[Gary Eickmeier]

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. 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. So the idea is to study those characteristics and make them
closer to the live situation by manipulating The Big Three. 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 PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALOGY

I love visual analogies. The analogy of sound to vision eventually breaks
down, but it is fun to try.

Let's make a music video. And forget stereoscopy for a moment. That's where
the analogy breaks down, so I want to ignore it for a minute.

You video some musicians; playing a musical piece. Now how to play that
back?

Well, what aspects of the image that you shot are visible? Maybe we could
compare them to the EEFs.

PHYSICAL SIZE: One person looks at the video on a portable TV. Another uses
a projector and big screen. Hopefully no disagreement that the larger you
can make the image, the more like the size of the real thing, up to life
size.

BRIGHTNESS: There has been a lull in the brightness of projectors in recent
years because a lot of home theater owners are using screens that are less
than 8 feet wide. But obviously, the brighter you image the more like real
life, up to daylight brightness.

OPTICAL FIDELITY: This just refers to the accuracy in the light path from
image to screen, such as sharpness, color accuracy, and dynamic range from
black to white. Maybe also geometric aberrations such as pincushion or
stretching of objects.

SPATIAL CHARACTERISTICS: Such as perspective (telephoto, normal, or wide
angle) and three dimensionality. This is where the analogy breaks down,
because stereoscopy is more like binaural in audio, in which two images are
taken from one point in space and presented to each eye, and the perspective
is fixed. There is no great analogy to stereophonic, or a field-type system,
unless you want to take it to a sculpture rather than a "picture."

This sculpture might be made up of many smaller sculptures, made by separate
artists or molds and placed in the reproduction like mannekins in a
department store window. The mannekins, or objects, would need a background,
or set, possibly made from wide photos of an actual location. Then they
would have to be pulled out from the background for the perspective and 3D
effect. If this be the case, you could actually walk around in the image and
view it from various perspectives, unlike the stereoscopy example.

Nope. Can't have any relationship to audio, even if the individual objects
were musicians and you could use "shape shifter" speakers or project onto
separate little screens placed out into the room, and... well, too big a
stretch. Crazy.

But still.....

Gary Eickmeier

[KH]

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.

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.

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.

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.


Keith

[Audio Empire]

On Fri, 25 May 2012 17:10:49 -0700, KH wrote
(in article ):
On 5/24/2012 5:46 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:

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.


Ever watched a classical concert on PBS? Notice how the aural sound stage is
fixed but the cameras shoot from various angles? I find it unbelievably
disconcerting that the camera changes perspective almost constantly; shifting
from this instrument or that group of instruments to another then back to a
frontal view of the conductor, all the while, the strings remain on the left,
woodwinds in the center, brass and bass viols on the right. Now I'm not
suggesting that the microphones should move with the cameras, that would be
ridiculous. But what I think is that the camera should be fixed on the whole
stage as if I (or you) were sitting in the audience watching the performance.
Then the aural and visual perspective would match up. To me that's much more
realistic.

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.

Agreed.

[KH]

On 5/26/2012 7:36 AM, Audio Empire wrote:
On Fri, 25 May 2012 17:10:49 -0700, KH wrote
(in ):
On 5/24/2012 5:46 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
snip

Ever watched a classical concert on PBS? Notice how the aural sound stage is
fixed but the cameras shoot from various angles? I find it unbelievably
disconcerting that the camera changes perspective almost constantly; shifting
from this instrument or that group of instruments to another then back to a
frontal view of the conductor, all the while, the strings remain on the left,
woodwinds in the center, brass and bass viols on the right. Now I'm not
suggesting that the microphones should move with the cameras, that would be
ridiculous. But what I think is that the camera should be fixed on the whole
stage as if I (or you) were sitting in the audience watching the performance.
Then the aural and visual perspective would match up. To me that's much more
realistic.

I suspect that might cause bit of a backlash from most folks. I agree
with the premise - from the aural perspective. I just wonder how many
viewers are as, if not more, interested in the visual part (i.e. they
want to see close-ups, and camera panning) as they are in the
performance, and would grouse about the lack of visual excitement.
Having worked a couple of pledge drives, people become incensed about
the oddest things.

