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#41
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 10, 5:41=A0am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
Scott wrote: On May 9, 6:13 pm, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Now, at the expense of boring all you technos, let me ask again: Have you ever thought much about radiation patterns of speakers, what should be the correct one, and according to what theory of how stereo works? I thought about it a lot, and it led me to the paper that I quoted a link to you, and then Siegfried Linkwitz asked the question straight out to the entire AES. =A0Yes I have given it some thought. I am of the school of near field listening and minimal room interaction through use of room treatment. I base that merely on personal experience. When you take this approach radiation patterns become less of an issue. When you use full range electrostatic speakers set up for nearfield listening with a great deal of dampening of room reflections it becomes a relatively small issue. =A0I don't agree with what I believe to be your most fundamental premise of how stereo works or should work. IMO it's an aural illusion that includes some if not all of the original soundfield not a reconstruction of an original acoustic event using a new soundfield (the listening room) OK, thanks! I can respect that. But in my long career of listening to tha= t approach, I find that it just sounds too "speakery" and limits all recordings to objects strung on a clothesline from one speaker to the oth= er. My experience is quite different. I have found the aural illusion of a soundfield to be quite three dimensional and in many cases a remarkably convincing illusion. My technical argument is that as long as your ears are free to hear the entire sound field presentation in front of you, they can easily detect t= hat the sound is coming from those two boxes. 1. unless you are roming around the room your ears are not free to hear the entire soundfield presentation. Just as one can detect that the sources of playback are two boxes (if one is using boxed speakers, I am not) one could detect that a 3D movie is really just a 2D image using two images if one takes off the special glasses .The spatial characteristic is changed from the original to that of your speakers and dead room, and ste= reo was never meant to work that way. The spatial characteristics can actually be very well mimiced in an aural illusion if the recording, playback equipment and listening room are up to the task. But we are talking about an aural illusion of a single preset listening position in the original venue. And if you read up on Blumlien's work you will see that it actually was specifically designed to work that way. It was never designed to be a literal reconstruction of a live performance that uses the listening room as a new soundfield. That clearly can't work using two channels and two speakers. You would have to have an individual chanel for each instrument that was recorded in an anechoic chamber and a speaker for each channel placed in the position of where that insturment would be in a live concert. Of course this would also require that each speaker be specially designed to mimic the radiation patterns of each specific instrument and that we have an actual concert hall as our listening space. Clearly that was not the design of stereo recording and playback. I believe that what Linkwitz has discovered, and I before him, is that if you bounce the sound off the walls more, there is an image shift toward t= he reflecting surfaces that causes the sound to go outside the speakers themselves and form itself in a deeper, wider area all across the front o= f your listening room. Aerial images of individual instruments form themsel= ves at points in space where there are no speakers, and it seems quite magica= l. He calls it an Auditory Scene and I call it Image Model Theory. It is cau= sed by the reflected sound. It is the reason that some planars like the Maggi= es and some omnis like the EBLs image so well. I believe what he discovered is a very simple euphonic coloration for the enhancement of the aural illusion of imaging. If you bounce the sound off the walls you are adding colorations. If it makes the sound better it is euphonic in nature. And while it may work to a degree in rooms that are otherwise poor envirements for creating a convincing illusion of the aural transportation to a concert hall IME it is not as good as nearfield listening in a heavily treated room using full range electrostatic speakers and euphonically colored playback gear, specifically certain high end tubed electronics and high end vinyl and vinyl playback equipment. The revolution in thinking that this causes is to consider specular reflectivity around the speaker end of the room, with the room treatment (diffusion along with some normal absorption) as you go further back. The= n you support the rear sound field with surround speakers. You can screw up the magic by mis-positioning the speakers, especially speakers with a highly reflective radiation pattern. Placing them too nea= r the walls causes a "clustering" of virtual images, leading to stretched soloists and a hole in the middle. Ideal placement is 1/4 of the room wid= th from the side walls, and an equal amount out from the front wall. This creates an image model (plan view of all real and reflected images) of 8 equally spaced sources for a lattice of perfectly even, smooth sound with maximum width and depth of the soundstage. The incredible realism of this approach has to be heard, and is worth shouting about. THIS is the direction speaker development needs to progre= ss, not more exotic materials or better cables, which is the original topic o= f this thread. I am glad you like the sound of your system. But what you have described above is hardly unique to that approach to audio playback. I have literally had guests in my house search the room for hidden speakers because the aural illusion of imaging was so startling and convincing. Stereo as it was designed by Blumlien and played back as I desribed works amazingly well. And it works amazingly well with a wide variety of recordings. And that really is the bottom line. What playback system will do the best job with the vast majority of my most beloved recordings. I have heard many Omnis including the top of the line MBLs and I have heard the Bose 901s in many settings including dedicted Bose listening rooms. IMO They just aren't in the same league. And the MBLs are very expensive. |
#42
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
... First, may I be so bold as to suggest that in order for one to reasonably participate in a technical discussion, there is a presumption that one has the appropriate grasp of the underlying principles of the realm being discussed, beginning with, at the very least, a working, correct knowledge of the vocabulary and terminology of that realm. Mr. Eickmeier, your dismissive response and outright avoidance to my questions regarding such basic prinsiples as minimum- vs non- minimum phase properties of systems could be taken as indicative that you are NOT conversant in the field, and suggest that further dicsussion with this common basic for communications and understanding is fruitless. Mr. Pierce, no one could possibly have your technical grasp. Please don't make me look up minimum phase again. I tried several different sources, and I am more confused now than before. It was nothing but calculus, and had nothing that I could see to do with audio. Pure physics. Be that as it may, allow me to address specific points, even though you have seem to have deliberately chosen to counter specific technical points with decidedly non-technicalm and even false rejoinders. Damn. Gary Eickmeier wrote: EQing speakers is really easy. So you say. You say so very emphatically, but you refuse to provide a single shred of support for this rather extraordinary claim, instead, you provide the following: You can go to Radio Shack and buy equalizers. There are parametric, graphic, some with scopes and meters, some built into receivers or processors. They have them in computer programs like Audition and Soundbooth and most all video editing programs. Those guys may not realize that it can't be done, because speakers are not minimum phase systems, but they are still forging ahead with their fantasies. How is the fact the people sell things technical support for their underlying technical validity and efficacy? Please eplxain this rather extraordinary "assertion of proof" to us. The fact that Radio Shack sells equalizers is no more a proof that "EQ'ing speakers is easy" than the fact that McDonalds sells billions of hamburgers is proof that the average American's diet is healthy or even that their hamburgers are any good. But, for the moment, let's take your "proof" on its face: The fact that something is sold "proves" that it is not only technically valid, but it's technical merit is appropriately high. Fine. Let's see how that sword suts. In my vast technical reading, the main point that I saw that was relevant to what you hear is whether you should equalize the direct sound or the power response. But I learned a long time ago that you do not want flat frequency response at the listening position. The MacIntosh people used to publish a "room curve" that their field technicians were told to use to EQ their speakers, rather than a flat response. This was a slightly humped response below 1k with a gradual falloff as you went toward 20k. This would be a spatially averaged room response, or power response, not direct sound, which is usually a very small part of the total sound incident upon the listener. Live or reproduced. Davis's project to develop the Soundfield One was indeed not trivial, but I swear Mr. Pierce said it was impossible, Yes, you swear that, even though you COMPLETELY misread what I said, imn the same way that you seem to completely miscomprehend the technical content and details of Davis' paper. But be that as it may. Damn. So, If you assert, as you essentially do above, that the fact that you can buy equalizers nearly anywhere, and thus they MUST be correct, the same criteria of commercial availability as support for technical merit would suggest that your much revered DBX Soundfield speaker has no such merit, because you can't buy them, in fact, you haven't been able to buy them for quite some time, and they NEVER made a significant impact in the market. Man, when you hit me with logic like that, I just have to slink away and hide somewhere. So back at ya, and if I get more gobbledegook again, I will stop for now. I already got myself kicked out of my audio club for bringing this up once too often. I might suggest you might also have gotten yourself kicked out for your refusal to accept the fact that many of your "theories" are unsupported by facts, and that you have allowed your admitted hero worship to replace technical objectivity. And that when faced with a technicqal challenge to your technical assertion, you have, instead of arguing the poinbt on its technical merits or lack thereof, resorted to misquoting, misattribution, and irrelevancies. But, I admit, that would be a guess on my part. Could also be avoiding the main topic under discussion. Gary Eickmeier |
#43
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... On Mon, 9 May 2011 18:13:53 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): snip Now, at the expense of boring all you technos, let me ask again: Have you ever thought much about radiation patterns of speakers, what should be the correct one, and according to what theory of how stereo works? Radiation pattern? Sure. A pulsating sphere - infinitely small. The first criterion, physically improbable, The second criterion, physically impossible. AE - where did you hear that? Why do you think that? Gary Eickmeier |
#44
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Scott wrote:
My experience is quite different. I have found the aural illusion of a soundfield to be quite three dimensional and in many cases a remarkably convincing illusion. The most interesting part of this whole discussion is that you can't sit two audiophiles down in front of a system and have them agree on anything. Not sure exactly why, but there just doesn't seem to be a "best" system or design that everyone gravitates to. Do you know what I mean? We all have such different experience bases and expectations, we don't even know what the standard is. My technical argument is that as long as your ears are free to hear the entire sound field presentation in front of you, they can easily detect that the sound is coming from those two boxes. The spatial characteristics can actually be very well mimiced in an aural illusion if the recording, playback equipment and listening room are up to the task. But we are talking about an aural illusion of a single preset listening position in the original venue. And if you read up on Blumlien's work you will see that it actually was specifically designed to work that way. It was never designed to be a literal reconstruction of a live performance that uses the listening room as a new soundfield. That clearly can't work using two channels and two speakers. You would have to have an individual chanel for each instrument that was recorded in an anechoic chamber and a speaker for each channel placed in the position of where that insturment would be in a live concert. Of course this would also require that each speaker be specially designed to mimic the radiation patterns of each specific instrument and that we have an actual concert hall as our listening space. Clearly that was not the design of stereo recording and playback. Scott, may I send you a PDF of an article I wrote that addresses that issue? The short answer is that you can reduce the number of channels because of the happy effect of summing localization. You can place an aural event anywhere along a line between two coherent sources, depending on amplitude and/or time differences. As for radiation pattern, you select a general pattern for the entire soundstage, not just a single instrument, and it all works out fairly well. You find you actually want negative directivity - more sound in the reflected than the direct field, because of the nearness of the speakers to you. I believe what he discovered is a very simple euphonic coloration for the enhancement of the aural illusion of imaging. If you bounce the sound off the walls you are adding colorations. If it makes the sound better it is euphonic in nature. And while it may work to a degree in rooms that are otherwise poor envirements for creating a convincing illusion of the aural transportation to a concert hall IME it is not as good as nearfield listening in a heavily treated room using full range electrostatic speakers and euphonically colored playback gear, specifically certain high end tubed electronics and high end vinyl and vinyl playback equipment. Obviously, I can't talk to you on a technical basis unless and until you can tell me what minimum phase systems are, and what they mean to you. (Insert smiley) I am glad you like the sound of your system. But what you have described above is hardly unique to that approach to audio playback. I have literally had guests in my house search the room for hidden speakers because the aural illusion of imaging was so startling and convincing. Stereo as it was designed by Blumlien and played back as I desribed works amazingly well. And it works amazingly well with a wide variety of recordings. And that really is the bottom line. What playback system will do the best job with the vast majority of my most beloved recordings. I have heard many Omnis including the top of the line MBLs and I have heard the Bose 901s in many settings including dedicted Bose listening rooms. IMO They just aren't in the same league. And the MBLs are very expensive. My speech on The Big Three (radiation pattern, room positioning, and acoustics of the room) is that you have to get all three correct before you will stumble upon good imaging. If you have the greatest speakers ever, and position them wrong, you will not know it. If you get the radiation pattern and the positioning right, but have followed standard audiophile practice and put all kinds of sound killing materials on the walls, you will not discover the right answer. I stumbled upon something in England when I was living in a house with plaster walls, with my 901s. I had them grossly mis-positioned, and then decided to experiment and put them further out from the walls like the Brits were doing with their Quads. The differences in positioning are magnified with specular reflectivity like that, and I could hear dramatic improvements in imaging and realism. That was the moment that created the monster that you see before you today. Email me if I can send you a PDF or two. Gary Eickmeier |
