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#1
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In the previous thread about models for how stereo works, why it doesn't
sound more realistic, whether the recorded signal contains enough information to reconstruct the performance in another room, and so on, the discussion gets confused with personalities, experience with different systems, taste vs something more scientific, theories vs hypotheses, and on and on until the whole discussion skids to a halt and nothing is transmitted or received. Well, I am here now to change all that. A tautology is a statement whose truth is so obvious and undeniable that it requires no proof. In logic, it means a statement that cannot be denied without inconsistency. I have a simple example that might explain some things about realism in sound reproduction. Suppose that you just love Oscar Peterson's jazz piano playing. While he was still with us, he made some recordings on a player piano like the Yamaha. It records every keystroke, every pressure on the keys, perfectly, so that on playback it is the same as when it was recorded. So imagine that you had one of these pianos and invited him over to play and record same. He sits down and plays. He leaves, later dies. It is a tautology that if you play the recording of his keystrokes on the same piano in the same room it will be a perfect reproduction. I think this one will survive even Dick Pierce. But why exactly will it sound the same? I mean beside that it IS the same. It will sound the same because the sound that is played back will have the same frequency response, radiation pattern, loudness, and position in the room as the "real thing" did when Mr. Peterson actually was playing it. So what? Is there a lesson here somewhere that can be applied to audio? Er, well, yes of course. Let's try to do this thing with speakers instead of a player piano. I am going to close-mike the piano while he plays, with some high quality microphones and even do it with some separation between the low and high keys so that I can delineate their spread. Sometimes even that is not necessary, because we don't really hear that in a live situation, we just hear the sound board coming out of the top and reflected from the raised lid, but never mind for now, just suppose that we have recorded the piano on digital, OK? OMG, this recording contains NO information about where the piano is, or the multiplicity of reverberant effects from all directions that it made in the room, NONE of it. What's a body to do? We plow ahead, undeterred. What the hell do we do with this recording, now that we have it? Play it back "accurately" as is current engineering thought, or go for "realism" so that it sounds like the piano is right there in the room with you? The "accuracy" team puts a speaker where the piano was when it was recorded and aims it toward the listener. This speaker is perfect - flat frequency response, no distortion, time aligned, the works. But somehow, it just doesn't sound the same. What is the difference? What more can we do than play the sound back with perfect accuracy? Well, if Jens Blauert, Mark Davis, Amar Bose, Art Benade, Gary Eickmeier and many others are right, it is because the playback does not have the same radiation pattern as the original piano. So the theory is, if we could figure out how the piano makes sound into the room - what frequency response, radiation pattern, direct to reflected ratio, and so on, the original had, and we could approximate that in the speaker or speakers, then it would HAVE to sound the same. There is no more that we can do with this signal that is audible, than play it back with the same response, rad pat, etc etc. Is there something in this allegory that can be applied to the general situation, and maybe show a path to some improvement in our playback systems? We saw that if we could model the playback spatial qualities after the real acoustic event, it would sound more real, and that if we paid no attention to those characteristics or didn't know about them or beleive them, then it would emphatically sound different from the original. Yes, I think there are some very valid and very important lessons there. It has to do with theories of reproduction, models, what is audible about sound in rooms - whether there is anything more scientific we can do than have preferences for this or that. If only someone would come along and put it all together for us... Gary Eickmeier |
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#2
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
On 4/21/2013 7:04 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
In the previous thread about models for how stereo works, why it doesn't sound more realistic, whether the recorded signal contains enough information to reconstruct the performance in another room, and so on, the discussion gets confused with personalities, experience with different systems, taste vs something more scientific, theories vs hypotheses, and on and on until the whole discussion skids to a halt and nothing is transmitted or received. Well, I am here now to change all that. OoooKay... snip Suppose that you just love Oscar Peterson's jazz piano playing. While he was still with us, he made some recordings on a player piano like the Yamaha. It records every keystroke, every pressure on the keys, perfectly, so that on playback it is the same as when it was recorded. So imagine that you had one of these pianos and invited him over to play and record same. He sits down and plays. He leaves, later dies. It is a tautology that if you play the recording of his keystrokes on the same piano in the same room it will be a perfect reproduction. I think this one will survive even Dick Pierce. One could niggle about the effect of Oscar sitting there as an absorber, environmental parameters being held constant, etc. but ok... But why exactly will it sound the same? I mean beside that it IS the same. Ah, but there *is* no "beside". It is the same. There is no need for further deconstruction to identify what makes it what it is. It's an identity, not a tautology, logically. It will sound the same because the sound that is played back will have the same frequency response, radiation pattern, loudness, and position in the room as the "real thing" did when Mr. Peterson actually was playing it. AND, and it's real big AND, the performance being "replayed" is exactly the same. No transformations, no transductions, no approximations, just the identical performance. So what? Is there a lesson here somewhere that can be applied to audio? Er, well, yes of course. Let's try to do this thing with speakers instead of a player piano. And here is where you enter the realm of approximations and errors. And the *performance* you provide will be very different than the original. I am going to close-mike the piano while he plays, with some high quality microphones and even do it with some separation between the low and high keys so that I can delineate their spread. Sometimes even that is not necessary, because we don't really hear that in a live situation, we just hear the sound board coming out of the top and reflected from the raised lid, but never mind for now, just suppose that we have recorded the piano on digital, OK? OK, we have close mike'd the soundboard, with FR and radiation pattern associated with whatever mikes we used, and we ignored the reflected sound from the lid. Ok. OMG, this recording contains NO information about where the piano is, or the multiplicity of reverberant effects from all directions that it made in the room, NONE of it. What's a body to do? Plod along flippantly? We plow ahead, undeterred. What the hell do we do with this recording, now that we have it? Play it back "accurately" as is current engineering thought, or go for "realism" so that it sounds like the piano is right there in the room with you? The "accuracy" team puts a speaker where the piano was when it was recorded and aims it toward the listener. This speaker is perfect - flat frequency response, no distortion, time aligned, the works. But somehow, it just doesn't sound the same. What is the difference? What more can we do than play the sound back with perfect accuracy? You are playing back a "performance" that is missing a lot of the original data for starters, so it MUST sound different. So why does an acoustical performance that has been electromechanically transduced, frequency limited, digitized, D/A converted, amplified and electromechanically transduced sound different on playback? Because irrespective the playback model, the *performance* will be significantly different. Well, if Jens Blauert, Mark Davis, Amar Bose, Art Benade, Gary Eickmeier and many others are right, it is because the playback does not have the same radiation pattern as the original piano. That's ONE of the problems, yes. An integral part of which is the lack of ability to *record* "radiation pattern". This is the essential predicate to re-establishing the same radiation pattern on playback (were we physically/mechanically able to do so). And, we don't. 3-D pattern, 2-D signal. So the theory is, if we could figure out how the piano makes sound into the room - what frequency response, radiation pattern, direct to reflected ratio, and so on, the original had, and we could approximate that in the speaker or speakers, If we could RECORD using techniques that would capture all of the information needed to reconstruct the identical frequency response, radiation pattern, locations, and sound pressure, AND you could create a speaker system with the identical radiation pattern as the piano, THEN: then it would HAVE to sound the same. It would sound very similar, not the same. You could likely make it sound identical within the limits of listener perception. The prerequisites, however, are daunting to say the least. There is no more that we can do with this signal that is audible, than play it back with the same response, rad pat, etc etc. But, of course, you can't actually do this. Is there something in this allegory that can be applied to the general situation, and maybe show a path to some improvement in our playback systems? Yes, we saw that a new paradigm in recording technology would be needed as a prerequisite. We saw that if we could model the playback spatial qualities after the real acoustic event, Constrained to the *original* venue, with a single instrument. If that player piano was in my living room, it absolutely would sound like a completely different performance than the original. This is a very real constraint that is highly variable, and outside the control of recording engineers and speaker manufacturers. it would sound more real, and that if we paid no attention to those characteristics or didn't know about them or beleive them, then it would emphatically sound different from the original. No, you asserted this to be true, without constraints. Yes, with a perfect recording (e.g. the player piano recording) and a perfectly accurate transducer (i.e. the player piano), and perfect placement of that transducer, you can exactly recreate the performance. There is no argument, from anyone I'm aware of, that this is very true. We all get that. We all get it that this is what you're trying to accomplish; that this is what your Model is all about. But outside of the severely constrained example you provide, there is no perfect recording - nothing even remotely close - and there is no perfect transducer. You said above "...if we could figure out how the piano makes sound into the room - what frequency response, radiation pattern, direct to reflected ratio, and so on,...", but that's not even a fraction of the problems in implementing your model. How do you record the radiation pattern? How do you design *A* speaker system with the same radiation pattern of each recorded instrument (or orchestra)? How do you control for vastly different listening rooms? And the biggest problem? It's "who cares?". We are a dying breed if you hadn't noticed, and IMO high-end music reproduction likely won't outlive us. There is simply no market for "better stereo" that would have to be re-imagined, and would have to start at the recording stage. There are major compromises necessary at every stage of the recording and reproduction process that preclude, with current technology and methods, doing what your model suggests. These compromises affect all of us. We choose to focus our attention on the areas of reproduction that are most important for our enjoyment, and our sense of realism. You clearly think "spaciousness" is paramount, and you forgive many less realistic attributes (faults in my model) of systems designed to synthesize that spaciousness. Your blind spot in this argument reminds me of something one of my family members (a Jazz saxophonist) told me "People who don't like Jazz, just don't understand it". Like her, you can't accept that anyone who understands your "theory" could possibly disagree with you. Sorry, but that just isn't the case. And no, I don't like Jazz. What you presented as Logical Tautology was actually a grammatical tautology. Keith |
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#3
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote: In the previous thread about models for how stereo works, why it doesn't sound more realistic, whether the recorded signal contains enough information to reconstruct the performance in another room, and so on, the discussion gets confused with personalities, experience with different systems, taste vs something more scientific, theories vs hypotheses, and on and on until the whole discussion skids to a halt and nothing is transmitted or received. Well, I am here now to change all that. A tautology is a statement whose truth is so obvious and undeniable that it requires no proof. In logic, it means a statement that cannot be denied without inconsistency. I have a simple example that might explain some things about realism in sound reproduction. Suppose that you just love Oscar Peterson's jazz piano playing. While he was still with us, he made some recordings on a player piano like the Yamaha. It records every keystroke, every pressure on the keys, perfectly, so that on playback it is the same as when it was recorded. So imagine that you had one of these pianos and invited him over to play and record same. He sits down and plays. He leaves, later dies. It is a tautology that if you play the recording of his keystrokes on the same piano in the same room it will be a perfect reproduction. I think this one will survive even Dick Pierce. It might survive Dick Pierce, but it doesn't survive Audio_Empire. Presently, the very best way of doing what you postulate, above is via a system devised by a North Carolina computer company called Zenph. They take a (commercial) recording of an artist and run it through a computer program which registers each piano note played, analyzes it for pitch, amplitude duration, and probably a number of other parameters. The computer then turns that information into piano keystrokes that mimic the information gleaned from the original performance. They have then built a device that can exactly replicate those keystrokes when placed in front of a piano (sort of like the old vorsetzer from the late 19th, early 20th Century). They took this player replicator to Toronto Canada to the very studio where the recording they used was made by Gould in 1955. Not only was the studio exactly the same, but the piano they used was the same piano as well. They then had the piano tuned to exactly the same state of tune as Gould's was on the recording dates. Then they invited people from the Gould fan club to come and hear the "re-performance" of their hero's most famous recording, the 'Goldberg Variations' by Bach. After the performance (which was hailed by the assembled acolytes) they recorded the performance using modern mikes for Sony SACD. I have that SACD and I also have the original 1955 mono recording of that performance and I have to say that, ignoring the sonic attributes of