Oh, can-you imagine we have time, during mixing sessions, to sample demonstration files of the various problems we can face ?
We have only time to look for a solution and acquire experience to save time during the next sessions.
(And we are not supposed to face any problem ;-).
Your remark on the "survival of the species" is right. Note that, IRL, when we localize a sound (a punctual source), we immediately move our head and sight in its direction. And our brain analyses the changes of the response curve in our two ears during this movement In hifi stereo listening the sound is most of the time issued from the two loudspeakers in the same time. The result will never be the same. It will always be a cheated "make believe" game.
Same thing with the 3D->2D process of photographic reproduction.
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So I can safely ignore your postulation as bluster and fluff? Excellent.
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So you better close your eyes while testing.
Anyway, DBT is nothing for me. I cannot hear what is better, just what is different.
(Last week i did a speaker comparison for a customer.
There were to singers in the band in a track we used for demo.
One speaker presented the black vocal guy very good, the other speaker was much better with the white guy.
Which one do i have to choose?)
But after a few days i can tell i like it or not for sure.
Anyway, DBT is nothing for me. I cannot hear what is better, just what is different.
Hearing a difference, consistently and reliably is a great accomplishment.
What you prefer or not is an entirely different story. It's not unusual to strongly prefer one over the other even if in a controlled test you can't hear any difference.
Jan
Interested in your opinion it uses the same ESS DAC as the Chinese are putting in their next gen cell phones. As far as I can see the only difference is the discrete I/V. The Chinese are using SOTA op-amps BTW.
Exactly as i can ignore your lack of kindness and politeness. And your empty assumptions less supported than mines. (I, at least, provided an interesting link on the subject)
I just tried to share my (little, but passionate, a whole professional life on it) experience on psycho-acoustic, take-it or ignore-it, i have nothing to sell.
Have a nice day, and welcome in my ignore list.
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Some questions.
Is your mixdown strictly level controlled, or does the pan function also introduce ITD?
When you set the soundstage using the monitors, how well does the result track in a home system? If a vocal is put 20 degrees off axis from a central no pan image in the studio on their monitors, is it the exact same place at home?
jn
Hi
To be clear, what I meant by learning or a learned system, is that over a life time, one associates the bizarre changes in mag and phase one measures within ones ear canal, to the visual association with the source of sound.
As I mentioned in the earlier post, a co-worker Doug Jones (professor emeritus in acoustics) had researched these effects fairly extensively and then made a set of recordings where the apparent location of the source was artificially generated using a simple set of these pina effects.
A write up / explanation on LEDR from Stereophile;
Take Me to Your LEDR! | Stereophile.com
The LEDR recordings, try these! ;
Online LEDR Sound Test | Listening Environment Diagnostic Recording Test
Best,
Tom
http://faculty.washington.edu/lawerner/sphsc462/dev_loc.pdf some scientific data on infant localisation of sound sources.
Of course. Part of the test setup would also be a calibration with a know difference and a null cal.
Funny how this starts to look like a routine scientific procedure
Jan
Absolutely, positive and negative controls are mandatory and "science" knows that for at least a couple of dozen years.
Therefore i was very surprised that i got a lot of criticism when i brought this concept into the discussion here in 2008. SY presented a lot of "hand waving" or "dancing around" just to avoid any positive control in for example cable tests and afair the "janneman" of that time didn´t know about it too....
Funny? Might be.
Was this (now suddenly so called) routine of calibration really mentionend in the otherwise nice linearaudio article about testing or did i miss the paragraph?
Aah, the master of straw man.....
Could you cite a post of mine where i advocated "peeking and cheating" ?
If you really want to know you have to do a competent experiment and usually (that means where possible) that includes "blinding" .
But there is lot more to it, and therefore "controlled test" is more appropriate. "ears only" is just a misnomer.
About pan, there is no problem if the instruments are fixed in the space. We set the position with the pan, then the level.
If we want to move an instrument from left to right, as an example, we are facing a problem. In the center position, basses from the 2 enclosures add their levels (+6db) treeble only +3db. So, you can feel they shrink through the sides: you'll have to correct the level in the same time you move the pan, depending of the harmonic content of the instrument.
Yes, we will have both a variation of level and response curve. Not a big deal in practice.
I add often a little delay in the signal on the opposite side of the instrument placement, to mimic as much as possible what happens with a couple of microphones. I never found any real trouble in the left/right positioning of the instruments, (home, headphones etc...) using this method. Only, if you put an instrument full right or full left, it is very unrealistic and disagreeable with headphones. Adding a little delayed signal of this instrument on the opposite side and the problem is gone (a mix of level and phase stereo).
It is for real that the reproducing system can change a lot the width and precision of the sound stage. Some systems can give a very precise impression of left/right localisation. Instruments can be well separated, precisely localized with space between them, while, on bad systems, they can be blurred, even moving. Same thing with the feeling of width and depth of the sound stage. On good systems, you can even make believe the sound-stage is larger than the space between enclosures.
I believe it depend of the phase and response curve accuracy of the two enclosures, as well as their directivity curves.
it is fun to create virtual walls on the side of the scene, even roofs, using delays. As well as to play with distances and vertical positioning (using equalizers in a very empiric way :-(.
Tom Danley, thanks for your input.
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To do a “blind test” that passes scientific muster requires a great deal of care and preparation and is why drug testing is done like it is, often “double blind” where even the doctors don’t know what you’re being given.
At the far other end of scientific rigor is audio where at it’s simplest, the test only requires that you not know which case is which when comparing them. This test is done at your leisure, with music of your choosing, when you feel in the mood, no rush, no pressure, as close to normal listening as possible except the "not knowing" part..
Question one is then “are these two cables, capacitors, parts etc, so close to the same I can’t tell them apart using only my ears? Question two “is one better than the other or just different”?
Althoug it seems to be so simple in fact it isn´t.
Leaving aside all technical considerations, which way do you decide that there is a difference or not?
Is it sufficient that a listener in this simple test tells "can/can´t hear a difference" or are several trials needed?
How many trials should be done and which level of significance should be possible?
Which way do you present the two DUTs, simple A/B, ABX, triangle or some other protocol?
If for example you choose A/B, is it a discrimination (which means only "AB" and "BA" will be presented in a random series) or a same/difference (which means "AB" "AA" "BA" and "BB" will be presented) test?
If you try to do such tests with different listeners you will most probable realize that most of them have difficulities in a controlled test to detect even quite large differences.
It is a difficult task because listeners have to evaluate (and memorize) complex sound events and have to do so reliable/consistent in as many trials that are needed.
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