#45
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On Tue, 10 May 2011 18:08:07 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... On Mon, 9 May 2011 18:13:53 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): snip Now, at the expense of boring all you technos, let me ask again: Have you ever thought much about radiation patterns of speakers, what should be the correct one, and according to what theory of how stereo works? Radiation pattern? Sure. A pulsating sphere - infinitely small. The first criterion, physically improbable, The second criterion, physically impossible. AE - where did you hear that? Why do you think that? I read that in a paper by Warfedale's Gilbert Briggs many years ago. His conclusions were based on studies about how live music propagates coupled with the size of the sound source that would give the best imaging. The MBL 101, etc. is an (only partially successful) attempt to approximate this pulsating sphere "ideal". Also, we know for a fact that small speakers image much better than large ones, and mathematical models indicate that if smaller is better, then infinitely small would be perfect. |
#46
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... On Tue, 10 May 2011 18:08:07 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): AE - where did you hear that? Why do you think that? I read that in a paper by Warfedale's Gilbert Briggs many years ago. His conclusions were based on studies about how live music propagates coupled with the size of the sound source that would give the best imaging. The MBL 101, etc. is an (only partially successful) attempt to approximate this pulsating sphere "ideal". Also, we know for a fact that small speakers image much better than large ones, and mathematical models indicate that if smaller is better, then infinitely small would be perfect. Have you ever read the famous Bose research that was published in Technology Review? Their whole project was first based on this "perfect point source" legend. They created the Beehive speaker, which sat in the corner and emitted a "perfect point source" wave. They found that it sounded awful, so there must be more to reproduction than that. This caused them to go into the concert hall with the Kemar head and record and compare to reproduced etc etc until the ineveitable conclusion that it was the spatial nature of a live soundfield that was the main difference between live and reproduced. Anyway, such legends are one reason for my (Davis's) statement that the main audible characteristics of a speaker are the radiation pattern and the frequency response. In sum, the differences between live and reproduced (my Big Four) are Physical Size Power Frequency Response, Noise, Distortion Spatial Characteristics This last involves the Big Three - radiation pattern, room positioning, and acoustics of the room. The easiest (most visual) way to study the spatial is to look at the image model of the reproduction and compare that to the live situation and make them as similar as possible. It's a whole deal, and I could send you a PDF of that as well. If the topic sounds interesting. Gary Eickmeier |
#47
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 10, 9:45=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 18:08:07 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... On Mon, 9 May 2011 18:13:53 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): snip Now, at the expense of boring all you technos, let me ask again: Have= you ever thought much about radiation patterns of speakers, what should b= e the correct one, and according to what theory of how stereo works? Radiation pattern? Sure. A pulsating sphere - infinitely small. =A0The= first criterion, physically improbable, The second criterion, physically impossible. AE - where did you hear that? Why do you think that? I read that in a paper by Warfedale's Gilbert Briggs many years ago. His conclusions were based on studies about how live music propagates coupled with the size of the sound source that would give the best imaging. The M= BL 101, etc. is an (only partially successful) attempt to approximate this pulsating sphere "ideal". =A0Also, we know for a fact that small speakers= image much better than large ones, and mathematical models indicate that if sma= ller is better, then infinitely small would be perfect. =A0 We know that for a fact? I sure don't know that for a fact. The best imaging I have ever heard has come from very large dipole speakers. That followed by some pretty large multi-driver speakers form the likes of Vandersteen and Theil. The imaging I have heard from the MBLs and Bose 901s (and this does include a demo by Bose in a custom built room for the 901s) were third and fourth rate compared to the Sound Labs, Certain Martin Logans, The Quads, The Vandersteenss etc etc |
#48
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On Wed, 11 May 2011 06:16:52 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... On Tue, 10 May 2011 18:08:07 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): AE - where did you hear that? Why do you think that? I read that in a paper by Warfedale's Gilbert Briggs many years ago. His conclusions were based on studies about how live music propagates coupled with the size of the sound source that would give the best imaging. The MBL 101, etc. is an (only partially successful) attempt to approximate this pulsating sphere "ideal". Also, we know for a fact that small speakers image much better than large ones, and mathematical models indicate that if smaller is better, then infinitely small would be perfect. Have you ever read the famous Bose research that was published in Technology Review? Their whole project was first based on this "perfect point source" legend. They created the Beehive speaker, which sat in the corner and emitted a "perfect point source" wave. They found that it sounded awful, so there must be more to reproduction than that. This caused them to go into the concert hall with the Kemar head and record and compare to reproduced etc etc until the ineveitable conclusion that it was the spatial nature of a live soundfield that was the main difference between live and reproduced. First of all, I don't put much credence to anything that comes from the fertile 'marketing' mind of Amar Bose and friends. I have never heard a Bose product that I thought was particularaly good or worth what they wanted for it. The 901s sounded terrible, their systems with the tiny satellite speakers sound awful (real high distortion), their noise-canceling headphones are wildly overpriced for the quality you get, etc. (although I will give them the big "wave-guide" radio. It too is overpriced, but at least it sounds halfway decent). This said, it doesn't surprise me that they were unable to make a perfect pin-point source speaker or that it sounded lousy. 8^) I also said that this ideal is impossible and whether or not Bose' s "perfect point source" sounded bad or not proves nothing. The infinitely small point source is ideal for IMAGING, not necessarily for sound quality (in fact, as far as physics is concerned, these are diametrically opposed concepts). For perfect radiation characteristics, the ideal is a pulsating sphere, which, cannot be done with current technology, but might be possible sometime in the future. That's why I said that it's "improbable". Anyway, such legends You haven't proved that either theoretical "ideal" is a legend. |
#49
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On Wed, 11 May 2011 07:45:09 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On May 10, 9:45=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Tue, 10 May 2011 18:08:07 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... On Mon, 9 May 2011 18:13:53 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): snip Now, at the expense of boring all you technos, let me ask again: Have= you ever thought much about radiation patterns of speakers, what should b= e the correct one, and according to what theory of how stereo works? Radiation pattern? Sure. A pulsating sphere - infinitely small. =A0The= first criterion, physically improbable, The second criterion, physically impossible. AE - where did you hear that? Why do you think that? I read that in a paper by Warfedale's Gilbert Briggs many years ago. His conclusions were based on studies about how live music propagates coupled with the size of the sound source that would give the best imaging. The M= BL 101, etc. is an (only partially successful) attempt to approximate this pulsating sphere "ideal". =A0Also, we know for a fact that small speakers= image much better than large ones, and mathematical models indicate that if sma= ller is better, then infinitely small would be perfect. =A0 We know that for a fact? I sure don't know that for a fact. Hmmm Everyone else seems to. The best imaging I have ever heard has come from very large dipole speakers. That followed by some pretty large multi-driver speakers form the likes of Vandersteen and Theil. The imaging I have heard from the MBLs and Bose 901s (and this does include a demo by Bose in a custom built room for the 901s) were third and fourth rate compared to the Sound Labs, Certain Martin Logans, The Quads, The Vandersteenss etc etc Nobody said anything about the MBLs and imaging. They were mentioned as an attempt to approximate the "pulsating sphere" ideal which is about sound field propagation, not imaging. Bose 901s always sounded lousy to me and I never thought they even imaged particularly well. The best imaging I've ever heard was from speakers like the Rogers LS3/5A, Wilson WATT, and my Behringer B2031s that I use as my DAW speakers. My main speakers are Martin-Logan Vistas, and although they sound superb, I consider their imaging only so-so. I can say the same thing about the Maggie MG-3.6s I used to have. Sounded great. imaged only so-so. |
#50
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 11, 1:05=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Wed, 11 May 2011 07:45:09 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On May 10, 9:45=3DA0pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Tue, 10 May 2011 18:08:07 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... On Mon, 9 May 2011 18:13:53 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote (in article ): snip Now, at the expense of boring all you technos, let me ask again: Ha= ve=3D =A0you ever thought much about radiation patterns of speakers, what should= b=3D e the correct one, and according to what theory of how stereo works? Radiation pattern? Sure. A pulsating sphere - infinitely small. =3DA= 0The=3D =A0first criterion, physically improbable, The second criterion, physically impossible. AE - where did you hear that? Why do you think that? I read that in a paper by Warfedale's Gilbert Briggs many years ago. H= is conclusions were based on studies about how live music propagates coup= led with the size of the sound source that would give the best imaging. Th= e M=3D BL 101, etc. is an (only partially successful) attempt to approximate thi= s pulsating sphere "ideal". =3DA0Also, we know for a fact that small spe= akers=3D =A0image much better than large ones, and mathematical models indicate that if = sma=3D ller is better, then infinitely small would be perfect. =3DA0 We know that for a fact? I sure don't know that for a fact. Hmmm Everyone else seems to. It's never a good idea to speak for everybody else.... The best imaging I have ever heard has come from very large dipole speakers. That followed by some pretty large multi-driver speakers form the likes of Vandersteen and Theil. The imaging I have heard from the MBLs and Bose 901s (and this does include a demo by Bose in a custom built room for the 901s) were third and fourth rate compared to the Sound Labs, Certain Martin Logans, The Quads, The Vandersteenss etc etc Nobody said anything about the MBLs and imaging. Actually Gary did. Didn't want to exlude him from the conversation. They were mentioned as an attempt to approximate the "pulsating sphere" ideal which is about sound field propagation, not imaging. =A0Bose 901s always sounded lousy to me a= nd I never thought they even imaged particularly well. Again I was trying to include Gary. The best imaging I've ever heard was from speakers like the Rogers LS3/5A, Wilson WATT, and my Behri= nger =A0B2031s that I use as my DAW speakers. My main speakers are Martin-Loga= n Vistas, and although they sound superb, I consider their imaging only so-= so. I can say the same thing about the Maggie MG-3.6s I used to have. Sounded great. imaged only so-so. I have not heard the ML Vistas. I lives with the CLSs for several years. As they were set up in my listening room, near field and with heavy room treatment, their imaging was pretty fantastic. Much much better than my friend's Celestion 700s. My Soundlabs were a step up from there once I got them set up just right. The Martin Logan Statement EIIIs were nothing short of amazing in their imaging as were the Soundlab Majestics. I would go so far as to say I could find no fault in any way with the Majestics. The WATTs I heard cetainly imaged well. Not quite as well as the Soundlabs or CLSs or even the Vandersteen 5s which I found to be mighty impressive in every way. |
#51
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 11, 12:40=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
I also said that this ideal is impossible and whether or not Bose' s "per= fect point source" =A0sounded bad or not proves nothing. The infinitely small = point source is ideal for IMAGING, not necessarily for sound quality (in fact, = as far as physics is concerned, these are diametrically opposed concepts). F= or perfect radiation characteristics, the ideal is a pulsating sphere, which= , cannot be done with current technology, but might be possible sometime in= the future. That's why I said that it's "improbable". The only "ideal" such a speaker achieves, in theory, is uniform radiation over all angles. In real rooms, this is far from the "ideal" directivity. More modern studies show that the best radiation pattern in a real room is NOT uniform in all directions. Check on the work, for example, of Floyd Toole on the matter, done some decades ago. Sean Olive has also written on this subject more recently. What appears to be most desirable for real speakers in real rooms is that the reflections from all directions have roughly the same frequency response as the on axis response, but not that they are equal in amplitude. A pulsating sphere does not attain either ideal except in empty space. I remember reading what I then considered the definitive refutation of the desirability of "omnidirectional" speakers in a British magazine decades ago. I believe that was way back in the 1970s's. People have been making various attempts at omni-directional speakers for longer than I've been alive. I've heard a few and liked none, though that might have nothing to do with their directivity. |
