[Gary Eickmeier]

Audio Empire wrote:

While much of what you say is true, with two channels, there is only a
very narrow range of listening positions where the aural images are in
focus. This has to be. Microphones aren't ears and they don't even ACT
like ears and in fact we don't want them to act like ears, because if
they did, we would have binaural recordings, not stereo recordings.
But they do build-up a snapshot of the performance from a fixed
perspective. It doesn't matter whether this perspective is the result
of some co-incident microphone technique such as M-S or ORTF, or
whether it's the result of widely-spaced omnis, or whether it's a
studio-mixed sound-field made up from the outputs of dozens of
microphones recorded to dozens of separate channels all mixed down to
two. The result, on the listener's end is the same. A fixed
perspective that does not move when the listener moves.

Well, I hope you can see that this "fixed perspective" is a property of the
reproduction and not a basic property of the system. In fact, if you have a
multi-miked recording (which is NOT in incorrect technique in any sense)
then there IS no "perspective" from which the recording was made. If you had
the multitrack master, if it was recorded that way, then you could actually
pipe each mike thru a channel of its own out to a speaker positioned where
it was and you would have my example.

You are right again when you say that the only way around this is to
have a microphone and channel per instrument and a speaker on the
listening end per instrument all arranged exactly where the original
instrument was arranged during the recording process. This would give
the playback a similar image specificity to a real performance. Bell
Labs noted this in their 1933 stereophonic experiments. They started
with one channel per instrument (not recorded, of course, merely
piped-in by hard-wire from another, remote location) and kept reducing
the number of channels (on both ends) until but two remained. They
noted that it was entirely practical to convey the stereophonic
effect with merely two channels, but they also added the caveat that
with two channels, the optimum stereo effect was achieved only at the
point in front of the speakers where the sound-fields from the two
channels intersect.

Yes, again, playback only situation, not systemic. And I thought they ended
up with a three channel system.

The movie people are always one step ahead of the pure audio people. You can
see that at least with DD 5.1 surround sound, you can be anywhere in the
audience and perceive the center channel dialog as coming from the center of
the screen.

Stereo theory is constantly confused with binaural theory due to the
widespread use of the two channel system. We've got to shake that off and
start from scratch. I really like your example of the Innersound
electrostatics driving you mad. I had the same reaction to the Acoustats.
The classical theorists would think this an ideal situation, if the two
channels were "ear signals" meant to be piped to your ears. All that would
be missing would be crosstalk cancellation to get all the way to binaural
and total confusion.

I hope that your listening experience with the curved panel electrostatics
also includes a more natural, realistic sound field generated in your room.
Some listeners (Siegfried Linkwitz among others) realize that the reflected
sound can be a part of the realistic construction of the stereo image, and
in fact should be the same frequency response as the direct sound, not an
accidental byproduct of whatever sound comes off the back of a box speaker.

The whole theory of stereo is usually taken wrong because of these multiple
errors and misconceptions, and there doesn't seem to be a path out of it,
because of a lot of folklore and a lack of a single theory on exactly what
it is that we are doing with auditory perspective systems. Two channel
stereo is the main culprit, and multichannel is a partial solution, thanks
to the film people.

But can't we short-circuit all the cut and try fumbling and examine the
macro situation and state it once and for all?

Gary Eickmeier