Down the track all the various techniques to disassemble, and then reassemble the sound will get bigger and bigger, it's just a processing power, storage and bandwidth issue. In the meantime, extremely low distortion playback allows the ear/brain to do the job that all the technology will try to mimic, and is available now ...
Getting back to an acoustic grand, this is a very nice reference point. Easy to get access to the real thing, easy to hear what happens in a small room when one is played enthusiastically - the sound field generated when an audio system plays a recording of such at comparable SPLs should match in most areas of tonality, sense of sound intensity, etc.
IME, when the acoustic piano sounds right then a lot of everything else falls into place; what I'm always after is the sense that I'm listening to real people, playing actual musical instruments - whether it actually matches the sound field in a particular concert hall, to me is far less interesting ...
IME, when the acoustic piano sounds right then a lot of everything else falls into place; what I'm always after is the sense that I'm listening to real people, playing actual musical instruments - whether it actually matches the sound field in a particular concert hall, to me is far less interesting ...
Yes and no. I think what I do hear is a reverse lens. A horn loaded speaker would do this. The simplicity of my design pays off as horns are not easy to design. I would rather loose some power and have a result. What I was trying to say is the lifelike qualities are very easily destroyed. I suspect hi fi sound has grown up around the reality of box speakers. They are used to monitor so the sound evolves to suit them. Much in the way microwave cooking exists with some good results ( rice ).
I had the Maggie's on last night. On Youtube the Partridge Family " I think I love you " came up on the side bar. Someone had spliced the TV show with a good transcription. All I can say is wow. Colleen loves this stuff so I always listen a bit. You never know when the jewels come out. If you repeat this some versions are very poor. This one has a primitive mix that I like, bass is excellent in a bloated way. The instruments sound very natural and my goodness they could sing. A very learned friend had a secret collection of Doris Day records to test his hi fi. I was one of the few he would allow to listen to them. Everyone else was Beethoven. Although the sound was enhanced I understand exactly why he used her voice.
The sound of a grand piano is interesting. Just the size and way it is made says it will defeat a hi fi to sound the same. I installed a system with Epos speakers and LP12 many years ago for a musician. She had a Steinway upright. The Epos put the upright to shame a little. On the strength of this Bonita bough the full concert grand. She kept the upright also.
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Small rooms.
I wonder if a very near field speaker working between 250 Hz and 25 kHz ( - 3 dB ) could work. A hybrid of car stereo and headphones. A double sub-woofer to ease the engineering and not pull the image to one side. Digital delay might help sometimes.
What it might also do is get rid of the box sound to only attempt this modest range. My experiments say to me that 7kHz is a good crossover point. I have heard many expensive full range units . I feel a 7 kHz double drive unit design to be the best of all worlds. Even the best full range seems to shout and beam. Very interesting to use 7 kHz. If the tweeter is removed often the difference is subtle. Restoring it makes the music snap. I really like that. It sort of proves treble harmonics work differently to how we think. I also found the absolute level is not so critical when crossed higher up . What is critical is maintaining 250Hz to 5 kHz linear. Using a piano as a guide all of that makes sense.
I feel crossing lower down is to force the speaker to live in the 1970's. Many do it because they have been told it is the only way to have acceptable stereo images. That being so I must throw my Maggie's away. Far better to make a narrow / excellent image for two listeners and then like the Maggie's tail off at the sides. The speakers I just built are better than the Maggie's in this. Doubtless they will attract criticism. I can live with that. I can not so easily live with the box sound. The guy I designed them for loves them. In his house ( small ) after ten minutes I feel totally comfortable with them which is pleasing. Two hours later I am even happier. As he pointed out all who listen to them love the small size and looks. He says he will make my OB's . I doubt he will sell many.