#52
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... Nobody said anything about the MBLs and imaging. They were mentioned as an attempt to approximate the "pulsating sphere" ideal which is about sound field propagation, not imaging. Bose 901s always sounded lousy to me and I never thought they even imaged particularly well. The best imaging I've ever heard was from speakers like the Rogers LS3/5A, Wilson WATT, and my Behringer B2031s that I use as my DAW speakers. My main speakers are Martin-Logan Vistas, and although they sound superb, I consider their imaging only so-so. I can say the same thing about the Maggie MG-3.6s I used to have. Sounded great. imaged only so-so. Again I must caution all and sundry that in order for you to stumble upon the correct idea for good imaging you must get all of the Big Three right, all at once. For example, if you had heard MG-3s mis-positioned, or in a bad room, you would not think much of them. My big discovery about the 901s was that the owners manual was WAY off in describing how to position the speakers in your room. Positioned wrong, they are a disaster waiting to happen. Positioned correctly, they are a modern miracle and a new point of departure for studying imaging all over again from a different perspective. Gary Eickmeier |
#53
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... You haven't proved that either theoretical "ideal" is a legend. I think you've got that backwards. I don't have to prove your theoretical ideal wrong, you've got to show how it is correct. Besides, what normal, spherical wave isn't "point source"? The Quad ESL-63 for example. Most box type speakers with dynamic drivers emit more or less spherical wavefronts. Line sources would emit cylindrical waves, and planars would emit plane waves. But no matter what you do, the main audible characteristics are the frequency response and radiation pattern. What you hear, spatially speaking, is not just the speaker but also the complete image model of the speakers and room. The reason for the impression of smaller speakers imaging better is that the smaller they are, the more omnidirectional they are. Notice how even the large speakers have the tweeter mounted on a little sub-box or even a little ball on top of the rest of the speaker, so that their wavefront will be closer to the rest. The worst imaging speaker would be a big box with mids and tweets mounted on a large flat panel. But the point of all the point sourcedness and small minimonitors and omnis would be lost if you put a lot of sound killing absorption on the walls near the speakers, because it doesn't matter if they are direct or omni or anything else if you hear only the front half of the radiation pattern. So, again, the Big Three: radiation pattern, room positioning, and room acoustics. Gary Eickmeier |
#54
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
... And the fact is that MANY have my technical grasp: no insult intended, you're just not one of them. I'm sorry for your loss. OK, I don't want to continue a ****ing contest with Mr. Pierce over things I don't understand, but... everyone else out there is just standing around watching. DOES ANYONE OUT THERE GET WHY THIS GUY IS MAKING SUCH A BIG DEAL OUT OF EQ? Gary Eickmeier |
#55
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Ed Seedhouse wrote:
The only "ideal" such a speaker achieves, in theory, is uniform radiation over all angles. In real rooms, this is far from the "ideal" directivity. More modern studies show that the best radiation pattern in a real room is NOT uniform in all directions. Check on the work, for example, of Floyd Toole on the matter, done some decades ago. Sean Olive has also written on this subject more recently. What appears to be most desirable for real speakers in real rooms is that the reflections from all directions have roughly the same frequency response as the on axis response, but not that they are equal in amplitude. A pulsating sphere does not attain either ideal except in empty space. I remember reading what I then considered the definitive refutation of the desirability of "omnidirectional" speakers in a British magazine decades ago. I believe that was way back in the 1970s's. People have been making various attempts at omni-directional speakers for longer than I've been alive. I've heard a few and liked none, though that might have nothing to do with their directivity. This subject is bigger than a few posts in a newsgroup can discuss. My main point is that we still have no basis, or operating theory, that might inform us as to which radiation pattern etc is more "correct." I think maybe stereo started with a simplistic thought that if you can make things image from left to right between the speakers, then you should be able to reproduce this window to another acoustic space and then you would be like at the concert. But there is and has never been no definitive stereo theory, written down in so many words, in any scientific or engineering or psychoacoustic terms. Cut past long Eickmeier paper on a new theory for stereophonic sound, which I would be glad to PDF to you, my Email Bottom line my ideal radiation pattern is a combination of the Bose 901 directivity and the Davis idea for time/intensity trading in both the direct sound and the first reflections. The concept requires certain positioning of the speakers, and more specular reflectivity from the walls near them, to set up a huge (effectively) 8 speaker array or lattice soundstage in front of you. The concept looks, for the first time, at the realistic reproduction of auditory perspective from the standpoint of comparing the image model of the reproduction to that of the original. Side benefits are getting the sound out of (away from) the speaker locations and causing the radiation wavefront to be the same at all frequencies. It applies more to small room acoustics but the same effects happen naturally in very large rooms such as auditoriums. I love talking about this spatial stuff, but do not want to bore or annoy anyone, so I will just take my cue from anyone who Emails me. Maybe we could start an Email round robin exchange rather than keep taking up space here, with only four or five interested. Might even get Linkwitz to join in. I have not spoken to him yet about The Challenge or why I believe his ideas are very valid and correct. Gary Eickmeier |
#56
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 12, 5:29=A0am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
"Dick Pierce" wrote in message ... And the fact is that MANY have my technical grasp: no insult intended, you're just not one of them. I'm sorry for your loss. OK, I don't want to continue a ****ing contest with Mr. Pierce over thing= s I don't understand, but... everyone else out there is just standing around watching. DOES ANYONE OUT THERE GET WHY THIS GUY IS MAKING SUCH A BIG DEA= L OUT OF EQ? I don't think he is making such a big deal out of EQ per se as much as he is making a big deal out of the idea that you can EQ frequency response issues out of a multidriver speaker because of physical interactions of the waveforms coming off the individual drivers and interacting with the other waveforms coming off the other drivers. I may not be using the most correct terminology here but I think that is his issue with the idea that you can just simply EQ away these ffects which will show up as frequency response distortions. |
#57
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 12, 6:42=A0am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
Ed Seedhouse wrote: The only "ideal" such a speaker achieves, in theory, is uniform radiation over all angles. =A0In real rooms, this is far from the "ideal" directivity. =A0More modern studies show that the best radiatio= n pattern in a real room is NOT uniform in all directions. =A0Check on th= e work, for example, of Floyd Toole on the matter, done some decades ago. Sean Olive has also written on this subject more recently. What appears to be most desirable for real speakers in real rooms is that the reflections from all directions have roughly the same frequency response as the on axis response, but not that they are equal in amplitude. =A0A pulsating sphere does not attain either ideal except in empty space. I remember reading what I then considered the definitive refutation of the desirability of "omnidirectional" speakers in a British magazine decades ago. =A0I believe that was way back in the 1970s's. =A0People h= ave been making various attempts at omni-directional speakers for longer than I've been alive. =A0I've heard a few and liked none, though that might have nothing to do with their directivity. This subject is bigger than a few posts in a newsgroup can discuss. My ma= in point is that we still have no basis, or operating theory, that might inf= orm us as to which radiation pattern etc is more "correct." I think maybe ste= reo started with a simplistic thought that if you can make things image from left to right between the speakers, then you should be able to reproduce this window to another acoustic space and then you would be like at the concert. But there is and has never been no definitive stereo theory, written down in so many words, in any scientific or engineering or psychoacoustic terms. Seriously? Blumlein was all over it back when he basically invented stereo. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Alan_Blumlein "Blumlein developed his ideas on what he called "binaural sound", now known as stereo, during this same period. In early 1931, Blumlein and his wife were at a local cinema. The sound reproduction systems of the early "talkies" invariably only had a single set of speakers - which could lead to the somewhat disconcerting effect of the actor being on one side of the screen whilst his voice appeared to come from the other. Blumlein declared to his wife that he had found a way to make the sound follow the actor across the screen. The genesis of these ideas is uncertain, but he explained them to Isaac Shoenberg in the late summer of 1931. His earliest notes on the subject are dated 25 September 1931, and his patent had the headline "Improvements in and relating to Sound-transmission, Sound-recording and Sound-reproducing Systems". The application, No. 34,657/31, was dated 14 December 1931; it was complete left on 10 November 1932, and was complete accepted on 14 June 1933 as British patent No. 394325. Whereas work led by Harvey FletcherHarvey FletcherHarvey Fletcher was an American physicist. Known as the "father of stereophonic sound" he is credited with the invention of the audiometer and hearing aid... at Bell Labs at about the same time considered sound systems using multiple channels, Blumlein always aimed at a system with just two channels. The patent covered many ideas in stereo, some of which are used today and some not. Some 70 claims include: =95A "shuffling" circuit, which aimed to preserve the directional effect when sound from a spaced pair of microphones was reproduced via a pair of loudspeakers instead of stereo headphones; =95The use of a coincident pair of velocity microphones with their axes at right angles to each other, which is still known as a "Blumlein PairBlumlein PairBlumlein Pair is the name for a stereo recording technique invented by Alan Blumlein for the creation of recordings that =97 upon replaying through headphones or loudspeakers =97 recreate the spatial characteristics of the recorded signal.... "; =95Recording two channels in the single groove of a record using the two groove walls at right angles to each other and 45 degrees to the vertical; =95A stereo disc-cutting head; =95Using hybrid transformers to matrix between left and right signals and sum and difference signals; Binaural experiments began in early 1933, and the first stereo discs were cut later the same year." That was just the begining. Cut past long Eickmeier paper on a new theory for stereophonic sound, whi= ch I would be glad to PDF to you, my Email Let's not cut past it. Why not post it and we can discuss it? Bottom line my ideal radiation pattern is a combination of the Bose 901 directivity and the Davis idea for time/intensity trading in both the dir= ect sound and the first reflections. The concept requires certain positioning= of the speakers, and more specular reflectivity from the walls near them, to set up a huge (effectively) 8 speaker array or lattice soundstage in fron= t of you. The concept looks, for the first time, at the realistic reproduct= ion of auditory perspective from the standpoint of comparing the image model = of the reproduction to that of the original. You may like the sound of such a set up but as Dick has pointed out this is in no way any sort of recreation of the original soundfield. You can't do that. We need to invent Star Trek holodeck technology to do that. You have an original soundfield as described by Dick so aptly that I will quote him if the mods allow it. "Now, if we look, in fact, at the radiation properties of musical instruments in the same light, many of us would be appaled at how utterly "awful" they a they are far from some theoretical ideal of uniform radiation patterns, frequency-independent directivity and such. . And now look at the instantaneous radiation pattern of an ensemble, and it's, well, mind boggling. Ny itself, it's unusable: that's why acoustic ensembles really only work in live acoustic spaces. The result is the creation of a very complex multi-dimensional sound field (you have both spacial and temporal complexity)." You can't pick a few points in the concert hall record that. mix down to two channels and then decode that original, ridiculously complex three dimensional soundspace back into a listening room through two channels no matter how many walls you bounce it off of. It's like trying to resurrect a cow by going to McDonalds and buying them out and pasting together the patties. What you can do through minimalist mic techniques such as the Blumlien pair is record and playback through two channels in a way that produces a pretty good aural illusion from a single designated listener perspective of that original event. That was the basic origin of stereo recording and playback. That is what that system was basically designed to do. So if you take recordings that were in essence designed to create an aural illusion of imaging through two channel playback through speakers and start bouncing that off the walls you are not going to get a more "accurate" result. You might like it. Nothing wrong with that. But it aint more accurate to the original acoustic event and it isn't intrinsically more correct than doing it in the more convential ways of setting up playback for stereo recordings. Side benefits are getting the sound out of (away from) the speaker locations and causing the radiation wavefront to be the same at all frequencies. But you get that with near field set ups with thorough room treatment. What you don't get with that is every recording of a piano or solo instrument sounding like it was played on some giant version of that instrument. It applies more to small room acoustics but the same effects happen naturally in very large rooms such = as auditoriums. Auditoriums really don't belong in the converstaion. They are **** poor envirements for stereo playback. I love talking about this spatial stuff, but do not want to bore or annoy anyone, so I will just take my cue from anyone who Emails me. The discussion is anything but anoying. I'd rather keep it here on the forum boards. Not big on audio discussions by private email. But there is no getting around being called on stuff when you present it in a public forum. Maybe we could start an Email round robin exchange rather than keep taking up space here= , I'd rather take up the space here. Hopefully with moderation we can keep the discussion on topic. with only four or five interested. Might even get Linkwitz to join in. Please invite him over here. Perhaps he can better discuss and challenge Dick on all things technical if there is a difference in opinions. |
