that's always been the battle.

 

 

You see, and very unfortunately ... that simple hardwiring of the whole chain could be the one last major obstacle to getting the next level of SQ. Every rig along the way that I've played with has always had that happen as the first step - because it's always transformed the playback from something that I couldn't tolerate for any length of time, to a status where most recordings could be thoroughly enjoyed at some volume level - plenty of issues still, yes, but the sense of 'musicality' was in the room.

 

 

That's the theory - but my experience is otherwise. The performance of the room is secondary, as far as the ear/brain is concerned - in the same way as if you had a live rock band - no PA - squeezed in to your living room; as compared to being set up on a sports oval, the sound of what you hear changes, but the integrity of the primary sound makers doesn't alter. In the case of a recording, the primary sound makers are the music plus the captured or manipulated acoustic; and that is what dominates - it nulls out the room contribution, subjectively.

 

 

The soundwaves reaching out ears are split, by our mind - one lot is attached to the recording event; the rest is the reaction of the room to the former. In the same way someone can talk to you at the same time as you listen to live music, and you will never mistake that as being part of the music making - so also can our minds discard what it evaluates as not being part of the primary sound of the recording.

 

The big problem normally is that the mind has to work too hard to separate these two sound streams, so it gives up - it's too much of a jumble; so then you have to apply acoustic treatments, solutions to aid the listening brain focusing on what you want as the primary stream. But, the good news is that if one achieves a high enough attenuation of distortion artifacts in the replay chain, then this is adequate for the mind to do full separation, without acoustic aids.

Well there’s one point there that I have to say has merit and that’s the removing of connectors. Not something I would ever do given that my system is a substantial investment that I like to recoup some of when I upgrade, but you are right that in total there could be some substantial degradation and therefore gains......non-gas-tight pressure contacts......especially those network plugs that i always view with dark suspicion.  

[Gavin]

ATC actives (50-100-150-300 as room size dictates) there is no substitute.... a super interview, very much enjoyed it, thank you for sharing 

[fas42]

8 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Well there’s one point there that I have to say has merit and that’s the removing of connectors. Not something I would ever do given that my system is a substantial investment that I like to recoup some of when I upgrade, but you are right that in total there could be some substantial degradation and therefore gains......non-gas-tight pressure contacts......especially those network plugs that i always view with dark suspicion.  

 

I'm rather chuffed that you thought one concept bore merit ... .

 

The story is that on my first ambitious rig, 35 years ago, it was quite obvious that the quality of connectors had a big bearing on what I was hearing, very early in the piece - every time I pulled them apart and meticulously cleaned them, with alcohol, the SQ went up. Now, having a few bits of stuff upstairs , I decided that it was important to make this part of everything work better - repeatedly cleaning was very annoying, and of short term benefit; next step was contact enhancers, the liquid ones - which were a mixed bag: longer term stability, but the end quality was worse! So, it was sorta obvious what I had to do - I did the hardwiring in a way that could be reversed, by removing connectors if necessary and feeding the cables straight through to the board traces ... voila, no more SQ issues from this aspect.

 

From then on, I could readily pick up the signature of a bad connection - an edge, unpleasantness, irritating 'offness' to the overall sound - far too important to eliminate this, than to worry about "money matters"

[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. 

[fas42]

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.

 

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.

[STC]

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).

 

 

[kirkmc]

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? 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."