either, I'd have to say while the performances are very close, they are not exactly the same. But why exactly will it sound the same? I mean beside that it IS the same. It will sound the same because the sound that is played back will have the same frequency response, radiation pattern, loudness, and position in the room as the "real thing" did when Mr. Peterson actually was playing it. To a certain extent yes, if we ignore the difference in accuracy between Peterson's original playing and your Yamaha Disklavier's registration of that playing. It's not all that accurate, believe me. Like It's 19th century forebearer, the Vorsetzer, The Disklavier makes keystroke "recordings" that are close enough to give lifelike and even thrilling piano concerts right in one's own home. In fact, had I the room in my home, I would have bought a grand piano and had a Disklavier installed in it years ago! But that doesn't say that I believe the system to make perfect registrations of a player's performance. So what? Is there a lesson here somewhere that can be applied to audio? Er, well, yes of course. Let's try to do this thing with speakers instead of a player piano. I am going to close-mike the piano while he plays, with some high quality microphones and even do it with some separation between the low and high keys so that I can delineate their spread. Sometimes even that is not necessary, because we don't really hear that in a live situation, we just hear the sound board coming out of the top and reflected from the raised lid, but never mind for now, just suppose that we have recorded the piano on digital, OK? Not OK. Why not mike the SPACE that the piano occupies rather than the piano. And that idea of "some separation between low and high keys" is wrong in every way, Gary, and you should know this. The type of miking that you seem to be advocating here will result in a piano 12 ft wide with none of the venue ambience that gives a piano its fulsome sound. OMG, this recording contains NO information about where the piano is, or the multiplicity of reverberant effects from all directions that it made in the room, NONE of it. What's a body to do? That's better. You were setting up bad example on purpose for illustrative purposes. Good boy! We plow ahead, undeterred. What the hell do we do with this recording, now that we have it? Play it back "accurately" as is current engineering thought, or go for "realism" so that it sounds like the piano is right there in the room with you? The "accuracy" team puts a speaker where the piano was when it was recorded and aims it toward the listener. This speaker is perfect - flat frequency response, no distortion, time aligned, the works. But somehow, it just doesn't sound the same. What is the difference? What more can we do than play the sound back with perfect accuracy? Well, if Jens Blauert, Mark Davis, Amar Bose, Art Benade, Gary Eickmeier and many others are right, it is because the playback does not have the same radiation pattern as the original piano. So the theory is, if we could figure out how the piano makes sound into the room - what frequency response, radiation pattern, direct to reflected ratio, and so on, the original had, and we could approximate that in the speaker or speakers, then it would HAVE to sound the same. There is no more that we can do with this signal that is audible, than play it back with the same response, rad pat, etc etc. I don't agree with Amar Bose and others here (I have always thought Dr. Bose was a bit of a quack and snake-oil salesman, and his products have always been a triumph of marketing over substance). Bose might have a point if recordings were designed to bring a performance into one's listening room. They're not. At best, they are designed to transport us, the listeners, to the venue where the performance took place, and at worse they are designed just to allow the listener to merely hear all the instruments without any thought of a soundstage or any venue ambience. The microphone, correctly used, captures the space that the instrument or ensemble occupies. If all you want is the instrument sound. you might as well Frap (use contact mikes) all the instruments and be done with it. I've heard that done... I don't want to hear it again! Is there something in this allegory that can be applied to the general situation, and maybe show a path to some improvement in our playback systems? We saw that if we could model the playback spatial qualities after the real acoustic event, it would sound more real, and that if we paid no attention to those characteristics or didn't know about them or beleive them, then it would emphatically sound different from the original. Your conclusion is faulty because it's based on facts not in evidence. We do not see any evidence that proves to us that if we could model the playback spatial qualities of the instruments after the real acoustic event that it would result in more realistic sound from our stereo systems. It's quite a leap in logic to go from an example of someone like Oscar Peterson playing on a Disklavier and then playing that Disklavier on the same piano in the same space and sounding identical to the real performance, and then somehow transferring that (mostly) truism to a performance in a living room playing a commercial recording. IOW, your Oscar Peterson example proves only that Oscar Peterson sounds like Oscar Peterson when playing the same piano that he played before, Whether he plays in person or via an accurate player piano device. It does not prove or even infer that this experience is transferrable to your ideas about sound reproduction. Even if we could prove that what you postulate is true, it's simply not doable. Every recording is different and each brings it's own set of acoustic parameters to the table. Short of using some technology that embeds digital information about the acoustic signature of the recording being played in that recording. And having done that, playing said recording and data back through some system that can, somehow, physically rearrange the room and speakers to conform to those embedded parameters, I don't see how it could even be implemented. Yes, I think there are some very valid and very important lessons there. It has to do with theories of reproduction, models, what is audible about sound in rooms - whether there is anything more scientific we can do than have preferences for this or that. If only someone would come along and put it all together for us... Gary, all of that research has been done. In the 1930's Bell Labs did experiments with up to THIRTY channels of sound (they couldn't record 30 channels in those days, so they had musicians in a soundproof room with 30 microphones feeding 30 speakers in another room). They'd move speakers and change the room around a thousand different ways trying to get what we would call a holographic sonic image of the musicians playing in that other room. Out of these experiments came the final realization (after continuing to remove mikes and speakers one at a time) that two channels and two microphones and two speakers were actually ideal for stereo. Gary, don't you think that If the Bose's concept of "direct-reflecting Sound" had any real merit beyond its marketing appeal, that it would have gained some traction in the industry? By that I mean don't you think that some others company would have, in the ensuing years, copied Bose's principle to make similar, competing products? Yet in the almost 45 years since the 901's first broke cover, no one has ever tried to replicate Dr. Bose's product or use any of his concepts in other products. BTW have you ever heard the MBL Radialstahler 101 or the X-Treme? These speakers (as closely as possible with current technology) mimic the physics ideal of the perfect loudspeaker being a pulsating sphere. The MBLs are (mostly) omnidirectional and yet they throw pinpoint images. They are among the best loudspeakers I''ve ever heard. But then so are the latest Wilson Alexandrias as well and they are just a set of cones in boxes. And the M-L CLX is the most transparent loudspeaker I've ever heard. There are lots of paths to audio nirvana it seems. All of them out of my reach...... 8^) Audio_Empire |
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#4
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
KH wrote:
Keith - Thanks for an interesting discussion - once again - I know that we both care very much about this subject, so I hope you will stay with me for a few excruciatiing further comments  That's ONE of the problems, yes. An integral part of which is the lack of ability to *record* "radiation pattern". This is the essential predicate to re-establishing the same radiation pattern on playback (were we physically/mechanically able to do so). And, we don't. OK, but, as you saw previously, we can synthesize, or approximate it on playback 3-D pattern, 2-D signal. Back into the D's for a minute: We don't usually record height, because that is not real important in most music. It is just the width and depth that I am concerned with. The width part is obvious, but the depth, as AE has mentioned, is more of a learned response based on the loudness and sinking back into the reverberance of the recorded room. However, we also "synthesize" the depth part by placing the speakers in our 3D space of our room, well away from all walls, and then - in my concept - by reflecting a large part of the output from the front wall of the room. This has to do with how sound in rooms differs from sound outdoors or anechoically. When a source is played in a room we get a lot more information about its localization than if we had only the direct sound from that source. The reflection patterns set up a sort of XYZ coordinate on the sound event that gives an auditory event more information to go on, especially if we can move around, turn the head, etc. Short version - we can tell if the speakers are out into the room in OUR 3D space or up against the wall. If we could RECORD using techniques that would capture all of the information needed to reconstruct the identical frequency response, radiation pattern, locations, and sound pressure, AND you could create a speaker system with the identical radiation pattern as the piano, THEN: It would sound very similar, not the same. You could likely make it sound identical within the limits of listener perception. The prerequisites, however, are daunting to say the least. Constrained to the *original* venue, with a single instrument. If that player piano was in my living room, it absolutely would sound like a completely different performance than the original. This is a very real constraint that is highly variable, and outside the control of recording engineers and speaker manufacturers. You said above "...if we could figure out how the piano makes sound into the room - what frequency response, radiation pattern, direct to reflected ratio, and so on,...", but that's not even a fraction of the problems in implementing your model. How do you record the radiation pattern? How do you design *A* speaker system with the same radiation pattern of each recorded instrument (or orchestra)? How do you control for vastly different listening rooms? OK, true enough, but should that stop us from pursuing an improvement, an enhancement to the playback that could make the limited info in a commercial recording sound more real, more like live music? All I was trying to establish with the tautology was that the spatial nature of the original is an important, AUDIBLE part of the reproduction problem. One that perhaps has been ignored in conventional stereo theory - you know, the diagram of how stereo works that shows just two speakers and a head, in an equilateral triangle. In the model of reproduction that I want to mimic the live model more closely, we are simply making an estimate, an educated guess, on the most important parts of what a typical live sound field's spatial nature is like, and trying to get closer to that in the reproduction. The answer to AE's questions about recordings is that only the best recordings contain in addition to the direct sound from the orchestra the early reflected and a touch of the reverberant sound of the venue, just enough to give your playback the "sound" of the original if you can somehow array those recorded sounds spatially in your own room in a similar way as in the original. If the engineer had recorded only the direct sounds by close-miking everything then there would be no real space in the recording. He might get away with synthesizing it electronically, but we would probably be onto him with the best playback systems. In my big theory about how exactly to build the playback model, the positioning of the speakers is very important so that the stronger reflected output will be more of a neutral canvas on which the recorded reflected sound can be arrayed, or painted, if the recording contains these delayed signals. If it does not contain them, the model does NOT make fake ones as you seem to be suspicious of. That part is very hard to explain to people the first time around, but believe me, I do not like synthesized electronic enhancement of any sort to "fake" a night club, rock arena, concert hall, or anything else. EVERYTHING in my playback model comes from the recorded signals, the attempt being to just present this more realistically according to what we know about sound in rooms. And the biggest problem? It's "who cares?". We are a dying breed if you hadn't noticed, and IMO high-end music reproduction likely won't outlive us. There is simply no market for "better stereo" that would have to be re-imagined, and would have to start at the recording stage. There are major compromises necessary at every stage of the recording and reproduction process that preclude, with current technology and methods, doing what your model suggests. These compromises affect all of us. We choose to focus our attention on the areas of reproduction that are most important for our enjoyment, and our sense of realism. You clearly think "spaciousness" is paramount, and you forgive many less realistic attributes (faults in my model) of systems designed to synthesize that spaciousness. I hear you! And I hope everyone realizes that my ideas are of interest only to those of us who are after this ultimate reproduction experience, and that our wives and children may not care or even perceive any of it. Your blind spot in this argument reminds me of something one of my family members (a Jazz saxophonist) told me "People who don't like Jazz, just don't understand it". Like her, you can't accept that anyone who understands your "theory" could possibly disagree with you. Sorry, but that just isn't the case. And no, I don't like Jazz. What you presented as Logical Tautology was actually a grammatical tautology. Keith Well, if you could give me just a teensy bit of credit that I do not actually have a blind spot to any part of it, because I have been studying it for some 30 years, doing it in my own system, and trying to find fault with it, but it holds up to everything I have read and heard. I know full well that it is hard to explain. I had to read the original Bose research paper a couple dozen times before I understood it, but I finally "got" the point about the difference between the spatial and the temporal and was able to separate those out in my mind and use them in my tale. The readers of my paper at the AES could not understand that, and like many others were confused by the difference in size between a home listening room and the real concert hall, saying that the model couldn't work because of that difference. That is the hardest part to get through, they not seeing that they have the same problem, but that they can still do something about the spatial part to make it sound better, then address the physical size part by simply building a bigger listening room! As I asked Arny Krueger to do, it is possible to analyze all of the parts of the listening experience - the audible parts - and examine just what is happening to them as we translate this experience from the redording to the reproduction. If we could get all of the spatial, spectral, and temporal aspects of the experience to be identical, then we would "be there." And you are correct, we cannot do that in the field-type system, but it is for acoustical reasons and not so much about not being able to record full periphony or all of the directional effects with sufficient channels. Gary Eickmeier |