#58
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Gary Eickmeier wrote:
"Dick Pierce" wrote in message ... And the fact is that MANY have my technical grasp: no insult intended, you're just not one of them. I'm sorry for your loss. OK, I don't want to continue a ****ing contest with Mr. Pierce over things I don't understand, but... everyone else out there is just standing around watching. DOES ANYONE OUT THERE GET WHY THIS GUY IS MAKING SUCH A BIG DEAL OUT OF EQ? Well, system being non-minimum phase means it's impossible to create (counter)system which would completely equalize that. Simply equalizing for one thing breaks other things. IOW, such systems introduce artifacts which could not be together corrected. Fortunately for us, our brain+ears system is somewhat tolerant for many errors, so equalization doesn't need to be perfect. But it means that we do not have total control, and that there must be tradeoffs and those might be not easy. And in many systems there irreversible artifacts which could not be compensated at all. IOW, there is some wiggle room, but it's far cry from being totally under control. For example in case of multi driver speaker system you'll get interference effects (i.e. frequency dependent peaks and dips in radiation pattern) and if you correct for particular frequency response on some chosen axis you'll break that response on other axes. rgds \SK PS. If you would, I'd like to see your PDF(s) you mentioned in replies to Scott and Audio Empire. -- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang -- http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels) |
#59
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On Thu, 12 May 2011 03:52:57 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... You haven't proved that either theoretical "ideal" is a legend. I think you've got that backwards. I don't have to prove your theoretical ideal wrong, you've got to show how it is correct. But I have never postulated that it was correct. I was merely following Gilbert Briggs et al and pointing out that both "ideals" (notice the quotes around the word ideal both now and in my OP) were either physically impossible or improbable given today's transducer technology. Besides, what normal, spherical wave isn't "point source"? None are. What Briggs et al were referring to was an "infinitely small point source" That doesn't and can't exist. The Quad ESL-63 for example. Most box type speakers with dynamic drivers emit more or less spherical wavefronts. Line sources would emit cylindrical waves, and planars would emit plane waves. You seem to miss the concept or you misspoke, above. The spherical wavefront would be in-phase from a 360- degree source (like a pebble dropped in a still pond, but in 3D). But no matter what you do, the main audible characteristics are the frequency response and radiation pattern. What you hear, spatially speaking, is not just the speaker but also the complete image model of the speakers and room. No argument. The reason for the impression of smaller speakers imaging better is that the smaller they are, the more omnidirectional they are. BINGO! Notice how even the large speakers have the tweeter mounted on a little sub-box or even a little ball on top of the rest of the speaker, so that their wavefront will be closer to the rest. The worst imaging speaker would be a big box with mids and tweets mounted on a large flat panel. That seems to be true. The humongous Wilson WAMM imaged very poorly, but other than that it was the most life-like producer of the actual FEEL of an orchestra playing in the room I've ever heard. I have a lot of experience with this speaker system (most people only had a passing acquaintance with it at audio shows) because in the early eighties, when it first came out, Steve Jobs put a pair in the foyer of his Macintosh development building (along with a concert grand piano) for his developers to relax with when they took a break. I had a friend on that team and we used to meet over there to listen to records on Sunday afternoons. But the point of all the point sourcedness and small minimonitors and omnis would be lost if you put a lot of sound killing absorption on the walls near the speakers, because it doesn't matter if they are direct or omni or anything else if you hear only the front half of the radiation pattern. No argument there. It's like putting sound absorbent material behind a pair of Maggies or M-Ls. So, again, the Big Three: radiation pattern, room positioning, and room acoustics. Gary Eickmeier |
#60
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Sebastian Kaliszewski" wrote in message
... Well, system being non-minimum phase means it's impossible to create (counter)system which would completely equalize that. Simply equalizing for one thing breaks other things. IOW, such systems introduce artifacts which could not be together corrected. Fortunately for us, our brain+ears system is somewhat tolerant for many errors, so equalization doesn't need to be perfect. But it means that we do not have total control, and that there must be tradeoffs and those might be not easy. And in many systems there irreversible artifacts which could not be compensated at all. IOW, there is some wiggle room, but it's far cry from being totally under control. For example in case of multi driver speaker system you'll get interference effects (i.e. frequency dependent peaks and dips in radiation pattern) and if you correct for particular frequency response on some chosen axis you'll break that response on other axes. Well, that's more than Pierce was able to explain! Thanks. But gosh and golly, that would mean that we cannot have active equalization of speakers, or digital speakers, or room correction circuits, or even crossovers that try to trim the response of each driver in ways that maintain flat response. What's a mother to do? PS. If you would, I'd like to see your PDF(s) you mentioned in replies to Scott and Audio Empire. Ok, I will see if I have copied your address properly and send them. Let me know if you get them. Gary Eickmeier |
#61
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
... Scott wrote: On May 12, 5:29 am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: OK, I don't want to continue a ****ing contest with Mr. Pierce over things I don't understand, but... everyone else out there is just standing around watching. DOES ANYONE OUT THERE GET WHY THIS GUY IS MAKING SUCH A BIG DEAL OUT OF EQ? I don't think he is making such a big deal out of EQ per se as much as he is making a big deal out of the idea that you can EQ frequency response issues out of a multidriver speaker because of physical interactions of the waveforms coming off the individual drivers and interacting with the other waveforms coming off the other drivers. I may not be using the most correct terminology here but I think that is his issue with the idea that you can just simply EQ away these ffects which will show up as frequency response distortions. That's one very important part of my objects to Mr. Eikmeier's assertion. But amn equally important poart is the challenge to several to his rather extraordinary technical assertions, just three of which I quote below with emphasis on specific points: "all that matters is frequency response and radiation pattern - both of which are TOTALLY under our control." "equalizing frequency response in speakers to WHATEVER we desire is a TRIVAL matter." "we can certainly aim different drivers any direction we want, and adjust gains for a desired radiation pattern at mid and high frequencies," His defense of one of these points boils down to statement like this: "EQing speakers is really easy. You can go to Radio Shack and buy equalizers." He cites but two "authorities," misunderstands one of them (Davis), and the other (Bose) he fails to cite a single peer-reviewed paper. And he COMPLETELY ignores a VAST array of technical literature on the subject and its foundations which his positions are in conflict with. He counters with: "I already got myself kicked out of my audio club" "I am more confused now than before." "I don't want to continue a ****ing contest with Mr. Pierce over things I don't understand." Duh! Why don't you just give your explanation of minimum phase systems right here for the benefit of all of us instead of concentrating on how MUCH Eickmeier doesn't understand it. Thanks in advance, Gary Eickmeier |
#62
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Scott wrote:
Seriously? Blumlein was all over it back when he basically invented stereo. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Alan_Blumlein "Blumlein developed his ideas on what he called "binaural sound", now known as stereo, during this same period. Can you see how most of these people were confused between stereo and binaural? Whereas work led by Harvey FletcherHarvey FletcherHarvey Fletcher was an American physicist. Known as the "father of stereophonic sound" he is credited with the invention of the audiometer and hearing aid... at Bell Labs at about the same time considered sound systems using multiple channels, Blumlein always aimed at a system with just two channels. He just assumed "two ears, two channels" He envisioned stereo as operating on a microscopic scale (at the head) vs. a macroscopic scale (as a field type system in the room). This is a fundamental error, a main point in my paper(s). Binaural experiments began in early 1933, and the first stereo discs were cut later the same year." That was just the begining. I know, I know. Fletcher, Snow, and Olson did much better work in the states. Cut past long Eickmeier paper on a new theory for stereophonic sound, which I would be glad to PDF to you, my Email Let's not cut past it. Why not post it and we can discuss it? It is not typed out in Word or some convenient way, and it has drawings in it. How would you post a PDF in a newsgroup? [ Moderator's note: please put it on a webserver and distribute the URL. -- dsr ] You may like the sound of such a set up but as Dick has pointed out this is in no way any sort of recreation of the original soundfield. You can't do that. We need to invent Star Trek holodeck technology to do that. You have an original soundfield as described by Dick so aptly that I will quote him if the mods allow it. "Now, if we look, in fact, at the radiation properties of musical instruments in the same light, many of us would be appaled at how utterly "awful" they a they are far from some theoretical ideal of uniform radiation patterns, frequency-independent directivity and such. . And now look at the instantaneous radiation pattern of an ensemble, and it's, well, mind boggling. Ny itself, it's unusable: that's why acoustic ensembles really only work in live acoustic spaces. The result is the creation of a very complex multi-dimensional sound field (you have both spacial and temporal complexity)." You can't pick a few points in the concert hall record that. mix down to two channels and then decode that original, ridiculously complex three dimensional soundspace back into a listening room through two channels no matter how many walls you bounce it off of. It's like trying to resurrect a cow by going to McDonalds and buying them out and pasting together the patties. What you can do through minimalist mic techniques such as the Blumlien pair is record and playback through two channels in a way that produces a pretty good aural illusion from a single designated listener perspective of that original event. That was the basic origin of stereo recording and playback. That is what that system was basically designed to do. So if you take recordings that were in essence designed to create an aural illusion of imaging through two channel playback through speakers and start bouncing that off the walls you are not going to get a more "accurate" result. You might like it. Nothing wrong with that. But it aint more accurate to the original acoustic event and it isn't intrinsically more correct than doing it in the more convential ways of setting up playback for stereo recordings. Again, I have addressed all of this extensively, in my papers and spotily in these forums. All of that above is true, but it is just as applicable to your favored approach of changing the spatial nature of the live sound field to two sources with a high direct field. Such a presentation is VERY different, spatially, from the live field. Can't possibly sound the same. Side benefits are getting the sound out of (away from) the speaker locations and causing the radiation wavefront to be the same at all frequencies. But you get that with near field set ups with thorough room treatment. What you don't get with that is every recording of a piano or solo instrument sounding like it was played on some giant version of that instrument. No no. Not what happens. I love talking about this spatial stuff, but do not want to bore or annoy anyone, so I will just take my cue from anyone who Emails me. The discussion is anything but anoying. I'd rather keep it here on the forum boards. Not big on audio discussions by private email. But there is no getting around being called on stuff when you present it in a public forum. I'd rather take up the space here. Hopefully with moderation we can keep the discussion on topic. Please invite him over here. Perhaps he can better discuss and challenge Dick on all things technical if there is a difference in opinions. Well, thanks for that. If it is not annoying, I would love to continue. As for Linkwitz, I am still toying with how to approach him. It's a very long story. He came out with The Challenge to the AES. My audio club took up the challenge. I saw it as my entre to prove my ideas once and for all. My quickly cobbled together speaker (the IMP, or Image Model Projector) was pitted against the Behringer box speakers and the Linkwitz Orions in a blind listening test. Preliminary conclusion was that mine were the only ones that were better than the reference (Behringers) at creating the Auditory Scene. There is a Powerpoint on that that I could also send you, but can't post in a newsgroup. So my desire is to tell Linkwitz just what it is that causes the spatial effects that he describes for his Orion system in his home, but my fear is that he won't believe me, just as many of you do not. At the moment I am trying to study a CAD/CAM program for drawing some better illustrations for a more complete treatise on Image Model Theory (IMT). It is very difficult to draw a visual representation of speaker radiation patterns and their effects on room sound. I am also writing to Floyd Toole about his book, and asking why The Challenge questions are just coming up now in the long history of audio. Also asking him some side questions on some spatial effects that don't seem to come up in the literature, such as his book or Blauert. My mission is simple. I've just got to convince the entire audio industry that they've been studying the wrong end of the elephant without appearing to be an idiot. Or maybe my brain is non minimum phase. Gary Eickmeier |
#63
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Gary Eickmeier wrote:
