It's too damn hot out there still.
Graaf, I went back and read this paper, interesting stuff.
Quite frankly I believe that the anechoic chamber IS the goal for recorded music/movies in our time.
Common control rooms and dubbing stages are highly treated. EQ is applied to remove room effects even more. Instruments are close-miked. Speaker have narrow directivity. All of this is done to eliminate the influence of the recording/reproduction space.
From a technical perspective there's nothing wrong with this approach. We simply need to accept the limitations of having created something that is inherently artificial and not built for maximum realism. On the other hand it provides qualities like pinpoint sharp localization and the greatest detail/resolution/clarity. This is a cultural phenomenon just like organ music is a result of the venue (churches) - this can also be seen in percussive music (played outdoors) or symphonic music (played in shoebox shaped halls).
Admittedly, from a practical perspective the unechoic chamber doesn't make much sense at all. Or, as listening habits shift to headphone listening, it finally starts to make sense.
I'm not taking sides here, just describing the general trend.
actually there is no established convention as to how to name what, hence a mess
in particular there is no established name for what You describe, long ago in one of Manger's patents it had been called "dummy head stereo", later similar commercial design appeared called "Stereolith"
I prefer to call it a "stereo bipole" - a "bipole" exactly because L and R speakers opposite mounted work in phase, another DIYaudio user - Elias - calls it SSS (single speaker stereo), there is a lot about it here: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/10962-stereolith-loudspeakers-question.html
and here: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/200040-stereophonic-sound-single-loudspeaker.html
Arcam Rcube is a popular mass market implementation of stereo bipole principle:
and a "stereo dipole" is just another name for a stereo pair of speakers with crosstalk cancelled one way or another, another name is "transaural stereo"
Audio Pro Living LV1 is an example of popular implementation of stereo dipole principle (with electronic crosstalk cancellation):
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
a stereo dipole, called "ambiopole", is an essential element of an Ambiophonics setup
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thanks! in fact Watkinson even looks ...well ...interesting too
like a medieval reenactor he could act in Lord of the Rings without any make up
thanks! in fact Watkinson even looks ...well ...interesting too
LOL!
I like the parts where he talks about compression, especially. Gives me another reason to feel good about spending extra hard drive space on flac.
Not really.
If you ask a good studio designer you'll find that there is a minimum RT60 time as well as a maximum one for control and live rooms.
Stuff recorded in an anechoic chamber sounds rubbish and an anechoic control room would lead to rubbish mixes which can ONLY be listened to in such a chamber.
Do Philip Newell or Tom Hidley qualify as good studio designers? Then look up "non-environment room".
Besides that I'm well aware of current standards and practices. I was describing the general trend and that is NOT towards strong first reflections or low D/R ratio.
I am saying that the recording mics were right at the ears. Then played back using earphones. This places the mic at the ears recording almost exactly what the ears hear, then when you listen through earphones, the replay location is also at the ears.
I have done this kind of recording in a hotel lobby where people just walk around you and talk; the piano playing in the background was also recorded. After a few minutes of recording, I then listened to the recording in the same lobby right away, it is a very unforgetable experience listening to the recording while also hearing people talk around me. It was very difficult to distinguish what was the recording of people talking and what were real people talking. You get a tendency to turn around trying to see who was talking behind you and find no person there.
I think it is important to do true binaural recording where the recording mics are located right outside the ears, so if you use earphone placing the diaphragm right at the mic location should replicate most closely what you would have heard if you listened to the live recording. This is why I think that all this portable music devices really can achieve higher fidelity than normal speaker playback can. Some devices that use an artificial head make the mistake of putting the mic inside a simulated ear canal, thus when you listen to that kind of recording, you get a double canal effect.I think that with realistic recording (which means: preserving natural directional cues) even quasi-anechoic headphone-like approach with loudspeakers can work on the condition there is no stereo crosstalk
all those requirements are pretty tough to meet in practice though - good recording + no reflections (horns/waveguides + highly damped room) + stereo crosstalk cancellation (ambiophonic-like mechanical barrier?) + a vice for the listener's head
it is pretty difficult to emulate earphone experience with loudspeakers
ps.
