Markus,
Your current recipe seems very good. But what is polar pattern in horizontal plane?
What you are doing with Nathans and toe-in in horizontal plane to get image erection of width and depth is exactly what Graaf is doing in vertical plane to get image erection of height. In both cases the problem starts with limited dispersion of speakers in frequency dependent fashion, and continues with balancing speaker and listener position to make system work.
Your current recipe seems very good. But what is polar pattern in horizontal plane?
What you are doing with Nathans and toe-in in horizontal plane to get image erection of width and depth is exactly what Graaf is doing in vertical plane to get image erection of height. In both cases the problem starts with limited dispersion of speakers in frequency dependent fashion, and continues with balancing speaker and listener position to make system work.
Fifth word in my reply above should have been "will", not "can't".
The sense of spaciousness as originally recorded may not be adequate for the listener's enjoyment, hence the pursuit of additional reflections that various speaker placements or designs allow, or the "phantom stereo" that I prefer to reflected sound.
Art
Image erection, in optics this most often means image oriented in same direction as object. Image through telescope/microscope is inverted top for bottom and left for right. Prisms are often used to flip this about as commonly done with SLR cameras, binoculars, and refraction telescopes intended for terrestrial viewing.
Yes, I'm borrowing and bending the term.
Graaf has a system in which vertical location is difficult to get right.
Markus has a system in which width and depth are difficult to get right.
Art had a post which wasn't that hard to get right.
Yes, I'm borrowing and bending the term.
Graaf has a system in which vertical location is difficult to get right.
Markus has a system in which width and depth are difficult to get right.
Art had a post which wasn't that hard to get right.
How does one get the feeling of "being there" when you have a bunch of reflections coming from the front, but little or none coming from the sides and rear? The feeling of being "there" requires this information, and that is part of the problem with stereo. No amount of frontal reflections will give you "you are there" perception. A well designed speaker pair can give a very good perception that "they are here" but not a "you are there".
Was this mixing tech apart of the recording and mixing team that did the Madonna album? How would this guy know what was heard in the studio, and what was not? The studios that Madonna has recorded in(at least the ones I know of) have very good monitoring systems, and merged tracks could easily be heard on the system. We also use headphones during tracking and mixing for stereo recordings just so we can hear deep in the mix, and catch these kinds of things.
I prefer that a sound system reveals the bad, good, and great recordings. It should not IMO gloss over details or have not enough resolution to flesh them out. This was my problem with hearing flooder's for the first time. With my recordings, the speakers glossed over far too much, and changed too many well heard sonic details for me to enjoy them. I had a point of reference which was what I heard in the studio mixing and mastering them. If I place a Hammond Organ solidly in the right channel, I want the speaker system to keep it there during playback. I don't want to hear a diffused half right position or that is a spatial distortion. A person that does not have a reference would not know what the correct placement was. I want to be able to tell one recorded sound field from the next, and that is hard to do with reflections flying all over the room.
Admittedly I am a specifications and guidelines guy because the end result can be much more predictable with them than without them. The ITU-B775 speaker setup(and current 7.1 speaker setup) had the benefit of being tested by thousands of listeners over a lot of years before the standards were reached. Since all studios closely follow this standard(along with using front firing speakers), the end user that does the same has a reasonable expectation that they are hearing the same spatial positioning of images as the recording, mixing and mastering folks heard. That expectation is lost with most stereo systems(there are no setup standards), and it is especially lost when you start using "exotic" speakers with "odd" radiation patterns like a flooder. At that point you have no idea what the original sounded like, it is all seasoning and very little original meat flavor.
In saying this, the end user has the power to choose whatever speaker they want. Preferences are what makes the world go around. Some of us are euphonic listeners, and others want accuracy and original intent. Most folks fall in between those two positions.
It was not a mixing tech from the original album, but a remixed version. I don't remember the remix. It's a long time ago and I'm no Madonna fan. The CD was one we had i the shop (A Dance chart album or something like that).
I can accept some smearing in the stereoimaging, but nothing that sounds like phaseshifts (you know the stuff you make with BBE Sonic Maximizer and the like - yes my studioexperience is quite old, and I hope better equipment are used today - I did love the EMT246 reverb though)
I can accept some smearing in the stereoimaging, but nothing that sounds like phaseshifts (you know the stuff you make with BBE Sonic Maximizer and the like - yes my studioexperience is quite old, and I hope better equipment are used today - I did love the EMT246 reverb though)
When the listening room provides artificially added reflections, the presentation can become more "you're there". It's like the front wall of the listening room has been removed and opens into the auditory space of the recording.
Real envelopment (LEV) requires additional speakers at the back. The effect is profound and nobody that has heard it would ever argue about the superiority of multichannel over stereo. Obviously a lot of people here haven't heard good multichannel setups/recordings.
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I agreen to Markus76. Multichannel is the way to go for the true audiofile. I have experienced this with very good classical multichannels setup. Holfi electronics on B&W nautilus speakers.
But I'm not yet ready to fill my living room with speakers and amplifiers. I will try to come as close as I can with just two speakers. I hope I will never reach nivarna, because this is also a hobby to build and try new things
But I'm not yet ready to fill my living room with speakers and amplifiers. I will try to come as close as I can with just two speakers. I hope I will never reach nivarna, because this is also a hobby to build and try new things
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I agreen to Markus76. Multichannel is the way to go for the true audiofile. I have experienced this with very good classical multichannels setup. Holfi electronics on B&W nautilus speakers.