"Sebastian Kaliszewski" wrote in message ... Well, system being non-minimum phase means it's impossible to create (counter)system which would completely equalize that. Simply equalizing for one thing breaks other things. IOW, such systems introduce artifacts which could not be together corrected. Fortunately for us, our brain+ears system is somewhat tolerant for many errors, so equalization doesn't need to be perfect. But it means that we do not have total control, and that there must be tradeoffs and those might be not easy. And in many systems there irreversible artifacts which could not be compensated at all. IOW, there is some wiggle room, but it's far cry from being totally under control. For example in case of multi driver speaker system you'll get interference effects (i.e. frequency dependent peaks and dips in radiation pattern) and if you correct for particular frequency response on some chosen axis you'll break that response on other axes. Well, that's more than Pierce was able to explain! Thanks. But gosh and golly, that would mean that we cannot have active equalization of speakers, or digital speakers, or room correction circuits, or even crossovers that try to trim the response of each driver in ways that maintain flat response. What's a mother to do? Generally we could get more-or-less flat response on some choosen axis -- but do not except flat phase (in all except few special cases) then, for example. Besides, some errors are acceptable, as our ears do not have infinite accuracy. Then our rooms are not ideal cuboids. etc. For example self adjusting room correction devices (things which measure rooms response and set themselves up to equalize it) often try to find minimum phase solution just (somewhat) aproximating real system and the calculate equalization. But they won't make frequency independent radiation pattern, etc. And in fact equalization is further modified, for exaple to allow for somewhat usable sweet spot (with radius bigger than half an inch). PS. If you would, I'd like to see your PDF(s) you mentioned in replies to Scott and Audio Empire. Ok, I will see if I have copied your address properly and send them. Let me know if you get them. Thanks, they arrived. Had not time to read, though. rgds \SK -- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang -- http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels) |
#64
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
... Duh! Innocent question to everyone: Equalization is usually done to the signal, in the electronic domain, before it even gets to the speaker. Wouldn't the electronic signal be a minimum phase system? Gary Eickmeier |
#65
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Sebastian Kaliszewski" wrote in message
... Generally we could get more-or-less flat response on some choosen axis -- but do not except flat phase (in all except few special cases) then, for example. Besides, some errors are acceptable, as our ears do not have infinite accuracy. Then our rooms are not ideal cuboids. etc. For example self adjusting room correction devices (things which measure rooms response and set themselves up to equalize it) often try to find minimum phase solution just (somewhat) aproximating real system and the calculate equalization. But they won't make frequency independent radiation pattern, etc. And in fact equalization is further modified, for exaple to allow for somewhat usable sweet spot (with radius bigger than half an inch). Huh? Wait a minute - the phase changes when you EQ a speaker? Is that what he is so worried about? Phase is not audible! Notches in the response curve are, but not phase per se. Is that what all the name calling is all about? PS. If you would, I'd like to see your PDF(s) you mentioned in replies to Scott and Audio Empire. Ok, I will see if I have copied your address properly and send them. Let me know if you get them. Thanks, they arrived. Had not time to read, though. Great. Gary Eickmeier |
#66
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On 5/13/2011 8:35 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
"Dick wrote in message ... Duh! Innocent question to everyone: Equalization is usually done to the signal, in the electronic domain, before it even gets to the speaker. Wouldn't the electronic signal be a minimum phase system? Gary Eickmeier Not necessarily. With digital any phase response is possible. Even analog it is possible, in a limited way, to generate customized non-minimum phase (with delay lines, for instance). Doug McDonald |
#67
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 13, 6:35=A0am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
Scott wrote: Seriously? Blumlein was all over it back when he basically invented stereo. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Alan_Blumlein "Blumlein developed his ideas on what he called "binaural sound", now known as stereo, during this same period. Can you see how most of these people were confused between stereo and binaural? No I don't see it. Binaural was Blumlein's term back in the 30s. What he called binaural was called stereo way before I knew what stereo was. The current meaning of binaural came in long after Blumleins term had died out. I don't see any confusion. Whereas work led by Harvey FletcherHarvey FletcherHarvey Fletcher was an American physicist. Known as the "father of stereophonic sound" he is credited with the invention of the audiometer and hearing aid... =A0at Bell Labs at about the same time considered sound systems using multiple channels, Blumlein always aimed at a system with just two channels. He just assumed "two ears, two channels" He envisioned stereo as operatin= g on a microscopic scale (at the head) vs. a macroscopic scale (as a field type system in the room). This is a fundamental error, a main point in my paper(s). I think Blumleins system works pretty well. Nut more to the point, it is what we have been using since the begining of commercial stereo recording and playback. It is how stereo recordings are designed to be used. Whether you agree with it in principle or not that is what it is. Binaural experiments began in early 1933, and the first stereo discs were cut later the same year." That was just the begining. I know, I know. Fletcher, Snow, and Olson did much better work in the states. Cut past long Eickmeier paper on a new theory for stereophonic sound, which I would be glad to PDF to you, my Email Let's not cut past it. Why not post it and we can discuss it? It is not typed out in Word or some convenient way, and it has drawings i= n it. How would you post a PDF in a newsgroup? =A0[ Moderator's note: please put it on a webserver and =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 distribute the URL. =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 = =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 -- dsr ] You may like the sound of such a set up but as Dick has pointed out this is in no way any sort of recreation of the original soundfield. You can't do that. We need to invent Star Trek holodeck technology to do that. You have an original soundfield as described by Dick so aptly that I will quote him if the mods allow it. =A0"Now, if we look, in fact, at the radiation properties of musical instruments in the same light, many of us would be appaled at how utterly "awful" they a they are far from some theoretical ideal of uniform radiation patterns, frequency-independent directivity and such. . And now look at the instantaneous radiation pattern of an ensemble, and it's, well, mind boggling. Ny itself, it's unusable: that's why acoustic ensembles really only work in live acoustic spaces. The result is the creation of a very complex multi-dimensional sound field (you have both spacial and temporal complexity)." You can't pick a few points in the concert hall record that. mix down to two channels and then decode that original, ridiculously complex three dimensional soundspace back into a listening room through two channels no matter how many walls you bounce it off of. It's like trying to resurrect a cow by going to McDonalds and buying them out and pasting together the patties. What you can do through minimalist mic techniques such as the Blumlien pair is record =A0and playback through two channels in a way that produces a pretty good aural illusion from a single designated listener perspective of that original event. That was the basic origin of stereo recording and playback. That is what that system was basically designed to do. So if you take recordings that were in essence designed to create an aural illusion of imaging through two channel playback through speakers and start bouncing that off the walls you are not going to get a more "accurate" result. You might like it. Nothing wrong with that. But it aint more accurate to the original acoustic event and it isn't intrinsically more correct than doing it in the more convential ways of setting up playback for stereo recordings. Again, I have addressed all of this extensively, in my papers and spotily= in these forums. All of that above is true, but it is just as applicable to your favored approach of changing the spatial nature of the live sound fi= eld to two sources with a high direct field. What happens in the soundfield in layback is irrelevant except how it affects the soundfield where your ears happen to be. That original soundfield is lost. Worrying about the soundfield in the playback room is a lost cause when using stereo recordings. So it is not just as applicable. Such a presentation is VERY different, spatially, from the live field. Can't possibly sound the same. Doesn't matter what is happening in the soundfield of either the original or the playback in all the places where you ears are not. What matters is what the sound field is doing in the listener position. Like any other illusion, the rest is smoke and mirrors. That is the basic beauty of Blumlien's approach. It picks up the soundfield from a designated position and then tries to mirror it in playback at the listener position. No it aint perfect but it works pretty well. Side benefits are getting the sound out of (away from) the speaker locations and causing the radiation wavefront to be the same at all frequencies. But you get that with near field set ups with thorough room treatment. What you don't get with that is every recording of a piano or solo instrument sounding like it was played on some giant version of that instrument. No no. Not what happens. It certainly has happened in every demo I have heard with the Bose 901s including their own demos in their own designated Bose demo rooms. There were other problems too but that one was pretty obvious and consistant. I love talking about this spatial stuff, but do not want to bore or annoy anyone, so I will just take my cue from anyone who Emails me. The discussion is anything but anoying. I'd rather keep it here on the forum boards. Not big on audio discussions by private email. But there is no getting around being called on stuff when you present it in a public forum. I'd rather take up the space here. Hopefully with moderation we can keep the discussion on topic. Please invite him over here. Perhaps he can better discuss and challenge Dick on all things technical if there is a difference in opinions. Well, thanks for that. If it is not annoying, I would love to continue. A= s for Linkwitz, I am still toying with how to approach him. It's a very lon= g story. Send him an email with a link to the discussion. He can read it and decide for himself if he wants to join in. He came out with The Challenge to the AES. My audio club took up the challenge. I saw it as my entre to prove my ideas once and for all. My quickly cobbled together speaker (the IMP, or Image Model Projector) was pitted against the Behringer box speakers and the Linkwitz Orions in a bl= ind listening test. Preliminary conclusion was that mine were the only ones t= hat were better than the reference (Behringers) at creating the Auditory Scen= e. There is a Powerpoint on that that I could also send you, but can't post = in a newsgroup. So my desire is to tell Linkwitz just what it is that causes the spatial effects that he describes for his Orion system in his home, but my fear i= s that he won't believe me, just as many of you do not. I don't think anyone here has any problem with your perceptions on the matter. Even though it runs against my experiences with room reflections, it is not like I'm gonna tell you that coloring the sound will hurt it. I'm obviously coloring the sound of my playback but in different ways. But you might want to let the guys who do the research and the math offer up explanations for cuase and effect. At the moment I am trying to study a CAD/CAM program for drawing some bet= ter illustrations for a more complete treatise on Image Model Theory (IMT). I= t is very difficult to draw a visual representation of speaker radiation patterns and their effects on room sound. I am also writing to Floyd Toole about his book, and asking why The Challenge questions are just coming up now in the long history of audio. Also asking him some side questions on some spatial effects that don't se= em to come up in the literature, such as his book or Blauert. I can't speak about Toole on the subject but IMO Olive, who seems to have followed in his footsteps has been working from some very flawed premesis around the idea that clearer results in listening tests are actually an amplification of less clear results rather than an oversimplification. As a result they test speakers, or should I say a single speaker in mono with a very limited choice of source material in the belief that one can extrapolate the same results in stereo with a wide range of source material. Personally I am file that in the pretty hard to believe catagory. I have other issues with their methodologies as well but the point being they obviously are not considering anything like what you favor as a set up. They are not even testing for imaging per se but assuming it comes along with the performance parameters they are gauging in mono. My mission is simple. I've just got to convince the entire audio industry that they've been studying the wrong end of the elephant without appearin= g to be an idiot. I don't think it will go well for you sorry to say. Or maybe my brain is non minimum phase. I think Dick is correct in pointing out that if you are going to talk tech with the industry you got to learn the language at the very least. |
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Gary Eickmeier wrote:
"Sebastian Kaliszewski" wrote in message ... Generally we could get more-or-less flat response on some choosen axis -- but do not except flat phase (in all except few special cases) then, for example. Besides, some errors are acceptable, as our ears do not have infinite accuracy. Then our rooms are not ideal cuboids. etc. For example self adjusting room correction devices (things which measure rooms response and set themselves up to equalize it) often try to find minimum phase solution just (somewhat) aproximating real system and the calculate equalization. But they won't make frequency independent radiation pattern, etc. And in fact equalization is further modified, for exaple to allow for somewhat usable sweet spot (with radius bigger than half an inch). Huh? Wait a minute - the phase changes when you EQ a speaker? Is that what he is so worried about? Phase is not audible! Notches in the response curve are, but not phase per se. Is that what all the name calling is all about? Not exactly. A minimum phase system is one that is causal (i.e. its output does not appear in time before its input) and stable (i.e. it cannot go into unending oscillations when you give it an impulse.) Also, a minimum phase system has an inverse that is also causal and stable. If you think about it, this is exactly the kind of system that can be corrected with filtering. Andrew. |