OTOH I remember that my stereolit-like bipolar stereo speakers tended to sound a lot like externalised headphones (not just my opinion but also of visiting friends, non-audiophiles)
When you use earphones, the listening room does not impose much audible reflections of it's own that will mess up the original recorded ques.
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Not according to the text reproduced in post #125. It suggests that without reflections you get the in-head effect. Yes, your head and outer ears are doing something to the frequency and phase response of the direct signal, but normally they would also be influencing your hearing of the reflections as well.
No, it's not a goal but it's just the cheapest way of doing it. Quite funny is that after an anechoic recording has been made, they add artificial reverberation to it
In my opinion that is an extremely poor trade off. I'm not going to accept that
Well, anechoic close miced recording listened through head phones is one of the worst audio experiece I can remember.
- Elias
I can conform from experience that listening a person talking in anechoic chamber in 2 meters distance results inside the head locatedness.
However, somehow this seems to depend on frequency. Grisping a thin plastic bag at the same distance can result externalisation. Even this does not sound natural, and perceived distance is ambiguous.
Overall, anechoic chamber is a terrible place to be !
- Elias
Anechoic chambers make for nice torture chambers. Just saying that most people get very disoriented in a chamber, not anywhere I would want to hear music or record it. The binaural recording techniques are very old and there must be a reason that this has never caught on. I am not saying that it can not be done well and perhaps for listening through headphones it would be preferable, I don't think in a normal two channel distributed loudspeaker design it has much of a following.
No, it's not a goal but it's just the cheapest way of doing it. Quite funny is that after an anechoic recording has been made, they add artificial reverberation to it
Doesn't make sense to you? It makes sense to me. First you try to capture the "essence" of a sound then you manipulate the spatial characteristics to your liking. It's an artistic process. And it's certainly not the cheapest way of doing it (room treatments, production time, tons of equipment, etc.). Capturing "realism" is cheap. Simply make binaural recordings.
In my opinion that is an extremely poor trade off. I'm not going to accept that
Well, that's the way it is. You don't need to accept it but how good are your chances to change it?
Well, anechoic close miced recording listened through head phones is one of the worst audio experiece I can remember.
That's why artificial reverberation is added.
Well, Toole isn't very precise in describing the circumstances of the listening test. And he continues to specifically talk about Ambisonics (not stereo!) under anechoic conditions.
Markus.
I think that we can come to a general consensus on anechoic recordings that without manipulation after the fact that the sound is not usable as a direct recording for playback purposes. Yes a recording engineer can add reverb and other time delay and acoustical treatments to an anechoic recording to give it a more realistic or what we would find to be normal, but why do all that? Wouldn't a good recording made in a proper acoustic space using a binaural recording setup be preferable in that regard. If it is not modern electronic music and was with acoustical instruments it would seem counterproductive and would probably never create the sounds we would all tend to expect. If we are just creating sounds electronically we don't even need an acoustical space, just a good computer program to do that.
I think that we can come to a general consensus on anechoic recordings that without manipulation after the fact that the sound is not usable as a direct recording for playback purposes. Yes a recording engineer can add reverb and other time delay and acoustical treatments to an anechoic recording to give it a more realistic or what we would find to be normal, but why do all that? Wouldn't a good recording made in a proper acoustic space using a binaural recording setup be preferable in that regard. If it is not modern electronic music and was with acoustical instruments it would seem counterproductive and would probably never create the sounds we would all tend to expect. If we are just creating sounds electronically we don't even need an acoustical space, just a good computer program to do that.
Anechoic type recordings make it easier to add appropriate acoustic effects. There are software out there that can add more complicated acoustic delays and reverberation. Although the software is some investment, but considering the cost, effort and restriction to setup a real recording session somewhere at a location half way around the world, and to get it perfect, the artificial way is cheaper in the long run. I would think though, the performer does not have the same feel and emotion as playing in a live environment.
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