[Gary Eickmeier]

STC wrote:

My curiosity is not about whether Ambiophonics is better or not but
the reluctance of audiophile to try it out. As I have observed, those
in non audiophile category embrace Ambiophonics as closer to realism
but hardcore audiophiles do not adopt them despite clearly awed with
it. They continue to tweak their system and rush back for another
demo and then go back to more tweaking and adjustments until they
gave up.


This prompted me to ask if we are after high fidelity or something
else. (Pls see the first post). The more I look into this I notice
that it is not music but some sort of obsession with their system
and format.Like a vinylphile will never accept anything digital
despite some digital are better recorded than vinyl.

Ambio is a neat trick, as long as we can get rid of the mattress up to your
forehead, but again, it confuses stereo with binaural. Binaural is a process
wherein the idea is to get the two channels piped to your ears separately,
with no crosstalk. It is intended to be recorded with a binaural head placed
in a typical listening position during recording, so that it can hear the
music and the complete acoustical surroundings from that spot. On playback,
you should in some way isolate the two channels from each other and play
back on headphones or on loudspeaker binaural in a deadened room.

Loudspeaker binaural is the preferred method because you can turn your head
without the whole orchestra turning with it, and you will always have a
little room acoustic to anchor the sources and prevent the In Head
Localization (IHL) effect.

Stereo recordings do not translate to binaural well because eliminating the
crosstalk will widen the presentation (perspective) to nearly 180°, which is
wider than normal and wider than the producer intended. A neat trick, but
not what everyone wants. I can widen the soundstage artificially in my
surround sound system by imploying one of the modes in the receiver that mix
the front channels with the rear.

All that plus in Ambio you are pretty much stuck in the sweet spot, and with
the speakers moved closer together (to regain the center) the problem gets
magnified.

I prefer surround sound and image modeling, employing reflected sound to
deepen and widen the apparent frontal soundstage naturally.

Gary Eickmeier