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#5
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Audio_Empire wrote:
In article , "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Oh boy. A lot here to respond to. Is it OK if I edit a little and cut to the chase? It might survive Dick Pierce, but it doesn't survive Audio_Empire. Presently, the very best way of doing what you postulate, above is via a system devised by a North Carolina computer company called Zenph. They take a (commercial) recording of an artist and run it through a computer program which registers each piano note played, analyzes it for pitch, amplitude duration, and probably a number of other parameters. The computer then turns that information into piano keystrokes that mimic the information gleaned from the original performance. They have then built a device that can exactly replicate those keystrokes when placed in front of a piano (sort of like the old vorsetzer from the late 19th, early 20th Century). They took this player replicator to Toronto Canada to the very studio where the recording they used was made by Gould in 1955. Not only was the studio exactly the same, but the piano they used was the same piano as well. They then had the piano tuned to exactly the same state of tune as Gould's was on the recording dates. Then they invited people from the Gould fan club to come and hear the "re-performance" of their hero's most famous recording, the 'Goldberg Variations' by Bach. After the performance (which was hailed by the assembled acolytes) they recorded the performance using modern mikes for Sony SACD. I have that SACD and I also have the original 1955 mono recording of that performance and I have to say that, ignoring the sonic attributes of either, I'd have to say while the performances are very close, they are not exactly the same. Yes, that is what I was talking about. I have the Oscar Peterson CD of the recording of his performance. I don't agree with Amar Bose and others here (I have always thought Dr. Bose was a bit of a quack and snake-oil salesman, and his products have always been a triumph of marketing over substance). Bose might have a point if recordings were designed to bring a performance into one's listening room. They're not. At best, they are designed to transport us, the listeners, to the venue where the performance took place, and at worse they are designed just to allow the listener to merely hear all the instruments without any thought of a soundstage or any venue ambience. The microphone, correctly used, captures the space that the instrument or ensemble occupies. If all you want is the instrument sound. you might as well Frap (use contact mikes) all the instruments and be done with it. I've heard that done... I don't want to hear it again! This is a gross misread of the Bose research and everything I have said about the philosophy of what it is we are doing with the process. It was William Snow, one of those Bell Labs researchers, who said that the object of the binaural system is to transport the listener to the original space, and of the stereophonic system to transport the sound to the listener's room. You asked in your original post in the previous thread, why doesn't it sound like they are right there in your room? My statement is that it is indeed possible for it to sound like they are right there in front of you, while at the same time getting your room to sound more like the recorded space to give it more of the "flavor" of the recorded acoustic. That is a big pill to swallow, but I'm afraid it is the best we can do, because of the central recording problem, and because we simply cannot make a room sound larger by playing a recording of a larger room within it. Is there something in this allegory that can be applied to the general situation, and maybe show a path to some improvement in our playback systems? We saw that if we could model the playback spatial qualities after the real acoustic event, it would sound more real, and that if we paid no attention to those characteristics or didn't know about them or beleive them, then it would emphatically sound different from the original. Your conclusion is faulty because it's based on facts not in evidence. We do not see any evidence that proves to us that if we could model the playback spatial qualities of the instruments after the real acoustic event that it would result in more realistic sound from our stereo systems. It's quite a leap in logic to go from an example of someone like Oscar Peterson playing on a Disklavier and then playing that Disklavier on the same piano in the same space and sounding identical to the real performance, and then somehow transferring that (mostly) truism to a performance in a living room playing a commercial recording. IOW, your Oscar Peterson example proves only that Oscar Peterson sounds like Oscar Peterson when playing the same piano that he played before, Whether he plays in person or via an accurate player piano device. It does not prove or even infer that this experience is transferrable to your ideas about sound reproduction. If you do not agree that spatial characteristics of sound are audible, then I am at a loss how to proceed. Even if we could prove that what you postulate is true, it's simply not doable. Every recording is different and each brings it's own set of acoustic parameters to the table. Short of using some technology that embeds digital information about the acoustic signature of the recording being played in that recording. And having done that, playing said recording and data back through some system that can, somehow, physically rearrange the room and speakers to conform to those embedded parameters, I don't see how it could even be implemented. So what is your solution to all that? You have the same problem I do, but have not any answer. You certainly can't reproduce those qualities by ignoring the problem and playing everything with a direct field. Gary, all of that research has been done. In the 1930's Bell Labs did experiments with up to THIRTY channels of sound (they couldn't record 30 channels in those days, so they had musicians in a soundproof room with 30 microphones feeding 30 speakers in another room). They'd move speakers and change the room around a thousand different ways trying to get what we would call a holographic sonic image of the musicians playing in that other room. Out of these experiments came the final realization (after continuing to remove mikes and speakers one at a time) that two channels and two microphones and two speakers were actually ideal for stereo. No, not "ideal," just the most practical approximation for commercial use. And yes, as I have mentioned, the pioneers knew some things about stereo that we have since forgotten. Gary, don't you think that If the Bose's concept of "direct-reflecting Sound" had any real merit beyond its marketing appeal, that it would have gained some traction in the industry? By that I mean don't you think that some others company would have, in the ensuing years, copied Bose's principle to make similar, competing products? Yet in the almost 45 years since the 901's first broke cover, no one has ever tried to replicate Dr. Bose's product or use any of his concepts in other products. BTW have you ever heard the MBL Radialstahler 101 or the X-Treme? These speakers (as closely as possible with current technology) mimic the physics ideal of the perfect loudspeaker being a pulsating sphere. The MBLs are (mostly) omnidirectional and yet they throw pinpoint images. They are among the best loudspeakers I''ve ever heard. But then so are the latest Wilson Alexandrias as well and they are just a set of cones in boxes. And the M-L CLX is the most transparent loudspeaker I've ever heard. There are lots of paths to audio nirvana it seems. All of them out of my reach...... 8^) Audio_Empire OK, first you poo poo the Bose concept of a combination of direct and reflected sound, then you point out the best reproduction you have heard, from the omnidirectional MBL! Why do you think the MBL sounds the way it does? And no, it has nothing to do with "perfect pulsating spheres." The Bose research project disproved that one, and I don't even know where that concept came from, but it is bunk with no research behind it. I do not understand your saying that you think Wilson speakers sound like MBLs. The Martin Logans are, again, dipolar multidirectional speakers that "splash sound all around" much like 901s and MBLs and have an equal radiation to the rear as to the front. Those factors are what makes speakers sound the way they do, so I propose that in essence you are agreeing with me! Gary Eickmeier |
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#6
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article , KH
wrote: And the biggest problem? It's "who cares?". We are a dying breed if you hadn't noticed, and IMO high-end music reproduction likely won't outlive us. There is simply no market for "better stereo" that would have to be re-imagined, and would have to start at the recording stage. I'm afraid that you have hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head with that statement, Keith. I suspect that High-End audio will largely die with us baby-boomers and older folks. Apparently, except for a very few, the younger generations don't view music the way our generation views it. They might say that they love music, but what they actually do love are the songs that belong to their generation. W'se all do that to a certain extent, But I have friends in their 40's, 30's 20 and I know some of their teen offspring. They don't understand my love of music. "How come you spend tens-of thousands of dollars on playback equipment when all you need is an iPod and a pair of ear-buds?" They don't get the idea of playback quality at all. One friend, in his 40's, once told me that while he could appreciate the sound from my system, he felt that he didn't need that because he could hear what he was *interested* in with his little pre-packaged video surround system. Depressing. --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#7
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Audio_Empire wrote: In article , "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Oh boy. A lot here to respond to. Is it OK if I edit a little and cut to the chase? It might survive Dick Pierce, but it doesn't survive Audio_Empire. Presently, the very best way of doing what you postulate, above is via a system devised by a North Carolina computer company called Zenph. They take a (commercial) recording of an artist and run it through a computer program which registers each piano note played, analyzes it for pitch, amplitude duration, and probably a number of other parameters. The computer then turns that information into piano keystrokes that mimic the information gleaned from the original performance. They have then built a device that can exactly replicate those keystrokes when placed in front of a piano (sort of like the old vorsetzer from the late 19th, early 20th Century). They took this player replicator to Toronto Canada to the very studio where the recording they used was made by Gould in 1955. Not only was the studio exactly the same, but the piano they used was the same piano as well. They then had the piano tuned to exactly the same state of tune as Gould's was on the recording dates. Then they invited people from the Gould fan club to come and hear the "re-performance" of their hero's most famous recording, the 'Goldberg Variations' by Bach. After the performance (which was hailed by the assembled acolytes) they recorded the performance using modern mikes for Sony SACD. I have that SACD and I also have the original 1955 mono recording of that performance and I have to say that, ignoring the sonic attributes of either, I'd have to say while the performances are very close, they are not exactly the same. Yes, that is what I was talking about. I have the Oscar Peterson CD of the recording of his performance. I don't agree with Amar Bose and others here (I have always thought Dr. Bose was a bit of a quack and snake-oil salesman, and his products have always been a triumph of marketing over substance). Bose might have a point if recordings were designed to bring a performance into one's listening room. They're not. At best, they are designed to transport us, the listeners, to the venue where the performance took place, and at worse they are designed just to allow the listener to merely hear all the instruments without any thought of a soundstage or any venue ambience. The microphone, correctly used, captures the space that the instrument or ensemble occupies. If all you want is the instrument sound. you might as well Frap (use contact mikes) all the instruments and be done with it. I've heard that done... I don't want to hear it again! This is a gross misread of the Bose research and everything I have said about the philosophy of what it is we are doing with the process. It was William Snow, one of those Bell Labs researchers, who said that the object of the binaural system is to transport the listener to the original space, and of the stereophonic system to transport the sound to the listener's room. I use the terms interchangeably, I guess, and I shouldn't do that. To me a stereo system is supposed to open a window onto a live performance. You asked in your original post in the previous thread, why doesn't it sound like they are right there in your room? My statement is that it is indeed possible for it to sound like they are right there in front of you, while at the same time getting your room to sound more like the recorded space to give it more of the "flavor" of the recorded acoustic. That is a big pill to swallow, but I'm afraid it is the best we can do, because of the central recording problem, and because we simply cannot make a room sound larger by playing a recording of a larger room within it. First of all the system has to sound like music. With Bose 901s, you have one strike against you right there. 