Keith

[Audio Empire]

On Sat, 26 May 2012 15:30:50 -0700, KH wrote
(in article ):

On 5/26/2012 7:36 AM, Audio Empire wrote:
On Fri, 25 May 2012 17:10:49 -0700, KH wrote
(in ):
On 5/24/2012 5:46 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
snip

Ever watched a classical concert on PBS? Notice how the aural sound stage is
fixed but the cameras shoot from various angles? I find it unbelievably
disconcerting that the camera changes perspective almost constantly;
shifting
from this instrument or that group of instruments to another then back to a
frontal view of the conductor, all the while, the strings remain on the
left,
woodwinds in the center, brass and bass viols on the right. Now I'm not
suggesting that the microphones should move with the cameras, that would be
ridiculous. But what I think is that the camera should be fixed on the whole
stage as if I (or you) were sitting in the audience watching the
performance.
Then the aural and visual perspective would match up. To me that's much more
realistic.

I suspect that might cause bit of a backlash from most folks. I agree
with the premise - from the aural perspective. I just wonder how many
viewers are as, if not more, interested in the visual part (i.e. they
want to see close-ups, and camera panning) as they are in the
performance, and would grouse about the lack of visual excitement.
Having worked a couple of pledge drives, people become incensed about
the oddest things.

Keith

Oh, I KNOW you're right. This is just my particular peccadillo.

[Gary Eickmeier]

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

[Audio Empire]

On Sat, 26 May 2012 07:44:39 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

Confused stereo with binaural.

What I don't get is WHO is confusing stereo with binaural? Certainly no one
here. Those ignorant enough of audio to confuse the two likely aren't
audiophiles and don't give a damn anyway.

[KH]

On 5/26/2012 7:44 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
Hi Keith -

wrote in message
...
On 5/24/2012 5:46 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
snip

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

There's no HRTF involved in the *recording* of stereo.

in which the 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.

Reproduction certainly *is* subject to HRTF effects unless you're using
earbuds. Hence your statement about once "both ears are free to hear
your entire room/speaker situation" still seems non-cogent in the
context of stereo.


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 boundary reflections, room standing wave modes, comb filter effects,
etc...

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.


*It* usually is a nuisance variable. Taking a quick side trip to the
reality of everyday use, what fraction of a fraction of a percent of
listeners have the luxury of a purpose designed/built dedicated
listening room? Even were we to stipulate that your "theory" is 100%
accurate, you cannot take a single speaker design, and through
placement, make it have the same response, relative to reverberant
field, across the myriad sizes, shapes, furnishings, and different/mixed
materials of construction used in typical listening rooms.


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.

With all due respect, you seem to be the one confused about everyone
else confusing stereo with binaural.


snip
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.

No, no misread on my part. You simply failed to understand my basic
point; no matter what you do with a stereo system, it will NOT sound
like a real live event. The information to do that is not in the
recorded signal. Thus every speaker design, and every room setup is a
compromise, and dependent on individual listener preferences. Your
optimal setup, one that to you is just a hairs' breath away from real
life, may sound contrived, or fake to me. That is simply a fact that you
need to come to grips with.

An analogy, since you're partial to them:

Take vinyl vs. CD for example. I'm fairly convinced that one reason
(whether anyone agrees with me or not) that many who continue to find
vinyl more realistic than CD - specifically among us old-timers - is
that listening to vinyl for decades creates a mental "image" of what
reproduced music should sound like. An image that contains all the
artifacts specific to vinyl playback, but which are lacking in CD
reproduction.

Now, if you're a vinyl nut, and I'm wedded to CD's, we can both listen
to the same record, and the same CD, and come to the opposite
conclusion. I'll hear the vinyl tics, some phasiness, and say you
cannot *possibly* think that's more realistic than the CD (for argument,
let's stipulate they're a GOOD CD and Record). Yet you'll never agree.
You'll insist that the vinyl is more realistic. Both of us are right,
because there is no standard of realism outside of the interpretation of
each individual listener.