#69
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On Fri, 13 May 2011 10:44:41 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): I think Blumleins system works pretty well. Nut more to the point, it is what we have been using since the begining of commercial stereo recording and playback. It is how stereo recordings are designed to be used. Whether you agree with it in principle or not that is what it is. Was it Blumlein in England or Bell Labs here in the USA that started with a many-channel model and kept reducing the number of channels to find the minimum that would still work for stereo and finally settled on two? One thing about Blumlein for which we should all be thankful was his stereophonic microphone work. Anytime you hear a truly spectacular true stereophonic recording where there are few-to-no phase anomalies with almost holographic imaging, it was likely recorded using the Blumlein technique (or some variation of it). |
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 13, 1:03=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Fri, 13 May 2011 10:44:41 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): I think Blumleins system works pretty well. Nut more to the point, it is what we have been using since the begining of commercial stereo recording and playback. It is how stereo recordings are designed to be used. Whether you agree with it in principle or not that is what it is. Was it Blumlein in England or Bell Labs here in the USA that started with= a many-channel model and kept reducing the number of channels to find the minimum that would still work for stereo and finally settled on two? I believe Bell favored a three channel system. One thing about Blumlein for which we should all be thankful was his stereophonic microphone work. Anytime you hear a truly spectacular true stereophonic recording where there are few-to-no phase anomalies with alm= ost holographic imaging, it was likely recorded using the Blumlein technique = (or some variation of it). Yup. The guy was smart |
#71
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Scott wrote:
On May 13, 1:03 pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Fri, 13 May 2011 10:44:41 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): I think Blumleins system works pretty well. Nut more to the point, it is what we have been using since the begining of commercial stereo recording and playback. It is how stereo recordings are designed to be used. Whether you agree with it in principle or not that is what it is. Was it Blumlein in England or Bell Labs here in the USA that started with a many-channel model and kept reducing the number of channels to find the minimum that would still work for stereo and finally settled on two? I believe Bell favored a three channel system. William B. Snow laid out the various systems for auditory perspective around 1950. He defined binaural vs stereophonic systems. I quoted some of it in my main paper on IMT. One thing about Blumlein for which we should all be thankful was his stereophonic microphone work. Anytime you hear a truly spectacular true stereophonic recording where there are few-to-no phase anomalies with almost holographic imaging, it was likely recorded using the Blumlein technique (or some variation of it). Yup. The guy was smart PHOOEY! You don't want to make stereo recordings with a coincident mike! Stereo operates on a macroscopic scale, not "at the head" of the listener. This being the case, if the images are formed in the room from speakers located with substantial geometric similarity to the live instruments, you may want to place the microphones near those instruments. I just finished an experimental recording to help prove my ideas on the recording end. I had always used the convenient single point stereo microphones for video work or concert recording. But there wasn't a very satisfactory stereo effect from them, because they are placed at only the one point in the room. My theory sez that Telarc was right in using three spaced omnis up front, spread across the soundstage. I have my own ideas about positioning them, so I needed to get a multichannel recorder and several omni mikes to try it out. I bought the Zoom R16 eight track digital recorder. I already had several of the cheap little Sony lavalier condenser mikes that we use for video, so that is what I used. Positioned them about 8 feet apart at center, half left, and half right and as far as I could comfortably get, about 6 feet, from the front row of players. A transfer to Audition, a little EQ, a mixdown to stereo (for now), and the result was so fantastic I was sitting there crying like a baby it worked so well. Spacious, even imaging all across the soundstage, great dept imaging, pinpoint when there was a solo, just spectacular. Maybe I can take the moderators' advice and upload some files with Usendit and post a link. Just too bad you can't hear it on my system. Anyone get near central Florida ever? Gary Eickmeier |
#72
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Gary Eickmeier wrote:
"Sebastian Kaliszewski" wrote in message ... Generally we could get more-or-less flat response on some choosen axis -- but do not except flat phase (in all except few special cases) then, for example. Besides, some errors are acceptable, as our ears do not have infinite accuracy. Then our rooms are not ideal cuboids. etc. For example self adjusting room correction devices (things which measure rooms response and set themselves up to equalize it) often try to find minimum phase solution just (somewhat) aproximating real system and the calculate equalization. But they won't make frequency independent radiation pattern, etc. And in fact equalization is further modified, for exaple to allow for somewhat usable sweet spot (with radius bigger than half an inch). Huh? Wait a minute - the phase changes when you EQ a speaker? Also, but that part is, as you notice, less important (but if you have multiple drivers all with significantly different phase things are not so obvious anymore, see below). Is that what he is so worried about? Phase is not audible! Notches in the response curve are, but not phase per se. Is that what all the name calling is all about? Well, not. When you EQ a speaker (esp. multi driver one) radiation pattern changes as well (partly due phase changes, but not only due to them). rgds \SK -- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang -- http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels) |
#73
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 14, 7:22=A0am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
Scott wrote: On May 13, 1:03 pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Fri, 13 May 2011 10:44:41 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): I think Blumleins system works pretty well. Nut more to the point, it is what we have been using since the begining of commercial stereo recording and playback. It is how stereo recordings are designed to be used. Whether you agree with it in principle or not that is what it is. Was it Blumlein in England or Bell Labs here in the USA that started with a many-channel model and kept reducing the number of channels to find the minimum that would still work for stereo and finally settled on two? I believe Bell favored a three channel system. William B. Snow laid out the various systems for auditory perspective aro= und 1950. He defined binaural vs stereophonic systems. I quoted some of it in= my main paper on IMT. One thing about Blumlein for which we should all be thankful was his stereophonic microphone work. Anytime you hear a truly spectacular true stereophonic recording where there are few-to-no phase anomalies with almost holographic imaging, it was likely recorded using the Blumlein technique (or some variation of it). Yup. The guy was smart PHOOEY! Um, Have you actually heard any Blumelien like minimalist recordings played back with a set up similar to the one I have described? IME it is the closest thing I have heard to a convincing aural illusion of transportation to an original acoustic event. You don't want to make stereo recordings with a coincident mike! I most cetainly do want all recordings of acoustic music to have been miked in the same manner as the great minimalist recordings of the past. To bad, can't change history but I certainly would if I could. Stereo operates on a macroscopic scale, not "at the head" of the listener. That is simply patently false. Whatever happens in the soundfield is only percieved by the listener. That would be happening around the listeners head and in the listeners ears. That's just a truism. I does not matter what th man behind the curtain is doing. This being the case, if the images are formed in the room from speakers locate= d with substantial geometric similarity to the live instruments, you may wa= nt to place the microphones near those instruments. But that isn't the case. And this assertion is completely wrong. There are no specific problems with the imaging from instruments that are coincidentally placed in a concert hall in a position that may be close to where the speakers would be placed in the listening room. No problem at all. I just finished an experimental recording to help prove my ideas on the recording end. I had always used the convenient single point stereo microphones for video work or concert recording. But there wasn't a very satisfactory stereo effect from them, because they are placed at only the one point in the room. My theory sez that Telarc was right in using three spaced omnis up front, spread across the soundstage. I have my own ideas about positioning them,= so I needed to get a multichannel recorder and several omni mikes to try it out. I bought the Zoom R16 eight track digital recorder. I already had several of the cheap little Sony lavalier condenser mikes that we use for video, so that is what I used. Positioned them about 8 feet apart at cent= er, half left, and half right and as far as I could comfortably get, about 6 feet, from the front row of players. A transfer to Audition, a little EQ, a mixdown to stereo (for now), and t= he result was so fantastic I was sitting there crying like a baby it worked = so well. Spacious, even imaging all across the soundstage, great dept imagin= g, pinpoint when there was a solo, just spectacular. Maybe I can take the moderators' advice and upload some files with Usendi= t and post a link. Just too bad you can't hear it on my system. Anyone get near central Florida ever? So do you think your recordings are actually better than the classic recordings using minimalist techniques? It would certainly be interesting to put your recordings up against the best we can find from Mercury, Decca, Lyrita, Waterlilly, RR, etc etc. I say this with the understanding that we wouldn't be bouncing the sound off the walls with the minimalist recordings. Only with your recordings. |
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Cable sound. Real after all?
Scott wrote:
So do you think your recordings are actually better than the classic recordings using minimalist techniques? It would certainly be interesting to put your recordings up against the best we can find from Mercury, Decca, Lyrita, Waterlilly, RR, etc etc. I say this with the understanding that we wouldn't be bouncing the sound off the walls with the minimalist recordings. Only with your recordings. When you say "minimalist," do you mean to say that multi-miking cannot be correct, or that spaced omnis are not minimalist? Blumlein stereo is based on the theory that you can encode direction from one point in space by means of intensity. Then, if you play that back from spaced speakers, it will decode a window to another acoustic space in the area between the speakers. My guess is you think this is "minimalist" because the Blumlein pair is all you need to encode direction, and any other mikes you throw in the mix will only screw up that already perfect window. How am I doing so far? I used to enjoy my own recordings made with a certain Sony mid/side mike, because it seemed to be able to encode surround sound, due to the way they matrixed its output from the two elements. I could usually hear the audience noises decode to the rear, and the frontal images placed where they belonged up front, if I played it in Dolby Surround. My problem with the Blumlein theory is that it depends on just the direct sound from a pair or a line of speakers, and my long experience listening to such speakers is that it just doesn't quite work. If both ears are free to hear both (or all) speakers, then they can easily tell that the source is those speakers, with their particular directional characteristics, positioning, and the acoustics of the room. The spatial characteristic changes between the live event and the reproduction, which is easily audible, and takes away the realism, or liveness, of the reproduction. In other words, the theory doesn't work. Nor is the answer to use crosstalk cancelling circuits to isolate the channels to each ear, because that would be a binaural system, which is an entirely different animal. So I wanted a new theory of stereo, one which better accounted for my observation of various types of speakers and playback schemes. The result is a very different way of looking at the whole problem of loudspeaker based auditory perspective and the realistic reproduction of same. I will look into uploading some files to the cloud, and starting a new thread on this topic, if you are interested. I don't have my own website, but I have Usendit. Another bright idea would be to ask Linkwitz if he would like to host such a discussion on his site, then he could punch in with his views as desired. Hey - he asked the questions, and I think he is sincerely looking for new ideas, and he certainly loves to blog about this stuff. Floyd Toole could punch on in there whenever he has time, because he "wrote the book" on spatial effects of speakers and rooms. Am I dreaming or what? No guts, no glory. I just need to do a little better job of PDFing my IMT article, because right now it is oriented horizontally when you pull it up, in double pages, so you can't really read it onscreen, just after printing it out. Sebastian, could you please weigh in here on whether you think my materials would be of intrest? In the meantime, Scott, could you please list me a couple of examples of the very best minimalist recordings that you have heard? I probably already have a lot of them. Gary Eickmeier |
#75