901s sound terrible (to me) they have no highs, the bass is muddy and slow (with the equalizer. Without the equalizer they have NO bass) and that reflected sound off the wall is, to me incredibly annoying and unrealistic. Is there something in this allegory that can be applied to the general situation, and maybe show a path to some improvement in our playback systems? We saw that if we could model the playback spatial qualities after the real acoustic event, it would sound more real, and that if we paid no attention to those characteristics or didn't know about them or beleive them, then it would emphatically sound different from the original. Your conclusion is faulty because it's based on facts not in evidence. We do not see any evidence that proves to us that if we could model the playback spatial qualities of the instruments after the real acoustic event that it would result in more realistic sound from our stereo systems. It's quite a leap in logic to go from an example of someone like Oscar Peterson playing on a Disklavier and then playing that Disklavier on the same piano in the same space and sounding identical to the real performance, and then somehow transferring that (mostly) truism to a performance in a living room playing a commercial recording. IOW, your Oscar Peterson example proves only that Oscar Peterson sounds like Oscar Peterson when playing the same piano that he played before, Whether he plays in person or via an accurate player piano device. It does not prove or even infer that this experience is transferrable to your ideas about sound reproduction. If you do not agree that spatial characteristics of sound are audible, then I am at a loss how to proceed. I'm not saying that they aren't audible. I'm saying that recreating them artificially is not possible. Even if we could prove that what you postulate is true, it's simply not doable. Every recording is different and each brings it's own set of acoustic parameters to the table. Short of using some technology that embeds digital information about the acoustic signature of the recording being played in that recording. And having done that, playing said recording and data back through some system that can, somehow, physically rearrange the room and speakers to conform to those embedded parameters, I don't see how it could even be implemented. So what is your solution to all that? You have the same problem I do, but have not any answer. You certainly can't reproduce those qualities by ignoring the problem and playing everything with a direct field. You listen to the stereo system that you like and be happy that you can come THAT close. Frankly, I'm pretty happy with what we CAN do. I wish the industry would catch-up with me, but they have gone in another direction entirely! Properly recorded stereo sounds magical to me, I can turn out the lights (with a proper recording) and point to each and every instrument in the ensemble with pin-point accuracy. I can hear the highest highs (that my old ears can respond to) and the lowest lows. The midrange is very realistic and distortion-free. I'm content with that because I know what's possible and what's impossible. Gary, all of that research has been done. In the 1930's Bell Labs did experiments with up to THIRTY channels of sound (they couldn't record 30 channels in those days, so they had musicians in a soundproof room with 30 microphones feeding 30 speakers in another room). They'd move speakers and change the room around a thousand different ways trying to get what we would call a holographic sonic image of the musicians playing in that other room. Out of these experiments came the final realization (after continuing to remove mikes and speakers one at a time) that two channels and two microphones and two speakers were actually ideal for stereo. No, not "ideal," just the most practical approximation for commercial use. And yes, as I have mentioned, the pioneers knew some things about stereo that we have since forgotten. Gary, don't you think that If the Bose's concept of "direct-reflecting Sound" had any real merit beyond its marketing appeal, that it would have gained some traction in the industry? By that I mean don't you think that some others company would have, in the ensuing years, copied Bose's principle to make similar, competing products? Yet in the almost 45 years since the 901's first broke cover, no one has ever tried to replicate Dr. Bose's product or use any of his concepts in other products. BTW have you ever heard the MBL Radialstahler 101 or the X-Treme? These speakers (as closely as possible with current technology) mimic the physics ideal of the perfect loudspeaker being a pulsating sphere. The MBLs are (mostly) omnidirectional and yet they throw pinpoint images. They are among the best loudspeakers I''ve ever heard. But then so are the latest Wilson Alexandrias as well and they are just a set of cones in boxes. And the M-L CLX is the most transparent loudspeaker I've ever heard. There are lots of paths to audio nirvana it seems. All of them out of my reach...... 8^) Audio_Empire OK, first you poo poo the Bose concept of a combination of direct and reflected sound, then you point out the best reproduction you have heard, from the omnidirectional MBL! Why do you think the MBL sounds the way it does? And no, it has nothing to do with "perfect pulsating spheres." The Bose research project disproved that one, and I don't even know where that concept came from, but it is bunk with no research behind it. Actually it is true the perfect loudspeaker would be a pulsating (truly omnidirectional) sphere and it would also (here's the difficult part) be infinitely small. This is a mathematical model, and it can't be researched as such except on a theoretical level. I do not understand your saying that you think Wilson speakers sound like MBLs. Well, I can understand your confusion since I never said that. I said that both the MBLs and the Wilson Alexandria XLF were AMONG the best speakers I've ever heard (obviously, for different reasons). I also said that the Martin-Logan CLXs are the most transparent speakers I've ever heard and those are the one's I'd choose if money were no object. No speaker does everything well, so this speaker might impress me in one way, and that speaker might impress me another way. BTW, MBL 101s only work in giant rooms. In the average 14 X 18 living room they don't work at all. The Martin Logans are, again, dipolar multidirectional speakers that "splash sound all around" much like 901s and MBLs and have an equal radiation to the rear as to the front. Those factors are what makes speakers sound the way they do, so I propose that in essence you are agreeing with me! Gary Eickmeier --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#8
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Audio_Empire wrote:
In article , KH wrote: And the biggest problem? It's "who cares?". We are a dying breed if you hadn't noticed, and IMO high-end music reproduction likely won't outlive us. There is simply no market for "better stereo" that would have to be re-imagined, and would have to start at the recording stage. I'm afraid that you have hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head with that statement, Keith. I suspect that High-End audio will largely die with us baby-boomers and older folks. Apparently, except for a very few, the younger generations don't view music the way our generation views it. They might say that they love music, but what they actually do love are the songs that belong to their generation. W'se all do that to a certain extent, But I have friends in their 40's, 30's 20 and I know some of their teen offspring. They don't understand my love of music. "How come you spend tens-of thousands of dollars on playback equipment when all you need is an iPod and a pair of ear-buds?" They don't get the idea of playback quality at all. One friend, in his 40's, once told me that while he could appreciate the sound from my system, he felt that he didn't need that because he could hear what he was *interested* in with his little pre-packaged video surround system. Depressing. When I was a kid I got my first tape recorder, a stereo one, I was maybe 15. We messed around with playing our voices backwards, doing skits, recording some of our 45s Then I found out about stereo tapes and wanted to try that. My uncle willed me his "hi fi" console, which had an RCA jack input, so I used that as one channel and the speakers in the recorder as the other. All I knew was that there were some sounds over there, and some over here, and that was stereo. Maybe the louder you played it the more real it sounded. Later when I was in High School, one fine lunch period a couple of musicians came into the gym and started playing some examples of some jazz pieces. I don't remember but I think it was a bass and some drums. I just remember that I was transfixed. Couldn't move, couldn't go on to lunch or class. I guess our family didn't go to good, live music much, or didn't take us kids. Later yet, I remember going up to the record department of J.L. Hudson's and listening to Ahmad Jamal for as long as they would let me. Everyone else was listening to Elvis and the new Rock 'n Roll, and I was discovering Ella Fitzgerald on the radio. Didn't know who she was, didn't even know she was a black woman, just recognized her voice every time and sat transfixed. I thought "who is that?" and had to seek her out and find some tapes. Made a fool of myself trying to give a speech about her in speech class. But one of my friends was taken with my enthusiasm and went with me to a concert in the Ford Auditorium in Detroit, on the evening of our graduation. We sat in the front row. All she had for accompaniment was a piano trio. She had the audience in the palm of her hand for an hour and a half. When it was over, we exited around the back of the stage after the curtain came down, and as we walked out there she was coming off the stage. Her eyesight was not the best and of course she didn't need to wear her glasses to sing, so she thought we were just some backstage people, and we heard her gushing "They were so kind, so kind." We were so kind! She sang some of the Gershwin songbook for us! It was at the peak of her career, 1962! I saw it, I heard her live right in front of me! OMG! Later in my many musical episodes I met and got autographs from Ella, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Count Basie, McCoy Tyner, Nat Adderly at his home here in Lakeland - he helped me find a trio to play at my wedding 16 years ago. He bemoaned the state of jazz appreciation in this country. So do I. Gary Eickmeier |
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#9
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
On 4/22/2013 7:34 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
KH wrote: Keith - Thanks for an interesting discussion - once again - I know that we both care very much about this subject, so I hope you will stay with me for a few excruciatiing further comments That's ONE of the problems, yes. An integral part of which is the lack of ability to *record* "radiation pattern". This is the essential predicate to re-establishing the same radiation pattern on playback (were we physically/mechanically able to do so). And, we don't. OK, but, as you saw previously, we can synthesize, or approximate it on playback 3-D pattern, 2-D signal. While I have read this news group for some time and Keith can surely answer for himself, I don't think the 3-Ds he is referring to are spacial dimensions. The three are time, amplitude and direction. Of these the microphone captures only time and amplitude which are are the contents of the 2-D signal. Don Back into the D's for a minute: We don't usually record height, because that is not real important in most music. It is just the width and depth that I am concerned with. The width part is obvious, but the depth, as AE has mentioned, is more of a learned response based on the loudness and sinking back into the reverberance of the recorded room. However, we also "synthesize" the depth part by placing the speakers in our 3D space of our room, well away from all walls, and then - in my concept - by reflecting a large part of the output from the front wall of the room. This has to do with how sound in rooms differs from sound outdoors or anechoically. When a source is played in a room we get a lot more information about its localization than if we had only the direct sound from that source. The reflection patterns set up a sort of XYZ coordinate on the sound event that gives an auditory event more information to go on, especially if we can move around, turn the head, etc. Short version - we can tell if the speakers are out into the room in OUR 3D space or up against the wall. If we could RECORD using techniques that would capture all of the information needed to reconstruct the identical frequency response, radiation pattern, locations, and sound pressure, AND you could create a speaker system with the identical radiation pattern as the piano, THEN: It would sound very similar, not the same. You could likely make it sound identical within the limits of listener perception. The prerequisites, however, are daunting to say the least. Constrained to the *original* venue, with a single instrument. If that player piano was in my living room, it absolutely would sound like a completely different performance than the original. This is a very real constraint that is highly variable, and outside the control of recording engineers and speaker manufacturers. You said above "...if we could figure out how the piano makes sound into the room - what frequency response, radiation pattern, direct to reflected ratio, and so on,...", but that's not even a fraction of the problems in implementing your model. How do you record the radiation pattern? How do you design *A* speaker system with the same radiation pattern of each recorded instrument (or orchestra)? How do you control for vastly different listening rooms? OK, true enough, but should that stop us from pursuing an improvement, an enhancement to the playback that could make the limited info in a commercial recording sound more real, more like live music? All I was trying to establish with the tautology was that the spatial nature of the original is an important, AUDIBLE part of the reproduction problem. One that perhaps has been ignored in conventional stereo theory - you know, the diagram of how stereo works that shows just two speakers and a head, in an equilateral triangle. In the model of reproduction that I want to mimic the live model more closely, we are simply making an estimate, an educated guess, on the most important parts of what a typical live sound field's spatial nature is like, and trying to get closer to that in the reproduction. The answer to AE's questions about recordings is that only the best recordings contain in addition to the direct sound from the orchestra the early reflected and a touch of the reverberant sound of the venue, just enough to give your playback the "sound" of the original if you can somehow array those recorded sounds spatially in your own room in a similar way as in the original. If the engineer had recorded only the direct sounds by close-miking everything then there would be no real space in the recording. He might get away with synthesizing it electronically, but we would probably be onto him with the best playback systems. In my big theory about how exactly to build the playback model, the positioning of the speakers is very important so that the stronger reflected output will be more of a neutral canvas on which the recorded reflected sound can be arrayed, or painted, if the recording contains these delayed signals. If it does not contain them, the model does NOT make fake ones as you seem to be suspicious of. That part is very hard to explain to people the first time around, but believe me, I do not like synthesized electronic enhancement of any sort to "fake" a night club, rock arena, concert hall, or anything else. EVERYTHING in my playback model comes from the recorded signals, the attempt being to just present this more realistically according to what we know about sound in rooms. And the biggest problem? It's "who cares?". We are a dying breed if you hadn't noticed, and IMO high-end music reproduction likely won't outlive us. There is simply no market for "better stereo" that would have to be re-imagined, and would have to start at the recording stage. There are major compromises necessary at every stage of the recording and reproduction process that preclude, with current technology and methods, doing what your model suggests. These compromises affect all of us. We choose to focus our attention on the areas of reproduction that are most important for our enjoyment, and our sense of realism. You clearly think "spaciousness" is paramount, and you forgive many less realistic attributes (faults in my model) of systems designed to synthesize that spaciousness. I hear you! And I hope everyone realizes that my ideas are of interest only to those of us who are after this ultimate reproduction experience, and that our wives and children may not care or even perceive any of it. Your blind spot in this argument reminds me of something one of my family members (a Jazz saxophonist) told me "People who don't like Jazz, just don't understand it". Like her, you can't accept that anyone who understands your "theory" could possibly disagree with you. Sorry, but that just isn't the case. And no, I don't like Jazz. What you presented as Logical Tautology was actually a grammatical tautology. Keith Well, if you could give me just a teensy bit of credit that I do not actually have a blind spot to any part of it, because I have been studying it for some 30 years, doing it in my own system, and trying to find fault with it, but it holds up to everything I have read and heard. I know full well that it is hard to explain. I had to read the original Bose research paper a couple dozen times before I understood it, but I finally "got" the point about the difference between the spatial and the temporal and was able to separate those out in my mind and use them in my tale. The readers of my paper at the AES could not understand that, and like many others were confused by the difference in size between a home listening room and the real concert hall, saying that the model couldn't work because of that difference. That is the hardest part to get through, they not seeing that they have the same problem, but that they can still do something about the spatial part to make it sound better, then address the physical size part by simply building a bigger listening room! As I asked Arny Krueger to do, it is possible to analyze all of the parts of the listening experience - the audible parts - and examine just what is happening to them as we translate this experience from the redording to the reproduction. If we could get all of the spatial, spectral, and temporal aspects of the experience to be identical, then we would "be there." And you are correct, we cannot do that in the field-type system, but it is for acoustical reasons and not so much about not being able to record full periphony or all of the directional effects with sufficient channels. Gary Eickmeier |