In the same way, you are insisting that you had an epiphany about the
proper way to hear music in a listening room, and simply refuse to
accept that, for any given listener, you could be dead wrong. Perhaps,
after 4+ decades of listening to stereo through box speakers, excessive
reflected sound doesn't sound more real to me, it sounds contrived.

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.

Perhaps the rest of us do pay attention, and have considerable
experience experimenting with speakers and placement?

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 -

OK, perhaps it's that Eichmeier misinterprets concepts that have been
around forever, and comes to some untenable conclusions:

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

No, it's wrong to even think that there is "spatial" information on the
recording. Other than left/right, there isn't. There's temporal
information, and phase information, and level information. These cues
can be, and will be, to some extent perceived as spacial separations
when reproduced, but that is not the same thing at all.

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.

And the first thing that we notice is that all spacial information is
lost in recording. The recording does not discriminate relative to
incident angle. Thus whatever the live model is, the information to
recreate it, spacially, simply doesn't exist on the recording.

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?

You know, Gary, I've found that when someone frequently resorts to
condescension, something you appear, from this thread, to have a
penchant for, A) people consider them uninterested in reasoned
discussion, and B) people choose to ignore them.



[ This is a good time for everyone in this thread to consider
taking a deep breath and relaxing before replying. Don't
send this into a flame war, please. -- dsr ]



You've alluded to finding many in "Group A" over your many years of
pushing your 'theory', and you reference the latest members of "Group B"
below. Perhaps you need to decide whether your desire is a reasonable
discussion or a pogrom against audio orthodoxy? My surmise is few will
be interested in the latter.



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?

No, but I'm not trying to create a comb filter or reflective soundfield
that doesn't exist on the recording either.


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.

You really need to take more care in assuming illiteracy on the part of
everyone else, while assuming clarity on yours. What I'm saying is that
you are taking temporal information that *is* on the recording, and
using it to create a, by necessity, inaccurate one-size fits all
illusion of spaciousness; information lacking from the actual recording.
To you, having sound come from a larger, though still primarily
forward 'pallette' of incident angles - none of which are accurate
relative to the actual recording space - sounds more realistic than
direct firing speakers. We all get that. We don't all agree.


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.

Yes, we are notoriously slow of wit. Observant of you to notice, and
kind of you to point it out.


I realize I am getting no more responses from AE, and very few others even have an
opinion on any of it yet.

Gee, want to guess why?

Keith

[Audio Empire]

On Sat, 26 May 2012 15:35:37 -0700, KH wrote
(in article ):

Take vinyl vs. CD for example. I'm fairly convinced that one reason
(whether anyone agrees with me or not) that many who continue to find
vinyl more realistic than CD - specifically among us old-timers - is
that listening to vinyl for decades creates a mental "image" of what
reproduced music should sound like. An image that contains all the
artifacts specific to vinyl playback, but which are lacking in CD
reproduction.

That is an interesting point. I have never considered that, but you might be
correct in that deduction. Of course, it doesn't explain kids who are just
now flocking to vinyl having never before been exposed to it. But it
certainly could be a major factor with us old fogies.

[KH]

On 5/27/2012 7:30 AM, Audio Empire wrote:
On Sat, 26 May 2012 15:35:37 -0700, KH wrote
(in ):

Take vinyl vs. CD for example. I'm fairly convinced that one reason
(whether anyone agrees with me or not) that many who continue to find
vinyl more realistic than CD - specifically among us old-timers - is
that listening to vinyl for decades creates a mental "image" of what
reproduced music should sound like. An image that contains all the
artifacts specific to vinyl playback, but which are lacking in CD
reproduction.

That is an interesting point. I have never considered that, but you might be
correct in that deduction. Of course, it doesn't explain kids who are just
now flocking to vinyl having never before been exposed to it. But it
certainly could be a major factor with us old fogies.

