[KH]

On 6/7/2012 6:34 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
wrote in message
...
On 6/6/2012 5:55 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:

big snip

I just hope upon hope that some of the correspondents are not right, that
it
is just a matter of taste and I am tilting at windmills.

I haven't seen any correspondents saying that it is *just* a matter of
taste. Quite the opposite. Everyone has acknowledged that there are many
areas, especially in the recording process, where clearly things can
improve. What is clear, however, is that you consistently refuse to
acknowledge that preference plays a major role, and thus there simply
cannot be any universally acknowledged *best*, or most realistic
presentation.

I haven't talked all that much about preference,

Well, yes. Quite. That's the point I was making; you want to divorce
preference from "realism" in reproduction, and that is a basic error IMO.

that is not the point of the thread.

And that is, again IMO, your basic misunderstanding of the goal of
reproduction in the home. Given that such reproduction must try to
create an illusion of the recorded event, in very large part it is a
matter of preference, and trying to examine the problem without
acknowledging that such a constraint exists is perfectly reasonable; for
your personal satisfaction. If you want to extrapolate your 'theory' to
a broader audience, you are doomed to failure if you ignore that basic
precept.

I couldn't have refused to acknowledge preference's role in
audio.

Actually, you've done so repeatedly. Explicitly by your continual
insistence that box speakers are "wrong*, direct sound is *wrong*, that
in essence, anything you don't like, or that doesn't represent *your*
internal reference for realism is *wrong*.

You do so implicitly by choosing to ignore any references to preference
that others bring up. This thread being the exception.

There HAS to be something more scientific about it than that.

There is nothing remotely unscientific about evaluating and understanding
listener preferences, and recognizing how such preferences impact the
universality or efficacy of any particular engineering solution. As long
as you continue to think there is *a* single correct way to create
realism, you will be tilting at windmills.

Didn't talk about a single best way, acknowledged many times that there are
many ways to make a recording, for example, such as Blumlein, spaced omni,
ORT-F, etc.

That's a dodge Gary. You have acknowledged that recordings can improve,
but have repeatedly insisted that your reflected sound method is the
only approach to realism in reproduction. That is a simple fact.

Just talking about what is audible about speakers and rooms, and
attempting to offer a new way to look at the big picture of sound in rooms
and compare that to the live situation.

I offered in the What Can We Hear thread that the spatial nature of sound
was the main stumbling block, or difference, between live and reproduced.

And no one has argued that point, with the stipulation that capturing
that nature in the recording does not happen today.

I
said that we can hear speaker positioning and different radiation patterns
and offered some reasons for certain positioning and the result of
mis-positioning them. If a hole in the middle effect is a matter of
preference, then more power to you. If a boxy sound in speakers is a
preference, then hey.

And these statements clearly demonstrate that you are not getting my
point. You appear unable to accept that others may simply not *hear* it
your way. Neither of these descriptions, "a hole in the middle" or
"boxy sound" is of any interest to any of us here (to my knowledge). But
all of your writing leads me to conclude that if a particular
implementation sounds a particular way to *you*, then that is the only
way it could be interpreted (or interpreted correctly). Thus anyone who
prefers such an implementation must, perforce, like the sound as *you*
perceive it to be, i.e. conforming to your own internal definitions.

If my system sounds real to me, and you hear it and state, as fact, "it
sounds like a hole in the middle", you are simply being *wrong* about
*my* perception of it. When I hear most dipoles, and certainly 901's
(unless augmented with significant additional directly radiated sound -
like the L-100's I mentioned previously), I hear an artificially large,
diffuse soundstage, with directional clues that seem totally wrong. My
perception is not open to your agreement or disagreement. You really
need to understand that point.

snip

In setting up a home audio system, I appreciate a more visual understanding
of sound as a basis for room treatment, speaker selection, and positioning

A point without controversy.

Within all of those ranges, there are a lot of possible preferences, but
that was not what I was hoping to talk about,

I know. And the only cogent reasons I can see to ignore preferences in
such a discussion would be if you deny, or are unaware of their effects,
or you believe yours preferences to be correct, and others must be
brought to "see the light".

and you are right, that would
be pointless.

Again, your interpretation of what I wrote is 180° off the mark. I said
ignoring preference in the discussion renders the discussion moot. It is
pointless to discuss your preferences in the context of right and wrong.
It certainly is appropriate to discuss your preferences, why you hold
them relative to certain implementations, what cues or facets of
reproduction trigger your perception of realism, how you can record to
preserve those clues, and how you arrive at a setup that optimally
reproduces those perceptual clues. However, stating that listening to
direct radiating speakers is "wrong" because they don't fit your visual
model is a value judgment you simply do not get to make for the world at
large.


If ANYBODY got ANYTHING out of this thread, please tell me.

Well, I don't know. Answer the question you ignored before, and I'll
tell you if there was anything to be learned, IMO:

If you and I completely disagree about whether a
specific stereo implementation (yours, mine, AE's, etc.) is
realistic or not, is one of us wrong? Yes or no?

Irrespective of that question, however, I can say that if you really
believe what you stated previously, namely;

"Yes... well... as I agreed earlier, the recording is a **new work of
art**, using the original as a stepping off point..."emphasis mine
and:

"...an audio reproduction event is also a NEW event, a new work of art
if you will, and not JUST a replica of the live event. I have made a few
recordings now that I enjoy more than the live event I was recording!"

then one thing I have gotten is that there's virtually no overlap
between your goals, and mine (or most anyone else's here unless I miss
my guess). Mine is reproduction, yours appears to be creation of some
new "performance" event. The two are not congruent; your
creation-of-event vision being the very antithesis of "hi fidelity".

Keith