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On Sat, 14 May 2011 07:22:29 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ): Scott wrote: On May 13, 1:03 pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Fri, 13 May 2011 10:44:41 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): I think Blumleins system works pretty well. Nut more to the point, it is what we have been using since the begining of commercial stereo recording and playback. It is how stereo recordings are designed to be used. Whether you agree with it in principle or not that is what it is. Was it Blumlein in England or Bell Labs here in the USA that started with a many-channel model and kept reducing the number of channels to find the minimum that would still work for stereo and finally settled on two? I believe Bell favored a three channel system. William B. Snow laid out the various systems for auditory perspective around 1950. He defined binaural vs stereophonic systems. I quoted some of it in my main paper on IMT. One thing about Blumlein for which we should all be thankful was his stereophonic microphone work. Anytime you hear a truly spectacular true stereophonic recording where there are few-to-no phase anomalies with almost holographic imaging, it was likely recorded using the Blumlein technique (or some variation of it). Yup. The guy was smart PHOOEY! You don't want to make stereo recordings with a coincident mike! Stereo operates on a macroscopic scale, not "at the head" of the listener. This being the case, if the images are formed in the room from speakers located with substantial geometric similarity to the live instruments, you may want to place the microphones near those instruments. Mr Eikmeier, you have just blown any credibility that you might have had with me by that statement! Obviously, you haven't done much recording because you are completely WRONG. I have made thousands of recordings over the years of everything from solo piano to huge symphony orchestras. I have recorded such musical luminaries as Aaron Copland, Pierre Fournier, Rudolph Firkusny, Phillipe Entremont, Hubert Laws, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. All of those recording were made with a coincident pair and all of them have a soundstage that everyone who has ever heard my recordings has declared as "breathtaking". And on a technical front, coincident miking has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the "head of the listener". A-B, X-Y, ORTF, coincident miking all using a pair of closely spaced cardioid mikes or M-S using a forward "firing" cardioid and a side "firing" figure-of-eight mike are the only way to record true stereophonic sound. Spaced omnis don't image for a damn, and when combined to mono suffer from cancellations because they aren't phase coherent. In the early days of stereo recordings, those whp used spaced omnis had to use a separate center mike for the mono pickup (mono records were still being made in those days) because they could not sum the widely spaced omnis to get a mono capture of the performance. I just finished an experimental recording to help prove my ideas on the recording end. I had always used the convenient single point stereo microphones for video work or concert recording. But there wasn't a very satisfactory stereo effect from them, because they are placed at only the one point in the room. Then you were doing something wrong, most likely you were using the mikes in the omnidirectional mode. That won't work for coincident miking for the very reason you say; the two mikes are at the same point in the room. But this isn't true of coincident cardioid mikes. They may be close together, but they are pointed at different places on the stage. Think of the cardioids as a camera. Point the camera 45 degrees to the left of straight-ahead and snap a photo, now turn 45-degrees to the right and shoot another. Now compare them. The one picture shows one scene and the other picture shows the another scene, Place the pictures side-by-side and you get the entire panorama of the scene before you. Notice that there is overlap in the center? In photography that might not be good, but in recording the two overlapping lobes of the cardioid mike sum to give you a solidly placed, in-phase center section of the ensemble being recorded. This works so well that I have been able to record soloists with a symphony orchestra without a highlight mike. On playback the soloist is solidly anchored EXACTLY where they should be on the sound stage My theory sez that Telarc was right in using three spaced omnis up front, spread across the soundstage. No, they were wrong. Telarc's image MERELY OK. Bob Woods used three spaced omnis because his "idol" C.R. Fine, miked most of the Mercury Living Presence recordings that way. What Woods didn't understand was that Fine used three spaced omnis originally to allow the center mike to supply the mono capture of the performance because spaced omnis won't mix to mono very well. He found out that mixing a bit of the center with the spaced omni pair would yield a more solid image with better center fill BY ACCIDENT. Woods slavishly copied him. I know these things because I have discussed these issues with both men. BTW, the Mercurys, Early RCAs and Telarc recordings are so well regarded, sound-wise only because most commercial recordings are muti-miked and mult-channeld with each instrument pan-potted into place. This method of recording unamplified instruments playing together in real-time is as wrong as it can possibly be. The Mercs, early RCA's and Telarcs were unique because, compared to multi-miked, multi-track excesses, they IMAGED at all! I have my own ideas about positioning them, so I needed to get a multichannel recorder and several omni mikes to try it out. I bought the Zoom R16 eight track digital recorder. I already had several of the cheap little Sony lavalier condenser mikes that we use for video, so that is what I used. Positioned them about 8 feet apart at center, half left, and half right and as far as I could comfortably get, about 6 feet, from the front row of players. If the spaced omnis made you cry, coincident cardioids, would have given you an apoplexy of joy. They're that much better. A transfer to Audition, a little EQ, a mixdown to stereo (for now), and the result was so fantastic I was sitting there crying like a baby it worked so well. Spacious, even imaging all across the soundstage, great dept imaging, pinpoint when there was a solo, just spectacular. Maybe I can take the moderators' advice and upload some files with Usendit and post a link. Just too bad you can't hear it on my system. Anyone get near central Florida ever? I wished that I could upload some of my stuff as well, so you (and others) could hear how wrongheaded spaced omnis are. Alas, most of my truly spectacular stuff is copyrighted and I have no right to use it for anything other than my own enjoyment. |
#76
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On Sat, 14 May 2011 09:29:45 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On May 14, 7:22=A0am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote: Scott wrote: On May 13, 1:03 pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Fri, 13 May 2011 10:44:41 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): I think Blumleins system works pretty well. Nut more to the point, it is what we have been using since the begining of commercial stereo recording and playback. It is how stereo recordings are designed to be used. Whether you agree with it in principle or not that is what it is. Was it Blumlein in England or Bell Labs here in the USA that started with a many-channel model and kept reducing the number of channels to find the minimum that would still work for stereo and finally settled on two? I believe Bell favored a three channel system. William B. Snow laid out the various systems for auditory perspective aro= und 1950. He defined binaural vs stereophonic systems. I quoted some of it in= my main paper on IMT. One thing about Blumlein for which we should all be thankful was his stereophonic microphone work. Anytime you hear a truly spectacular true stereophonic recording where there are few-to-no phase anomalies with almost holographic imaging, it was likely recorded using the Blumlein technique (or some variation of it). Yup. The guy was smart PHOOEY! Um, Have you actually heard any Blumelien like minimalist recordings played back with a set up similar to the one I have described? IME it is the closest thing I have heard to a convincing aural illusion of transportation to an original acoustic event. Apparently, he hasn't because you are quite correct! You don't want to make stereo recordings with a coincident mike! I most cetainly do want all recordings of acoustic music to have been miked in the same manner as the great minimalist recordings of the past. To bad, can't change history but I certainly would if I could. Again, you are spot-on, Scott! Stereo operates on a macroscopic scale, not "at the head" of the listener. That is simply patently false. Whatever happens in the soundfield is only percieved by the listener. That would be happening around the listeners head and in the listeners ears. That's just a truism. I does not matter what th man behind the curtain is doing. Again, I agree wholeheartedly. This being the case, if the images are formed in the room from speakers locate= d with substantial geometric similarity to the live instruments, you may wa= nt to place the microphones near those instruments. But that isn't the case. And this assertion is completely wrong. There are no specific problems with the imaging from instruments that are coincidentally placed in a concert hall in a position that may be close to where the speakers would be placed in the listening room. No problem at all. Right. I just finished an experimental recording to help prove my ideas on the recording end. I had always used the convenient single point stereo microphones for video work or concert recording. But there wasn't a very satisfactory stereo effect from them, because they are placed at only the one point in the room. My theory sez that Telarc was right in using three spaced omnis up front, spread across the soundstage. I have my own ideas about positioning them,= so I needed to get a multichannel recorder and several omni mikes to try it out. I bought the Zoom R16 eight track digital recorder. I already had several of the cheap little Sony lavalier condenser mikes that we use for video, so that is what I used. Positioned them about 8 feet apart at cent= er, half left, and half right and as far as I could comfortably get, about 6 feet, from the front row of players. A transfer to Audition, a little EQ, a mixdown to stereo (for now), and t= he result was so fantastic I was sitting there crying like a baby it worked = so well. Spacious, even imaging all across the soundstage, great dept imagin= g, pinpoint when there was a solo, just spectacular. Maybe I can take the moderators' advice and upload some files with Usendi= t and post a link. Just too bad you can't hear it on my system. Anyone get near central Florida ever? So do you think your recordings are actually better than the classic recordings using minimalist techniques? It would certainly be interesting to put your recordings up against the best we can find from Mercury, Decca, Lyrita, Waterlilly, RR, etc etc. I say this with the understanding that we wouldn't be bouncing the sound off the walls with the minimalist recordings. Only with your recordings. I currently use a single-point stereo mike for much of my recording these days where one mike head rotates with respect to the other (Avantone CK-40) http://avantoneaudio.com//ck40.htm I use it in an A-B configuration either in the cardioid mode or (depending upon the situation) crossed figure-of-eight. Lately I have put together a isolation matrix that allows me to do M-S (one mike in cardioid pattern, facing the ensemble, and the other mike at 90 degrees to the front "firing" cardioid and set to the figure-of-eight pattern. The Front + Side and Front - Side matrixing is done in the mixer (it takes three mike channels to do this, but the results are worth the extra mixer input). The mike sounds excellent and easily betters my Sony C-500s. |
#77
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... Mr Eikmeier, you have just blown any credibility that you might have had with me by that statement! Obviously, you haven't done much recording because you are completely WRONG. I have made thousands of recordings over the years of everything from solo piano to huge symphony orchestras. I have recorded such musical luminaries as Aaron Copland, Pierre Fournier, Rudolph Firkusny, Phillipe Entremont, Hubert Laws, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. All of those recording were made with a coincident pair and all of them have a soundstage that everyone who has ever heard my recordings has declared as "breathtaking". Can you point out a few of them? Might have some in my collection. And on a technical front, coincident miking has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the "head of the listener". A-B, X-Y, ORTF, coincident miking all using a pair of closely spaced cardioid mikes or M-S using a forward "firing" cardioid and a side "firing" figure-of-eight mike are the only way to record true stereophonic sound. Spaced omnis don't image for a damn, and when combined to mono suffer from cancellations because they aren't phase coherent. In the early days of stereo recordings, those whp used spaced omnis had to use a separate center mike for the mono pickup (mono records were still being made in those days) because they could not sum the widely spaced omnis to get a mono capture of the performance. I just finished an experimental recording to help prove my ideas on the recording end. I had always used the convenient single point stereo microphones for video work or concert recording. But there wasn't a very satisfactory stereo effect from them, because they are placed at only the one point in the room. Then you were doing something wrong, most likely you were using the mikes in the omnidirectional mode. There is no omnidirectional mode. I am talking amateur mikes, one-point stereo with (usually) cardioid elements. That won't work for coincident miking for the very reason you say; the two mikes are at the same point in the room. But this isn't true of coincident cardioid mikes. They may be close together, but they are pointed at different places on the stage. Think of the cardioids as a camera. Point the camera 45 degrees to the left of straight-ahead and snap a photo, now turn 45-degrees to the right and shoot another. Now compare them. The one picture shows one scene and the other picture shows the another scene, Place the pictures side-by-side and you get the entire panorama of the scene before you. Good example. This would produce a fisheye perspective on the orchestra, because you would be close to the center guys, and much farther from the right and left sides. Spaced omnis would give three "pictures" taken straight on and would produce a straight, even image. I have thought of taking such pictures along with my recordings, to illustrate this point. You just talked me into it for my next one. May 19th. Notice that there is overlap in the center? In photography that might not be good, but in recording the two overlapping lobes of the cardioid mike sum to give you a solidly placed, in-phase center section of the ensemble being recorded. This works so well that I have been able to record soloists with a symphony orchestra without a highlight mike. On playback the soloist is solidly anchored EXACTLY where they should be on the sound stage My theory sez that Telarc was right in using three spaced omnis up front, spread across the soundstage. No, they were wrong. Telarc's image MERELY OK. Bob Woods used three spaced omnis because his "idol" C.R. Fine, miked most of the Mercury Living Presence recordings that way. What Woods didn't understand was that Fine used three spaced omnis originally to allow the center mike to supply the mono capture of the performance because spaced omnis won't mix to mono very well. He found out that mixing a bit of the center with the spaced omni pair would yield a more solid image with better center fill BY ACCIDENT. Woods slavishly copied him. I know these things because I have discussed these issues with both men. Interesting! Thanks for that. And yes, the center mike is part of the deal, because the number of mikes and their spacing has nothing to do with the number of ears or their spacing on the human head. Not saying that you think that, just adding that point. Without the center mike, center imaging would be a lot more chancey and swimmy. With it, you can nail the center image, such as center soloists. Should also have center speaker on playback - of course. BTW, the Mercurys, Early RCAs and Telarc recordings are so well regarded, sound-wise only because most commercial recordings are muti-miked and mult-channeld with each instrument pan-potted into place. This method of recording unamplified instruments playing together in real-time is as wrong as it can possibly be. The Mercs, early RCA's and Telarcs were unique because, compared to multi-miked, multi-track excesses, they IMAGED at all! I have my own ideas about positioning them, so I needed to get a multichannel recorder and several omni mikes to try it out. I bought the Zoom R16 eight track digital recorder. I already had several of the cheap little Sony lavalier condenser mikes that we use for video, so that is what I used. Positioned them about 8 feet apart at center, half left, and half right and as far as I could comfortably get, about 6 feet, from the front row of players. If the spaced omnis made you cry, coincident cardioids, would have given you an apoplexy of joy. They're that much better. Well, joy of joys, I just happened to make a single point stereo mike recording at the same time, for backup and/or comparison. Haven't even downloaded it yet, the first one took so much time and was so successful. Maybe could make a special test recording where i fade between the two techniques and see what happens. A transfer to Audition, a little EQ, a mixdown to stereo (for now), and the result was so fantastic I was sitting there crying like a baby it worked so well. Spacious, even imaging all across the soundstage, great dept imaging, pinpoint when there was a solo, just spectacular. Maybe I can take the moderators' advice and upload some files with Usendit and post a link. Just too bad you can't hear it on my system. Anyone get near central Florida ever? I wished that I could upload some of my stuff as well, so you (and others) could hear how wrongheaded spaced omnis are. Alas, most of my truly spectacular stuff is copyrighted and I have no right to use it for anything other than my own enjoyment. Just tell us which recordings are yours, and we may own them already. What is your name? Gary Eickmeier |
