[Gary Eickmeier]

KH wrote:

Apparently not. I'm of the opinion that an "accurate" reproduction
would place the instruments in the proper position in the reproduced
soundstage. You don't think that's important to the illusion? Is it
necessary to build a solid image? No, only to build an accurate one.

Keith

Keith -

Remember the player piano from the OP of this thread? The only case where
you can have "accuracy" of the kind you are thinking of is if you can
close-mike the piano and play it back with a speaker of speakers that have
the same loudness, freq response, and radiation pattern and room positioning
as the real piano. This is because the sound of the piano depends upon the
way it puts sound into the room.

For too long now we have been misled by this "accuracy" red herring, trying
to take the recorded sound and play it on speakers aimed at your face,
trying to eliminate the room from messing up the pure recorded signal in
this mistaken goal of accuracy. But obviously if you point the speakers at
your face only, then they will not be putting sound into the room in the
same way the piano did, so no accuracy, no realism.

We are not "doing" accuracy in the stereo system, because we cannot have
accuracy. The reason is that we must run the sound through two different
acoustic spaces before it's all over with.

Take the simple problem of placing the two stereo speakers. Lots of sage
advice here, but eventually you mut place them somewhere and sit somewhere.
So is there a "correct" angular spread? Distance to sit? No, and neither is
there live. Are we trying to put the same sound as the microphones heard
into your ears? That would be an ultimately silly concept, as if you wanted
to be suspended 9 ft. above the conductor's head with your ears stretched 10
to 16 ft apart, or you have coincident ears angled 110 degrees twoard the
orchestra, and an additional ear 1 ft in front of the soloist.

You get the idea, this is not an "accuracy" process. So, if we can drop that
false goal and study how live music puts sound into a room and mimic that
with speakers then we could make some progress toward greater realism by
studying it from the other end - sort of.

OK, it is much too late now and I can't type any more without falling asleep
and laying down a mile of "k"s that I have to backspace out of.

Later,

Gary Eickmeier