Mind Stretchers
To the group:
I have had 3 posts that I can still find not show up in this thread, or not
get acknowledged, so I would like to re-send them one at a time and just
complete the thought, as it were. Here is the first one:
"KH" wrote in message
...
On 5/28/2012 9:37 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
Hello again Keith -
Thanks for the frank and honest reply. This is what I thought was going
on,
but I didn't think anyone else realized it.
Gary, please re-read your last sentence in the context of "us" as readers,
not you as author. Do you not see how implicitly dismissive it is? That
is why I "beat you up" about being condescending previously. I've been
around long enough to remember your earlier forays here, and as I recall,
they devolved similarly. You would do yourself a service if you would
take more care in tone.
Sorry Keith but I really do have something to say. Please stay with me for
this one last post - we are 99% of the way there.
snip
That's not idealism, Gary, that simply ignoring that there is no "right"
when it comes to listener preference. There are a hundred Grape flavors.
Do you believe there should be some unifying theory that would result in
the one, true, grape flavor and everyone would then agree with that
selection?
If you and I disagree about which grape is the most realistic, is one of
us wrong? If you and I disagree about whether a specific stereo
implementation is realistic or not, is one of us wrong? If your answer to
either question is "yes", further discussion is pointless as you're now in
the realm of ideology not acoustical theory.
OK, you are saying designing or selecting speakers is like selecting ice
cream flavors at Baskin Robins. Well, I have another analogy for you, and I
think it is quite apt.
I have said that the stereo signal is a concentrate, to be mixed with the
playback room acoustic in a certain way, a way that models itself after the
real thing. Imagine two orangeophiles who are unfamiliar with frozen orange
juice. They love their pure, rich Florida orange juice and they are yearning
to duplicate it. So they select some Sunkist frozen juice and take it home
to their tasting room.
The first one takes his can, opens it, and starts eating the frozen slush
straight out of the can. He figures that if this is made from the real
orange juice he wants to take it straight, for the most accurate experience
of the product. The second orangeophile says no no, you've got entirely the
wrong idea. Watch me. We take the can of frozen concentrate, dump it into
this pitcher, then add a quart of water and mix it in. The first man is
horrified at the inaccuracy of consuming the pure juice that way. The second
one explains why it works that way: He says it may not be as accurate to
mix it with all this water first, but by doing so it is more realistic, much
more like the original orange juice that it was made from and that we are
trying to duplicate. Its temperature is more like the original, and that is
feelable. Its texture is more like the real thing, and that is visible. Its
flavor is more like the real thing, and that is very tasteable. You may
prefer a California product, but we must all understand the basic principle
of mixing it with water in this certain way before we consume it, no matter
who made it.
(where did the recorded ambience info go)
It got converted into two dimensions. Basically, level and arrival time.
How do you think incident angle information is coded into the signal?
That's the HRTF information that is lost in the process. Not because it
wasn't in the venue, and not because the microphone didn't pick it up, but
because it was transduced using a very different instrument than WE use to
hear.
Here you have a technical misconception. Stereo has nothing to do with HRTF.
That is a binaural, or head-related, process. With stereo, a field-type
system, we are reproducing the object itself in front of us and using our
own natural hearing mechanism and HRTF to listen to it.
Why do you keep conflating stereo and binaural, and assuming everyone but
you confuses the two? If you believe all the spacial clues are in a
stereo recording I would submit that the confusion is yours.
snip
Then I would say that your whole approach is one of redefining what you
think live music *should* sound like. How can one consider the real event
to be anything other than the intended *end* point, not a "stepping off
point"?
Slight miscommunication. Although the reproduction is a new work of art,
some works are made with the goal of the realistic reproduction of the
original, some are a pure construct, such as a synthesizer composition or a
multimiked and highly produced pop or jazz piece. It's all fair game.
The point you repeatedly overlook - audiophiles, IME, all have the exact
same design goals; faithful reproduction of the recorded event. They have
different *preferences* that impact how they perceive the various
implementations designed to realize that goal.
*Most* are right - "trick", "illusion", call it what you will - that is
the goal of stereo. You seem to want to disconnect the reproduction from
the event, preferring to consider the reproduction paramount, and
massaging it to meet your interpretation of realism; an interpretation
untethered from the seminal event, and unconstrained by the desire to
faithfully recreate it. This concept is at odds with the goals of every
audiophile I know, or have conversed with. If this is, indeed your view,
then I hope you like the role of Sysiphus.
OK, here comes my main point of this whole discussion, my "closer."
We have discussed all of the audible parts of the listening experience in
the EEFs, What Can We Hear. We said that the spatial part is the main
stumbling block, the main difference between the reproduction and the real
thing. Think of it as pure physics. If the spatial qualities I discussed are
audible, then we must make some attempt to reproduce them.
The "real thing" comes to us as a primarily reverberant field from a
multiplicity of incident angles.
The reproduction comes to us from just those two points in space.
That difference is seriously audible; they CANNOT sound the same. This is
not a matter of taste, it is a fundamental error in the theory of
reproduction.
What to do, what to do? Look at the spatial problem from the standpoint of
the image model of the real thing and the reproduction. If you can separate
out in your mind the spatial from the temporal for a moment, and if the
recording really does contain some of the early reflected sound from the
venue, then it is more correct to reproduce that part of the sound by
reflecting it from the similar surfaces in your listening room. Also, due to
the closeness of the speakers to you, it is more correct to diminish the
direct to reflected ratio emanating from the speakers. Design a certain
radiation pattern according to Mark Davis that helps the time/intensity
trading and image stability as you go across the room, pull the speakers out
from the walls to make the soundstage three dimensional with similar depth
and spaciousness to the real thing, and you are almost all the way to Image
Model Theory, or IMT.
There are many, many more aspects of this that are worth discussing, but I
must leave it there for now. Thanks for listening.
Ah, but whereas taking "the huge, wide set of fields that were recorded
and pipe them all through just two points in space" split in some ratio
between sound radiated directly at the listener and sound directed toward
the front wall and then listening to the reflected simulation of the
reverberant field is more accurate? Really? This approach adds spacial
clues that are NOT in the recording, and thus cannot be accurate. There
is no information in the recording that can be used to correctly
"calibrate" some split of direct versus reflected sound to equal the
spatial information in the recording venue - it's simply artificial. You
may prefer the result, great, it's right for you, but you have no reason
to assume that it is universal for other listeners. Looking across current
speaker designs, it would seem quite the opposite in fact.
Yes, I know.
Keith
Gary
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