One thing we did do is use many sound sources. Interestingly the design that works with low grade sources also is the most open sounding. Sure it says some sources are low grade. It never says switch it off. The other weird bit is very bight sounding amplifiers sound just that. Somehow it is almost nice that they do. Not pinched or acidic. Equally very warm amps sound very detailed and friendly. Very, very weird and most welcomed. The speaker is a very easy load. This was not a design aim. It just came out of what we did.
I wonder if a very near field speaker working between 250 Hz and 25 kHz ( - 3 dB ) could work. A hybrid of car stereo and headphones. A double sub-woofer to ease the engineering and not pull the image to one side. Digital delay might help sometimes.
What it might also do is get rid of the box sound to only attempt this modest range. My experiments say to me that 7kHz is a good crossover point. I have heard many expensive full range units . I feel a 7 kHz double drive unit design to be the best of all worlds. Even the best full range seems to shout and beam. Very interesting to use 7 kHz. If the tweeter is removed often the difference is subtle. Restoring it makes the music snap. I really like that. It sort of proves treble harmonics work differently to how we think. I also found the absolute level is not so critical when crossed higher up . What is critical is maintaining 250Hz to 5 kHz linear. Using a piano as a guide all of that makes sense.
I feel crossing lower down is to force the speaker to live in the 1970's. Many do it because they have been told it is the only way to have acceptable stereo images. That being so I must throw my Maggie's away. Far better to make a narrow / excellent image for two listeners and then like the Maggie's tail off at the sides. The speakers I just built are better than the Maggie's in this. Doubtless they will attract criticism. I can live with that. I can not so easily live with the box sound. The guy I designed them for loves them. In his house ( small ) after ten minutes I feel totally comfortable with them which is pleasing. Two hours later I am even happier. As he pointed out all who listen to them love the small size and looks. He says he will make my OB's . I doubt he will sell many.
One thing we did do is use many sound sources. Interestingly the design that works with low grade sources also is the most open sounding. Sure it says some sources are low grade. It never says switch it off. The other weird bit is very bight sounding amplifiers sound just that. Somehow it is almost nice that they do. Not pinched or acidic. Equally very warm amps sound very detailed and friendly. Very, very weird and most welcomed. The speaker is a very easy load. This was not a design aim. It just came out of what we did.
Why secret,
!?? I could listen to her voice any time, love that sound! One of my all-time favourite movies when very young was Calamity Jane, and my only CD of the music from that appears to be taken from the sound track, nominally quite poor quality - perhaps they are the only remaining "masters". If her voice can still shine through the "dirt" of those recordings then the system is doing OK ...
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Stereo is not PSR.
With PSR you can walk around a sound just like you can walk around a real instrument.
On holiday I had a very good reminder of drum sound. It was in the hotel lounge. At first I thought it was amplified. It sounded a bit slow and coloured. Very nice I thought all the same. Then I realized it was real. This made me think. I really love recorded drum sound. In truth it is slightly enhanced. I had this years ago when listening to triangle and violin as the only instruments in a folk tune . They sounded like different amplifiers being used when there were none. The triangle very Naim like and the violin like some very couloured valve amp. The effect was like an active set up with the reverse priorities of how the science would say how best to use the amps. That is valve as bass-mid and Naim for mid-top.
With high quality stereo the same thing subjectively does happen - you can walk around and the sound field remains intact; there is no such thing as a sweet spot. This appears to come about because there are sufficent auditory location cues clearly enough rendered for the ear/brain to always make sense of them; the spatial sense of what you're listening to doesn't collapse irrespective of where your head is.
This is relatively rarely experienced; a bit of a shock the first time it happens but you never forget it. Of course this could be created "artificially" using the techniques you referred to, but I wonder if the clarity of the sound would also be conveyed when done this way?
Frank. Whilst I didn't get a uniform field on the speakers I found that simple filters allow it to fade away rather than cut. The ear adapts and as you say the walk in field appears. We found it very hard to get this. Then like a jigsaw puzzle all the pieces fitted together. What I learn't is the parts of the jigsaw seem missing until every small thing is tried. The missing pieces seemed to be there but not there. The maths said it should be a walk in the park. It wasn't.