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#10
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Audio_Empire wrote:
In article , "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: First of all the system has to sound like music. With Bose 901s, you have one strike against you right there. 901s sound terrible (to me) they have no highs, the bass is muddy and slow (with the equalizer. Without the equalizer they have NO bass) and that reflected sound off the wall is, to me incredibly annoying and unrealistic. This is, of course, the biggest and most frustrating stumbling block in trying to relate my story. As soon as they get wind of my using 901s in my system, "nanner nanner, he can't be right, he likes Bose 901s - ha ha, Bose, no highs no lows, must be Bose." And I can sympathize with all who say that, because they have not been demonstrated properly in about 40 years. I opened my tale with how I discovered a tragic fault with the Bose owners manual. It had us placing the 901s from a foot to a foot and a half from the front and side walls. That is not just wrong, it is disaster in the making. The only reason I can think of for them to be doing that is to make "the public" think that they can be placed almost anywhere and give that great, Bose spacious sound. Well, they can't, and no company can change the laws of acoustics with an owners manual. Long story short, I have mine 5 ft from front and side walls, and I am incorporating a Velodyne F1800 subwoofer. My system images like a striped-assed ape, puts out sound power like the Second Coming, and has a power response that has no limits with any recording I have of my thousands. Believe it or leave it, you have not heard 901s yet. You listen to the stereo system that you like and be happy that you can come THAT close. Frankly, I'm pretty happy with what we CAN do. I wish the industry would catch-up with me, but they have gone in another direction entirely! Properly recorded stereo sounds magical to me, I can turn out the lights (with a proper recording) and point to each and every instrument in the ensemble with pin-point accuracy. I can hear the highest highs (that my old ears can respond to) and the lowest lows. The midrange is very realistic and distortion-free. I'm content with that because I know what's possible and what's impossible. What are you listening to again? I forgot. BTW, MBL 101s only work in giant rooms. In the average 14 X 18 living room they don't work at all. That is because an omni is still a little too hot in the direct sound. You need to back off from them a certain distance for the direct sound to go down to something more Bose like, and live sound like. Gary Eickmeier |
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#11
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Donald White wrote:
On 4/22/2013 7:34 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote: KH wrote: 3-D pattern, 2-D signal. While I have read this news group for some time and Keith can surely answer for himself, I don't think the 3-Ds he is referring to are spacial dimensions. The three are time, amplitude and direction. Of these the microphone captures only time and amplitude which are are the contents of the 2-D signal. Don Well, that's different! I'm sure Keith can answer for himself on this one, but I would say that the 3D means the same as the Greek derivation of "stereophonic," or "solid," three dimensional as opposed to flat, two dimensional, width only. Gary Eickmeier |
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#12
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
"Audio_Empire" wrote in message
... I suspect that High-End audio will largely die with us baby-boomers and older folks. As you seem to define high end audio, yes. As it morphs, not so much. Apparently, except for a very few, the younger generations don't view music the way our generation views it. Just sitting down and listening to just recorded music and doing nothing else as a preferred activity will largely die with our generation. Listening to music has become an "and" process instead of an "or" process. People now listen to music as they do something else, and that something else may be the main activity that is getting their primary attention. So, the experience is music and, and not so much music or. They might say that they love music, but what they actually do love are the songs that belong to their generation. No difference there! ;-) W'se all do that to a certain extent, But I have friends in their 40's, 30's 20 and I know some of their teen offspring. They don't understand my love of music. Read what follows. What they don't follow is how you express your love of music. "How come you spend tens-of thousands of dollars on playback equipment when all you need is an iPod and a pair of ear-buds?" They don't get the idea of playback quality at all. The error here is the lack of affirmation of the true knowledge that a good digital player and a fine pair of headphones or earphones can be as accurate and enveloping or even more so than the dedicated room and jillions of dollars worth of racks and boxes of equipment. One friend, in his 40's, once told me that while he could appreciate the sound from my system, he felt that he didn't need that because he could hear what he was *interested* in with his little pre-packaged video surround system. Depressing. The physical size and cost that equipment has to have in order to be enveloping and accurate has decreased significantly. A Sansa Clip and a pair of Sony XBA-2 earphones (for example) should not be pooh-poohed in the way that many seem prone to do. |
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#13
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Donald White wrote: On 4/22/2013 7:34 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote: KH wrote: 3-D pattern, 2-D signal. While I have read this news group for some time and Keith can surely answer for himself, I don't think the 3-Ds he is referring to are spacial dimensions. The three are time, amplitude and direction. Of these the microphone captures only time and amplitude which are are the contents of the 2-D signal. Don Well, that's different! I'm sure Keith can answer for himself on this one, but I would say that the 3D means the same as the Greek derivation of "stereophonic," or "solid," three dimensional as opposed to flat, two dimensional, width only. Gary Eickmeier That's correct. Three dimensional sound has width, depth and height. |
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#14
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Audio_Empire wrote: In article , KH wrote: And the biggest problem? It's "who cares?". We are a dying breed if you hadn't noticed, and IMO high-end music reproduction likely won't outlive us. There is simply no market for "better stereo" that would have to be re-imagined, and would have to start at the recording stage. I'm afraid that you have hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head with that statement, Keith. I suspect that High-End audio will largely die with us baby-boomers and older folks. Apparently, except for a very few, the younger generations don't view music the way our generation views it. They might say that they love music, but what they actually do love are the songs that belong to their generation. W'se all do that to a certain extent, But I have friends in their 40's, 30's 20 and I know some of their teen offspring. They don't understand my love of music. "How come you spend tens-of thousands of dollars on playback equipment when all you need is an iPod and a pair of ear-buds?" They don't get the idea of playback quality at all. One friend, in his 40's, once told me that while he could appreciate the sound from my system, he felt that he didn't need that because he could hear what he was *interested* in with his little pre-packaged video surround system. Depressing. When I was a kid I got my first tape recorder, a stereo one, I was maybe 15. We messed around with playing our voices backwards, doing skits, recording some of our 45s Then I found out about stereo tapes and wanted to try that. My uncle willed me his "hi fi" console, which had an RCA jack input, so I used that as one channel and the speakers in the recorder as the other. All I knew was that there were some sounds over there, and some over here, and that was stereo. Maybe the louder you played it the more real it sounded. Later when I was in High School, one fine lunch period a couple of musicians came into the gym and started playing some examples of some jazz pieces. I don't remember but I think it was a bass and some drums. I just remember that I was transfixed. Couldn't move, couldn't go on to lunch or class. I guess our family didn't go to good, live music much, or didn't take us kids. Later yet, I remember going up to the record department of J.L. Hudson's and listening to Ahmad Jamal for as long as they would let me. Everyone else was listening to Elvis and the new Rock 'n Roll, and I was discovering Ella Fitzgerald on the radio. Didn't know who she was, didn't even know she was a black woman, just recognized her voice every time and sat transfixed. I thought "who is that?" and had to seek her out and find some tapes. Made a fool of myself trying to give a speech about her in speech class. But one of my friends was taken with my enthusiasm and went with me to a concert in the Ford Auditorium in Detroit, on the evening of our graduation. We sat in the front row. All she had for accompaniment was a piano trio. She had the audience in the palm of her hand for an hour and a half. When it was over, we exited around the back of the stage after the curtain came down, and as we walked out there she was coming off the stage. Her eyesight was not the best and of course she didn't need to wear her glasses to sing, so she thought we were just some backstage people, and we heard her gushing "They were so kind, so kind." We were so kind! She sang some of the Gershwin songbook for us! It was at the peak of her career, 1962! I saw it, I heard her live right in front of me! OMG! Later in my many musical episodes I met and got autographs from Ella, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Count Basie, McCoy Tyner, Nat Adderly at his home here in Lakeland - he helped me find a trio to play at my wedding 16 years ago. He bemoaned the state of jazz appreciation in this country. So do I. Gary Eickmeier My story is similar. As a teen, I found a fairly new Roberts "Crossfield" 770 (really an Akai) at an estate sale auction and purchased it for 5 bucks (there were no other bids). I bought a couple of cheap mikes from Layfayette Radio, mail order and went around recording everything, especially our high-school band. I also made the first recording ever done of Emmy Lou Harris, the country singer. She was a high-school friend and was into aping Joan Baez in those days (boy do I wish I'd have kept THAT tape!) I also started recording off of FM and had a number of tapes of the famous Washington DC "Watergate Concerts" I wish I still had them as well. FM was uncompressed and un-limited in those days, and the radio station carrying the broadcasts had just recently gone stereo. I had added a Knight-Kit stereo multiplex adapter to my Eico HTF-90 FM tuner and could receive the broadcasts is stereo. For listening I had a two Knight-Kit 18-Watt mono integrated amplifiers and two 12 " bass reflex speakers (EV "Wolverine" 12"") in cabinets my dad built for me (he was an amateur cabinet maker, and a talented one). I think I enjoyed that old system much more than I enjoyed any system I've had since then. FM radio was filled with great music, and it SOUNDED good too. There were lots of live concerts in DC as well. If it wasn't the National Symphony live from the rotunda of the Natural History museum, it was one of the President's bands (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force) giving concerts almost any night (if they weren't playing at a State Occasion they had little else to do). Yeah, it's called Nostalgia. --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#15
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Audio_Empire wrote: In article , "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: First of all the system has to sound like music. With Bose 901s, you have one strike against you right there. 901s sound terrible (to me) they have no highs, the bass is muddy and slow (with the equalizer. Without the equalizer they have NO bass) and that reflected sound off the wall is, to me incredibly annoying and unrealistic. This is, of course, the biggest and most frustrating stumbling block in trying to relate my story. As soon as they get wind of my using 901s in my system, "nanner nanner, he can't be right, he likes Bose 901s - ha ha, Bose, no highs no lows, must be Bose." And I can sympathize with all who say that, because they have not been demonstrated properly in about 40 years. I opened my tale with how I discovered a tragic fault with the Bose owners manual. It had us placing the 901s from a foot to a foot and a half from the front and side walls. That is not just wrong, it is disaster in the making. The only reason I can think of for them to be doing that is to make "the public" think that they can be placed almost anywhere and give that great, Bose spacious sound. Well, they can't, and no company can change the laws of acoustics with an owners manual. Long story short, I have mine 5 ft from front and side walls, and I am incorporating a Velodyne F1800 subwoofer. My system images like a striped-assed ape, puts out sound power like the Second Coming, and has a power response that has no limits with any recording I have of my thousands. Believe it or leave it, you have not heard 901s yet. The pair I had I tried in every configuration imaginable including around 5 ft (and 6ft and 7 fit. At the time I lived in a loft-like place with huge open spaces) out from any reflective surface. I never liked them and didn't keep them long. I didn't even think that they made decent surround speakers. You listen to the stereo system that you like and be happy that you can come THAT close. Frankly, I'm pretty happy with what we CAN do. I wish the industry would catch-up with me, but they have gone in another direction entirely! Properly recorded stereo sounds magical to me, I can turn out the lights (with a proper recording) and point to each and every instrument in the ensemble with pin-point accuracy. I can hear the highest highs (that my old ears can respond to) and the lowest lows. The midrange is very realistic and distortion-free. I'm content with that because I know what's possible and what's impossible. What are you listening to again? I forgot. Martin-Logan Vistas. And while flat-panel electrostatics can be considered bi-polar, M-Ls are not. The curved screen focuses the back wave in on itself so the bi-polar effect is largely lost. Even so, I was a Magnaplanar enthusiasts for many years (still am, actually, but I think electrostatics are just better) and though they are true bipolar speakers they do not do what Bose 901s do (thankfully). BTW, MBL 101s only work in giant rooms. In the average 14 X 18 living room they don't work at all. That is because an omni is still a little too hot in the direct sound. You need to back off from them a certain distance for the direct sound to go down to something more Bose like, and live sound like. Believe me, if Bose 901s sounded ANYTHING like MBLs, I would still be listening to them. Everybody has different tastes. I'm not trying to impugn yours, just demonstrate how mine differs. --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#16