#78
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On Sat, 14 May 2011 17:23:34 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Mr Eikmeier, you have just blown any credibility that you might have had with me by that statement! Obviously, you haven't done much recording because you are completely WRONG. I have made thousands of recordings over the years of everything from solo piano to huge symphony orchestras. I have recorded such musical luminaries as Aaron Copland, Pierre Fournier, Rudolph Firkusny, Phillipe Entremont, Hubert Laws, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. All of those recording were made with a coincident pair and all of them have a soundstage that everyone who has ever heard my recordings has declared as "breathtaking". Can you point out a few of them? Might have some in my collection. And on a technical front, coincident miking has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the "head of the listener". A-B, X-Y, ORTF, coincident miking all using a pair of closely spaced cardioid mikes or M-S using a forward "firing" cardioid and a side "firing" figure-of-eight mike are the only way to record true stereophonic sound. Spaced omnis don't image for a damn, and when combined to mono suffer from cancellations because they aren't phase coherent. In the early days of stereo recordings, those whp used spaced omnis had to use a separate center mike for the mono pickup (mono records were still being made in those days) because they could not sum the widely spaced omnis to get a mono capture of the performance. I just finished an experimental recording to help prove my ideas on the recording end. I had always used the convenient single point stereo microphones for video work or concert recording. But there wasn't a very satisfactory stereo effect from them, because they are placed at only the one point in the room. Then you were doing something wrong, most likely you were using the mikes in the omnidirectional mode. There is no omnidirectional mode. I am talking amateur mikes, one-point stereo with (usually) cardioid elements. That won't work for coincident miking for the very reason you say; the two mikes are at the same point in the room. But this isn't true of coincident cardioid mikes. They may be close together, but they are pointed at different places on the stage. Think of the cardioids as a camera. Point the camera 45 degrees to the left of straight-ahead and snap a photo, now turn 45-degrees to the right and shoot another. Now compare them. The one picture shows one scene and the other picture shows the another scene, Place the pictures side-by-side and you get the entire panorama of the scene before you. Good example. This would produce a fisheye perspective on the orchestra, because you would be close to the center guys, and much farther from the right and left sides. That would depend on how far you are away from the subjects and how the scene was arrayed. Spaced omnis would give three "pictures" taken straight on and would produce a straight, even image. I have thought of taking such pictures along with my recordings, to illustrate this point. You just talked me into it for my next one. May 19th. Except sound doesn't work like that. The analogy I used wasn't literal, but only to show that the fact that the two mikes are close together doesn't result in low separation at all because each mike "sees" a different part of the ensemble. The perspective you speak of has nothing whatever to do with the finished recording. Listen to a pre-stereo mono recording sometime. It consists of a single mike set in front of the orchestra, often over the conductors head and slightly behind him it didn't audibly accentuate the center of the orchestra and attenuate the sides as you seem to suggest. I've recorded string quartets and small jazz ensemble where I have placed the players in an arc, equidistant from the stereo mike at the arc's locus. Then I have rearranged the ensemble in a straight line in front of a centrally mounted stereo mike. The difference in perspective between the two methods was inaudible. Notice that there is overlap in the center? In photography that might not be good, but in recording the two overlapping lobes of the cardioid mike sum to give you a solidly placed, in-phase center section of the ensemble being recorded. This works so well that I have been able to record soloists with a symphony orchestra without a highlight mike. On playback the soloist is solidly anchored EXACTLY where they should be on the sound stage My theory sez that Telarc was right in using three spaced omnis up front, spread across the soundstage. No, they were wrong. Telarc's image MERELY OK. Bob Woods used three spaced omnis because his "idol" C.R. Fine, miked most of the Mercury Living Presence recordings that way. What Woods didn't understand was that Fine used three spaced omnis originally to allow the center mike to supply the mono capture of the performance because spaced omnis won't mix to mono very well. He found out that mixing a bit of the center with the spaced omni pair would yield a more solid image with better center fill BY ACCIDENT. Woods slavishly copied him. I know these things because I have discussed these issues with both men. Interesting! Thanks for that. And yes, the center mike is part of the deal, because the number of mikes and their spacing has nothing to do with the number of ears or their spacing on the human head. Not saying that you think that, just adding that point. Without the center mike, center imaging would be a lot more chancey and swimmy. With it, you can nail the center image, such as center soloists. Should also have center speaker on playback - of course. You absolutely need the center mike if you are using widely-spaced omnis, if for no other reason than to avoid an obvious hole-in-the-middle effect. You only need a center speaker if you have a three channel playback (such as some releases of Mercury and RCA Red Seal 3- channel recordings on SACD. But, then you need three amps and three preferably identical speakers. BTW, the Mercurys, Early RCAs and Telarc recordings are so well regarded, sound-wise only because most commercial recordings are muti-miked and mult-channeld with each instrument pan-potted into place. This method of recording unamplified instruments playing together in real-time is as wrong as it can possibly be. The Mercs, early RCA's and Telarcs were unique because, compared to multi-miked, multi-track excesses, they IMAGED at all! I have my own ideas about positioning them, so I needed to get a multichannel recorder and several omni mikes to try it out. I bought the Zoom R16 eight track digital recorder. I already had several of the cheap little Sony lavalier condenser mikes that we use for video, so that is what I used. Positioned them about 8 feet apart at center, half left, and half right and as far as I could comfortably get, about 6 feet, from the front row of players. If the spaced omnis made you cry, coincident cardioids, would have given you an apoplexy of joy. They're that much better. Well, joy of joys, I just happened to make a single point stereo mike recording at the same time, for backup and/or comparison. Haven't even downloaded it yet, the first one took so much time and was so successful. Maybe could make a special test recording where i fade between the two techniques and see what happens. If you did the latter correctly, you'll find that it produces a superior stereo. A transfer to Audition, a little EQ, a mixdown to stereo (for now), and the result was so fantastic I was sitting there crying like a baby it worked so well. Spacious, even imaging all across the soundstage, great dept imaging, pinpoint when there was a solo, just spectacular. Maybe I can take the moderators' advice and upload some files with Usendit and post a link. Just too bad you can't hear it on my system. Anyone get near central Florida ever? I wished that I could upload some of my stuff as well, so you (and others) could hear how wrongheaded spaced omnis are. Alas, most of my truly spectacular stuff is copyrighted and I have no right to use it for anything other than my own enjoyment. Just tell us which recordings are yours, and we may own them already. What is your name? I didn't say that they are commercial recordings. I was the archival recordist for a famous symphony orchestra for many years, Most of the Jazz stuff I recorded was for a National Public Radio Network series called "Jazz Alive" as well as having recorded the entire San Francisco Jazz Festival for three years running. Most of my recordings these days are for civic musical groups and institutions like the Stanford University Jazz Band, The Stanford Winds, and the Stanford Symphony, plus countless jazz groups who want their performances preserved. Some of these things I was paid for doing, and some I did just for my own amusement. |
#79
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
On May 10, 2:13=A0am, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
Now, at the expense of boring all you technos, let me ask again: Have you ever thought much about radiation patterns of speakers, what should be th= e correct one, and according to what theory of how stereo works? I thought about it a lot, and it led me to the paper that I quoted a link to you, a= nd then Siegfried Linkwitz asked the question straight out to the entire AES= .. Linkwitz writes: "The optimum radiation pattern and placement of stereo loudspeakers in a room has not been scientifically confirmed." There appear indeed to be very few studies involving listener response, two that I know of are Flindell et al. (1991), "Subjective evaluations of preferred loudspeaker directivity", Audio Engineering Society preprint 3076 Kuhl et al. (1978), "Effect of a loudspeaker radiated diffuse sound on the hearing event" (in German) Acustica, vol. 40, no.3, p.182 Flindell concludes that "there is no clear consensus of preference across listeners and programme items overall, although there is a tendency for naive listeners to prefer a more omni-directional response." Kuhl finds that sound engineers prefer lower directivity for recreational listening, for mixing/mastering the preference for lower vs higher directivity is 50/50. In AES preprint 6190 Olive states that "loudspeaker directivity by itself had little predictive power of listener preference" and "it is unclear what the ideal directivity of the loudspeaker should be, except that it should be smooth." However, experiments have revealed that a global directivity index is not appropriate and separate vertical and horizontal indices are needed (Ringlstetter, "Investigating the directivity index of loudspeakers", 22nd Annual Conference of the German Acoustical Society 1996) An overview of existing studies is given in Evans et al., "Effects of loudspeaker directivity on perceived sound quality =96 a review of existing studies", AES preprint 7745 (2009) Klaus |
#80
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Cable sound. Real after all?
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... You absolutely need the center mike if you are using widely-spaced omnis, if for no other reason than to avoid an obvious hole-in-the-middle effect. You only need a center speaker if you have a three channel playback (such as some releases of Mercury and RCA Red Seal 3- channel recordings on SACD. But, then you need three amps and three preferably identical speakers. Step back a minute on that one. I have found that some speaker/room combinations exhibit the dreaded hole in the middle, or stretched soloists, due to some reasons I give in my paper, but the idea is that if you screw up the speaker placement you can have two "clumps" of sound at the right and left, with no solid center that is well focused. A center speaker eliminates most of that problem. Obviously. Well, joy of joys, I just happened to make a single point stereo mike recording at the same time, for backup and/or comparison. Haven't even downloaded it yet, the first one took so much time and was so successful. Maybe could make a special test recording where i fade between the two techniques and see what happens. If you did the latter correctly, you'll find that it produces a superior stereo. I cannot say that the single point stereo mike was perfectly placed, no. So the comparison won't be real fair, but it was there for backup, so I might learn something from it anyway. Just tell us which recordings are yours, and we may own them already. What is your name? I didn't say that they are commercial recordings. I was the archival recordist for a famous symphony orchestra for many years, Most of the Jazz stuff I recorded was for a National Public Radio Network series called "Jazz Alive" as well as having recorded the entire San Francisco Jazz Festival for three years running. Most of my recordings these days are for civic musical groups and institutions like the Stanford University Jazz Band, The Stanford Winds, and the Stanford Symphony, plus countless jazz groups who want their performances preserved. Some of these things I was paid for doing, and some I did just for my own amusement. I would love to hear something, if you can make a disc or upload something. Read your blog - very complete and good. I may still have a few questions, because I have just gotten serious about audio recording and have the equipment now to do some innocent experiments. There is nothing like hands on experience. (I have been a video professional for 20 years now, after Air Force retirement.) My degree is Industrial Design. Gary Eickmeier |
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