Well, one obvious (though not necessarily *the* correct) reason is
compression. If you "grew up" on MP3 and brutally compressed pop CD's,
older recordings, especially, on vinyl have to be whole new experience.

Keith

[Gary Eickmeier]

This is the second of the posts that didn't get in. FWIW:


"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Frankly, I find that the recording industry has a hard enough time doing
two
channel stereo correctly, much less four channels, or five or seven....
Now
for movies where the extra channels have explosions and other sound
effects
pan-potted to them, it's fine, but I have yet to hear a music surround
recording where I thought that the surround was any more than a gimmick.

Well, I am in partial agreement with you there. Since starting to record in
surround with my little amateur setup (Zoom H2n, with or without additional
mikes up front) I haven't found a LOT of benefit or audibility of the
enhancement, just mainly audience coughs and pop clappers.

However, there are some recordings that do contain more ambience than most,
and for those it "sets" that ambience more correctly around you. In one of
my recordings, I let the audience applause and ambience of the place open
the recording for about 10 seconds before the music began, and it really
perked my ears up to the location and the "flavor" of that acoustic space,
and I enjoyed the music just a little more.

A good M/S microphone technique can get about 80% of the way there as well.
One member of our audio society is particularly good at this, but he is now
interested in surround recording because one of his choral groups tends to
perform in the round, and he wants the full effect.

In a live event, in a good hall, you don't "notice" the acoustics of the
hall directly - I mean, it doesn't hit you over the head - you mainly notice
the frontal soundstage, and even then you do not get pinpoint imaging in any
but the closest seats.

Sometimes we expect too much in a hi fi situation. In the surround sound
situation, it is usually so subtle that (it has been said) you don't hear it
until it is turned off. That is probably as it should be.

Gary Eickmeier

[Audio Empire]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 20:25:12 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

This is the second of the posts that didn't get in. FWIW:


"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Frankly, I find that the recording industry has a hard enough time doing
two
channel stereo correctly, much less four channels, or five or seven....
Now
for movies where the extra channels have explosions and other sound
effects
pan-potted to them, it's fine, but I have yet to hear a music surround
recording where I thought that the surround was any more than a gimmick.

Well, I am in partial agreement with you there. Since starting to record in
surround with my little amateur setup (Zoom H2n, with or without additional
mikes up front) I haven't found a LOT of benefit or audibility of the
enhancement, just mainly audience coughs and pop clappers.

However, there are some recordings that do contain more ambience than most,
and for those it "sets" that ambience more correctly around you. In one of
my recordings, I let the audience applause and ambience of the place open
the recording for about 10 seconds before the music began, and it really
perked my ears up to the location and the "flavor" of that acoustic space,
and I enjoyed the music just a little more.

This goes without saying, however, the key phrase here is "Done Right." It is
really rare. Even Bob Woods of Telarc with his multichannel SACDs didn't do
surround correctly.

A good M/S microphone technique can get about 80% of the way there as well.
One member of our audio society is particularly good at this, but he is now
interested in surround recording because one of his choral groups tends to
perform in the round, and he wants the full effect.

To me that's a gimmick,BUT, if that's the way they perform, then surround IS
the proper way to capture it. I use M-S a lot. If there is no audience, I
tend to use the "M" channel mike in the omnidirectional mode and the "S" mike
in figure-of -eight pattern. If it's a live performance, I use the cardioid
pattern for the "M" mike and figure-of -eight pattern for the "S" mike.

In a live event, in a good hall, you don't "notice" the acoustics of the
hall directly - I mean, it doesn't hit you over the head - you mainly notice
the frontal soundstage, and even then you do not get pinpoint imaging in any
but the closest seats.

True, but since the microphones, in a correctly miked stage performance, are
up on the stage (or hanging over it), that is the perspective that you are
capturing - "the closest seats". I have some British made AmbiSonics
recordings where the mikes are quite distant from the stage. The effect isn't
very appealing

You are also correct that in a concert, the members of the audience are not
aware of the hall acoustics per-se as they blend-in as part of the
performance, but believe me, they'd notice if they suddenly went away!

