I have a good friend who is a renowned classical pianist. I once convinced him to play a piece on an electric piano that he liked (the piece and the piano) and I recorded the output directly - no acoustics at all. When this was played back on my HT system the results were uncanny. The piano was in the room. Even the pianist was impressed and that usually does not happen because they expect room acoustics.
Just so that I understand you, you regard "high directivity" as a "wide directivity" (the small speaker comment implying that they have "high directivity")? That's the opposite of the way that I would use the terms. But your observation is interesting. What then would you expect from a high output very narrow directivity speaker in a very lively room?
I find the Orion lacking and I think that the point of this thread is that it is equaled by a small extremely low cost Behringer unit. That's not a strong recommendation even if the Behringer is very good, as even SL admits.
By the way, I have been talking with Uli Behringer and he routed me to a YouTube recording of him playing with Lee Ritenour. The guy is a very good musician. Maybe that's why his products work so well. I will tell you that he is passionate about his work.
So two loudspeakers in an anechoic chamber would both have the same dynamics? Good or bad?
I am having trouble with the psychoacoustic reasons why. It is a fascinating idea however. It would then relate the dynamics directly to the directivity. Not something that I have ever considered, but it is not inconsistent with my experience.
I understand, but we don't necessarily want the piano in the room, we want to be in the hall, hopefully the best seat.. two very different things, but maybe achievable by different means?
The test did not show the Berries equaled the Orions at all, and you know that too well..
Not necessarily, true. But I believe that the piano in a large room image is not possible to achieve in a small room without multichannel and a very dead room such that there is no local acoustics. However, the piano in the room with me is perfectly reasonable and doable on a good HT system. I'll take the "possible" but believable image over the other any day.
As I said before, I sometimes go to recitals at U of M. Last month I saw an outstanding pianist named Joel Hastings. the room was very small and the imaging was quite like what I was able to achieve in my HT. So what's not to like?
Excuse me but statistically they did. The Berries were actually preferred, but it was not statistically significant. Hence all that one can say with certainty is that the two are the same. Either you misread my quote or you don't understand the statistics.
I don't understand, there was piano without any acoustics? like extremely dry recording listened through earphones, a piano stuck inside Your head between the ears?
then how can we say that "the piano was in the room" if the room was not there (audibly)?
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Ah - not headphones, but a real room! Think about it. It probably doesn't fit with your vision of good sound quality, but that's beside the point.
There's no psychoacoustic research about "dynamics" I'm aware of.
Anyway, listen to a drum in a damped room and then listen to a drum in a church. No psychoacoustic research needed
a real room without room acoustics?
because You said: "the pianist was impressed and that usually does not happen because they expect room acoustics." so am I to understand that the guy couldn't hear the "expected room acoustics"?
Isn't contradictory?
Sounds like an electric piano was recorded directly via it's line out so the recording didn't include the recording venue's acoustics. Hence when playing back in the listening venue it sounded like a piano in the listening venue (without recorded venue's room acoustics) - I don't see anything contradictory?
Really?
I should point out something that Dave Clark did not make a point of in his paper - the results were not really statistically significant. The variance across listeners was as great as the differences heard. In other words the results were a Null result for the group.
And we are drawing conclusions from it still? The very fact that the test is flawed is proven by the "result". Speaker 1 and 3 use reflexions, speaker 2 doesn't. Why is it not the best, or the worst then? Speaker 1 and 3 have more in common after all.. What am I not understanding?
I think yes, this may be part of it. Back in 1177 I wrote:
A more reverberant room presents a higher "background" sound level, and as a result sound impulses don't sound as (relatively) loud. This effect is present in the recording as well . . . orchestral music is commonly recorded "wet" (in the hall), which masks some of what might be considered "dynamics", and will generally sound less "dynamic" than studio recordings captured close and "dry".
Many classical composers (Stravinsky is a good esample) use this to produce a "startle" effect . . . a "forte" following a "pianissimo" sounds "louder" (more "dynamic"?) than the same "forte" in a sustained passage. So it may well be that the perception of "more dynamic" may be an artifact of both reduced room excitation/reverberation and the nature of the recordings commonly played on the different loudspeaker types. One didn't commonly hear ORION demonstrated with the kind of "punchy" recordings often favored by the "horn guys" intent on demonstrating their "dynamics".
