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#1
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Need advice for a small room
For me, stereo is about the imaging. I can't tell if my room is down
3db at 400hz, and frankly, I don't care as long as it sounds good. I don't even go in for room treatment of any sort. Every room, including a concert hall is going to have peaks and dips. I just live with that. Right now I have a pair of Apogee Divas in a room that is about 15.5'x25'. Maybe I just got lucky, but I can walk just about anywhere in the room and the image is locked in place. The only place this fails is if I stand within a foot directly in front of one of the speakers. I am planning to move and most of the rooms I am looking at tend to be on the order of 10-12'. Sometimes they are almost square. I was all hyped up on one product as a possibility for such a room until I found out it was more about getting correct response from the room then the kind of imaging I am after. So, are there any imaging nuts out there who are dealing successfully with small rooms? What are you doing? |
#2
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Need advice for a small room
On Apr 26, 9:23=A0am, Robert Peirce wrote:
For me, stereo is about the imaging. =A0I can't tell if my room is down 3db at 400hz, and frankly, I don't care as long as it sounds good. I don't even go in for room treatment of any sort. =A0Every room, including a concert hall is going to have peaks and dips. =A0I just live with that. Right now I have a pair of Apogee Divas in a room that is about 15.5'x25'. =A0Maybe I just got lucky, but I can walk just about anywhere in the room and the image is locked in place. =A0The only place this fail= s is if I stand within a foot directly in front of one of the speakers. I am planning to move and most of the rooms I am looking at tend to be on the order of 10-12'. =A0Sometimes they are almost square. =A0I was all hyped up on one product as a possibility for such a room until I found out it was more about getting correct response from the room then the kind of imaging I am after. So, are there any imaging nuts out there who are dealing successfully with small rooms? =A0What are you doing? Yikes: Coming in late, I get to see what has already been discussed to-date. Cutting to the chase, I would refer you to advice published in the early 1960s from no less than Acoustic Reseach on speaker placement. Given that they specialized in acoustic-suspension 'bookshelf' speakers of conventional/conservative (today) design, this will not apply in detail to your speakers, but it will do so in general. Take the longest wall in your room. Place one speaker (A) about two woofer-diameters in from one corner. Place the other (B) about midway between the first speaker and the other wall. Experiment with the placement of speaker B until you have the what you perceive as the best placement. Start with both speakers as close to the wall as possible, moving only speaker B until you are happy. Then A out from the wall (or not) and so forth. In/out from the wall affects bass primarily. Distance from the walls and each other affects soundstage primarily. Asymmetrical placement reduces/eliminates standing waves and cancellation waves as well as multiple sorts of room effects. This will give you the widest "sweet spot" available - closest to what you (apparently) perceive in your present location. Repeat the process on the shorter wall. AR suggested at the time that if there was a listening audience and if the listening room was used for other purposes than music, the long- wall placement would quite regularly 'win' as it gave the greatest audience spread. If for a single listener in a dedicated room, the short-wall would win as the sweet spot could be made quite small. And the natural progression to that concept is headphones. OPINION (typical rant removed): I find the concept of a tiny sweet spot as antithetical to the listening experience and about the furthest thing from duplicating a live setting as is possible (except for headphones). If I *must* keep my ears within a 12"/31cm cube in order to realize the best possible performance from my speakers - that is simply nuts. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA AR3a Maggie MG-III Revox Piccolo ARM5 AR14 AR Athena Dynaco A25 |
#3
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Need advice for a small room
On Thu, 10 May 2012 06:10:57 -0700, Peter Wieck wrote
(in article ): OPINION (typical rant removed): I find the concept of a tiny sweet spot as antithetical to the listening experience and about the furthest thing from duplicating a live setting as is possible (except for headphones). If I *must* keep my ears within a 12"/31cm cube in order to realize the best possible performance from my speakers - that is simply nuts. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA AR3a Maggie MG-III Revox Piccolo ARM5 AR14 AR Athena Dynaco A25 While I agree with you in theory, the reality is that the "sweet spot" concept is part of the baggage that stereo recording methodology carries with it. I've mentioned this before, but it doesn't hurt to reiterate: When you are at a live, unamplified concert, and you move around with respect the stage (or other locus of performance) your ears go with you and your perspective changes with location. When listening to a recording, and you move around the room, your surrogate ears, the microphones, and ultimately, (in the case of multi-miked, multi-channel recordings) the final mix has one set perspective because the "mikes" DON'T move. That being the case, there is only ONE set place where the perspective is correct, IOW, there is only one place in front of the speakers (right to left) where the listener is on the same axis as the surrogate ears. Naturally, this is the place where the imaging and soundstage snap into sharp focus. If you aren't in that spot, you still hear a sound-field, but the focus will be gone. An analogy would be a 3-D visual image. As you move the right-eye image and the left-eye image closer together and further apart, there is only one relative position where these two images coalesce in your mind as a single 3-D image (assuming, of course, you are wearing the glasses) with depth as well as height and width. That's because your surrogate eyes are a pair of lenses on a camera that are a set distance apart. That means that when viewing those images they must give the illusion of being the same distance apart to your brain, or you won't see the stereo effect - with or without the glasses. |
#4
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Need advice for a small room
