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#1
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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 |
#2
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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 |
#3
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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. |
#4
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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 |
#5
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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. |
#6
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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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 |
#7
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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. |
#8
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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 |
#9
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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. |
#10
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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 |
#11
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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 |
#12
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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 |
#13
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
"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. |
#14
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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! |
#15
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Mind Stretchers
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) |
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