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
On 4/23/2013 3:18 PM, Audio_Empire wrote:
In article , "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Donald White wrote: On 4/22/2013 7:34 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote: KH wrote: 3-D pattern, 2-D signal. While I have read this news group for some time and Keith can surely answer for himself, I don't think the 3-Ds he is referring to are spacial dimensions. The three are time, amplitude and direction. Of these the microphone captures only time and amplitude which are are the contents of the 2-D signal. Don Well, that's different! I'm sure Keith can answer for himself on this one, but I would say that the 3D means the same as the Greek derivation of "stereophonic," or "solid," three dimensional as opposed to flat, two dimensional, width only. Gary Eickmeier That's correct. Three dimensional sound has width, depth and height. Actually no, I wasn't referring to solid geometry. As Donald states, I'm talking about time, amplitude, and direction. Hence all the discussion surrounding vector information. A 2-D signal does not contain directional information that is not just required, but is an intrinsic property of a vector. Acoustic signals comprise multitudinous vectors. It's the vector summation, filtered and transformed via the HRTF that allows identification, aurally, of three dimensions. It's the angular component that is excised during transduction. Perhaps this is some of the confusion. I thought vectors would be well understood in the discussion. Keith |
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#17
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote: "Audio_Empire" wrote in message ... I suspect that High-End audio will largely die with us baby-boomers and older folks. As you seem to define high end audio, yes. As it morphs, not so much. Apparently, except for a very few, the younger generations don't view music the way our generation views it. Just sitting down and listening to just recorded music and doing nothing else as a preferred activity will largely die with our generation. Listening to music has become an "and" process instead of an "or" process. People now listen to music as they do something else, and that something else may be the main activity that is getting their primary attention. So, the experience is music and, and not so much music or. And that's sad really, because listening to serious music is an intellectual exercise. Not giving it all the attention it warrants is like reading Spinoza or Marcel Proust while having sex. Your attention just isn't 100% on your reading! 8^) They might say that they love music, but what they actually do love are the songs that belong to their generation. No difference there! ;-) Uh, yes there is. Pop music is (and has been for many years) mostly about the lyrics, I.E. "poetry" with a beat. Largely speaking the melody has been irrelevant. That's why pop music has morphed into rap and hip-hop finally eliminating everything EXCEPT the lyrics and the beat. W'se all do that to a certain extent, But I have friends in their 40's, 30's 20 and I know some of their teen offspring. They don't understand my love of music. Read what follows. What they don't follow is how you express your love of music. "How come you spend tens-of thousands of dollars on playback equipment when all you need is an iPod and a pair of ear-buds?" They don't get the idea of playback quality at all. The error here is the lack of affirmation of the true knowledge that a good digital player and a fine pair of headphones or earphones can be as accurate and enveloping or even more so than the dedicated room and jillions of dollars worth of racks and boxes of equipment. While that MIGHT be so, It's not their criticism at all. They don't listen with a "good digital player" and a fine pair of headphones. They listen with an iPod and cheap pair of earbuds. One friend, in his 40's, once told me that while he could appreciate the sound from my system, he felt that he didn't need that because he could hear what he was *interested* in with his little pre-packaged video surround system. Depressing. The physical size and cost that equipment has to have in order to be enveloping and accurate has decreased significantly. A Sansa Clip and a pair of Sony XBA-2 earphones (for example) should not be pooh-poohed in the way that many seem prone to do. Who is pooh-poohing anything? I use an iPod occasionally to listen to music casually, Lossless compression and Sony MDR-6s of course. But you seem to be singularly intent on using my anecdote to reinforce your opinion: I.E. that all high-end audio is bunk. Now I have no comment on your opinion, because we've been there countless times, but I will say that your interpretation wasn't the point of my post or of my friend's comments at all. Their personal point, and my larger point was just what you said above, before your soapbox got the better of you. I.E. that the idea of sitting down and listening to great music (and great music comes in all genres, classical, jazz, folk, even rock and so-called "easy listening" (Sinatra, Bing, Steve and Eddie, etc., all doing their interpretations of the "Great American Songbook") is passé and therefore spending any money on equipment that would get one closer and MORE INVOLVED in the music isn't a part of their lifestyle nor has it any priority in their lives. This is what is tragic. That society seems to be on it's way to the human race becoming more Eloi-like with each successive generation. '"Books? Yes, we have books." As they crumbled to dust in his hand.' --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#18
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
On 4/23/2013 6:18 AM, Arny Krueger wrote:
"Audio_Empire" wrote in message ... I suspect that High-End audio will largely die with us baby-boomers and older folks. As you seem to define high end audio, yes. Well, yes, that goes without saying. But my definition is not mega-buck, it's more related to need for high quality reproduction of music - as an activity, not a background operation - in order to be satisfied. As it morphs, not so much. Sorry, can't agree with you there based on my experience. I wish it were so. Apparently, except for a very few, the younger generations don't view music the way our generation views it. Just sitting down and listening to just recorded music and doing nothing else as a preferred activity will largely die with our generation. Listening to music has become an "and" process instead of an "or" process. People now listen to music as they do something else, and that something else may be the main activity that is getting their primary attention. So, the experience is music and, and not so much music or. And I do the same as well - on airplanes for hours on end, and while reviewing reams of data, etc. - but that *I* don't consider to be part of "high-end" listening. YMMV snip The physical size and cost that equipment has to have in order to be enveloping and accurate has decreased significantly. A Sansa Clip and a pair of Sony XBA-2 earphones (for example) should not be pooh-poohed in the way that many seem prone to do. This is absolutely true IME, yet it hardly compares to a real full-range system. I'm not saying that "kids" can't appreciate...yadda, yadda,...it's just that, as you relate, the video generation never really had the audio-only immersion that we (old guys) did (chemically enhanced or not), and as a result just don't relate to it in the same manner as we do. Keith |
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#19
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
KH wrote:
Actually no, I wasn't referring to solid geometry. As Donald states, I'm talking about time, amplitude, and direction. Hence all the discussion surrounding vector information. A 2-D signal does not contain directional information that is not just required, but is an intrinsic property of a vector. Acoustic signals comprise multitudinous vectors. It's the vector summation, filtered and transformed via the HRTF that allows identification, aurally, of three dimensions. It's the angular component that is excised during transduction. Perhaps this is some of the confusion. I thought vectors would be well understood in the discussion. Keith So Keith Howard says there is no directional information in a stereo recording? Just time and amplitude? Then what, pray tell, is the difference from mono? Gary Eickmeier |
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#20
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Arny Krueger wrote:
"Audio_Empire" wrote in message ... The error here is the lack of affirmation of the true knowledge that a good digital player and a fine pair of headphones or earphones can be as accurate and enveloping or even more so than the dedicated room and jillions of dollars worth of racks and boxes of equipment. One friend, in his 40's, once told me that while he could appreciate the sound from my system, he felt that he didn't need that because he could hear what he was *interested* in with his little pre-packaged video surround system. Depressing. The physical size and cost that equipment has to have in order to be enveloping and accurate has decreased significantly. A Sansa Clip and a pair of Sony XBA-2 earphones (for example) should not be pooh-poohed in the way that many seem prone to do. In my fanciful Mars article, in which an imaginary trip to Mars by the AES introduces the Martians to loudspeaker stereo rather than the only system they had ever known, headphones, the team remarks on their success: "The demonstration went extremely well. It is so refreshing to see beings who had never been exposed to this type of reproduction jumping up and down, screaming, and at times weeping over the beauty and realism of the music. They had never been able to move around, dance, and interact with each other before during a hi fi experience, unencumbered with headphones. They had never felt the chest-thumping bass or been able to turn toward the soloists and practically 'see' them playing. They enjoyed this pure audio experience even more than a complete AV bit, feeling that they were in the living presence of the performers even without the visuals." Gary Eickmeier |
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#21
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Audio_Empire wrote:
In article , Martin-Logan Vistas. And while flat-panel electrostatics can be considered bi-polar, M-Ls are not. The curved screen focuses the back wave in on itself so the bi-polar effect is largely lost. Even so, I was a Magnaplanar enthusiasts for many years (still am, actually, but I think electrostatics are just better) and though they are true bipolar speakers they do not do what Bose 901s do (thankfully). Everybody has different tastes. I'm not trying to impugn yours, just demonstrate how mine differs. I'm sure you meant dipolar, not bipolar. And as a matter of fact, I do NOT believe that our tastes differ, just that you have not heard my system yet. I know it is pointless to say that without the pudding of proof, but if you ever get to Florida.... It's funny how susceptible they are to the room acoustics and speaker positioning, which is one of the ways I was able to discover some of the principles in my IMT - because slight changes in these factors can make huge differences in the sound, and when it locks in the rewards are worth it and very illustrative. Gary Eickmeier |
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#22
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
ScottW wrote: On Apr 24, 5:07*am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: KH wrote: Actually no, I wasn't referring to solid geometry. *As Donald states, I'm talking about time, amplitude, and direction. *Hence all the discussion surrounding vector information. *A 2-D signal does not contain directional information that is not just required, but is an intrinsic property of a vector. *Acoustic signals comprise multitudinous vectors. *It's the vector summation, filtered and transformed via the HRTF that allows identification, aurally, of three dimensions. *It's the angular component that is excised during transduction. Perhaps this is some of the confusion. *I thought vectors would be well understood in the discussion. Keith So Keith Howard says there is no directional information in a stereo recording? Just time and amplitude? Then what, pray tell, is the difference from mono? I think directional information is not captured by a single microphone or a single channel but it can be captured (or at least estimated) from multiple mics and recreated from two or more channels in playback. ScottW As has been pointed out previously, the only directional information that can be captured by a microphone is intensity for omnidirectional mikes and on-axis and off-axis response for cardioids and time delay for both. I.E. If put two omni microphones in front of an orchestra about 15 ft apart. Each mike pick-up its half of the orchestra with greater intensity than it will pick up the other half because it's closer to it's half of the ensemble. Each mike will also pick up its off-side delayed slight from the other mike which is closer to its side of the ensemble. There will also be phase differences between the soundfields picked up by each respective mike. It's really not down to any actual directionality at all. Now with cardioids , they have a directional attribute in their pick-up pattern. They are designed to be the most sensitive to sounds directly on axis with the microphone's front . I.E they are designed to be pointed, like a flashlight, at whatever one is trying to capture. Just as a light beam from a flashlight is tight at the source but is cone shaped as it leaves the flashlight and the further one points the beam away from the source, the circle of illumination gets larger. That's sort of (in a very crude way) how cardioid mikes work. Imagine, if you will, being able to mount two flashlights on a foot-long bar, and suspending that bar (from a tripod, perhaps) so that both flashlights shine on a wall, say, 30 feet away. The beams will each be a large, but pretty dim, circle of light and if the flashlights are aimed straight ahead, the two circles of light will intersect. Now, move the two flashlights at an angle to one another and stop when the two pools of light overlap just enough to form the largest common area of illumination before the two pools separate into two distinct circles. You can now see how cardioid mikes work in a closely spaced, coincident pair. The left mike "illuminates" the left side of the ensemble and the right mike "illuminates" the right side, with some overlap in the middle. Where the flashlight analogy breaks down is that a pool of light thrown by a flashlight is pretty even from edge to edge and goes dark altogether outside of the cone of illumination. A cardioid mike, OTOH, would be brightest in the center, with illumination falling off as you get further from the center. So flashlights and cardioid mikes are really the crudest of analogies but the conceptual view of both is pretty valid. Stereo takes TWO microphones. If you are using widely spaced ominis, then it might be useful to use a third in the center and blend that third mike equally into both right and left channels. This is called a center-fill mike. If you use more than two (or three spaced omnis) mikes, then you are pan-potting the mikes into whatever position laterally across the stage you want them to be. This is NOT stereo. Multiple mikes create two channels that have a group of instruments artificially blended in a right-to-left ratio that allows each instrument to be placed along a lateral line, from right-to-left. If you mike each instrument separately, you can produce two or three groups of instruments which sound as if they are located on the right, with another group on the left, and perhaps a third group in the center (called a phantom center channel. This "channel" is monaural). This is the way most jazz ensembles have been recorded for decades. Rock is similarly produced. It is two channel sound, but it is NOT stereo because it registers only left and right information. No depth is captured, no height. It is merely two dimensional, not three. --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#23