Sometimes we expect too much in a hi fi situation. In the surround sound
situation, it is usually so subtle that (it has been said) you don't hear it
until it is turned off. That is probably as it should be.

Well recorded surround would be like the ambience in a hall - not noticed in
and of itself, but sorely missed if it went away. Unfortunately, many -shall
we be kind and call them "less sophisticated" listeners?- don't think that
they're getting real surround unless something can be heard coming out of the
rear, that's why recording companies make so-called surround tracks with
instruments playing out of them. And while it might impress and beguile the
"unwashed" (I'm through being kind), I'm neither impressed nor beguiled,
merely disappointed. I have a 5.1 channel SACD player (Sony XA777ES) and a
rear amplifier and speakers, but I rarely turn them on.


Gary Eickmeier

[Gary Eickmeier]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

True, but since the microphones, in a correctly miked stage performance,
are
up on the stage (or hanging over it), that is the perspective that you are
capturing - "the closest seats". I have some British made AmbiSonics
recordings where the mikes are quite distant from the stage. The effect
isn't
very appealing

Not quite. As I alluded in one of my quaint analogies, we do not perceive
the sound from the perspective of the microphones. We place the microphones
closer to the soundstage than a good, typical listening position, not
because we wish to hear the concert as if suspended nine feet above the
conductor's head or two feet from the lips of the mezzo soprano, but because
when we play it back we will be playing it from speakers that are placed at
some distance from us, so that the perspective becomes correct again. As I
have also said, this is the opposite of binaural theory, in which you want
to place the head at a good listening seat, because you are going to be
capturing just that perspective, and recording the entire ambience of the
original hall from that position.

In stereo, a field-type sytem, we are going more toward the capturing of the
direct and early reflected sound from the region of the proscenium, and just
enough of the reverberant field to give the "flavor" of the original hall,
but realizing that it will be mixed with the listening room acoustics
because of this distant placement of the speakers. And this is not an
error - it is intended that both ears hear both speakers, and that we hear
the total sound field from the speaker/room interface. THAT is the area that
needs to be studied further, as I have suggested. That is, how to make the
speaker/room interface sound more like the live field than typical "hi fi"
has done so far.

You are also correct that in a concert, the members of the audience are
not
aware of the hall acoustics per-se as they blend-in as part of the
performance, but believe me, they'd notice if they suddenly went away!

Yes - and here we also run into large vs small room acoustics. In the large
room, the reverberant field is much smoother and all around you. This is how
we perceive the timbre of the instruments - the total sound power output
combines in the reverberant field so that we hear what it sounds like in its
full radiation pattern. It is the early reflected sound that gives the
spaciousness and separates the good halls from the bad. The direct field is
but a very small portion of the sound heard at a good seat.

It is the opposite in hi fi. In a search for "accuracy," we attempt to
direct the recorded signal all toward our ears, and diminish the nasty
reflections from the listening room - which already has no appreciable
reverberant field! The difference in these two sound fields is obvious. Some
of us have buttressed the missing reverberant field at home with surround
speakers on delay, so that is addressed with some degree of "modeling" the
repro field after the original, but the frontal soundstage shape has been
all but ignored.

The recording contains all of the sound I have just described - if done
right - but in the reproduction we force it all from the same direction as
the direct sound, which is an error. The effect of a spatial broadening of
reflected sound has been well reported in the literature, but not tied to
any particular reproduction theory as to how it can cause the early
reflected sound that was recorded to come from a more correct set of
incident angles. Keith can't understand how reflecting some of the output
can decode the early reflected contained in the recording and separate it
from the direct part that was recorded, but I am reporting that it can and
does work. The direct sound part undergoes a harmless image shift toward the
side and rear of the speaker, while the later and more sustained tones take
on a spatial broadening effect that can make the recorded early reflections
seem to be coming from the appropriate wall of your room. A greater
impression of depth of image is caused by the simple fact that the speakers
are pulled out from the front wall into free space, and the reflected sound
comes from behind them. All of these effects have been reported in speaker
tests in the magazines, but they have no idea what causes them.

