This seems very strange to me.
How does the ear know when a reflection comes from the horizontal plane or the vertical plane? With the direct sound this is eazy as the ear has a specific shape, but with the reflections this will be quite different as there will be a hudge amount of a combination of both horizontal and vertical plane reflections.
Or has this to do with the polar patern of the speakers used? Witch ofcause is different for converntional speakers in horizontal vs vertical plane.
Introduction to Psychoacoustics - Module 08B
But in simple terms, because of the apparent source location of the reflection.
The first floor or ceiling reflection will arrive from the same horizontal angle but a different vertical angle. The ear is not so good at separating reflections which vary from the direct signal only by vertical angle, for reasons that reference goes into. (There is no change in inter-aural time delay, for one)
Reflections from the side wall will come from roughly the same height but at a much wider angle towards the sides of the room than the direct source from the speaker. The ear is very adept at identifying the horizontal location of a sound source, using among other things inter-aural time delay and HRTF.
The ear still has a specific shape for the reflections too ?
Not sure what you mean by that. Yes, there will be a whole bunch of different reflections present at once with slightly different time delays, but that is the miracle of our hearing system - it's able to make sense of all these multiple delayed versions of a sound source coming from different directions at once.Well there's that too, but even if the spectral balance of a floor and side-wall reflection was the same, it would still sound different because of the different apparent source location, and how the brain interprets this relative to the direct signal.
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Direct sound isn't any different than reflections. Not all reflections arrive at the same time.
Please, do yourself a favor and read the paper I've linked yesterday. By reading it, you'll learn much more in much shorter time.
The ear needn't be very good in that. After the direct sound, or, if missing, the first reflections have arrived the brain determines the position and doesn't care much about where all the rest comes from. In the case of hifi nobody doubts that diffuse-radiating speakers don't have pinpoint imaging, but the two-source stereo-phantom-image is usually not very believable, and some people like Elias are completely unable to form one in their head.
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Again, a misinterpretation of the results. Neither the expert group nor the naive group, showed by numerical ranking an association between wide dispersion and spaciousness or narrow dispersion and imaging precision. Should I claim that wide dispersion doesn't lead to spaciousness? No, just that this test didn't prove a connection. Unfortunately, null proof of a link will not prove the absence of a link.
To call it either an "occupational disease" or a "occupational bias" are both a spin of your opinion that it must be a bad thing, rather than the equally plausible possibility that they are simply more discerning of a factor that the less experienced overlook (my spin).
Toole is not disparaging of it. He takes the view that professionals will sometimes listen for critical evaluation and sometimes for enjoyment. When they need to hear what's going on they lean towards higher directivity and dryer acoustics.
David S.
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Some thoughts why i proposed that
Above that frequency range where dominance of absolute phase (in natural hearing) diminishes and HRTF,
envelope, ILD takes over, there's hard to see benefit in phase coherent radiation, say above 1.6 Khz,
with a stereo setup in an acoustical small room.
Destructive interference between the 2 stereo loudspeakers tends to disturb cues for lateralisation
when listening outside the median plane of the stereo setup.
Also there is interference with the mirror sources of the speakers in the room.
Symmetrically radiating but incoherent sources are able to smooth interference.
That interference, despite estimation of audibility, is an artefact coming with phantom sources.
The absolute phase information is lost when introducing incoherence now, but it is not needed
anyhow in that frequency range for proper lateralization of phantom sources.
And the phase information for high frequencies was only present exactly in the stereo median
plane anyhow: Do you all and always sit there ? Listening tests involving more listeners
will ineviteably have to place some of the participants outside the median plane ...
Spectral and intensity cues, can be maintained even better than using coherent sources.
This takes place in a frequency region, where the hearing is most sensitive even for coloration.
Making lateralisation cues at high frequencies more independent from listening position and thus
more consistent with ITD cues from lower mid frequencies will tend to make perceived lateralization
angle more robust and contribute to even sharper localization.
Interaural cross correlation will tend to be lower, thereby also lowering the perceivable contribution
of the listening room's "small room reverb", which again is - even if beneficial in some respects - an
artefact.
Next point is "consistency" of center vs. left/right panned phantom sources.
A source panned completely to one side is often located more sharply as the speaker becomes coincident
with the phantom source (distance cues neglected for a moment), but it is likely that the phantom
looses "virtuality" and just brute force coincides with the speaker (and e.g. the speaker's idiosyncrasies
in radiation pattern).
Decorrelation (in highs) may contribute to giving all phantoms (center and side) a more consistent amount
of "virtuality" resulting in a more homogeneous presentation of the sound stage.
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Which is plausible to me.
When taking part in a loudspeaker evaluation, some of the
professionals may be in "working mode" and some in "enjoyful mode",
unless instructions are definite ...