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
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. 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. 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 diotic. All of these terms were defined by the pioneers from Bell Labs, and then later forgotten. Gary Eickmeier |
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#24
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
On 4/26/2013 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. snip 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. Not the road to effective communication. Technically the "stereo" part means solid, all three axes. The "phonic" part means on loudspeakers. No, the "phonic" part doesn't mean "loudspeakers" technically, it means an acoustic wave. Etymologically, it comes from "phone", the Greek word for "voice". "Hooked on speakers" would be a totally different product... Keith |
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#25
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
KH wrote:
On 4/26/2013 4:27 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote: Technically the "stereo" part means solid, all three axes. The "phonic" part means on loudspeakers. No, the "phonic" part doesn't mean "loudspeakers" technically, it means an acoustic wave. Etymologically, it comes from "phone", the Greek word for "voice". "Hooked on speakers" would be a totally different product... Keith We are not talking about Greek literature, we are talking about Harry Olson's system definitions. The "phonic" suffix of "stereophonic." Gary Eickmeier |
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#26
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Gary E:
I consider two-channel stereo the "mp3" of stereo! lol It's an approximation of the spatiality of the original recording environme= nt, or, a manufactured image(pan-pot mono). Be very quiet as you read this. Listen to whatever sounds you are hearing,= whatever they are coming from and which ever direction.... That is stereo! Where ever you are - in your house, on a commercial flight= , hanging upside down from a set of parallel bars, rowing a canoe across a = rapid, etc. - is stereo. To practically reproduce the above environments with any number of speakers= is theoretically impossible. Well, binaural done properly comes close, bu= t still, the sound field is limited to and affected by the type(closed or o= pen-back) and quality of headphones you are lisening via. Stereo is everything - the source, proximity to or distance from, the radia= tion pattern, reflectivity sources, vibration transmission - all of that, a= nd more, localize you in that specific environment at that given time. |
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#27
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
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#29
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
On 5/26/2013 10:29 AM, Audio_Empire wrote:
While you are right, of course, as you say, to reproduce it with speakers is essentially impossible (impractical, anyway). But two channel stereo is what we've got (with occasional musical forays into 5.1 or 7.1 surround - but this experience often includes video and is seldom done on its own.). Again, as you say, binaural is close, but binaural recordings are thin on the ground. Even though high-end headphones have become very popular of late, they are still used mostly for private listening as most people would rather listen to speakers. There are several reasons for this. First of all, even the most expensive headphones are not all that comfortable for long-term listening, and headphones lack the visceral involvement with the music that you find when attending live musical events and that one gets somewhat with speakers. Thirdly, while binaural sound does a very decent approximation of the soundfield, the real thing doesn't move with you when you move your head, but with binaural, through headphones, it does. This is so unnatural, that for binaural to give a realistic illusion of instruments playing in real space, one simply cannot move ones head, and that requirement makes listening to binaural uncomfortable with even the most comfortable headphones. The best way to make binaural work, (IMHO) is with a chair, specifically designed for the purpose. Do you recall the so-called "egg chair"? This was a hard plastic egg-shaped shell, sitting on a pedestal, with a cutout for a person to sit in it. The entire interior was upholstered, either with vinyl or leather and when one set back in the chair, they were almost completely enveloped by it. Some had speakers at ear level on each side of the head, but they weren't very good. Now, if someone were to make such a chair and install a pair of very good near-field monitors (self, powered, of course) and supply a self powered sub-woofer to place in the room with the chair, then binaural, would I believe, work quite well and be more than adequately comfortable to listen to. You are /enveloped/ in an egg-shaped chair... hmm; I think that could be claustrophobic. Well, unless you like the idea of returning to the womb. Seems like the same effect would result without the chair. Just have the speakers in similar positions while listening to a 'binaural' recording. Eh? bl |
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#30
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Audio_Empire wrote:
Again, as you say, binaural is close, but binaural recordings are thin on the ground. Even though high-end headphones have become very popular of late, they are still used mostly for private listening as most people would rather listen to speakers. There are several reasons for this. First of all, even the most expensive headphones are not all that comfortable for long-term listening, and headphones lack the visceral involvement with the music that you find when attending live musical events and that one gets somewhat with speakers. Thirdly, while binaural sound does a very decent approximation of the soundfield, the real thing doesn't move with you when you move your head, but with binaural, through headphones, it does. This is so unnatural, that for binaural to give a realistic illusion of instruments playing in real space, one simply cannot move ones head, and that requirement makes listening to binaural uncomfortable with even the most comfortable headphones. The best way to make binaural work, (IMHO) is with a chair, specifically designed for the purpose. Do you recall the so-called "egg chair"? This was a hard plastic egg-shaped shell, sitting on a pedestal, with a cutout for a person to sit in it. The entire interior was upholstered, either with vinyl or leather and when one set back in the chair, they were almost completely enveloped by it. Some had speakers at ear level on each side of the head, but they weren't very good. Now, if someone were to make such a chair and install a pair of very good near-field monitors (self, powered, of course) and supply a self powered sub-woofer to place in the room with the chair, then binaural, would I believe, work quite well and be more than adequately comfortable to listen to. I don't hold out that much hope for "the chair" (sounds like a sentence for high end magazine reviewers) but I sure would like to experience Ralph Glasgal's Ambiophonics system. He has about six large planars set up in his large room with crosstalk cancellation on the front two and some surround processing on the side and back pairs. This description may not be exact but the idea is that it is loudspeaker binaural, in a real room, with surround processing to help out. There is probably a sweet spot, but at least you could turn your head and I believe the performers would stay put where they belong. There would be a strong sense of being there and hearing the full acoustic space of the original if it was a binarual recording. http://www.ambiophonics.org/ With the chair it just seems to me that it would be more like the headphone experience. I think that your ears might just go into and out of the best listening position, and not externalize well. Gary Eickmeier |
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#31
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
Bob Lombard wrote: You are /enveloped/ in an egg-shaped chair... hmm; I think that could be claustrophobic. Well, unless you like the idea of returning to the womb. Seems like the same effect would result without the chair. Just have the speakers in similar positions while listening to a 'binaural' recording. Eh? Al Kooper is said to have such a chair! I remember hearing "Riders on the Storm" in one in a department store way back in the seventies. Stephen |
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#32
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Barkingspyder wrote:
One thing is certain, realistic audio reproduction, the kind you seem to be crying out for is impossible. It is impossible with 2 speakers or 7.1 speakers. It is even less possible with Bose direct/reflecting speaker systems, especially using the inferior drivers they choose. I have had the chance to listen to many different speakers systems and some work better than others, but none of them ever matched real life. Some, however managed to convey very pleasant, worthwhile enjoyment, which given the limits of current technology is fine by me. I don't really see the point of continually claiming it's being done badly or incorrectly when the fact is at it's best, stereo is done as well as it can be. You can't continually complain about it being bad when the fact is it really can't be much better because of the limits of technology. This has all been done to to death and I have come to understand that unless some new scientific breakthrough comes along, making it possible to capture more realistic sound, this is what we have and it's pointless to keep harping on it. You might want to find a place where you can audition a Linkwitz speaker system and see how well 2 channel sound can be done. Dear Spyder, Sounds like you are taking no prisoners, so I will keep it short. First, I didn't say a word about Bose 901 speakers. Second, I just gave you an example of undeniably perfect reproduction, which you pressed on to tell me could not be done, without addressing my example. Third, I do have a new "scientific breakthrough" that I call Image Model Theory. It is a different way of looking at the reproduction problem that leads to different ways of designing radiation pattern and positioning speakers and doing room acoustics. Fourth and finally, using that theory I built some very cheap box speakers with Radio Shack components that I entered in Siegfried Linkwitz's Challenge experiment, and I beat the Orions in a head to head double blind listening session with the criterion of realism of the reproduced sound. Please Email me if interested. Gary Eickmeier |
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#33
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
Bob Lombard wrote: On 5/26/2013 10:29 AM, Audio_Empire wrote: While you are right, of course, as you say, to reproduce it with speakers is essentially impossible (impractical, anyway). But two channel stereo is what we've got (with occasional musical forays into 5.1 or 7.1 surround - but this experience often includes video and is seldom done on its own.). Again, as you say, binaural is close, but binaural recordings are thin on the ground. Even though high-end headphones have become very popular of late, they are still used mostly for private listening as most people would rather listen to speakers. There are several reasons for this. First of all, even the most expensive headphones are not all that comfortable for long-term listening, and headphones lack the visceral involvement with the music that you find when attending live musical events and that one gets somewhat with speakers. Thirdly, while binaural sound does a very decent approximation of the soundfield, the real thing doesn't move with you when you move your head, but with binaural, through headphones, it does. This is so unnatural, that for binaural to give a realistic illusion of instruments playing in real space, one simply cannot move ones head, and that requirement makes listening to binaural uncomfortable with even the most comfortable headphones. The best way to make binaural work, (IMHO) is with a chair, specifically designed for the purpose. Do you recall the so-called "egg chair"? This was a hard plastic egg-shaped shell, sitting on a pedestal, with a cutout for a person to sit in it. The entire interior was upholstered, either with vinyl or leather and when one set back in the chair, they were almost completely enveloped by it. Some had speakers at ear level on each side of the head, but they weren't very good. Now, if someone were to make such a chair and install a pair of very good near-field monitors (self, powered, of course) and supply a self powered sub-woofer to place in the room with the chair, then binaural, would I believe, work quite well and be more than adequately comfortable to listen to. You are /enveloped/ in an egg-shaped chair... hmm; I think that could be claustrophobic. Well, unless you like the idea of returning to the womb. Hadn't considered that. I was just contemplating on the fact that the egg-chair IS a real product that could easily be made to be a quality binaural chair. I've sat in one. pretty comfy, just not conducive to conversation. Seems like the same effect would result without the chair. Just have the speakers in similar positions while listening to a 'binaural' recording. Eh? Sure. Might look a little odd. That's why I suggested the "egg-chair". --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#34
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
On Sunday, May 26, 2013 12:40:09 AM UTC-4, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