Nigel, you've got it bad when you describe natural sounds by the type of amp sounds they resemble ... get a grip, man,
!! The real thing takes no prisoners, it is what it is - for me, number one priority is intensity ... if a system only gives me "polite" sound then it goes straight into the bin - I can use a kitchen radio if I just want background mulch ...
A very nice description, Nigel - there are degrees of "convincingness", and you do have to get fussier the more you wish the illusion to be rock solid. For me the first time it happened it was night and day, I found it be an amazing "creation", and I marvelled at it - from then on the measure was always how close the elements in the sound were in place for the "mirage" to re-establish ...
PSR goes much much further than that.
With PSR there's a sound reproduced and its in the middle of the room (or anywhere else). You can then walk around the room and the sound keeps its position in the room. If there are more sounds reproduced, these sounds keep their individual positions. Just like when people are speaking in a room and you walk around the room.
Okay, I've noted this - onhifi.com -- Features Archives. The upside is that it does seem to deliver the goods, the downsides are that the event has to be recorded with a special microphone array, which means that all previous recordings aren't relevant; and, this was written up over 13 years ago, the technology was sorted out back then, but it hasn't yet made any significant impact in the audio world ...
Yeah, for audio we have chosen simple stereo instead of 5.1 or even 2.1 (and others), not that it is better.
Another couple of interesting points in that article: digital preamplifiers weren't "quiet enough" - abraxalito would appreciate that, - and the amount of amplifier grunt on tap: 3,500W into 8 ohms. These are exactly the sort of requirements, or equivalent to conditions for getting convincing sound from stereo - so I wonder how much of the "good stuff" was due to those aspects of the setup, ...
- and the amount of amplifier grunt on tap: 3,500W into 8 ohms. These are exactly the sort of requirements, or equivalent to conditions for getting convincing sound from stereo - so I wonder how much of the "good stuff" was due to those aspects of the setup, ...
Yes.
You need 7 mics and 5 speakers. Its not complicated at all.
Normal stereo recordings sound just like normal stereo as usual.
Maybe that's because people are concentrating on stuff that doesn't matter much. I'm thinking of low SNR, THD, High sampling frequencies, cables, quantum purifiers etc....
The equipment is nothing special.Another couple of interesting points in that article: digital preamplifiers weren't "quiet enough" - abraxalito would appreciate that,
"When we reached Johnston's lab, we discovered that the actual audio equipment he was using was very firmly in the affordable "prosumer" camp. The amp rack sported a home-built ten-channel balanced passive attenuator (J.J.: "None of the digital units we tried were quiet enough, so I just built something analog") and five Hafler P7000 power amplifiers. "
Speakers were Snell C5As.
Yeah, so?
The first airplanes made didn't have turbo jets either, yet they still flew.
Consider the potential cost of a 5.1 system in 1940, or for that matter, in 1970. Pure astronomy.
You might as well wonder why haven't active speakers been represented more, or are not represented more even today, when they are technically potentially far superior since they would allow use of specialized amps, for example the tweeter coud be run off pure class A 100% of the time, bass lines wopuld have no effect on the mid or high rnage, and so on.
If relatively simple and crude biamping can produce stunning results, imagine what an all active well designed 3 way speaker could do. I worked for three seasons in a TV studio equipped with Klein & Hummel 3 way active speakers, the signal coming from the audio mixer - amazing sound.
While on the subject of active speakers, Nigel, rather than playing around with open baffles and whatnots, why aren't you thinking of a hybrid active speaker? You could have a solid state bass driver, which would give the "oomph!" no tube I have ever heard could even dream of, while the treble could be powered by a true class A tube amp, where their lack of power would not even be noticed?
Get the best of both worlds.
Get the best of both worlds.
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