My take on the piano in the room is that you should be able to close your eyes and not be able to say if the piano is real or not. Now that is rather hard to do, having the length of an acoustic piano appear to be in front of you and the dynamic impact of hammer on strings and even fingers on keys and feet on the pedals. An electric piano should be much easier through the method that Earl used as an electric piano wouldn't necessarily have the size factor, that would be played through one or two speakers normally and there you just need the dynamics of the sound without the localization of the acoustic piano. Not having the recording capture the ambiance of a the room would be to an advantage when recording as the playback would be easier to achieve without that information having to blend with a recording of a room and having to integrate with the second source of the room and not interfere with each other and ruin the image. Having a piano recorded in a large hall and played back would require a very dead room I would think to be able to achieve anything like the sound of the hall without again screwing with the illusion, of course unless you were to play it back in a room the was truly equivalent in size to the original venue. All of this of course would go for the human voice also, having the illusion of somebody in the room either speaking to you or singing, that moment when you turn around to look at the person and realize they are not really there, that it is from the speakers.
Ps. So I would say that Earl's demo of the sound of the electric piano played back for the musician would be the easiest to achieve. If the recording chain was good all you are creating is the sound that you would have heard in real time over the same speakers playing the music in the first place if they were the ones used for the initial amplification of the sound. Now if this was a second pair of speakers they would have to have a very close approximation of the original speakers tonality and dynamics used to amplify the piano by themselves
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Ps. So I would say that Earl's demo of the sound of the electric piano played back for the musician would be the easiest to achieve. If the recording chain was good all you are creating is the sound that you would have heard in real time over the same speakers playing the music in the first place if they were the ones used for the initial amplification of the sound. Now if this was a second pair of speakers they would have to have a very close approximation of the original speakers tonality and dynamics used to amplify the piano by themselves
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I really think you guys should examine what the Modulation Transfer Function is so far as loudspeaker dynamics and room effects. That (limitations of it) are what governs your ability to understand random words and is limited by a number of different things which all apply.
My earlier post probably didn’t make a good case for what I see here and only Earl responded, so examine these links which are the optical case of MTF.
As the MTF’s extend higher in frequency, the resolution improves. Dynamics are another way of saying contrast.
Modulation Transfer Function - what is it and why does it matter? - photo.net
Modulation Transfer Function - YouTube
In loudspeakers in rooms, it is the STIpa measurement which quantifies speech intelligibility, that is based on a number of MTF measurements. In the case of a large room, among the things which improve the MTF’s is directivity.
I believe that the MTF’s that extend above the speech range are still clues used for stereo imaging etc and to me there appears to be a correlation between good MTF’s and more effectively conveying / preserving the information in the recording (as well as voice). Things which reduce the dynamics, reduce the MTF’s and that is measurable (like with Arta for example).
Best,
Tom
My earlier post probably didn’t make a good case for what I see here and only Earl responded, so examine these links which are the optical case of MTF.
As the MTF’s extend higher in frequency, the resolution improves. Dynamics are another way of saying contrast.
Modulation Transfer Function - what is it and why does it matter? - photo.net
Modulation Transfer Function - YouTube
In loudspeakers in rooms, it is the STIpa measurement which quantifies speech intelligibility, that is based on a number of MTF measurements. In the case of a large room, among the things which improve the MTF’s is directivity.
I believe that the MTF’s that extend above the speech range are still clues used for stereo imaging etc and to me there appears to be a correlation between good MTF’s and more effectively conveying / preserving the information in the recording (as well as voice). Things which reduce the dynamics, reduce the MTF’s and that is measurable (like with Arta for example).
Best,
Tom
Karajan didn't like the Musikverein so much because he thought the reverberation burried the note attacks. This fact is well covered in Beranek's books.
Dipole bass is not "punchy", but "airy", a virtue that does suit real instruments better. That's fine, because very few instruments are punchy as it gets in HT for example.
Dipole bass is not "punchy", but "airy", a virtue that does suit real instruments better. That's fine, because very few instruments are punchy as it gets in HT for example.