Gary Eickmeier

PS - I have to make a trip up to Michigan for a week, and not sure I will be
able to respond to any additional comments on this in Google Groups, so may
have to delay for a week if anyone is interested.

[Audio Empire]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2012 05:53:45 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

True, but since the microphones, in a correctly miked stage performance,
are
up on the stage (or hanging over it), that is the perspective that you are
capturing - "the closest seats". I have some British made AmbiSonics
recordings where the mikes are quite distant from the stage. The effect
isn't
very appealing

Not quite. As I alluded in one of my quaint analogies, we do not perceive
the sound from the perspective of the microphones.

However you "perceive" it, that's the perspective that the microphones
capture. We call microphones "surrogate ears" but that's a misnomer. Our ears
are connected to our brain which makes all the interpretive decisions about
what and how we hear. So the mikes are, essentially "brainless" they are
pre-set to determine the field of "view" that the microphone "sees". It
intersects a sound field and turns that part of the field that strikes the
diaphragm into an analogous electrical signal, that's all it does. The
recording engineer makes the decision about how far back and how high the
mikes are placed. I have found that in most auditoriums, for a symphony
orchestra or concert band, the correct mike location is about 10 feet over
the conductor's head and about 5 ft behind him. This gives the "presence"
effect of about the third/fourth-row center. Further back, the orchestra
seems more distant and without the brain's ability to focus on specific
sounds, the microphones start to get swamped with hall ambience (not to
mention audience noise). The stereo mike over the conductor's head
technique(using, of course, a pair of cardioids on a stereo "T" bar seven
inches apart and with the axis of the microphones 90 degrees apart or a
single stereo mike configured either as above, or in an M-S configuration)
gives, what is in my opinion, the best, widest, and deepest stereo image as
well as the proper listening distance - I.E. the proverbial "best seat in the
house".


We place the microphones
closer to the soundstage than a good, typical listening position, not
because we wish to hear the concert as if suspended nine feet above the
conductor's head or two feet from the lips of the mezzo soprano, but because
when we play it back we will be playing it from speakers that are placed at
some distance from us, so that the perspective becomes correct again. As I
have also said, this is the opposite of binaural theory, in which you want
to place the head at a good listening seat, because you are going to be
capturing just that perspective, and recording the entire ambience of the
original hall from that position.


I disagree. "I" place microphones in order to get the proper "presence" for
the type of performance I am recording. IOW, the proper balance between
direct and reflected sound. I want to hear some ambience, yes, but I don't
want so much ambience in a recording that it makes the recording sound,
through speakers, on playback, like we're listening to the concert from out
in the auditorium foyer! It's pretty easy to make that error and lots of
amateur recordists make it. That's pretty much my only consideration in
placing mikes. Now, the kind of mike I use depends upon a number of things
and these decisions come with experience. I can walk into a venue I've never
recorded before and within minutes know exactly the right spot for the
mike(s). There's nothing magical about this ability, it's just experience.

In stereo, a field-type sytem, we are going more toward the capturing of the
direct and early reflected sound from the region of the proscenium, and just
enough of the reverberant field to give the "flavor" of the original hall,

I think I said that.

but realizing that it will be mixed with the listening room acoustics
because of this distant placement of the speakers.

In my experience, this is totally irrelevant. The average listening room adds
so little, acoustically, to the playback that I don't even think about it.

And this is not an
error - it is intended that both ears hear both speakers, and that we hear
the total sound field from the speaker/room interface. THAT is the area that
needs to be studied further, as I have suggested. That is, how to make the
speaker/room interface sound more like the live field than typical "hi fi"
has done so far.

I think it's a tempest in a teapot. I tamed my room to my satisfaction years
ago. I never even think about it any more. And I don't tailor my recordings
for my listening room, but I have known recordist who did. I knew a guy once
who took over recording a major symphony orchestra from me after I couldn't
do it any more. He had good equipment for the time, but generally, I thought
he was pretty clueless. His living room had two corner horns placed in
opposite corners from one another and about 12 ft of wall/bookcase between
the speakers. Talk about a hole in the middle! Anyway, to eliminate that, he
started panning the left and right microphones closer and closer together in
order to get rid of that hole-in-the-middle in his living room! He got rid
of it alright! He has a shelf full of 10-inch reels containing some of the
best monaural and near monaural recordings of that symphony orchestra ever
made!