gmail.com wrote: Gary E: I consider two-channel stereo the "mp3" of stereo! lol It's an approximation of the spatiality of the original recording environment, or, a manufactured image(pan-pot mono). Be very quiet as you read this. Listen to whatever sounds you are hearing, whatever they are coming from and which ever direction.... That is stereo! Where ever you are - in your house, on a commercial flight, hanging upside down from a set of parallel bars, rowing a canoe across a rapid, etc. - is stereo. No, that is natural hearing. Reproducing those sounds is an entirely separate question. To practically reproduce the above environments with any number of speakers is theoretically impossible. Well, binaural done properly comes close, but still, the sound field is limited to and affected by the type(closed or open-back) and quality of headphones you are lisening via. Stereo is everything - the source, proximity to or distance from, the radiation pattern, reflectivity sources, vibration transmission - all of that, and more, localize you in that specific environment at that given time. Your wild-eyed description of stereo is not helpful. The terms "stereophonic" and "binaural" have been defined by Snow and Olson for over 60 years now. The basic idea is that there are fundamentally two ways of reproducing a sensory experience: reproduce the sensory inputs, as with binaural recording and reproducing the ear signals that a listener on site would experience, or reproduce the object itself, the sound of the orchestra in front of you, as with the stereophonic system, and let your natural hearing experience that. There are problems with both ideas that prevent a perfect reproduction of the live experience. With binaural, on headphones you cannot move your head without the orchestra moving with it, and you get in In Head Localization (IHL) problem that prevents the externalization of the live experience. With loudspeaker binaural, you must still listen in a real room for the externalization to happen, in which case you once again mix the room acoustics in with the recorded acoustic. You are also stuck in a fairly small sweet spot, limiting the technique for large audiences. With stereophonic, which is not limited to two channels but can be done with any number of channels and speakers, you are reproducing the object itself in front of you, the sound of the orchestra and the soundstage surrounding them, in another acoustic space - your listening room. This is potentially the more realistic of the two techniques, because you can move around and get different perspectives on the performance, as in the live situation, and it can be used for large audiences. But it has the "central recording problem," that you must run the sound through two acoustic spaces before you hear it. This is solved mostly by recording much closer to the orchestra than you would with the binaural system so that the result will not be too "swimmy," or "wet" with reverberance. The one aspect of the stereophonic system that is missed by most writers and theoreticians is that once you recreate all of the spatial, spectral, and (the combined) temporal characteristics of the performance within your listening room, and if you do that right, you then are regenerating all of the spatial cues you need for your natural hearing to be able to just listen to the actual (real) sounds right there in your room in front of you and the realism can be stunning because it IS real within your recreation. The above was demonstrated by the AR company and Edgar Vilchur in the 50s and 60s in their Live vs Recorded shows, and is alluded to in my OP, in which loudspeakers are substituted for a player piano to recreate realism that is indistinguishable from the real piano, if you get the radiation pattern the same as the piano would have. Gary Eickmeier __________________ Stereo IS natural hearing! You need to step out of the box Gary. The speaker-box that is. My originaly reply was meant to imply just how difficult it is to really capture and reproduce something as it was heard then-and-there. The phrase "in stereo" does not mean two-channel, and it certainly doesn't mean that something playing over a "stereo system" aka a couple components feeding a pair of speakers. |
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#35
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Audio_Empire wrote: Again, as you say, binaural is close, but binaural recordings are thin on the ground. Even though high-end headphones have become very popular of late, they are still used mostly for private listening as most people would rather listen to speakers. There are several reasons for this. First of all, even the most expensive headphones are not all that comfortable for long-term listening, and headphones lack the visceral involvement with the music that you find when attending live musical events and that one gets somewhat with speakers. Thirdly, while binaural sound does a very decent approximation of the soundfield, the real thing doesn't move with you when you move your head, but with binaural, through headphones, it does. This is so unnatural, that for binaural to give a realistic illusion of instruments playing in real space, one simply cannot move ones head, and that requirement makes listening to binaural uncomfortable with even the most comfortable headphones. The best way to make binaural work, (IMHO) is with a chair, specifically designed for the purpose. Do you recall the so-called "egg chair"? This was a hard plastic egg-shaped shell, sitting on a pedestal, with a cutout for a person to sit in it. The entire interior was upholstered, either with vinyl or leather and when one set back in the chair, they were almost completely enveloped by it. Some had speakers at ear level on each side of the head, but they weren't very good. Now, if someone were to make such a chair and install a pair of very good near-field monitors (self, powered, of course) and supply a self powered sub-woofer to place in the room with the chair, then binaural, would I believe, work quite well and be more than adequately comfortable to listen to. I don't hold out that much hope for "the chair" (sounds like a sentence for high end magazine reviewers) but I sure would like to experience Ralph Glasgal's Ambiophonics system. He has about six large planars set up in his large room with crosstalk cancellation on the front two and some surround processing on the side and back pairs. This description may not be exact but the idea is that it is loudspeaker binaural, in a real room, with surround processing to help out. There is probably a sweet spot, but at least you could turn your head and I believe the performers would stay put where they belong. There would be a strong sense of being there and hearing the full acoustic space of the original if it was a binarual recording. http://www.ambiophonics.org/ With the chair it just seems to me that it would be more like the headphone experience. I think that your ears might just go into and out of the best listening position, and not externalize well. Gary Eickmeier Well, you know Gary, Ambiophonics has been around almost as long as your beloved Bose 901s have been for sale - IOW, more than 40 years! I heard it at a CES show in Chicago in the early eighties in one of the hotel suites down in the loop (I think it was the REALLY old one and not the Conrad Hilton or the Palmer House) The Ambiophonics demo was very impressive, even then. They even had a static display of the microphone array (8 Coles condenser mikes in an octahedron arrangement with a controller/power supply). --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#36
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
Audio_Empire wrote:
Well, you know Gary, Ambiophonics has been around almost as long as your beloved Bose 901s have been for sale - IOW, more than 40 years! I heard it at a CES show in Chicago in the early eighties in one of the hotel suites down in the loop (I think it was the REALLY old one and not the Conrad Hilton or the Palmer House) The Ambiophonics demo was very impressive, even then. They even had a static display of the microphone array (8 Coles condenser mikes in an octahedron arrangement with a controller/power supply). Yes, I know. And every few years some new genius invents loudspeaker binaural all over again and calls it some new pet name. It's novel at first, but in the long run I prefer stereophonic in the classical sense, auditory perspective on loudspeakers placed in your room in geometrically similar positions to the orchestra and generating their sound anew within your space. Come one, come all, suitable for large audiences, no mattress up to your forehead or crosstalk cancellation circuits required. I think I have a fairly ideal system on which I can play most any recording properly and get all of the intended spatial effects out of them. I just did an interesting experiment. My system incorporates surround sound, of course, and the receiver has several modes that can manipulate the sound field around you. I bought a recording of Dr. Chesky's Amazing Binaural Sound Show, which consists of nothing but binaural recordings and sound effects. I looked for the mode on my receiver that can display the stereo channels the widest, and found "Game" and "Neo 6 Speaker" to be able to image the L and R channels completely to the sides. I think it puts the L and LR at equal loudness so that they combine to form an apparent S channel. I wouldn't have thought that could be done, but with identical 901 speakers to the front and the rear/sides, it works. The result was not magical, but it did display the Amazing Chesky's sounds as intended, just a little too distant. It worked great for music, such as a live band spread 180 degrees in front of you, but when it came to the "barber cutting your hair" material, or Chesky whispering into each ear, it was too distant to fool me. I have heard it work amazingly on headphones, but note that it is only these extremely close effects that work that way in binaural. The farther away stuff just starts having problems. But in my experiment, the farther stuff worked great. One thing that never can be overcome is physical size. You just cannot make a small room sound like a large room by playing a recording of a large room within it. You and I are recording engineers - you for real, and me learning - but perhaps you have experienced the same phenomenon after a session. The finest recording played on the finest system simply does not and cannot sound the same as the live group in the huge audition hall. There is nothing that Ambiophonics can do about it, nothing that my system can do about it, nothing that anyone can do about it, and going anechoic is not the answer either. Play even a good surround recording in an anechoic environment, and you get IHL, as described by Floyd Toole. The most realistic reproduction I have heard, bar none, is in a large room, almost performance size room, because the acoustics of that room take over and are REAL and not trickery, and you can move around, and it IS real, happening right up there on stage in front of you, and you are using your natural hearing and every nuance of the live sound experience is present in that recreation, or re-staging of the recorded sound, and all of Arny's and Dick Pierce's "lost" spatial cues are there present and are REAL, happeining all over again for the same reasons theay happened live. Them's the facts of audio life, and maybe that says it better than I have said it before, and I wonder if they are reading this and wish to comment. Corollary to Image Model Theory is my EEFs, or Essential Elements of Fidelity - the four factors of sound that are audible and must be accounted for in comparing live to reproduced. They are Physical size, Power, Waveform fidelity (freq response and freedom from noise and distortion), and Spatial Characteristics. Image Model Theory, or IMT, is contained within the last one. Did you get that crazy set of recordings I sent you? What think ye? Gary Eickmeier |
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#37
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
In article ,
Barkingspyder wrote: On Monday, May 27, 2013 8:05:25 AM UTC-7, Gary Eickmeier wrote: Audio_Empire wrote: Loking at the descriptions of Ambiophonics and Sonic holography, it seems they are working on the same concept, namely eliminating crosstalk. Having heard SH on a demo disc I can say I was impressed with some of the recordings and less so with others. Like any audio experience it all depends on the quality of the recording. I have heard some recordings that were so-called purist recording using just 2 microphones that sounded amazing and quite realistic. I think it always comes down to the quality of the gear being used to do the recording and the experience and taste of the recording engineer. Then lastly but most important is the listener. What pleases the listener is really all that counts. True. Unfortunately, no single recording will please all listeners, and the business of recording, like all businesses these days are so cynical, that many really don't care what their product sounds like as long as it sells to those who have no tastes to please, because they don't care about sound at all. just the "tunes". --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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#38
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
On Sunday, 26 May 2013 04:51:42 UTC+8, wrote:
Gary E: =20 =20 Be very quiet as you read this. Listen to whatever sounds you are hearin= g, whatever they are coming from and which ever direction.... =20 =20 =20 That is stereo! Where ever you are - in your house, on a commercial flig= ht, hanging upside down from a set of parallel bars, rowing a canoe across = a rapid, etc. - is stereo. =20 How can that be? Sound which originates from a single source travels into y= our left and right ears. A violin or a person singing cannot be consider st= ereo. However, when we playback the recordings in stereo we are listening t= wo identical violins or singers over the left and right speakers and it can= not be correct but we accept that as natural. There was two experiments conducted in 1957 and in the 70s to see if audien= ces (3000 of them) could tell difference between live sound and recording. = The experiment concluded they couldn't. How good can the gears and the reco= rding be in the 50s? |
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#39
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
ST wrote:
On Sunday, 26 May 2013 04:51:42 UTC+8, wrote: Gary E: Be very quiet as you read this. Listen to whatever sounds you are hearing, whatever they are coming from and which ever direction.... That is stereo! Where ever you are - in your house, on a commercial flight, hanging upside down from a set of parallel bars, rowing a canoe across a rapid, etc. - is stereo. How can that be? Sound which originates from a single source travels into your left and right ears. A violin or a person singing cannot be consider stereo. However, when we playback the recordings in stereo we are listening two identical violins or singers over the left and right speakers and it cannot be correct but we accept that as natural. That never happens, unless you're sitting in an anechoic chamber. Sound comes from all over. Andrew. |
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#40
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Stereophonic Realism - a Tautology
That never happens, unless you're sitting in an anechoic chamber.
So how does that make stereo accurate in anechoic chamber? We listen to mono sound with a lot of reflections. Stereo simply attempt to create the soundstage illusion. It is unnatural but for the last 50 years or so we are listening in stereo and accept that to be correct. Imagine a small band with the piano to the left, double bass in the centre and the drums on the right. Each instruments emits from a single source. In order to recreate the exact recorded playback perhaps we should put one speaker each at the exact location of the instruments and play the mono recording of the each instrument. It should be more accurate than attempting to recreate the three instruments with a single stereo recording over a pair of speakers. We prefer to listen to the sound coming directly to us by turning our head towards the sound. Unfortunately in stereo, we fix our head to an empty space between two speakers and listen to sound coming from outside of our point of focus. How can that be natural? Do you stare and look right in the centre of the stage irrespective where the sound coming from in a live recording? |
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