Well . . . we've still got "tone controls" . . . and we just have to accept that some of the old recordings are never going to sound as good as we'd like, even if the original tapes still exist there's not enough market to re-master them. That said, some performances still sound good even on old 78s. You just listen through all the flaws . . .
True (although a lot of current "music" is as bad as the recordings), but really, compression has always been with us . . . justified by the terrible dynamic and noise performance of vinyl and cassette tape, and the noise floor in automobiles. The quality of classical recordings however is holding steady, and in some cases getting better. Some of the newer opera recordings (recorded to movie "standards") are better than anything from, well, last century. Can't fault the sound on something like the Leonard Cohen "Live in London" DVD, either (even if the video sucks) . . .
I would say that the current recordings coming out of the smaller European labels (hyperion, Chandos, Dutton, BIS etc). I am not sure yet if there is a correlation between the label doing a 5.1 SACD release and the overall quality.
TV sound is an interesting one. Ever noticed on a pop song you can hear the lyrics more clearly when its played on TV? At least on BBC anyway. I know BBC have a remit to ensure intelligability. Dunno if its a function of TV FR or if there is a combination midrange boost combined with mono channel being +6dB.
Toole himself states:
"This is a caution to all of us who work in the field of audio and acoustics. Our preferences may reflect accumulated biases and therefore may not be the same as those of our customers."
This topic is starting to spread across 3 threads, so to save myself from typing it all in again, I retypes my post from teh directivity thread:
It depends on the delay of the first reflection. If its far enough out it won't affect timbre but if it's closer in time, it does. I know Voecks would agree with that based on his past writings. It also has to be delayed enough but not too much to be perceived as spacousness. From "The detection of Reflections in Typical Rooms", Olive, presented at the 85th AES convention, preprint # 2719 (F-1): Lateral reflections from 10 to 40 ms lead to image spreading and spaciousness. Notice you don't get something for nothing, the image spreads.
Kantor also indicated keeping that side wall reflection reduces clarity "The key factor in editing is clarity, not audiophile accuracy. You need to hear splice points, noise floors, fades, etc. From a speaker design standpoint, this means a strong emphasis on clean axial response, with few early reflections"
Oddly enough, Moulton completely disagrees (talk about circle of confussion!). From Moulton: "WHEN we employ a loudspeaker that has both point sources and constant lateral output as a function of frequency, working in a room with hard sidewalls for broadband specular reflections, it turns out that the resulting playback phantom images and reverberance GAIN in detail, not LOSE" But Newell and Holland disagree finding “spaceousness and the resolution of fine details are largely mutually exclusive"
Then there is Toole's finding that keeping a strong sidewall (not reduced through overly tight dispersion) reduces error due to crosstalk (Pan's center image thread). See my post with Toole's quotes at http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/277519-fixing-stereo-phantom-center-19.html#post4518639. So, there's an argument that too much DI and toe in increases this error. BTW, recording environment can't correct this, it has no knowledge of the distance to my side wall for example.
Next, regarding my point that the playback can and should be tuned by individual listeners to account for their differing perception of realism, from Toole:
"Ando et.al. (2000) found that musicians judge reflections to be about seven times greater than ordinary listeners, meaning that they derive a satisfying amount of spaceousness from reflections at a much lower sound level than ordinary folk"
Again from Toole:
"This is a caution to all of us who work in the field of audio and acoustics. Our preferences may reflect accumulated biases and therefore may not be the same as those of our customers."
So your premise that there is ONLY one way to achieve realism (spaciousness and accuracy) and that it's not listener dependent is without scientific precedent, in fact the science (with with fairly substantial independently repeated support behind it now) sufficiently refutes that position.
I can dig up much much more, but enough for now.
I don't think that any of your comments support this and I think that you misunderstood my comment. Lateral late reflections are what we want, not early ones. You quotes mostly support this, although there will always be dissension. I suppress the early reflections with directivity so there is no need to use absorption - its not that I want early reflections. And saying that I believe that there is "ONLY one way" to achieve the results that we want is kind of disingenuous as I am not saying that at all. I am saying that there is one way to achieve that, and I haven't found any others that work as well. The researchers in this area are coming to a fairly common idea, although smallish differences permeate. Like frequency response in the loudspeaker is hardly an issue at all anymore, few would disagree with Toole and the rest in this regard. The main points that I make are those areas where there is very solid agreement among researchers, but still very large disagreement among people on the web. Like THD, nobody that I know who has studied this considers it to be a major aspect of loudspeaker design (major in that we don't have solutions.) But around here THD is considered a major aspect of any loudspeaker design.
To be fair, you did state that absorbing the first side wall reflection is wrong as it reduces spaciousness, and to leave it and reduce timbre distortion through higher DI. I quoted Toole who clearly agreed with a positive side effect. I know Tooles and Olives work very well, and I don't think they endorse a high DI. They endorse even response at the reflection points. I also quoted research pointing out that absorbing it improves detail retreval. It's all about trade offs
And quoting your post I linked above: ``See, I recommend a very live room and high DI. That way you get both detail (and imaging) AND spaciousness. There is no other way to get both.``
I think it's hard to misinterpret.
Just reading this thread for what it is. You seem to be trying to merge another two current threads into this thus confusing nearly everyone, esp as Earl had spun this topic out to try and treat it on its own. For you and Earl who are active on both threads it may make sense, but runs the risk of killing useful discussion here before its even started.
Looking back to the first post by Earl I still do not think that his comments on directivity on another thread have anything to do with the core question asked. But very happy to be corrected.
So in conclusion: Not pedantic, just checking you had thought about the chaos you might be causing.
I'm not sure how to take this, coming from someone as yourself. So I'll just say yes I notice these effects to.
Sorry, no attempt at chaos. A bit of thread history is in order. This thread started as an extension of the others as those were getting OT, but these links I created are very much related, prescient to this topic, and part of Earl`s over-all philosophy so worthy of discussion (this thread is a continuation of those posts).
His rather restrictive perspective (IMO) on what accuracy means opens the door to including this, as it is useful to counter that argument.
Dave
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Pano, is the front wall absorptiveÉ If so, strange indeed. If not, its the doubling of distance of that reflection.
What does the ETC look like? A large drop after the initial peak? Sounds like you're practically in an ambechoic room
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I don't see that based on the first post in this thread. I now understand that you don't rove around looking for arguments with Earl on every thread he posts on (which is how it did seem), but your links do seem very OT compared to the intent. But it's Earl's thread so I will shutup, listen and hopefully learn something
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