You are also correct that in a concert, the members of the audience are
not
aware of the hall acoustics per-se as they blend-in as part of the
performance, but believe me, they'd notice if they suddenly went away!

Yes - and here we also run into large vs small room acoustics. In the large
room, the reverberant field is much smoother and all around you. This is how
we perceive the timbre of the instruments - the total sound power output
combines in the reverberant field so that we hear what it sounds like in its
full radiation pattern. It is the early reflected sound that gives the
spaciousness and separates the good halls from the bad. The direct field is
but a very small portion of the sound heard at a good seat.

Essentially, it is what it is.

It is the opposite in hi fi. In a search for "accuracy," we attempt to
direct the recorded signal all toward our ears, and diminish the nasty
reflections from the listening room - which already has no appreciable
reverberant field! The difference in these two sound fields is obvious. Some
of us have buttressed the missing reverberant field at home with surround
speakers on delay, so that is addressed with some degree of "modeling" the
repro field after the original, but the frontal soundstage shape has been
all but ignored.

I find it not important unless your room is nasty - and some are, make no
mistake. But generally speaking a few absorptive panels strategically placed
by trial and error will usually tame the nastiest sounding room.

The recording contains all of the sound I have just described - if done
right - but in the reproduction we force it all from the same direction as
the direct sound, which is an error.

No it's not. Two channel recording - two speaker systems about 6-8 ft apart
in most rooms.


The effect of a spatial broadening of
reflected sound has been well reported in the literature, but not tied to
any particular reproduction theory as to how it can cause the early
reflected sound that was recorded to come from a more correct set of
incident angles.

Had a friend who owned Bose 901s. Always thought they were junk. They never
sounded "right" to me. They might sound good to some, but that's a matter of
preference, now, isn't it?


Keith can't understand how reflecting some of the output
can decode the early reflected contained in the recording and separate it
from the direct part that was recorded, but I am reporting that it can and
does work.


Neither do I.

The direct sound part undergoes a harmless image shift toward the
side and rear of the speaker, while the later and more sustained tones take
on a spatial broadening effect that can make the recorded early reflections
seem to be coming from the appropriate wall of your room. A greater
impression of depth of image is caused by the simple fact that the speakers
are pulled out from the front wall into free space, and the reflected sound
comes from behind them. All of these effects have been reported in speaker
tests in the magazines, but they have no idea what causes them.

Please show me some formal studies that back up this "notion" because my
experience with home Hi-Fi tells me that this is wrong. You're going to have
to prove it with more than just endless reiteration

Gary Eickmeier

PS - I have to make a trip up to Michigan for a week, and not sure I will be
able to respond to any additional comments on this in Google Groups, so may
have to delay for a week if anyone is interested.

Have a nice trip!

[Sebastian Kaliszewski]

Audio Empire wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jun 2012 05:53:45 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

True, but since the microphones, in a correctly miked stage performance,
are
up on the stage (or hanging over it), that is the perspective that you are
capturing - "the closest seats". I have some British made AmbiSonics
recordings where the mikes are quite distant from the stage. The effect
isn't
very appealing
Not quite. As I alluded in one of my quaint analogies, we do not perceive
the sound from the perspective of the microphones.