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... While I agree with you in theory, the reality is that the "sweet spot" concept is part of the baggage that stereo recording methodology carries with it. I've mentioned this before, but it doesn't hurt to reiterate: When you are at a live, unamplified concert, and you move around with respect the stage (or other locus of performance) your ears go with you and your perspective changes with location. When listening to a recording, and you move around the room, your surrogate ears, the microphones, and ultimately, (in the case of multi-miked, multi-channel recordings) the final mix has one set perspective because the "mikes" DON'T move. That being the case, there is only ONE set place where the perspective is correct, IOW, there is only one place in front of the speakers (right to left) where the listener is on the same axis as the surrogate ears. Naturally, this is the place where the imaging and soundstage snap into sharp focus. If you aren't in that spot, you still hear a sound-field, but the focus will be gone. An analogy would be a 3-D visual image. As you move the right-eye image and the left-eye image closer together and further apart, there is only one relative position where these two images coalesce in your mind as a single 3-D image (assuming, of course, you are wearing the glasses) with depth as well as height and width. That's because your surrogate eyes are a pair of lenses on a camera that are a set distance apart. That means that when viewing those images they must give the illusion of being the same distance apart to your brain, or you won't see the stereo effect - with or without the glasses. No. Not analogous. There need not be a single "sweet spot" nor a single perspective that was viewed by some single stereo microphone. The example in my Mars paper - which I think I sent you - was of an imaginary recording made with one microphone per instrument, then played back on speakers that have similar radiation patterns to the instrument they are reproducing, and are placed in positions that are geometrically similar to the original. Such an ideal system creates a sound field that is spatially a duplicate of the original. You can move around in it just like live. The realism of it depends on the size of the room being similar to the original, or what the original would be good in. And most notably, neither the recording nor the reproduction have anything to do with the number of ears on your head or the spacing between them or any single position of any microphone during the recording. Stereo is not a head-related system like binaural, nothing to do with the human hearing mechanism, but rather the creation of sound fields in rooms. It is confusing when we begin to simplify the system down to fewer channels, especially if it gets all the way down to two channels, because then we begin to think that the two speakers are reproducing EAR SIGNALS, which they are not. The only aspect of playback that relates to the human hearing mechanism is the summing localization that is employed to create the phantom imaging between speakers. Discrete surround sound with the center channel gets us some of the way away from that confusion, but the nature of the system remains the same, and the confusion will always be with us. But even with a simplified-down system there needn't be a single sweet spot or single perspective on the instruments, if you employ a proper radiation pattern, speaker positioning, and a good room. Gary Eickmeier |
#5
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Need advice for a small room
On Fri, 11 May 2012 06:02:09 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... While I agree with you in theory, the reality is that the "sweet spot" concept is part of the baggage that stereo recording methodology carries with it. I've mentioned this before, but it doesn't hurt to reiterate: When you are at a live, unamplified concert, and you move around with respect the stage (or other locus of performance) your ears go with you and your perspective changes with location. When listening to a recording, and you move around the room, your surrogate ears, the microphones, and ultimately, (in the case of multi-miked, multi-channel recordings) the final mix has one set perspective because the "mikes" DON'T move. That being the case, there is only ONE set place where the perspective is correct, IOW, there is only one place in front of the speakers (right to left) where the listener is on the same axis as the surrogate ears. Naturally, this is the place where the imaging and soundstage snap into sharp focus. If you aren't in that spot, you still hear a sound-field, but the focus will be gone. An analogy would be a 3-D visual image. As you move the right-eye image and the left-eye image closer together and further apart, there is only one relative position where these two images coalesce in your mind as a single 3-D image (assuming, of course, you are wearing the glasses) with depth as well as height and width. That's because your surrogate eyes are a pair of lenses on a camera that are a set distance apart. That means that when viewing those images they must give the illusion of being the same distance apart to your brain, or you won't see the stereo effect - with or without the glasses. No. Not analogous. There need not be a single "sweet spot" nor a single perspective that was viewed by some single stereo microphone. The example in my Mars paper - which I think I sent you - was of an imaginary recording made with one microphone per instrument, then played back on speakers that have similar radiation patterns to the instrument they are reproducing, and are placed in positions that are geometrically similar to the original. Such an ideal system creates a sound field that is spatially a duplicate of the original. You can move around in it just like live. The realism of it depends on the size of the room being similar to the original, or what the original would be good in. And most notably, neither the recording nor the reproduction have anything to do with the number of ears on your head or the spacing between them or any single position of any microphone during the recording. Stereo is not a head-related system like binaural, nothing to do with the human hearing mechanism, but rather the creation of sound fields in rooms. It is confusing when we begin to simplify the system down to fewer channels, especially if it gets all the way down to two channels, because then we begin to think that the two speakers are reproducing EAR SIGNALS, which they are not. The only aspect of playback that relates to the human hearing mechanism is the summing localization that is employed to create the phantom imaging between speakers. Discrete surround sound with the center channel gets us some of the way away from that confusion, but the nature of the system remains the same, and the confusion will always be with us. But even with a simplified-down system there needn't be a single sweet spot or single perspective on the instruments, if you employ a proper radiation pattern, speaker positioning, and a good room. 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. 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. |
#6
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Need advice for a small room
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 |
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