[Gary Eickmeier]

"KH" wrote in message
...


They sound very good, why stop? The reality is, a great many people spend
big bucks on Wilsons (and a myriad other direct radiation designs) because
they believe they sound great. Your self described "best designed
speaker" on the other hand, is a footnote in audio history. Speakers are
not cables - they, and they rooms they're in, and the recordings they
play - are inherently inaccurate, and preference plays a major role. At
some point, the numbers stack up against your speaker design choice - and
the numbers don't lie when preference is the sole criterion.

OK, I'll play your game.

I sat right behind Gordon Holt at a demo of the Wilson WAMM during a break
from an audio show in L.A. It was at a high end dealer, I forget which now.
A bus took us from the show to the crime scene. The proprietor found it
necessary to completely blacken the room so we couldn't see the speakers
while they were playing. I hate that, because I enjoy being able to "see"
the localization of the instruments within my listening room in recordings
that feature such precise imaging. It would annoy me just as much at a live
concert. When I could see the speakers, they were like some horror story of
a caricature of all that I have found wrong with current audio practice in
speaker design. Not only were all of the drivers on one side - the front,
natch - but they had tilted the top couple of boxes down toward our hapless
ears so that we would get the full benefit of the direct sound from this
creation.

Well, give them a chance. But afterward Gordon and I were agreed that there
was "something" wrong with these speakers. The dealer, of course, thought
they were the end of the trail. I knew exactly what was wrong, which was
that they were way too hot on the direct field, which is nothing like live
sound.

Operating on the wrong - or no - stereo theory. They can't help it, just as
you can't, because you don't know any better. Some of the attendees may have
actually liked the sound because it was similar to what they were used to at
home, only had more of it, and they would think that that is what hi fi
should sound like. I did not, because I have had much better sound at home
for a long time now.

This dissonance between what "hi fi" should sound like and what live music
really does sound like causes a lot of confusion in the industry. For
example, some will like WAMMs and some will gravitate toward the Maggies and
Martin Logans and MBL omnis, which have entirely different radiation
patterns and philosophies for stereo effects - they cannot all be right, but
all have their adherents. I come along and claim that there IS a correct, or
more correct, way of thinking about the problem and designing toward it, but
the above disconnect among people of different experience bases makes them
tell me to go away, we have our preferences and we like it that way.

But that leaves us once again without a stereo theory of what the hell it is
we are doing with recording and reproduction. I laid out in my paper what I
see as the major theories, or ideas. There is the Bell Labs curtain of
sound, the Blumlein intensity stereo at the head of the listener, perhaps of
late the Wave Field Synthesis. There is Ambisonics, Ambiophonics, and
binaural on headphones or speakers.

As a designer, I find all this fascinating as hell. All of these are
attempts at the realistic reproduction of auditory perspective - realism. We
want the music to sound real, like it is right there in front of us just
like live. All of them have their problems in achieving this. My angle of
attack is to first separate the major categories of theories into the
head-related vs. the field type, then go after the field type as being the
more realistic, if not the most accurate.

The overlying concept is that there are basically two ways we can reproduce
a sensory experience: We can try to reproduce the sensory input or we can
reproduce the object itself and let our natural senses experience that. We
all know that the binaural is the first one, attempting to reproduce the ear
input signals that you would have heard at the same position in space as the
dummy head. William Snow in the fifties defined "stereophonic" as the
field-type system, so that is the word that I use for it, no matter how many
speakers we are talking about. It is a field-type system, and he made the
same broad separation between systems that I have used.

Long story short - I know you are getting impatient again - we need to
figure out the correct approach to speaker design for a field-type system.
Speaker design means radiation pattern, room positioning, and room
acoustics - the major audible factors. I believe I am not wrong or crazy in
that statement, because another writer, Siegfried Linkwitz, has asked the
question of the AES, what are the correct ones for reproduction of a
realistic Auditory Scene. Nobody in audio history has ever answered, or even
addressed, that question.

I have an answer, but if you say there is no answer, just preference, then
that leaves you without an answer and we continue on the path of the blind
leading the blind. Cut and try. Fool around. Memorize the last concert you
were at and design a crossover that sounds like it. Burp all of the sound at
your face and "get rid of" reflections in the room in the name of accuracy.
And the beat goes on.

A live orchestra makes certain sound patterns in a room. Your speakers make
certain sound patterns in your room. How can we make the second sound the
most like the first? Stereo theory.

The ball is in your court. If I am all washed up with the idea of comparing
their image models and all aspects of that, then you need to tell me the
correct paradigm or that there is none and we should just continue flailing
about if preference is the sole criterion.

Let me be absolutely clear on that. If you say that preference is the only
criterion, then you have left the discussion because there is no more point
in talking about a correct stereo theory if you don't think there is one.
But if you are saying that I am WRONG about my theory, then you can't get
off the hook by just saying it is all preference. If it is all preference,
then I cannot be wrong, because I have a preference too. But if I am WRONG
then you should correct me on what the right stereo theory is, or should be,
and why.

Gary Eickmeier