the ideal polar response

[lilun]

Y
The latter may sound "spacious", but it destroys the accurate portrayal of the original sound space that's there in the recording to begin with.

In a nutshell, it boils down to reproducing a "you are there" effect, rather than producing an artificial "they are here" one.

so according to what you say the best most accurate space would be to listen in an anechoic chamber. It is well known that this sounds bad. How can it sound bad if its the most accurate? this is the mystery

 

[dumptruck]

It's not a mystery. If everyone was listening in anechoic chambers, everything from recording to speaker design would be done differently, and it would sound great (aside from it still being totally unpleasant hanging out in the chamber in order to listen to music).

 

[GM]

so according to what you say the best most accurate space would be to listen in an anechoic chamber. It is well known that this sounds bad.

Hmm, seems like this would only be true if either the recording was made in one like Bell Labs did early on or the radiating point in space was the size of a large spherical pin head with a 360 deg. polar response, so little wonder all cone/dome 'full-range' speakers sound horrible in one.

GM

 

[GM]

These include all electronic instruments as well as vocals recorded in anechoic vocal booths.

Aneochoic? Seen well damped ones, but none truly aneochic.

GM

 

[dumptruck]

Doesn't really matter, because we pretty much always add artificial reverb to anything recorded that dry.

 

[GM]

True, but I'm curious if there's any truly anechoic voice, etc., recording booths used for consumer recordings he or others can point to or is he peppering his responses with the kind of misinformation that marketing gurus are famous for.

GM

 

[lilun]

Aneochoic? Seen well damped ones, but none truly aneochic.

GM

same thing

 

[lilun]

True, but I'm curious if there's any truly anechoic voice, etc., recording booths used for consumer recordings he or others can point to or is he peppering his responses with the kind of misinformation that marketing gurus are famous for.

GM

listen to some rap or pop albums. They are done in vocal booths. Its near enough anechoic and dry enough- So there are examples where the recording contains little reverb.

 

[GM]

same thing

Technically not true.

GM

 

[marco_gea]

so according to what you say the best most accurate space would be to listen in an anechoic chamber. It is well known that this sounds bad. How can it sound bad if its the most accurate? this is the mystery

I suggest reading about the "Non Environment Control Room" concept championed by Tom Hidley. It is explained in this recent article: The BOP Studios Story

Marco

 

[peteleoni]

The truth is its going to be a 60 to 120 degree cone with around 90 degrees the more likely to be the most useful in an average room. And now the debull part: Polars need to graph all nulls by turning unit on side and running plot.

 

[andy19191]

One problem is it is hard to reduce the width of the bass. It tends to always be omni. So we can only match the tweeters dispersion to the bass by making it wide dispersion, or we can gently narrow it by using felt or changing the shape of the baffle etc

It is easy to control bass beam width using multiple drivers because the wavelength is long. But the reasons you might want to control a driver's radiation pattern in a room is not the same below the Schroeder frequency as it is above it.

 

[peteleoni]

Which is why it would be best to have uniform polars and control reflection at the source, ceiling clouds for example.

It is easy to control bass beam width using multiple drivers because the wavelength is long. But the reasons you might want to control a driver's radiation pattern in a room is not the same below the Schroeder frequency as it is above it.