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but wait guys! I think important thing is overlooked here - evaluation of what?
the critical evaluation is not evaluation of speakers or hifi electronics, this is not audiophile evaluation
this is critical evaluation of sound recorded or monitored when producing a record or a musical event, it is looking for flaws and mistakes and for potential problems
of course this is entirely different listening mode and an entirely different speakers may be needed - loudspeaker for music production, a particular kind of professional tool
If you don't mind a little provocation:
To resemble the production result closely, a speaker for home listening
should be a little more directional than typical studio monitors
- because home environment is likely to be more reflective -
and at the same time allow for larger variance in listening position
... i.e. has higher requirements to CD.
So "good monitors" would appear being a subset of "good home speakers".
Not talking about nearflields here.
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perhaps - if we assume that HiFi is about resembling the production (as the producer heard in His studio through His monitors) result closely
it is controversial and there is the realistic sound reproduction alternative
but anyway - one way or the other - for sound RE-production people generally - even pro guys in this "enjoyment mode" - prefer low directivity and room reflections it creates
what's the point of forcing them to like something else just because it is supposedly more correct?
I really think we tend to underestimate differences in listening habits,
not just "hearing and judging the same stimulus" between professionals
and home listeners.
The professional (a recording engineer during work) will listen
from a defined distance and very small side offset.
Home listeners usually use (and often consciously want) a
wider zone for listening.
Part of the stereo artefacts play a siginificant role when trying
different listening positions in a room.
That makes "smoothness" and "homogeneity" of sonic impression
within a "listening zone" more important, than it may be with
professional equipment.
not just "hearing and judging the same stimulus" between professionals
and home listeners.
The professional (a recording engineer during work) will listen
from a defined distance and very small side offset.
Home listeners usually use (and often consciously want) a
wider zone for listening.
Part of the stereo artefacts play a siginificant role when trying
different listening positions in a room.
That makes "smoothness" and "homogeneity" of sonic impression
within a "listening zone" more important, than it may be with
professional equipment.
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Yes, and when in working mode you need to have the most revealing look at the sound possible.
Some people forget, as they shout that their preferences are absolute, that 2 speaker stereo is a tradeoff. You can have high clarity or you can have high spatial envolvment but, apparently, not both.
Our kitchen is adjacent to the living room where the stereo is. Frequently we'll put on a record while we make dinner. I've noticed the sound from a room away is perfectly acceptable. It isn't overly reverberent or dull or unpleasant. But, quite distinctly, the ticks and all but largest pops of the records are not audible when listening from the kitchen!
There must be a loss of clarity from being a few more critical distances away.
David S.
It depends on the listening room acoustics and the personal preference of how the listener likes to listen (close vs. they really just want ambient music).
Someone several pages back complained that this discussion often turns into an exploration of what's wrong with stereo reproduction, rather than what's the best dispersion... I don't see how you can develop a comprehensive answer to the latter without an examination of the former.
In the 20HZ - 200HZ region, you've got so few room reflections filling in the primary cancellations at the listening position that "flanking" woofers may be the best repair of boomy sounding lower mid and bass. In the 200HZ - 1kHZ region, you've got inter-aural crosstalk corrupting any embedded imaging info, which can be made "better" by either inter-aural cancellation or wide dispersion getting the side walls of the listening room to be more in the picture, thereby creating a synthetic sense of spaciousness horizontally. In the 1kHZ to about 6kHZ region, imaging is all about amplitude comparisons, so you might want to limit dispersion in this range so room reflections don't create a significant perceived amplitude difference over frequency. Above 6kHZ, I've read that our sense of image location rolls off quite a bit, and we will perceive this range as being diffuse regardless of the dispersion characteristics of the tweeter (not that I totally agree with that - but it may be more true than I think). Adding my rear firing tweeter really did sound better to my ear, for what that's worth.
In the 20HZ - 200HZ region, you've got so few room reflections filling in the primary cancellations at the listening position that "flanking" woofers may be the best repair of boomy sounding lower mid and bass. In the 200HZ - 1kHZ region, you've got inter-aural crosstalk corrupting any embedded imaging info, which can be made "better" by either inter-aural cancellation or wide dispersion getting the side walls of the listening room to be more in the picture, thereby creating a synthetic sense of spaciousness horizontally. In the 1kHZ to about 6kHZ region, imaging is all about amplitude comparisons, so you might want to limit dispersion in this range so room reflections don't create a significant perceived amplitude difference over frequency. Above 6kHZ, I've read that our sense of image location rolls off quite a bit, and we will perceive this range as being diffuse regardless of the dispersion characteristics of the tweeter (not that I totally agree with that - but it may be more true than I think). Adding my rear firing tweeter really did sound better to my ear, for what that's worth.
That was me "complaining"
, nevertheless i agree to that statement.My goal was to keep on searching for "partially healing the drawbacks"
- if possible - instead of discussing alternative formats of reproduction.
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Member
Joined 2009
This sounds to me like the most reasonable conclusion from this entire discussion. Wide dispersion speakers sound spacious while narrow ones can retain their clarity at higher volume.
yeah, this sounds to me like the most reasonable conclusion from this entire discussion - I think we all agree that there must be loss of clarity in a kitchen that is adjacent to a living room where a stereo is
indeed
geeezzzz WTF are we talking about?
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