Thread: Surround Sound
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Scott[_6_] Scott[_6_] is offline
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On Saturday, November 9, 2013 8:17:38 AM UTC-8, news wrote:
"KH" wrote in message

...

On 11/8/2013 8:07 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:






radiation patterns of the speakers




Gee, where did this happen? Did you invent the piano speaker, bass


speaker, and drum kit speaker? This isn't feasible. Nonetheless, let's


assume you have these perfect speakers for discussion purposes.


-


what do you know - zing ping pow happening all over again right in your


room! The drum sound will reflect off the front and right side walls, the


bass off the left walls and the piano will remain mainly centered.




Well, let's do a bit of an arrival timeline here. Let's say that in the


new room, the smaller playback room, that new room first arrival and new


in-room zing ping and pow are now only separated by 0.2ms. So what


happens when you play back in the room? Let's see, to be simplistic, you


play one pure tone from each "instrument", in sync.




Sorry, I don't want to trash all of your work on the X, A, B, C diagram, but

I'm getting Deja Vu all over again here.


reality will keep hitting you in the face over and over again every time you make these completely incorrect assertions about stereo.



I said that all of the foregoing just scratches the surface, so permit me to

elaborate just one more level.



There are two stereophonic recordings being made at the live event.


No. There is only one stereophonic recording being made. Even with mulitmiking


One, the

direct sounds and their directions, left to right. Two, the reflected sounds

have been recorded in stereo as well - as you have agreed.




Noooooooo. They are all entwined in the same single stereophonic recording. There is no separate channels for reflected sound. The mics pick up the direct and the reflected sound. You can't separate them. It's all in one recording.

Both the

directions and the timings of those reflections, plus the reverberant tail

as the sound dies out during the reverb time of the hall.



No, the "directions" do not die out. that doesn't even make sense.



No, we cannot find enough channels to do each reflection with a direct

loudspeaker, nor could we do a new setup for every recording.



Again this doesn't even make sense. You can't mimic the reflections of the original venue without recreating that venue. That is never going to happen.. That is the primary reason the inventors of stereo recording and playback never went that route. It would be futile.


What is

important to audibility is that these reflected sounds NOT come from the

same directions (sources) as the direct sounds that were recorded.



Actually that is not important. If it were, all we would ever hear with playback is the directional sound coming from the speakers. Funny thing how we hear directionally. It has to do with phase, amplitude and spectral content. Stereo recording and playback utilizes this to create an aural illusion. If it didn't work then stereo would sound like two point sources. But it does work. And it does so without bouncing the sound off the walls. That is not a part of how stereo works.


This is

why you cannot just wipe out the room and listen to the speakers only, in

near field or any other manner.


Actually you can. And it works well.



Nor is it necessary to have precisely the same radiation pattern as each

musical instrument - just a general pattern will suffice, one that is

oriented toward the model, not the live sound itself, in a general way, not

for each instrument and each recording.


How on earth can you possibly make such a claim? Have you made comparisons between speakers and live instruments in concert halls? Not that it matters..





The main requirement is to get the spatial patterns more correct and

separate the later arriving reflected sounds from the first arriving direct

sounds.



That is just going to be a sonic mess. as has already been pointed out to you all you are doing is taking the original two or multi channel recording with all the reflected sounds of the hall that are on the recording and then making them echo off the walls of the playback room. Sonic smearsville USA.

This will be done simply by time delay. In the model, a matrix of

real and virtual speakers


real and "virtual" speakers? What is a "virtual speaker?" I probably shouldn't have asked.

is set up equidistant from each other such that

the loudnesses of all 8 of these sources is about equal and there will be a

summing localization among them all, in depth as well as width, so that the

recorded sounds come from a region within this structure somewhere behind

the plane of the real speakers and from wall to wall in width. This

structure, a spatially arrayed, temporally delayed, spectrally shaped sound

field simulator then becomes the "canvas" on which the recorded sounds can

array themselves.



And this is supposed to work with what recordings? What you are proposing is just a seemingly random made up new flavor of multichannel and then mixing room echo into it.



The main point is that the reflections from the recording come from correct

spatial angles on playback,



That would not happen with what you are proposing. Wouldn't even be close.

which MUST be different from the direct sounds.

Your whole timing discussion is mostly irrelevant to this spatial

requirement.



No it was not irrelevant. the timing of reflected sounds gives us our aural cues to recognize the illusion of original sound space.


The fact that the timings of the reflections in your room are

shorter than those in the recording matters not. Those timings remain as

recorded, but now come from spatially similar angles during playback if

properly recorded.


It matters hugely. This is really old news. Take a recording with substantial real recording venue reverb on it and play it back into a reverberant playback room and you get all kinds of confusing spacial cues that pretty much destroy each other. You end up with poor imaging and a lot of smeared sound. IOW a complete sonic mess.



At this point you declare that Eickmeier is full of it once again, because

there is no way to separate out the reflections from the direct sound in the

recording in order to make this fantastical model work. You would be wrong.



No we would all be right. It's not like this is anything new.




It is all done with time delay.


Nope, no such thing as time delay that seperates the reverb and direct reflections from the direct radiation of the instruments. Once it hits the mics it all becomes one signal. Taking that signal and adding time delayed playback over the regular playback just smears the sound.


Much like a Hafler or Dolby Stereo playback

system can extract the ambience from a recording and wrap it around to the

sides and rear, the time delay of the reflected sound in your room can

decode the reflected in the recording for the frontal soundstage.


Those systems can't actually extract the ambiance from a recording.


How? There

can be only one first arrival, and that HAS to be from the actual speakers

in the model. Later arriving, longer duration sounds will come from the

virtual sources or reflections in your listening room if the balances are

all about right.



The audible result is that for tight dry recordings with none or little

reverberance contained in them, the direct sounds just take on a harmless

image shift toward the reflecting surfaces and form themselves as an aerial

image slightly behind the plane of the speakers.



And what recordings that actually exist in this world would you be refering to here? And let's not forget that this is a huge issue for any attempt to reinvent stereo/multi chanel recording and playback. Just ask JJ Johnston. He helped develop such a system that by all reports was a substantial step up when it comes to realism. But the problem is we have over half a century of recorded musical heritage and any new system has to be retro compatible for that vast array of existing recordings. If not then what is the point? Ditch our music collections and wait and hope for the new recordings made with the new system? Not going to happen.



More reverberant recordings

take on the spaciousness and depth similar to the live situation and for

similar reasons. As long as zing ping pow happen within the fusion time, we

perceive them as part of the direct sound but with the spatial signature of

the model, which has been designed to be similar to the live model.


Except it doesn't work. It doesn't work because that is not how those recordings were designed to work. what you get is the good old Bose 901 sound. No thanks.