However you "perceive" it, that's the perspective that the microphones
capture. We call microphones "surrogate ears" but that's a misnomer. Our ears
are connected to our brain which makes all the interpretive decisions about
what and how we hear. So the mikes are, essentially "brainless" they are
pre-set to determine the field of "view" that the microphone "sees". It
intersects a sound field and turns that part of the field that strikes the
diaphragm into an analogous electrical signal, that's all it does. The
recording engineer makes the decision about how far back and how high the
mikes are placed. I have found that in most auditoriums, for a symphony
orchestra or concert band, the correct mike location is about 10 feet over
the conductor's head and about 5 ft behind him. This gives the "presence"
effect of about the third/fourth-row center. Further back, the orchestra
seems more distant and without the brain's ability to focus on specific
sounds, the microphones start to get swamped with hall ambience (not to
mention audience noise). The stereo mike over the conductor's head
technique(using, of course, a pair of cardioids on a stereo "T" bar seven
inches apart and with the axis of the microphones 90 degrees apart or a
single stereo mike configured either as above, or in an M-S configuration)
gives, what is in my opinion, the best, widest, and deepest stereo image as
well as the proper listening distance - I.E. the proverbial "best seat in the
house".


We place the microphones
closer to the soundstage than a good, typical listening position, not
because we wish to hear the concert as if suspended nine feet above the
conductor's head or two feet from the lips of the mezzo soprano, but because
when we play it back we will be playing it from speakers that are placed at
some distance from us, so that the perspective becomes correct again. As I
have also said, this is the opposite of binaural theory, in which you want
to place the head at a good listening seat, because you are going to be
capturing just that perspective, and recording the entire ambience of the
original hall from that position.


I disagree. "I" place microphones in order to get the proper "presence" for
the type of performance I am recording. IOW, the proper balance between
direct and reflected sound. I want to hear some ambience, yes, but I don't
want so much ambience in a recording that it makes the recording sound,
through speakers, on playback, like we're listening to the concert from out
in the auditorium foyer! It's pretty easy to make that error and lots of
amateur recordists make it. That's pretty much my only consideration in
placing mikes. Now, the kind of mike I use depends upon a number of things
and these decisions come with experience. I can walk into a venue I've never
recorded before and within minutes know exactly the right spot for the
mike(s). There's nothing magical about this ability, it's just experience.

But think a little about it! Your mikes are generally closer to orchestra than
that 4th row seat. If you placed your mikes at 4th row ceneter seat position it
would be all wrong. So something is causing the perceived perspective to move
friom 10ft above 5ft behind conductor into that 4th row seat. Reasons are rather
complex. Part of it could be that listeners are used to listen from a seat not
hanging above conductor -- so listener brain moves the image to what it knows.
But part of that could be simply the effect of listener surroundings. Both ion
concert vanue and in ones listening room there are close surrounding which
affect sound coming to our ears.


In stereo, a field-type sytem, we are going more toward the capturing of the
direct and early reflected sound from the region of the proscenium, and just
enough of the reverberant field to give the "flavor" of the original hall,

I think I said that.

but realizing that it will be mixed with the listening room acoustics
because of this distant placement of the speakers.

In my experience, this is totally irrelevant. The average listening room adds
so little, acoustically, to the playback that I don't even think about it.


Don't conflate not thinking about something with that something having neglibile
effect. To come to that conclusion you'd need to compare your room with an
anechoic chamber. I wouldn say that anechoic chamber is a thing which you'd
easily ignore while being there -- yet it is the thing which would add neglibile
amounts to reproducend sound coming from speakers.

[...]
The direct sound part undergoes a harmless image shift toward the
side and rear of the speaker, while the later and more sustained tones take
on a spatial broadening effect that can make the recorded early reflections
seem to be coming from the appropriate wall of your room. A greater
impression of depth of image is caused by the simple fact that the speakers
are pulled out from the front wall into free space, and the reflected sound
comes from behind them. All of these effects have been reported in speaker
tests in the magazines, but they have no idea what causes them.

Please show me some formal studies that back up this "notion" because my
experience with home Hi-Fi tells me that this is wrong. You're going to have
to prove it with more than just endless reiteration

Excatly my issue with Mr Eickmeier's theory -- it lacks physical and
psychoacoustical explanation. And/Or a support off a set of properly controlled
listening tests (there is just one result and only against some narrow set of
speakers -- a set of Linkwitz Orions -- i.e. dipoles, and some more-or-less
generic set with some experimantal(?) digital room correction).

rgds
\SK
--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang
--
http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels)