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George Graves George Graves is offline
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Default Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology

In article ,
ScottW wrote:

On Apr 26, 4:27 am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
ScottW wrote:
On Apr 24, 7:17 pm, Audio_Empire wrote:
Now with cardioids , they have a directional
attribute in their pick-up pattern.


How does one differentiate in a cardiod output from a quiet sound
coming into the front (sensitive area) and a loud sound coming =

from
the side?


Amplitude itself is not sufficient to provide a realistic 3D.


You missed the point of AE's post. He wasn't saying that the =

cardioid
pattern has anything to do with the stereo. Just talking in general =

about
directivity in microphones.

=20
So it was a nice informative obfuscation? I'd still appreciate an
answer to the question.



Trying to explain to someone how two cardioid mikes pick-up stereo is =
obfuscation? Well, pardon me for living! I think this question has been =
answered satisfactorily for most people.


I'll leave the claim that all close mic'd, studio recordings, etc. =

are
not in fact stereo recordings....as an opinion based upon ancient
greek language.


Another misunderstanding. It's a long story.



The common modern use of the word as a noun to name a recording or =

a
playback system....stereo means two channels.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dict...british/stereo


I don't care what somebody's dictionary says.

=20
Then you decline to accept the meaning of the word in current
society.
=20
Words can..and do change meaning.
=20
The word means a field-type
auditory perspective system.
Width, height, and depth in the reproduction of a multi-channel =

recording.
The Bell Labs had three channels to do the same job. We now have 5. =

You
could have one channel per instrument and arrange them on your own
soundstage and it would still be "stereophonic." You could compose a =

piece
for ten loudspeakers, a piece that was never performed in any other =

space,
and it would still be stereophonic if it could be portrayed with =

more than
one channel and present a width, depth, and height to the =

presentation of
the sounds.

Live music is stereophonic, unless you are listening from the next =

room.

Technically the "stereo" part means solid, all three axes. The =

"phonic" part
means on loudspeakers.

On the other system, binaural, the "bi" part means two. The "aural" =

part
means ears. We have binaural and monaural, or one eared. Monophonic =

would be
one loudspeaker. But it would still be mono if it was played on two
loudspeakers, if the music came from just one channel. Mono sound =

presented
on headphone would be idiotic. All of these terms were defined by =

the
pioneers from Bell Labs, and then later forgotten.

=20
Some people think words are defined by some forgotten use...others
think they are defined by their current use in society as recorded by
dictionaries...like cambridge.


First of all, there's nothing "forgotten" about real stereo. Many record =
companies still record that way, but usually, mostly for classical =
music. Scott have you ever even heard a real stereo recording played =
back on a decent system? It sure doesn't seem so.=20
=20

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Gary Eickmeier Gary Eickmeier is offline
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Default Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology

ScottW wrote:
On Apr 26, 12:16 pm, George Graves wrote:

First of all, there's nothing "forgotten" about real stereo.
Many record companies still record that way, but usually, mostly for
classical music. Scott have you ever even heard a real stereo
recording played back on a decent system? It sure doesn't seem so.


I guess my Linkwitz Orions or my Maggie 1.7s or my recently deceased
Quad 63s or my Legacy Focus based surround system must not be up to
the task. I'll have to just enjoy "unreal" stereo which fortunately
for me...still seems to have depth and a 3D quality for my music
pleasure.


Your system has depth and a 3D quality? Then why were you fighting everybody
tooth and nail about all this?

I think I need to re-clarify a few things to tie up this thread and get back
to the main point about stereo. Some have asked the musical question, how
can stereo record height, width, and depth if the microphones can't know
anything about direction, or how can all of this spatial information be
contained in any recording? There is no HRTF or head shadowing in a
recording. It just can't work.

But it does. I have tried to put across the major, major concept that
stereophonic is not a head-related system, the recording of ear signals in
any way. There is no HRTF or head shadowing because those concepts have
nothing to do with stereo, just binaural. We do not need to "encode" all of
the sounds arriving at the microphones to be able to tell direction of
anything, because it doesn't work that way.

Harry Olson defined stereophonic as follows: "A stereophonic sound
reproducing system is a field type sound reproducing system in which two or
more microphones, used to pick up the original sound, are each coupled to a
corresponding number of independent transducing channels which in turn are
each coupled to a corresponding number of loudspeakers arranged in
substantial geometrical correspondence to that of the microphones." William
Snow comments that "it has been aptly said that the binaural system
transports the listener to the original scene, whereas the stereophonic
system transports the sound source to the listener's room."

I hope all that comes as a shock to some readers. The Cliff Notes version of
stereo theory is this: We record a set of sounds. We play those sounds back
on speakers that we PLACE in our listening room where those sounds belong.
There may be three speakers up front. They will have a certain height, such
as the ear height of the listener sitting down. They may be pulled out from
the walls and encompass a certain lateral spread. This is where the width
and depth come from. In addition to the physical depth we perceive by simply
pulling the speakers out from the walls into 3D space, there is a
psychoacoustic depth contained in the recording due to loudness attenuation
and sinking into the reverberance of the recorded venue. Finally, and the
hardest to understand, we can bounce some of the output of the speakers from
the surfaces of our room in order to use the acoustics of the room to help
build a real space around the recorded sound. In a properly set up system
this effect can actually decode, or paint, the recorded reverberance onto
the appropriate walls of your listening room.

Even shorter version: How does stereo know where the sound came from?
Because we PUT it there, in front of us, where it belongs. The sounds that
we hear in the reproduction are real, physical sounds that exist in real
space in front of you, you hear them with your natural hearing, your own
HRTF and head shadowing, a summing localization permits auditory events
anywhere along a line between the speakers, and the recorded space gives the
presentation the "flavor" of the original space if such is contained in the
recording.

All of this was well known by the pioneers at the Bell Labs who were doing
the experiments, but of late it has become confused with binaural with some
thinking that what is wrong with stereo is we need crosstalk cancellation,
or we need to record the HRTF, or head shadowing, or anything else that has
to do with binaural such as Sonic Holography, Holophonics, Ambiophonics,
Transaural - there are a number of these that keep popping up about every 5
years, some new genius (usually a rocket scientist who is here to straighten
us all out) comes up with a new form of loudspeaker binaural.

Gary Eickmeier



ScottW


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KH KH is offline
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Default Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology

On 4/26/2013 7:06 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
ScottW wrote:
On Apr 26, 12:16 pm, George Graves wrote:


snip

I guess my Linkwitz Orions or my Maggie 1.7s or my recently deceased
Quad 63s or my Legacy Focus based surround system must not be up to
the task. I'll have to just enjoy "unreal" stereo which fortunately
for me...still seems to have depth and a 3D quality for my music
pleasure.


Your system has depth and a 3D quality? Then why were you fighting everybody
tooth and nail about all this?


I don't see him fighting "about all this". I see him saying, basically,
what I've been saying. Naturally, I agree to a large extent :-)

I think I need to re-clarify a few things to tie up this thread and get back
to the main point about stereo. Some have asked the musical question, how
can stereo record height, width, and depth if the microphones can't know
anything about direction, or how can all of this spatial information be
contained in any recording?


Yes. If you want to clarify, however, you could actually answer that
question.

There is no HRTF or head shadowing in a
recording. It just can't work.


There is in binaural, which you never cease to conflate with stereo in
these discussions. But yes, you're correct; there isn't any HRTF in
stereo recording - and no one has ever even suggested such.

But it does.


I assume you mean "spatial reproduction" here. Unless are you just
contradicting your previous sentence?

I have tried to put across the major, major concept that
stereophonic is not a head-related system,


And you are clearly incorrect in that concept as presented. There is no
HRTF in the recording, true. But the listener, wherever he may be, or
whatever type of system he is listening to, will perceive the sound as
filtered through his HRTF, as you later state clearly yourself.

the recording of ear signals in
any way.


Can you just drop the "ear signals" nonsense? No one has ever suggested
anything about this, but you perpetually erect this strawman.

There is no HRTF or head shadowing because those concepts have
nothing to do with stereo, just binaural.


On the playback end, they certainly *do* play a primary role. Please
tell us how they do not? Do they play a role in the construction of
*your* reproduction model? No. That's the major deficiency, and the
part you seem not to grasp. Whatever "field" you construct, it will be
transformed by the listeners HRTF, and will be interpreted for spatial
clues based on that transformation. Your "model" provides erroneous
spatial clues by redirecting what spacial information is on the
recording in all directions.


We do not need to "encode" all of
the sounds arriving at the microphones to be able to tell direction of
anything, because it doesn't work that way.


You do if you want to "decode" it on playback. Anything else is purely
synthesis, not reproduction or decoding.

snip

Finally, and the
hardest to understand,


Simply because it is factually inaccurate, and physically impossible.

we can bounce some of the output of the speakers from
the surfaces of our room in order to use the acoustics of the room to help
build a real space around the recorded sound. In a properly set up system
this effect can actually decode,


You already stipulated that it is not "encoded", therefore you cannot
"decode" it.

or paint, the recorded reverberance onto
the appropriate walls of your listening room.


And yet you have no theory for how this is actually performed. You
continually use words like "decode" and terms like "appropriate walls"
in a definition-free manner and expect the readers to somehow "grok"
what you feel they mean to you.

Tell us how you define "appropriate", and tell us how you *direct* the
appropriate sound to the appropriate wall.

Even shorter version: How does stereo know where the sound came from?
Because we PUT it there, in front of us, where it belongs. The sounds that
we hear in the reproduction are real, physical sounds that exist in real
space in front of you, you hear them with your natural hearing, your own
HRTF and head shadowing, a summing localization permits auditory events
anywhere along a line between the speakers, and the recorded space gives the
presentation the "flavor" of the original space if such is contained in the
recording.


Whoa there partner, this "shorter version", scrubbed of undefined terms
and physical impossibilities, is pretty much accurate. And yes, it works
surprisingly well. But once you add in all the reflections of sounds
that should be "there, in front of us, where it belongs", thinking that
somehow that decodes information not present on the recording, that's
where you run off the tracks.

Obviously you *like* the way that sounds, great, but it simply is not
doing *what* you claim it is, and you've provided no plausible mechanism
for *how* it could.


All of this was well known by the pioneers at the Bell Labs who were doing
the experiments, but of late it has become confused with binaural


Maybe you have been confused about it; I see no evidence that anyone
else is so afflicted.

with some
thinking that what is wrong with stereo is we need crosstalk cancellation,
or we need to record the HRTF, or head shadowing,


Again, who? I've not seen any evidence of that here.

Keith

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Gary Eickmeier Gary Eickmeier is offline
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Default Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology

KH wrote:
On 4/26/2013 7:06 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:



There is no HRTF or head shadowing in a
recording. It just can't work.


There is in binaural, which you never cease to conflate with stereo in
these discussions. But yes, you're correct; there isn't any HRTF in
stereo recording - and no one has ever even suggested such.


Dick Pierce said in his response on 4/4/2013 at 7:27PM to AE's previous
thread:

"The fact is that the HRTF of the original sound field is
eliminate from the listening chain is precisely the problem."

But it does.


I assume you mean "spatial reproduction" here. Unless are you just
contradicting your previous sentence?


Yes, it means spatial reproduction, and yes, I am
contradicting my previous sentence "It just can't work."


I have tried to put across the major, major concept that
stereophonic is not a head-related system,


And you are clearly incorrect in that concept as presented. There is
no HRTF in the recording, true. But the listener, wherever he may
be, or whatever type of system he is listening to, will perceive the
sound as filtered through his HRTF, as you later state clearly
yourself.


Good. You got that. But then why are you harrassing me about it right now?
In a field-type system, which has nothing to do with the number of ears,
head shadowing, HRTF, or anything about the human hearing mechanism,
everyone who hears the music hears it the same way he hears live music. We
are reproducing the object itself, not signals for any particular being's
ears, so we do NOT have to worry about anything that has to do with how we
hear. I have noted the summing localization which happily lets us get away
with fewer channels, but that is heard in the same way by everyone as well,
and does not need to be encoded into the signals in any way beyond normal
stereo recording techniques.

Mr. Pierce was also very confused about how we can possibly know from the
recording where the instruments are. Hence, this thread relating how we
place those recorded sounds within our rooms and how that settles the
question about the difference between a field-type system and a head-related
system.

the recording of ear signals in
any way.


Can you just drop the "ear signals" nonsense? No one has ever
suggested anything about this, but you perpetually erect this
strawman.


If some still think that all arriving sounds must be "encoded" as to
direction from the microphones then they may not be able to conceive of a
field-type system with the direction decided physically and acoustically.
They may still think that the signals alone, going into the ears, should be
able to tell you the directions of all sounds. This sounds silly, I know,
but that is what I have gleaned from some of the remarks.

There is no HRTF or head shadowing because those concepts have
nothing to do with stereo, just binaural.


On the playback end, they certainly do play a primary role. Please
tell us how they do not? Do they play a role in the construction of
your reproduction model? No. That's the major deficiency, and the
part you seem not to grasp. Whatever "field" you construct, it will
be transformed by the listeners HRTF, and will be interpreted for
spatial clues based on that transformation. Your "model" provides
erroneous spatial clues by redirecting what spacial information is on
the recording in all directions.


Do you see what I mean about your thinking that the information on the
recording needs to be directed strictly toward your ears? No, that is NOT
the way it works. Not recording and reproducing ear signals, recording and
reproducing sound in rooms, not sound in ears or heads.

OK here is a deeper explanation to illustrate the difference. There are
basically two ways to reproduce a sensory experience.We can reproduce the
sensory inputs or we can reproduce the object itself and let your own senses
experience it. The first one would be like binaural, in which we record and
reproduce ear signals by using a dummy head and then headphones. The sensory
experience of when the head was there at the live event, reproduced by
direct sensory input with headphones. The stereophonic system is like the
second method - reproduce the object itself, a sound field in a room, and
let everyone experience that sound with his own senses.

The part about redirecting spatial information on the recording in all
directions is simply a part of reconstructing sound fields that were
recorded so that they can come from similar directions at home


Finally, and the
hardest to understand,


Simply because it is factually inaccurate, and physically impossible.

we can bounce some of the output of the speakers from
the surfaces of our room in order to use the acoustics of the room
to help build a real space around the recorded sound. In a properly
set up system this effect can actually decode,


You already stipulated that it is not "encoded", therefore you cannot
"decode" it.


I told you this isn't easy. No, the directions of all of the spatial content
is not encoded as such, it is reconstructed int he playback room by means of
time delay and positioning of extra speakers or just using reflected sound
from the main speakers.

or paint, the recorded reverberance onto
the appropriate walls of your listening room.


And yet you have no theory for how this is actually performed. You
continually use words like "decode" and terms like "appropriate walls"
in a definition-free manner and expect the readers to somehow "grok"
what you feel they mean to you.

Tell us how you define "appropriate", and tell us how you direct the
appropriate sound to the appropriate wall.


A recording is made of a saxphone on the left side of the orchestra. The
recording contains reverberance from the sax bouncing some of its output off
the left side wall. We play this back on a system with multidirectional
speakers. The left speaker contains the vast majority of the sound of the
saxophone and its reverberance from the left wall of the concert hall. The
right channel has little or none of it. On playback both speakers direct
part of their output toward their nearest side wall, but only the left
speaker has the sound of the sax and its reverberance. Therefore, in the
playback model the sax sound is bounced more from the left wall of the
playback room than the right - which would be the appropriate wall.

Even shorter version: How does stereo know where the sound came from?
Because we PUT it there, in front of us, where it belongs. The
sounds that we hear in the reproduction are real, physical sounds
that exist in real space in front of you, you hear them with your
natural hearing, your own HRTF and head shadowing, a summing
localization permits auditory events anywhere along a line between
the speakers, and the recorded space gives the presentation the
"flavor" of the original space if such is contained in the recording.


Whoa there partner, this "shorter version", scrubbed of undefined
terms and physical impossibilities, is pretty much accurate. And yes,
it works surprisingly well. But once you add in all the reflections
of sounds that should be "there, in front of us, where it belongs",
thinking that somehow that decodes information not present on the
recording, that's where you run off the tracks.


How is the reverberance not contained in the recording?


Obviously you like the way that sounds, great, but it simply is not
doing what you claim it is, and you've provided no plausible
mechanism for how it could.


You want me to keep saying it again and again until - never mind.


All of this was well known by the pioneers at the Bell Labs who were
doing the experiments, but of late it has become confused with
binaural


Maybe you have been confused about it; I see no evidence that anyone
else is so afflicted.

with some
thinking that what is wrong with stereo is we need crosstalk
cancellation, or we need to record the HRTF, or head shadowing,


Again, who? I've not seen any evidence of that here.


Pierce. And many of your statements, as above.

Gary Eickmeier
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Dick Pierce[_2_] Dick Pierce[_2_] is offline
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Default Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology

Gary Eickmeier wrote:
KH wrote:

On 4/26/2013 7:06 PM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:




There is no HRTF or head shadowing in a
recording. It just can't work.


There is in binaural, which you never cease to conflate with stereo in
these discussions. But yes, you're correct; there isn't any HRTF in
stereo recording - and no one has ever even suggested such.



Dick Pierce said in his response on 4/4/2013 at 7:27PM to AE's previous
thread:

"The fact is that the HRTF of the original sound field is
eliminate from the listening chain is precisely the problem."


Which, of course and as usual, you completely utterly
misunderstood. I would please implore you once again to
not assume that when you are confused, you immediately
assume that it's because the other person is confused.

The HRTF (do you even know what that means?) is eliminated
for a variety of reasons. Most especially in the confused
and inconsistent misrepresentations you've proferred, since
the soundfields presented by the instrument and ANY
recreation of the soundfields by ANY existing stereo
recording and playback technique are VASTLY different
(despite your unsupported claims about what your 901-
based speaker system is capable of doing), the HRTF-
processed result of that original soundfiels and that
of the reproduced soundfield must, be necessitty, be
vastly different. The fact that it work at all, as stated
by Audio_Empire and many others, is far more a testimony
to the flexibility and adaptability of the human auditory
system in being able to synthesize the resultant emotive
results, than it is to any alledged physical or technical
properties.

And you are clearly incorrect in that concept as presented. There is
no HRTF in the recording, true. But the listener, wherever he may
be, or whatever type of system he is listening to, will perceive the
sound as filtered through his HRTF, as you later state clearly
yourself.


Good. You got that. But then why are you harrassing me about it right now?
In a field-type system, which has nothing to do with the number of ears,
head shadowing, HRTF, or anything about the human hearing mechanism,
everyone who hears the music hears it the same way he hears live music. We
are reproducing the object itself, not signals for any particular being's
ears, so we do NOT have to worry about anything that has to do with how we
hear. I have noted the summing localization which happily lets us get away
with fewer channels, but that is heard in the same way by everyone as well,
and does not need to be encoded into the signals in any way beyond normal
stereo recording techniques.

Mr. Pierce was also very confused


No, once again, Mr. Eickmeier is confused about what
Mr. Pierce said. Please stop blaming him for your confusion.

with some
thinking that what is wrong with stereo is we need crosstalk
cancellation, or we need to record the HRTF, or head shadowing,


Again, who? I've not seen any evidence of that here.


Pierce. And many of your statements, as above.


No. Mr. Eickmeier, Pierce did not say anything like the
confused statements you have represented.

--
+--------------------------------+
+ Dick Pierce |
+ Professional Audio Development |
+--------------------------------+



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Default Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology

Dick Pierce wrote:
Gary Eickmeier wrote:


Dick Pierce said in his response on 4/4/2013 at 7:27PM to AE's
previous thread:

"The fact is that the HRTF of the original sound field is
eliminate from the listening chain is precisely the problem."


Which, of course and as usual, you completely utterly
misunderstood. I would please implore you once again to
not assume that when you are confused, you immediately
assume that it's because the other person is confused.

The HRTF (do you even know what that means?) is eliminated
for a variety of reasons. Most especially in the confused
and inconsistent misrepresentations you've proferred, since
the soundfields presented by the instrument and ANY
recreation of the soundfields by ANY existing stereo
recording and playback technique are VASTLY different
(despite your unsupported claims about what your 901-
based speaker system is capable of doing), the HRTF-
processed result of that original soundfiels and that
of the reproduced soundfield must, be necessitty, be
vastly different. The fact that it work at all, as stated
by Audio_Empire and many others, is far more a testimony
to the flexibility and adaptability of the human auditory
system in being able to synthesize the resultant emotive
results, than it is to any alledged physical or technical
properties.


Again I say, HRTF has nothing to do with the stereophonic system. Your
problem with its being eliminated in the process, or the two HRTFs being
VASTLY different, show a confusion between stereophonic and binaural. HRTF
means Head Related Transfer Function. It has to do with a head-related
system, not a field type system.

snip


No, once again, Mr. Eickmeier is confused about what
Mr. Pierce said. Please stop blaming him for your confusion.


Mr. Pierce,

I started this whole new thread because of your astonishing statements in
the previous thread, in the post already quoted, that:

"ALL directional information iis lost in any single microphone.
The output of the microphone is a simply two-dimensional record
of instantaneous pressure or velocity amplitude vs time. That's
it. There is no information in that electrical signal as to where
the sound that caused it came from. None.

"As I said, even in a directional microphone, that information is
irretrievably lost. Say a directional microphone is down 20 db
120 degrees relative to the principle axis. There's nothing in
the resulting electrical stream that unambiguously (or even
vaguely) provides a clue as to whether that signal was due to
an 80 dB SPL sound on the principal axis or a 100 dB SPL sound
120 degrees off axis.

"And when you start to talk about recording in a complex sound
field, the electrical output has NO indication AT ALL whether
a direct sound came from there, while the reverberent sound
came form over there.

"Now, take a stereo pair. The situation is really not any better
It is geometrically impossible to disambiguate, for example, by
any property in the elctrical signals, whether a source of a sound
is anywhere on a circle whose center is defined by the line between
the two microphones and whose plane is at right angles to that
circle. Two omnis some distance apart will generate the SAME
electrical signals whether the source is 20 feet ahead, 20 feet
above, 20 feet behind or anywhere else on the circle. The same is
true of any other mike position. The only position that can be
unambiguously recorded is somewhere EXACTLY in between the two,
which is arguably not very useful."


But anyway, I think that the main difference between the live and the
playback is an acoustic one, not necessarily that some info gets lost
during
recording.


"Uh, sorry, but it is the 3-dimensional aspect of the original
acoustical field that is provably lost.

"The fact is that the HRTF of the original sound field is
eliminate from the listening chain is precisely the problem."

And further down:

"The reason carefully done (and VERY inconvenient) binaural works
is because it works VERY hard to try to preserve as much of the
utility of the listener's HRTF as possible."

And so what we have here is a fuzzy confusion between stereophonic and
binaural, once again thinking that the idea is to encode signals that when
they enter the ears will decode all incident angles that were recorded and
fool the listener into hearing the original space.

What I have been hammering at is that the stereophonic system does not work
by recording and reproducing ear signals, but rather by recording and
reproducing sound fields in rooms. Pierce says that the reason that stereo
doesn't work all that well is because almost all directional information is
lost and can never be resurrected again. I point out that we are not playing
the recorded channels into our ears, we are playing them on speakers
arranged where we want the sound to come from, in our playback space. Big
difference.

Spot evaluation: Record a single instrument with a single microphone. Put a
loudspeaker in your listening room in a position that is geometrically
similar to where the source was in the original room. Now NAIL IT DOWN SO IT
CAN'T MOVE. Now play the sound that you recorded. Can you tell where the
instrument is? Did the recording contain any information about where it was
originally? Did the recording have any HRTF in it? Head shadowing? Anything
to do with the human hearing mechanism?

Now make a stereo recording, maybe three instruments placed left, center,
and right. Play the recording on speakers that you have arranged in front of
you in positions that are geometrically similar to the original. Even in a
two channel recording, can you tell where the instruments are? Left, center,
and right? Is there any ambiguity about it, even though the stereo pair
could not tell which of 360 possible planes those sounds came from? So how
did you choose to make the sound come from right there and there?

I will leave the spatial reverberance part for another post, but I just want
to communicate with you for the first time the kind of difference I am
talking about. Most of us grew up in audio thinking that stereo was a vague
attempt to fool the ears into hearing another acoustic space, the one in
which the microphones were placed, by putting two channels of information
into our ears. And so if it didn't work quite like we expected, we figured
that there must be some fault in the signal path and so the search was on
for greater and greater accuracy in our microphones, electronics, recording
media, and speakers, or, as you have expressed that sufficient information
was never recorded in the first place, so it cannot work as expected.

My contribution is that you are studying the elephant from the wrong end.
The Holy Grail lies not in signals, paths, sufficient information, accuracy,
none of that. The answer lies in studying the problem of reconstructing the
recorded information as sound fields within your room - direct, early
reflected, and reverberant. If you understand the structure of this "thing"
that we are trying to rebuild within our space, you will have a much better
chance at success.

Gary Eickmeier

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In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote:


Spot evaluation: Record a single instrument with a single microphone. Put a
loudspeaker in your listening room in a position that is geometrically
similar to where the source was in the original room. Now NAIL IT DOWN SO IT
CAN'T MOVE. Now play the sound that you recorded. Can you tell where the
instrument is? Did the recording contain any information about where it was
originally? Did the recording have any HRTF in it? Head shadowing? Anything
to do with the human hearing mechanism?


Well said, Gary. Bravo! That is exactly right. In the case of the mono
recording, you know where the instrument is, because you put it there!
How could it be anywhere else. It's a single channel representation of a
single instrument.

Now make a stereo recording, maybe three instruments placed left, center,
and right. Play the recording on speakers that you have arranged in front of
you in positions that are geometrically similar to the original. Even in a
two channel recording, can you tell where the instruments are? Left, center,
and right? Is there any ambiguity about it, even though the stereo pair
could not tell which of 360 possible planes those sounds came from? So how
did you choose to make the sound come from right there and there?


Right again! You know where each instrument is because you know from
whence they are emanating. You have brought up one of the prime reasons
why stereo works. And it works for 100 instruments as well as it does
for two, or three. You know where the sound filed is because you know
where the speakers are. You expect that stereo spread to come from the
speakers because it does.

Gary Eickmeier


Audio_Empire

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On 4/29/2013 4:56 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
Dick Pierce wrote:
Gary Eickmeier wrote:



snip


No, once again, Mr. Eickmeier is confused about what
Mr. Pierce said. Please stop blaming him for your confusion.


Mr. Pierce,

I started this whole new thread because of your astonishing statements in
the previous thread, in the post already quoted, that:


Astonishing to you, apparently. More about that below:


snip

"The reason carefully done (and VERY inconvenient) binaural works
is because it works VERY hard to try to preserve as much of the
utility of the listener's HRTF as possible."


And so what we have here is a fuzzy confusion between stereophonic and
binaural,


And, I submit, the confusion is yours.

once again thinking that the idea is to encode signals that when
they enter the ears will decode all incident angles that were recorded


And once again, you miss the obvious - the *angles* were NOT recorded.

and
fool the listener into hearing the original space.

What I have been hammering at is that the stereophonic system does not work
by recording and reproducing ear signals,


Whatever that means...

but rather by recording and
reproducing sound fields in rooms. Pierce says that the reason that stereo
doesn't work all that well is because almost all directional information is
lost and can never be resurrected again.


Which is, again, demonstrably true if you substitute "all" for "almost
all", which would be the accurate way to characterize Mr Pierce's
statements.

I point out that we are not playing
the recorded channels into our ears, we are playing them on speakers
arranged where we want the sound to come from, in our playback space. Big
difference.


Not nearly as big as you'd like to imply. According to this concept,
headphones simply cannot produce any stereo sound right?

Spot evaluation: Record a single instrument with a single microphone. Put a
loudspeaker in your listening room in a position that is geometrically
similar to where the source was in the original room. Now NAIL IT DOWN SO IT
CAN'T MOVE. Now play the sound that you recorded. Can you tell where the
instrument is?


Of course you can. And *why* is that? What mechanism allows you to
localize that sound? Yep, the old HRTF that "has nothing to do with
stereo" in your world. Without it, and two (or more) ears, you could
not localize it.

Did the recording contain any information about where it was
originally?


Nope. Now you're getting close...

Did the recording have any HRTF in it? Head shadowing? Anything
to do with the human hearing mechanism?


Nope. So you can tell where it *is*, but not where it *was*. If it's
front left, that's where you hear it. Doesn't matter that it was far
right in the recording. This is synthesis, not reproduction. You need
to understand the difference.

Now make a stereo recording, maybe three instruments placed left, center,
and right. Play the recording on speakers that you have arranged in front of
you in positions that are geometrically similar to the original. Even in a
two channel recording, can you tell where the instruments are? Left, center,
and right? Is there any ambiguity about it, even though the stereo pair
could not tell which of 360 possible planes those sounds came from? So how
did you choose to make the sound come from right there and there?


Once again, you put it where you wanted to hear it *from*, and your ears
and HRTF allow you to localize the sounds. You think this an epiphany?
Seriously? That, of course has zero to do with where it was in the
performance.


I will leave the spatial reverberance part for another post,


Well yes of course, because your model breaks down completely at this
point. You can choose where the left channel is placed, but where do
you *place* the reverberant information? You don't know where it was,
it had no unique location such that you can place a speaker with
'geometric accuracy', and you can't separate the reverberant from the
direct in the signals you bounce around. so you just bounce it all
around everywhere - you have no other options.

Keith

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KH wrote:
On 4/29/2013 4:56 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:



Once again, you put it where you wanted to hear it *from*, and your
ears and HRTF allow you to localize the sounds. You think this an
epiphany? Seriously? That, of course has zero to do with where it
was in the performance.


I will leave the spatial reverberance part for another post,


Well yes of course, because your model breaks down completely at this
point. You can choose where the left channel is placed, but where do
you *place* the reverberant information? You don't know where it was,
it had no unique location such that you can place a speaker with
'geometric accuracy', and you can't separate the reverberant from the
direct in the signals you bounce around. so you just bounce it all
around everywhere - you have no other options.

Keith


Keith is getting close to some understanding here. He sees that we are
reconstructing the stereo images within our room, synthesizing where left
and right are, and using the recording to play onto that model the sounds
that we want to take on this perspective. I haven't yet convinced him that
this is legitimate, that it is "OKAY" to display the recorded sound in
another room like this, or that the ambience can possibly be separated from
the direct by means of time delay. But at least he is beginning to see the
system as a reconstruction in his room rather than a head-related
system.that is supposed to contain all directional information for your
ears.

And no, Keith, listening on headphones would not be stereophonic. Remember
the system definitions. Stereophonic is the above described field-type
system in front of you in your playback room. In fact, this is a great
illustration of the "problem" that Dick Pierce and Keith are both talking
about with stereo. They say that the two signals just don't have enough
information in them to completely reconstruct where all of the sounds came
from in the live situation, so stereo is a flawed system that may never have
complete realism. Thinking that you can play it on headphones proves them
correct in their complaint. All you get is this In Head Localization because
your ears just cannot tell which of Pierce's many possible planes that set
of left to right sounds could have come from.

Right?

So Eickmeier comes along and says right, but that is not how the system
works, and explains the difference between regarding the recording as "ear
signals" and realizing that it is a field-type system intended for playback
on speakers in another room from that which was recorded.

My big contribution is (if we can get over the first hurdle, the field-type
system difference) that to do it right (or rather even righter) we must
study the problem aa a total acoustical situation, rather than just sound
coming from two direct speakers. The acoustical model of live sound can be
studied for its spatial nature and those qualities incorporated in the
playback model to a great extent, if you can see you way clear to looking at
it from that perspective.

And so the people of Eick land lived happily ever after recording and
reproducing direct, early reflected, and reverberant sound and displaying it
as such in their listening rooms, using their new speakers as Image Model
Projectors rather than direct radiators.

Gad I love the ending. If we can ever make our way through the first
chapter.

Gary Eickmeier

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In article , KH
wrote:

On 4/29/2013 4:56 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
Dick Pierce wrote:
Gary Eickmeier wrote:



snip


No, once again, Mr. Eickmeier is confused about what
Mr. Pierce said. Please stop blaming him for your confusion.


Mr. Pierce,

I started this whole new thread because of your astonishing statements in
the previous thread, in the post already quoted, that:


Astonishing to you, apparently. More about that below:


snip

"The reason carefully done (and VERY inconvenient) binaural works
is because it works VERY hard to try to preserve as much of the
utility of the listener's HRTF as possible."


And so what we have here is a fuzzy confusion between stereophonic and
binaural,


And, I submit, the confusion is yours.

once again thinking that the idea is to encode signals that when
they enter the ears will decode all incident angles that were recorded


And once again, you miss the obvious - the *angles* were NOT recorded.

and
fool the listener into hearing the original space.

What I have been hammering at is that the stereophonic system does not work
by recording and reproducing ear signals,


Whatever that means...

but rather by recording and
reproducing sound fields in rooms. Pierce says that the reason that stereo
doesn't work all that well is because almost all directional information is
lost and can never be resurrected again.


Which is, again, demonstrably true if you substitute "all" for "almost
all", which would be the accurate way to characterize Mr Pierce's
statements.

I point out that we are not playing
the recorded channels into our ears, we are playing them on speakers
arranged where we want the sound to come from, in our playback space. Big
difference.


Not nearly as big as you'd like to imply. According to this concept,
headphones simply cannot produce any stereo sound right?


Headphones can produce binaural sound fairly realistically, Stereo? Not
so much. Headphones will give you two channels, sure, but they won't
produce a sound stage like speaker will, with the ensemble spread out
before you from wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, or front-to-back. Center
placed sounds like vocals, then to end up inside the listener's head
instead of front-and-center, and that's not very stereo-like. So, I'd
say no. headphones don't produce anything that I would call stereo.

Spot evaluation: Record a single instrument with a single microphone. Put a
loudspeaker in your listening room in a position that is geometrically
similar to where the source was in the original room. Now NAIL IT DOWN SO IT
CAN'T MOVE. Now play the sound that you recorded. Can you tell where the
instrument is?


Of course you can. And *why* is that? What mechanism allows you to
localize that sound? Yep, the old HRTF that "has nothing to do with
stereo" in your world. Without it, and two (or more) ears, you could
not localize it.

Did the recording contain any information about where it was
originally?


Nope. Now you're getting close...

Did the recording have any HRTF in it? Head shadowing? Anything
to do with the human hearing mechanism?


Nope. So you can tell where it *is*, but not where it *was*. If it's
front left, that's where you hear it. Doesn't matter that it was far
right in the recording. This is synthesis, not reproduction. You need
to understand the difference.


I think Mr. Eickmeier understands that difference. He also understands
that "where it was" is simply not important to the illusion that stereo
seeks to produce. Do you understand that?

Now make a stereo recording, maybe three instruments placed left, center,
and right. Play the recording on speakers that you have arranged in front of
you in positions that are geometrically similar to the original. Even in a
two channel recording, can you tell where the instruments are? Left, center,
and right? Is there any ambiguity about it, even though the stereo pair
could not tell which of 360 possible planes those sounds came from? So how
did you choose to make the sound come from right there and there?


Once again, you put it where you wanted to hear it *from*, and your ears
and HRTF allow you to localize the sounds. You think this an epiphany?
Seriously? That, of course has zero to do with where it was in the
performance.


No. And from his context, I don't see how anyone could think that this
explanation is any kind of epiphany. It is merely an attempt to explain
the localization of a stereo image within a room to a number of people
who seem duty bound to argue points about this subject that are
abundantly clear to everyone except the highly contentious amongst us.


I will leave the spatial reverberance part for another post,


Well yes of course, because your model breaks down completely at this
point. You can choose where the left channel is placed, but where do
you *place* the reverberant information? You don't know where it was,
it had no unique location such that you can place a speaker with
'geometric accuracy', and you can't separate the reverberant from the
direct in the signals you bounce around. so you just bounce it all
around everywhere - you have no other options.


Actually, Mr. Eickmeier wasn't talking about his "theory" here. He was
talking about first one and then two VERY generic speakers and how they
form the locus of any directionality that a recording or live broadcast
of an event can provide.

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On 4/30/2013 9:54 AM, Audio_Empire wrote:
In article , KH
wrote:


Not nearly as big as you'd like to imply. According to this concept,
headphones simply cannot produce any stereo sound right?


Headphones can produce binaural sound fairly realistically, Stereo? Not
so much. Headphones will give you two channels, sure, but they won't
produce a sound stage like speaker will, with the ensemble spread out
before you from wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, or front-to-back. Center
placed sounds like vocals, then to end up inside the listener's head
instead of front-and-center, and that's not very stereo-like. So, I'd
say no. headphones don't produce anything that I would call stereo.


Really? Interesting. I wouldn't say they produce Mr. Eckmeiers
definition of stereo, which I don't believe is universally held, but
given your rather spirited defense of "stereo" as simply producing a
"solid image", I wouldn't have thought you'd disagree. I find they are
clearly capable of providing a solid image, just not a recreation of a
soundstage out in front of you.

Nope. So you can tell where it *is*, but not where it *was*. If it's
front left, that's where you hear it. Doesn't matter that it was far
right in the recording. This is synthesis, not reproduction. You need
to understand the difference.


I think Mr. Eickmeier understands that difference. He also understands
that "where it was" is simply not important to the illusion that stereo
seeks to produce. Do you understand that?


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

Keith

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KH wrote:

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

Keith


Keith -

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later,

Gary Eickmeier

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KH wrote:

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


You guys have inspired me to write another paper. Not sure if I would submit
it to the AES or just give up, but the idea has to do with those new fangled
3D copiers. Ya know? They take a bin of plastic media and scan an object and
then reproduce another one complete with working parts etc, all in plastic.
It can make anything, in various colors, just like the Replicator on Star
Trek.

So this 3D copier guy is giving a demo at the AES during one of their
conventions, and someone asks him if he could reproduce audio in 3D. He says
sure, how are you doing it now? They tell him all about "accurate" sound
reproduction and he is astonished at their ignorance. He says that can't
possibly sound like live sound, the three dimensiional sound fields that
were recorded! What's the matter with you people? You have studied live
sound in concert halls, you have been told by Leo Beranek what makes a good
concert hall, you have read the Bose research into the difference between
live sound and "hi fi." And you think you are going to reproduce this huge,
complex 3 dimensional field with this two dimensional presentation from two
speakers doing the direct field alone?

After being lectured about "accuracy" and Blumlein and measurements and not
wanting to hear the playback room, the guy gets really perturbed. He
explains that even in stereo we still hear three dimensionally, whatever
sound presentation is in front of us. What you experts have been doing is
taking the original 3D object and presenting it as a 2D plane of direct
field sound with no theory or paradigm or concept of any kind that can
explain how the one is supposed to sound anything like the other. Please
call me when you get serious about this subject.

I might take it as far as the call back, when they ask him to tell how he
would do it. He says just like anything else, I would study the compnent
parts in 3D space and model the reproduction after that object. He would
explain about the essential (audible) components of the live sound object
they are trying to reproduce, the direct field, the early reflected, and the
full reverberant, how important it is for all of those to be reproduced in
your playback room, all of the component parts coming from the appropriate
points in space. He says the direct sound part is fine - you are recording
the direct field, playing it on speakers placed about right in front of you
and getting the left to right separation duplicated pretty well.

Now lets take a look at the early reflected sound. It must come from all
around the instruments, from the front and left and right side walls - very
important that it not come from the same place as the direct sound. In a
good recording you are actually capturing that sound pretty well, if you are
recording in stereo with well positioned microphones. Some engineers use a
Mid/Side pattern that gets the full spread of sound in the front half of the
concert hall. Some use outrigger mikes for this purpose, like John Eargle
used to do. Some do spaced omnis placed far apart. All of these techniques
pick up all of these sounds and their relationships to each other in 3D
space.

So how might we reproduce the early reflected part on playback so that it
comes from the correct points in space - around the instruments, behind and
beside the main direct sound? Well, we might want to have some extra
speakers placed around the main stereo pair, on time delay to leave the main
sound (first arrival) intact. Or we might use some extra speakers reflecting
their output from the front and side walls in the same way the instruments
did when making the recording, and in fact those sounds are contained in the
recording and are just waiting to be played back from the proper incident
angles. Reflecting the output of these extra speakers from the walls would
automatically incorporate some delay in them and separate that sound from
the direct field.

So the smartest of the AES guys get a little agitated and bark back at him,
sure, but there is no way to record those reflected sounds separately from
the direct sounds so that we can present the direct from the speakers facing
us, and the reflected from the extra speakers. You are bouncing ALL of it
all around the room, not just the reflected from the recording. No way to
separate the two.

So the new guy comes back with "Yes, of course there is. They were separated
in the recording by time delay and they will be separated on playback by the
same mechanism. All of the recorded sounds must of necessity come first from
the direct speakers, then later from the walls all around. There can be only
one first arrival, and so those sounds take priority from the direct
speakers. All of that plus remember, if your criticism is that all of the
sounds will be bounced from the walls, not just the reflected part, you have
the same problem, only worse! If you cause all of these sounds to come from
only the direct speakers, it will also not be separated and the direct may
even mask the reflected part.

"So we need to design some special reflecting speakers and just aim their
output toward the walls and set their gain and response to properly build
these fields?" "Well," the man explains, "no, you do not. All you need to do
is design the radiation pattern of the existing speakers to reflect a
certain portion against the walls, in much the same manner as happens live,
to fill out the frontal soundstage as recorded."

They say that sounds familiar. Didn't Bose do that in 1968, and write a
paper telling how it was developed? Yes, the man says, and a guy presented a
paper in 1989 about modeling the playback sound fields after the live sound,
but for some reason you guys never believe your own research, all in the
name of this "accuracy" red herring.

Many arguments ensued, until the smartest man in the room stood up and said
hey - I think we could settle this whole thing by just trying it.

Amen and The End.

Gary Eickmeier

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On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 6:37:45 PM UTC-7, KH wrote:
On 4/30/2013 9:54 AM, Audio_Empire wrote:

In article , KH


wrote:






Not nearly as big as you'd like to imply. According to this concept,


headphones simply cannot produce any stereo sound right?




Headphones can produce binaural sound fairly realistically, Stereo? Not


so much. Headphones will give you two channels, sure, but they won't


produce a sound stage like speaker will, with the ensemble spread out


before you from wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, or front-to-back. Center


placed sounds like vocals, then to end up inside the listener's head


instead of front-and-center, and that's not very stereo-like. So, I'd


say no. headphones don't produce anything that I would call stereo.




Really? Interesting. I wouldn't say they produce Mr. Eckmeiers

definition of stereo, which I don't believe is universally held, but

given your rather spirited defense of "stereo" as simply producing a

"solid image", I wouldn't have thought you'd disagree. I find they are

clearly capable of providing a solid image, just not a recreation of a

soundstage out in front of you.


I've never heard a pair of phones do this and I've a number of pairs. Everything from
Sony MDV-6 and AKG K-340's, to Hifiman HE-500s and Stax SR-007s (the original
ones from the 1980's). Even when playing a REAL stereo recording, I get right, and
left images and everything in between is in my head, I.E. it literally sounds like it's
inside my head! Headphones are necessary sometimes, but I find that even the best
of them or less than satisfactory (unless one is listening to binaural material, then
they are OK.

Nope. So you can tell where it *is*, but not where it *was*. If it's


front left, that's where you hear it. Doesn't matter that it was far


right in the recording. This is synthesis, not reproduction. You need


to understand the difference.




I think Mr. Eickmeier understands that difference. He also understands


that "where it was" is simply not important to the illusion that stereo


seeks to produce. Do you understand that?




Apparently not. I'm of the opinion that an "accurate" reproduction

would place the instruments in the proper position in the reproduced

soundstage.


We are talking at cross purposes here. The stereo image starts and ends
in your (or my) listening room. The recording you play may be real stereo
or some studio creation, and their locations in the sound field are going
to be wherever the recording engineer (or the stereo mikes) place them.
BUT, the sound field in your room is going to be wherever YOU place it
and however you place it. Erect speakers that don't image well, put your
speakers too far apart, or too close together and you wreck whatever
stereo image there might be in the recording. In that context, the where
is simply not important, as ultimately, the where is going to be whatever
your listening room and your choice of speakers and their placement
dictates. Under Ideal conditions, the "where" can be a fairly accurate
record of the space in which the recording took place, but whether that
space Symphony Hall, in Boston, Dinklespiel Auditorium at Stanford U,,
or Abby Road Studios in London or Sun Studios in Memphis, it all starts
at your speakers and your listening environment. For all practical
purposes, THAT's the "where"!

You don't think that's important to the illusion? Is it

necessary to build a solid image? No, only to build an accurate one.



Of course it is. See above.

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In article ,
ScottW wrote:

On May 1, 11:00*am, Audio_Empire wrote:
On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 6:37:45 PM UTC-7, KH wrote:
On 4/30/2013 9:54 AM, Audio_Empire wrote:


*I find they are

clearly capable of providing a solid image, just not a recreation of a


soundstage out in front of you.


I've never heard a pair of phones do this and I've a number of pairs.
Everything from
Sony MDV-6 and AKG K-340's, to Hifiman HE-500s and Stax SR-007s (the
original
ones from the 1980's). Even when playing a REAL stereo recording, I get
right, and
left images and everything in between is in my head, I.E. it literally
sounds like it's
inside my head!


Thats true....but given time I have found my perception adapts and a
very large 3-D image resolves even with distance creating a sense of a
large space inside your head.
The perceived size of a space is just a matter of scale which human
perception adapts to quite easily if you give it a chance.

ScottW


It's the "inside my head" part that bothers me. Not saying here that I
don't or can't listen to headphones , obviously, I do. When recording,
for instance, I have a pair of big, clumsy Koss Pro-4AAs clamped to my
head because they are the most isolating phones I know of next to a
pair of David Clark aviation phones, and they're (A) expensive, and (B)
monaural.
I listen to my HiFiMan HE-500s using my HiFiMan tubed headphone amp
as part of my stereo all the time. When editing recordings using
Audacity, I use my Stax with its tubed amp/polarizing driver (don't use
them on my stereo because the cord isn't long enough and I can't get an
extension from Stax any more)

A_E

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Gary Eickmeier Gary Eickmeier is offline
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Default Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology

Audio_Empire wrote:


It's the "inside my head" part that bothers me. Not saying here that I
don't or can't listen to headphones , obviously, I do. When recording,
for instance, I have a pair of big, clumsy Koss Pro-4AAs clamped to my
head because they are the most isolating phones I know of next to a
pair of David Clark aviation phones, and they're (A) expensive, and
(B) monaural.
I listen to my HiFiMan HE-500s using my HiFiMan tubed headphone amp
as part of my stereo all the time. When editing recordings using
Audacity, I use my Stax with its tubed amp/polarizing driver (don't
use them on my stereo because the cord isn't long enough and I can't
get an extension from Stax any more)

A_E


I have often wondered how those noise cancelling headphones would work for a
recording engineer wanting to isolate from the live sound and hear what is
going into the recorder more clearly. I would be a little afraid that you
might hear a mix of the two, rather than just the pure electrical signal.

Anyone ever try it?

Gary Eickmeier

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Audio_Empire Audio_Empire is offline
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Posts: 179
Default Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology

In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote:

Audio_Empire wrote:


It's the "inside my head" part that bothers me. Not saying here that I
don't or can't listen to headphones , obviously, I do. When recording,
for instance, I have a pair of big, clumsy Koss Pro-4AAs clamped to my
head because they are the most isolating phones I know of next to a
pair of David Clark aviation phones, and they're (A) expensive, and
(B) monaural.
I listen to my HiFiMan HE-500s using my HiFiMan tubed headphone amp
as part of my stereo all the time. When editing recordings using
Audacity, I use my Stax with its tubed amp/polarizing driver (don't
use them on my stereo because the cord isn't long enough and I can't
get an extension from Stax any more)

A_E


I have often wondered how those noise cancelling headphones would work for a
recording engineer wanting to isolate from the live sound and hear what is
going into the recorder more clearly. I would be a little afraid that you
might hear a mix of the two, rather than just the pure electrical signal.

Anyone ever try it?

Gary Eickmeier


Yes, I bought a pair from Bose when they first came out. Here's what I
found. They would totally cancel out the sound of a fan or an air
conditioner and heavily attenuate the sound of a jet plane cabin. But,
with music playing in the same room, they did nothing. They are designed
to attenuate more or less constant noise and to be comfortable, they
were not ACOUSTICALLY isolatory themselves like the Koss Pro 4AAs. I
also didn't like the way the Bose's sounded. They seemed distorted to
me. Luckily, one of the earpiece attachment pieces broke at the headband
and that was the end of those. I have a pair of light on-ear noise
cancelers from JVC now and they work OK for airplanes, noisy cafes, etc.
and sound acceptable. I still prefer my Sony MDV-6s for iPod listening,
though.

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