But I'm not yet ready to fill my living room with speakers and amplifiers. I will try to come as close as I can with just two speakers. I hope I will never reach nivarna, because this is also a hobby to build and try new things
I believe audiophool nirvana can only be achieved with headphones. With so many problems caused by speakers in rooms (and recording formats), there's a point where it's simply stupid to invest in better speakers and electronics.
With headphones we could easily control variables like distortions, speaker similarity, acoustical symmetry, room reflections, interaural crosstalk, etc. The tools are here but there's probably no business case for having individual HRTFs measured just to listen to headphones.
Markus,
Listening room is nothing more than a bunch of artificially added reflections.
Sure, you can boost this number by adding reverberation effects, or more speakers.
Adding another pair of speakers and balancing a stereo signal can pull image in front of main speakers. Some stereo recordings will be perceived as better this way, other recordings won't.
So much comes down to recording and mixing techniques.
Binaural recording/listening reveals that two channel recording can capture everything that brain needs to have a good time.
Front wall reflection isn't a problem when speaker has uniform polar response in horizontal plane.
To this end I've modified Pluto Clone by adding some drivers....
Sixteen tweeters/speaker.
I've placed the speaker pair in a number of locations in my living room. Imaging detail and stability is fantastic.
Even when placed directly in front of brick wall. Of course EQ changes, but this doesn't impact imaging and spaciousness. The walls presence is completely imperceptible. From as far back as I can get to just short of placing head in between the speakers the image remains stable. Approaching the speakers is very much like approaching a live stage.
Not sure what you're trying to prove or disprove here. The problem with omnidirectional speakers is that low level details are completely lost due to masking effects.Other than that, this is probably closer to an omni than anything else I've seen here on DIY in a long time. What drivers did you use? Do you run the upfiring driver full range?
What is usually meant by masking is that a loud tone at F will inhibit perception of a less loud tone at F +/- D. The smaller the D, the smaller the difference in loudness needs to be for the least loud tone to be surpressed. This cannot play a role here.
The other masking effect I know usually goes under the name of precedence effect. The first wavefront will inhibit perception of the same wavefront delayed by reflections or path length differences. This obviously does play an important role here, but it points in a different direction than you suggest. Because reflections are surpressed, what is perceived is only the initial sound source, whether it be from omni or controlled directivity loudspeakers.
As a matter of fact, I think it works the other way around, and the way Geddes for example feels a need to heavily dampen the space behind the speakers provides anacdotal evidency for this. Controlled directivity speakers in general have very sloppy and eratic frequency response outside the listening window. In other words, the sound that emanates from the sides and rear of a controlled directivity loudspeaker can be substantially different from what comes out of the front. Sufficiently different for the reflections not to be suppressed by the Haas effect, which as a result makes them audible.
FYI: my present setup comprises of speakers with very wide dispersion in a listening room (4.5x8x3.3) which is completely untreated and with furniture with only hard surfaces. I do hear quite a bit of room, but nevertheless, imaging is pin point precise.
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Other than that, this is probably closer to an omni than anything else I've seen here on DIY in a long time. What drivers did you use? Do you run the upfiring driver full range?
Obviously this is a work in progress.
No loss of detail. Everything I can pick out with Pluto Clone is present.
Implementation is via DCX2496. I've played with crossover from 500Hz-2.8kHz with Butterworth 6dB/oct up through Linkwitz-Riley 48dB/oct. Power handling is obscene.
Parts-Express sold them as Onkyo. I bought these from fellow forum member Adison, who used some in Keele CBT clone. Backs of drivers are stamped Delco. They are frequently used in cars.
Google of "delco tweeter" returns hits like this. This appear to be same driver.
Woofer is SEAS L16RN-SL.
If I'm trying to prove/disprove anything it's Linkwitz's observation/conjecture that our perceptual mechanism accounts for specular reflections in manner allowing concentration on direct sound, including virtual sources generated by multiple highly correlated real sources. My observations concur with Linkwitz.
vacuphile,
We've discussed this before. I think our understanding of the hearing process isn't as deep as it would need to be in order to decide on what is "best" in sound reproduction. An interesting quote from Alan Watts (stumbled upon in Daniel Levitin's book "This is your brain on music") which I feel does describe the status quo pretty good:
"If you want to study a river, you don't take out a bucketful of water and
stare at it on the shore. A river is not its water, and by taking the water
out of the river, you lose the essential quality of river, which is its motion
its activity, its flow."
We've discussed this before. I think our understanding of the hearing process isn't as deep as it would need to be in order to decide on what is "best" in sound reproduction. An interesting quote from Alan Watts (stumbled upon in Daniel Levitin's book "This is your brain on music") which I feel does describe the status quo pretty good:
"If you want to study a river, you don't take out a bucketful of water and
stare at it on the shore. A river is not its water, and by taking the water
out of the river, you lose the essential quality of river, which is its motion
its activity, its flow."
How about a hemispherical on-wall speaker? The surface covered with as many small fullrange drivers as possible.
Compare to good headphones