I agree - the narrow directivity approach creates the problem of incoherent reflections
no surprise
and You hear a bit of the room because it is rather big
So the only requirement for optimal sound reproduction is high similarity of direct sound and reflections, so our brain can filter them out, i.e. listening to fully constant directivity speakers in bathroom-like rooms with tiles all around has to be considered as optimal? Something's certainly wrong with that notion
on the contrary, but You miss one important point
Moulton put it aptly:
for example:
from: Moulton's Takes
because there is too much of "after that" (50 ms)
absolutely
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And I would add that this is the case if there was higher direct to reflection ratio. He did not state anything about a flooder, and since I don't know a single studio that uses them, It can only mean he is referring to a front firing speaker, not a flooder.
I notice that not one of your links you have provided as support of your points mentions a flooder. It just mentions reflections. Also none of them mention reflections coming from the ceiling either, so you don't have a lot of support for your ceiling reflection argument - just a lot of ambiguous statements and references.
You seem to love to quote Moulton, but you avoid this point like the plague.
Both Floyd Toole of Harman International and Joe D'Appolito, who's a fairly well known speaker and systems designer, made the case: we now know that wide dispersion of high frequencies, resulting in a reasonably flat power response laterally, is ideal behavior.
NB: Why laterally and not vertically?
DRM: Right now there seems to be a fairly clear sense that vertical reflections (from the floor to the ceiling) tend to upset our perception.
Toole and D'Appolito both talk about wide LATERAL reflections as being complementary, not ceiling or floor reflections. So it is not just reflections in general, it is reflections with a time component coming from specific directions. Hodas, Holmanson, Erskine, Grimani, Huston and many others have stated this over and over.
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a properly set up FCUFS system IS completely invisible, also invisible visually
It is neither. I could see the speakers, and could definitely hear its sonic characteristics.
More unsubstantiated claims....
why?
"just reflections"? an analysis of influence of reflections on audio quality shows why FCUFS simply must be better
who? me? this was discussed zillion times before
yes, I absoultely agree that "vertical reflections (from the floor to the ceiling) tend to upset our perception." - vertical reflections produced by a conventional forward firing loudspeaker
this is my point exactly
What do You think - which is better for audio quality - an incoherent reflection delayed by ca 2.5 ms or a coherent one delayed by ca 6 ms?
truth is that what You listened to was not a FCUFS system properly set up
Agree, that has also been my experience with small to medium sized speakers in a typical small to medium size room. But as the room and speakers get bigger, that starts to change.
That does help a lot for most rooms & systems*. But with the right room and system, it isn't needed. It wouldn't sound bad, it just isn't needed. The stereo illusion can be so profound that you just forget there isn't anything else. I certainly never would have believed it, had I not heard it. So I understand why most people don't believe it's possible.
For practical and budget reasons multi-channel is the way to go and works great. Pure stereo can do it, but it takes space and money to get the effect.
*I don't know at what size this starts to kick in. My listening room is about 3400 cu ft and it's not big enough. I have heard the effect starting in rooms that I would guess at about 5000~7000 cu ft. Wish I knew where the tipping point is, if there is one.
There are a number of ways, the ear/brain is very forgiving if you give it the right ammunition. Personally, I've found space and money to be unnecessary, focus and fussiness in refining every link in the chain of an otherwise conventional system will also succeed, the only disadvantage of the latter will be that there is a hard limit on the peak level of sound because the voltage rails of the amplifier will not be large enough.
ps. Ad:
not only twice as much delayed but also 6 dB quieter (propagation loss) for the same reason which is sound path being twice as long
not only twice as much delayed but also 6 dB quieter (propagation loss) for the same reason which is sound path being twice as long
In HiFi shows of the past it was common to have a live band play in an auditorium. The musicians were recorded and replayed over loudspeakers in the same auditorium. This used to be a very convincing exercise. Why? Because the replay could use the same room acoustics as the original.
Most of us don't have a problem with the "girl and guitar" reproduced at home. It fits in our rooms - even if it is "she is here". It becomes a problem if the recorded room acoustics differ too much from what we have in our listening space. I believe that listening to larger ensemble recordings in larger rooms is more convincing simply because of this better fit of recording/reproduction room sizes.
Rudolf
not just multichannel because :
not for the first time I can see contradictions in Your posts
LEV is an important factor in QUALITY of auditoria but even then NOT of all of them:
Leo Beranek's paper "Listener Envelopment LEV, Strength G and Reverberation Time RT in Concert Halls" 2010:
LEV per se is not a requirement for realism whereas ASW/spaciousness is such a requirement
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BTW a question - do available multichannel formats allow for perception of ASW ie. the spaciousness of sound sources?
And the multichannel setup makes the small room even smaller...
Don't get me wrong, I would always recommend a multichannel setup. But the reality, at least in Germany, is: too many people can not place 5 good speakers + subwoofers in their room. They eat up too much space, and although the user might have a great listening system, he has no more space to live. People interested in multichannel ("surround") often bought very small speakers to put on the wall, and that was OK for movies, but definitely not OK for hifi audio.
That is one reason why multichannel audio is nearly dead. Other reasons include the manufacturers, which still think that "multichannel" is a synonym for "home theater" and offer only such speakers. And the electronics is Stereo, too, except of those big A/V amps offered by japanese companies, which are never even considered as an alternative in the HighEnd world.
I agree and the situation is not going to change for the same reasons that You have stated
but as You say:
then question is whether a multichannel setup really has any advantages over 2 channel as far as realism of sound reproduction is concerned
or perhaps it is all just about some impressive effects?
just to quote Peter Walker's of QUAD opinion on multichannel:
the opinion referred to the multichannel of the 70s ie. quadrophony, of course, but it's a general statement and I think that it holds true with regard to any rear channels
Wiring two rear channels in series with the positive terminals of the amplifier can be fun sometimes