Try Ambiophonics with your speakers

fcserei said:


I totally agree with you. I'm using a dsp, not a barrier, which makes life much simpler. I'm just shaking my head when they are talking about "fidelity", and "reproducing what is on the record" in stereo reproduction.


And I totaly agree with You and with sunshinedawg's comments

the fact that people stick to conventional stereo triangle is for me something that can be explained only by force of habit and/or plain ingorance of the alternative options and/or conceptual inertia of audio industry and market

the latter being most probable explanation IMHO
 
poldus said:
I use a yamaha ax1 hall effect for ambience. I´ve tried jvc-xpa1010 but it was not good enough. The ax1 is so good I just bought a second unit so I can have 8 ambience speakers as advised by Ralph Glasgal. In my experience ambience should be 15db below the main speakers.

Does this unit do the dsp and amplification in one box? Can it do more spaces than Hall or do you just use that for everything? I wonder if there is a unit that does everything in the digital domain so I can use digital amps?


poldus said:
The front ambience channels in the ax1 are different from the rear ones. They basically provide early reflections.

Ok, thanks for the info. Do you know if this pretty much is the same with dsp's like the Yamaha and others that process a front and a rear channel, the front is automatically the early reflection and the rear is reverb? You don't have to do any configuration except place the speakers in the proper places?
 
I'm using the Yss-901. The only source I kow is the Sony SDM-N50 LCD monitor. You can use the audio board of the monitor. I have one installed in a Behringer DEQ, and 2 in a panasonic digital receiver.
I've tried the pc (RACE), but i did not like it, besides I also don't want the complications of a pc in my listening setup.
An other possibility is the Creative Soundworks ps2000 (cheap) ot the new TACT (expensive).

The barrier method is foolproof, but I'm quite satisfied with the DSP. Sweetspot is reasonable and because of the "sound field completeness" you don't feel at all that your head needs to be in a vice. But of course it is still a one man show.
The only problem is that the stereo dipole speaker pair has a veird off axis combined response (just like the stereo speakers has veird on axis - sweet spot - response :) ), so a dead room is a must. But if the room is dead, you need ambience, which is a requirement anyway. (Stereo can only work if you have a big room acoustically close to the recording venue and you are in the farfield.)

I've found the double stereo dipole (one in front of you and one playing the same signal behind) better than the single. It really helps to detach hf signal from the speakers, which is a problem even with the barrier. It is also much more tolerant to head movements.

I'm experimenting now with a version of OPSODIS, tweeters are at +-5 deg, mids at +-10 and woofers to the sides. The experiences are very positive.
I use 8 channel ambience too (3 XP-a1010), one pair for early reflections, 3 pairs for rear and above.
 
poldus said:
I use a yamaha ax1 hall effect for ambience. I´ve tried jvc-xpa1010 but it was not good enough. The ax1 is so good I just bought a second unit so I can have 8 ambience speakers as advised by Ralph Glasgal. In my experience ambience should be 15db below the main speakers.


It depends. If you have a good distribution of the ambience speakers (diamond or cube shape for 8) and the speakers have no apparent distortion, you can increase the ambience level surprisingly high. The real purpose of the main stereo dipole is "only" to position the instruments in the soundfield.
 
Does this unit do the dsp and amplification in one box? Can it do more spaces than Hall or do you just use that for everything? I wonder if there is a unit that does everything in the digital domain so I can use digital amps?

The ax1 includes amplification. There are different hall and church modes with parameters that you can adjust. No need to set specific parameters for front versus rear speakers except volume.
Using cd´s as a source it all stays in the digital domain (using the digital input). For sacd you need to use the analog input so you are converting twice (bummer). However, I´ve been listening to multichannel sacd for a long time ( three years) and have to agree with Mr Glasgal that recorded ambience is not as good- there is too much direct sound captured by the rear microphones and it is not believable in the long run. The ambience channels in the ax1 have no direct sound whatsoever and have a real-like quality that multichannel sacd does not have despite the higher resolution.
 
poldus said:


The ax1 includes amplification. There are different hall and church modes with parameters that you can adjust. No need to set specific parameters for front versus rear speakers except volume.
Using cd´s as a source it all stays in the digital domain (using the digital input). For sacd you need to use the analog input so you are converting twice (bummer). However, I´ve been listening to multichannel sacd for a long time ( three years) and have to agree with Mr Glasgal that recorded ambience is not as good- there is too much direct sound captured by the rear microphones and it is not believable in the long run. The ambience channels in the ax1 have no direct sound whatsoever and have a real-like quality that multichannel sacd does not have despite the higher resolution.

There seems to be a bunch of different Yamaha models. The dsp-1 and the dsp-3000 are just processors, no amp. Then there are the amplified units Ax1, ax2, a1, a2 and there are a bunch more. Is there any reason you went with the ax1?

What I meant was a dsp that input the digital from a cd player, did the convolution and output a digital signal that I could use with my pure digital panny sa-xr45 amp. Thanks for all the great info.
 
What I meant was a dsp that input the digital from a cd player, did the convolution and output a digital signal that I could use with my pure digital panny sa-xr45 amp. Thanks for all the great info.
There is no digital output in the ax1.
fcserei:
Can you elaborate on the phantom center issue? I don´t see what you´re referring to.
 
poldus said:

There is no digital output in the ax1.
fcserei:
Can you elaborate on the phantom center issue? I don´t see what you´re referring to.


If you want to play back MCH material with stereo dipoles , you have to mix the center channel to L and R. This is happening after the DACs in the Yamaha, so it would have been an extra ad/da step. Also the Yamaha would have been hard to "convince" to process analog input at 48 kHz.
If you are using a rear stereo dipole pair for reproducing the rear 2 channels of a Mch recording, the direct sound contamination is not that big a deal - see the post about double stereo dipoles.

Originally posted by sunshinedawg

What I meant was a dsp that input the digital from a cd player, did the convolution and output a digital signal that I could use with my pure digital panny sa-xr45 amp.

I do this within the panny, after the Dolby/DTS decoder. Or as a standalone unit, the Behringer provide the necessary input/output for the DSP.
The Panny ambience generator is useless, I have extra boxes for that.
 
fcserei said:


I do this within the panny, after the Dolby/DTS decoder. Or as a standalone unit, the Behringer provide the necessary input/output for the DSP.
The Panny ambience generator is useless, I have extra boxes for that.

I'm not clear on what your saying. Do you mean you have the yss901 in the panny? And the Behringer can take a dig in, do convolution and output dig?