Mind Stretchers
Hi Keith -
"KH" wrote in message
...
On 5/24/2012 5:46 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
I yield. You guys have fed my papers to the junkyard dog until they are
no
longer recognizable. I would just leave you with one final thought on
audio.
My biggest point is that once both ears are free to hear your entire
room/speaker situation, then they can easily hear the spatial
presentation
in front of them.
OK, under what normal listening situations are both ears *not* be "Free to
hear your entire room/speaker situation"? I'm afraid I don't know what
you're trying to say here.
Just that stereo is not a binaural type system, not a directly head-related
system in which the two channels are piped to your ears and you are "fooled"
into hearing what the mikes heard and transported to another acoustic space.
That is a long story, a possible confusion for most all these years of
trying to figure out stereo and speakers and what causes imaging
characteristics.
With binaural, the channels are isolated from each other at the ears and you
are supposed to be able to hear the entire original recorded acoustic space,
with your real space eliminated on headphones, and diminished with
loudspeaker binaural. But with a field-type system like stereo, your ears
are free to hear both speakers, their spatial characteristics, and the
entire speaker/room situation. This entire speaker and room situation has
been studied mostly with respect to frequency response and an attempt to
mistakenly diminish the room acoustics from the listening experience. They
seem to understand that you don't want to eliminate it all (see Floyd's book
and the LEDE idea) but it is still usually considered a nuisance variable
that subtracts from the "accuracy" of that pure, recorded signal that they
think they want to go straight, no chaser, to their ears.
This is a fundamental error of a proportion great enough to call my
corrections a whole new stereo theory in order to break loose from the
binaural confusion.
If it is a boombox, you can tell the sound is coming from
that little box in front of you, no matter what was recorded. If it is a
car
stereo, you usually hear some stereo image coming from, or forming itself
over, a certain portion of your dashboard or windshield. If it is a
sophisticated home system, you can hear those aspects that I described at
the beginning. In other words, the process changes the spatial
characteristics of the recorded original to those of the presentation in
front of you.
Absolutely. There's no argument there at all. What you seem to refuse to
allow is that *your* version of "realism" or "EEF's" or whatever term you
want to use, is not universal. To a very large degree it is a matter of
preference, and subject to the interpretation of the listener. You seem to
insist that there is *a* correct way, and other ways are *wrong*. It is a
simple fact that you could set up a system that to your ears is a 10 out
of 5 for EEF, and it could still sound totally unnatural to me, or others.
Slight misread. There are as many presentations of the recording as there
are rooms to play music in. I am just pointing out that we need to pay
attention to the spatial nature of sound in a field-type system. If you know
nothing of this, you have no clue what you are doing to the sound in an
installation with wall speakers for example. Or you may design corner horns
or other speakers with no regard to the spatial results of such a scheme. If
it sounds "funny somehow" to you, you try to equalize it or something that
has nothing to do with the basic problem. Or, in my case, you may own a
highly omnidirectional speaker and have no clue how to place them in the
room for best imaging.
OK, so, if Eickmeier comes along and points out this spatial nature of
speakers and rooms, and gives a way of looking at the problem in more visual
terms, with a concept that has been time honored as valid - then why is
everyone fighting me so hard about it? This is not rocket science -
1. You can hear the spatial nature of your speakers and room
2. It is wrong to force all of the sound that was recorded through just
those two points in space that are the speakers in front of you, because
that will change the spatial nature of the sound that was recorded
3. The way to look at the problem is to notice the image model of the
(typical) live situation and the reproduction, and see how they differ, to
try and explain what it is that we are doing with a field-type system.
The paradigm is NOT just "shoot an exact replica of the recorded signal out
of the front of the speakers" or some similar nonsense. Do you get that
Keith? Anyone?
So the idea is to study those characteristics and make them
closer to the live situation by manipulating The Big Three.
But again, this ignores the recording piece which, perforce, sets a
realism boundary that you simply cannot breach through speaker
design/placement. You are, in essence, applying a form of fixed
equalization which, being fixed, has to perform with varying degrees of
help or harm depending on the specific recording. If you make a dead,
flat recording sound spacious, then you'll overcompensate for a good
recording with 'proper' spatial clues.
No, it is ignoring nothing, and we are all establishing a "fixed" image
model with our speakers and rooms. Do you move your speakers around for each
recording?
Footnote - I am not, and cannot, make a dead recording sound spacious. That
is another misread. I am using a single additonal reflection in a room that
has no apprecialble reverberant field. A single reflection does not an
acoustic make. Addressing the spatial, not the temporal. No reverb chamber.
Making an image
model drawing gives a more visual representation of what you are hearing,
and leads to more realistic reproduction if you model the room/speaker
situation after the original.
A visual image is often useful, and often misleading. A classic example;
you cannot form a visual image of 7-dimensional space. We have no visual
concept of more than three dimensions. But mathematically, multiple
additional dimensions are realizable, and often useful. If there are no
mathematical underpinnings for your "Image", and you have no way of
developing such supporting calculations, you have to accept that your
Image could simply be fallacious, irrespective of how obvious its
conclusions appear to you.
A PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALOGY
I love visual analogies.
Hadn't noticed ;-)
The analogy of sound to vision eventually breaks
down, but it is fun to try.
But this is the problem with reasoning by analogy; the analogy is only
useful when it is truly analogous in most, if not all, crucial aspects.
Since sound is room dependent, and video is not, the analogy breaks down
before it starts.
OK, my little game is up. It was a great effort, and I am at an impasse with
you and AE for now, until you have had time to digest some of it. I realize
I am getting no more responses from AE, and very few others even have an
opinion on any of it yet.
The Mind Stretchers piece was an attempt to introduce the model concept to
the visual analogy in a subtle way. I really do think that the comparison of
the audio scene to a physical sculpture is apt and not "crazy" as I said,
tongue in cheek. When one of you objected I was going to agree and then give
the example of the center speaker, which is physically placed to force
dialog to come from where we want everyone to perceive it. Of course, we do
the same with the left, right, and surround speakers, place them where we
want those channels to come from, in a giant model of the recorded
situation. Beyond that, I point out that that isn't all there is to it, that
The Big Three have definite audible consequences, and there is a way to look
at the problem that honors and respects the audibility of those
characteristics.
No matter how hard we try, we cannot eliminate those factors from
audibility - for example, some designers may try and shoot all of the sound
straight at you with no radiation outside of the direct, in a mistaken
attempt to eliminate the room. But all that they accomplish is a different
model, one which is nothing like the original.
Confused stereo with binaural.
Repeating self.
Outa here.
Gary Eickmeier
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