And, again: Each microphone element used to capture sound is point receiver, it doesn't know direction, distance or number of wavefronts producing signal.
Most instruments produce extremely complex radiation that rapidly approach plane wave as distance grows to several times the size of instrument.
Recording process fixes listening perspective to single location. Head motion fore/aft, side to side during playback reveals fixed perspective, but rotation of head allows looking in direction of various image elements appearing in phantom image. With great recordings, and point coherent speakers the ability to rotate head between various image elements as they draw our attention, without phantom image bobbing about, smearing, or completely collapsing, transforms listening into "you are there" experiences.
Speakers with large radiating surfaces can, and should project back to a point. A truly planar speaker projects back to a point at infinity.
Put a door in front of you and there you have it. Play "Empire Brass in Japan". Amazing depth.
I had similar perception with speakers directly at the side walls with an opening angle of about 90°. It's probably as simple as attenuating the confusing cues from interaural crosstalk.
P.S. Picture is from an Bock/Keele AES preprint.
Better off blocking cues from speaker reaching both ears, when cues radiating from speaker toward each ear are different, do to lack of speaker coherence. With highly coherent speakers, the door is not needed.
For most recordings several microphones with varying directivity characteristics and distances are used.
"[...] crosstalk can be thought of as a
high-level early reflection coming from the direction of the
opposite speaker (or from the direction of a true reflection
from an imaginary reflective center barrier). The timing of
this "reflection", however, is unfortunately based on the
path length of the opposite speaker to the listener's ear
and on what is received from the opposite channel. From an
imaging standpoint, this crosstalk "reflection" comes from
the worst possible direction--that of the opposite channel.
Furthermore, this "reflection" is not coherent with the
speaker on the same side as the ear but is coherent with the
opposite channel's signal. All of these factors contribute
to the very detrimental effect crosstalk has on imaging in a
normal spaced-speaker stereo listening setup."
Bock/Keele, AES preprint 2420
Glad to know I am not the only one with that conclusion
.I tried it within the Car audio environment and although it worked somewhat to enhance width I could not get over the side effects it produced.
Conventional stereo got me very close to that same effect after careful time alignment and EQ.
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Speaker and the room. Let's not leave out the room as its relationship with the speakers is a key factor. At LFs almost a dominate factor - the speakers themselves are less of a factor. But yes, electronics never needs to be a factor.
And you have proven this in blind tests? Otherwise its just a biased opinion and likely intrackable subjective effects. No one else has been able to hear this stuff in blind tests.
Markus - beautifully said. A quote worth remembering. Is this one you have heard before or is it yours? I'd like to reference the right person.
It is quite sarcastic that the same interaural cross talk for which Blumlein set the stereophonic theory on is also the biggest impediment of stereo triangle
Either I don't understand this or its wrong. The diffraction signal to the opposite ear is coherent. At least as far as I know the deffinition of coherence. Delays in and of themselves do not cause a signal to become incoherent. The issue is that the signal to the other ear interfers with the direct signal and it does this outside of the hearing system and so the hearing system is incapable of removing its effect. This is the same rational as the need to lower early reflections of the signal to say the right ear from the right ears direct signal. Our hearing has a better chance of removing a reflection from the far wall to the other ear because these two signals are less correlated. I think Keele should have used the word "correlated" rather than "coherent".
The problem has two aspects, a) comb filtering effects and b) bleed-through of information of the opposite channel. The latter is paramount.
Yes,
I can't wait to have a barrier in my room to divide it and be in my face..... Oh and only one person at a time can listen to this effect. And no reflections off that surface are being created that are then added to the room reflections? Let's get serious, this is fine if you want to do some type of perceptive testing but not a realistic listening environment. Even if it worked I wouldn't do it....
You might as well go with stereo Blumlein microphones instead of single mono microphone techniques......
Fas42,
Your analogy of the printer and computer again says that if I only get the image in my processor maxed out by upping the pixel depth I will have the best picture and the printer I use doesn't matter. Well I don't buy that anymore than your speaker analogy. Perhaps that is why I use a photo printer with more colors of ink, I can create a better visual image than you can ever get with a simple three color printer with black. When my printer finally dies I am moving up to the 8 color Epson photo printer, closer to a realistic representation. sorry still no 3d printing though, it still will lack that final necessity to make it realistic, the holographic part, the real analogy to the speaker electronic interface that is missing, the extra depth element that we should be able to get much closer to with multichannel sound systems distributed around the room.
I can't wait to have a barrier in my room to divide it and be in my face..... Oh and only one person at a time can listen to this effect. And no reflections off that surface are being created that are then added to the room reflections? Let's get serious, this is fine if you want to do some type of perceptive testing but not a realistic listening environment. Even if it worked I wouldn't do it....
You might as well go with stereo Blumlein microphones instead of single mono microphone techniques......
Fas42,
Your analogy of the printer and computer again says that if I only get the image in my processor maxed out by upping the pixel depth I will have the best picture and the printer I use doesn't matter. Well I don't buy that anymore than your speaker analogy. Perhaps that is why I use a photo printer with more colors of ink, I can create a better visual image than you can ever get with a simple three color printer with black. When my printer finally dies I am moving up to the 8 color Epson photo printer, closer to a realistic representation. sorry still no 3d printing though, it still will lack that final necessity to make it realistic, the holographic part, the real analogy to the speaker electronic interface that is missing, the extra depth element that we should be able to get much closer to with multichannel sound systems distributed around the room.