Try Ambiophonics with your speakers

[markus76]

Originally Posted by Ralph Glasgal

Yes but that is not quite correct. If the laser speakers are directly in front and head spaced then there is no crosstalk at all as the sound just grazes the ears in passing. As the speakers begin to be separated the crosstalk increases since now sound can actually go around, over and under the head. At the far side the level at the far ear may decrease from some maxima but not by that much. So in general for a perfect laser speaker, the crosstalk does increase as the angle increases with some slight decline at extremes maybe.

The Soundmatters speakers are four inches apart and are the closest I have ever seen to being laser-like. With RACE they do produce a remarkably wide stage and are fun to play with but you have to listen to them in the near field. You can hang one around your neck.

Ralph Glasgal

Ralph, with respect but that's nonsense and contradicts physics - or have I just misread what you're trying to say?

[poldus]

Markus: I don´t mean you in particular. There is something going on that I don´t understand. There is Ralph Glasgal and then there are a very few of us who said: this is totally better than stereo, there is no way we will go back.
Where is everybody else? How come they don´t hear the overpowering superiority of ambio?
Theories explaining why ambio cannot improve on stereo don´t mean a thing to me because I´ve been sitting in this chair listening to ambio with a smile on my face for over eight years now. It is the fact that some have tried it and are not astonished at its beauty. That is what I don´t understand and would like to hear details on.

[Ralph Glasgal]

Originally Posted by markus76

I don't follow why a phantom image between C and L should sound worse than the same phantom image generated by L and R?

If you expect a phantom image between C and L for thirty degree spacing while you are facing the center speaker, then you know something I do not. The sterophonic sonic illusion hearing mechanism requires that the loudspeaker triangle be equilateral or normally in the 50 to 90 degree range and a listener must be centered. But try it. Just play an ordinary CD with two speakers placed 30 degrees apart, sit facing one of them and see if you can hear anything like a stage between them that compares to normal stereo. To me this sounds mostly like two mono channels which is okay for movies with sound effects.

The extreme example of this is the idea that you can hear things at the side between say the left speaker and the left rear speaker in a 5.1 system when facing front and watching the screen. You can't of course, but if you rotate your chair so that you have the left front speaker on your right and the left rear speaker at your left you might hear a center image in front of you but then you can't see the movie or hear the right side of the stage.

The moral of this is that like optical illusions, the stereophonic illusion has its limitations and neither optical nor stereo illusions are easy to make seem like real life seeing or hearing but as a hobby they are fun to play with.

Ralph Glasgal

[Ralph Glasgal]

I do get lots of E-mails from Ambiophonic converts. Here are a two.

Dr. Albert-George Lang, Diplom Audio Engineer: Today I tried Ambiophonics with 4 speakers and normal CDs. I used Adobe Audition in order to run two instances of the Ambiophonic plugin and routed them to the front and rear speaker pair respectively. It was absolutely fantastic!

Andrew: (via TACT) XTC/Ambiophonics........WOW! I spent the last day or so in the UK playing with the XTC setup and was staggered by the improvement this can achieve in image precision/depth placement, stage width increase and removal of crosstalk smearing. The improvements were both dramatic and particularly surprising given the fact that my arrangement of the LS1s is nothing like an optimum Ambiodipole configuration (probably around 50 degrees, rather than the preferred 20 degrees or so). I can't wait to try the XTC processing out in combination with the DRC!

Since, neither Sterophile nor TAS has written anything about Ambiophonics or tried any of the products it is unlikely that anything will happen in the audiophile world soon. The real action is in the PC/AppleApp/Droid area. Maybe Stereophile will eventually catch up as will the home theater crowd. You know it took 25 years from its patenting for stereo to become commercial and Stereophile Magazine to break away from High Fidelity Magazine.

Ralph Glasgal

[markus76]

Originally Posted by Ralph Glasgal

If you expect a phantom image between C and L for thirty degree spacing while you are facing the center speaker, then you know something I do not. The sterophonic sonic illusion hearing mechanism requires that the loudspeaker triangle be equilateral or normally in the 50 to 90 degree range and a listener must be centered.

I can localize phantom images between a center and L or R just fine. It obviously works for others too: http://www.tonmeister.ca/research/pubs/martin99a.pdf

[Ralph Glasgal]

Originally Posted by markus76

Ralph, with respect but that's nonsense and contradicts physics - or have I just misread what you're trying to say?

Maybe I have not understood your original point.

I am saying that if you shine a very small beam of laser tightly focused light from in a point directly in front of the head so that it just grazes one pinna that none of this light can reach any other part of the head. Now let us move this beam to the side and assume that the head involved is tranparent to light. Now when the beam hit the ear from the side it can pass through the head to the other ear. So in this rather crazy example crosstalk increase as the angle to the side increases.

Of course in the case of sound, sound can diffuse around obstacles quite easily but more easily if it arrives from the side of such an obstacle especially at higher frequencies. So if you had a laser speaker but assume that sound can still diffract around a head the sound at the wrong ear would get louder as the speaker is move to the side.

In the case of real speakers, if the frontal beam is so large that it can engulf the whole head, then the crosstalk is 100%. As the speaker is moved to the side crosstalk will somewhat decrease (not at all in the bass) due to the attenuation going around the head. Maybe this is what you really have in mind. Forget the lasers.

Moving the speakers closer together makes it easier to cancel the crosstalk, even if there is more of it, because you don't have to worry about the head response transfer function which varies with angle and head shape. That is, the crosstalk now has a flat frequency response and also an easily compensated for attenuation and delay. You also now have an optimized location for the pinna so central sounds are correct. (The pinna are less important at the far sides or you can use the 2nd rear Ambiodipole trick) Essentially you end up with loudspeaker instead of earphone binaural sound reproduction.

Ralph Glasgal

[Ralph Glasgal]

Originally Posted by markus76

I can localize phantom images between a center and L or R just fine. It obviously works for others too: http://www.tonmeister.ca/research/pubs/martin99a.pdf

I was therre when that paper was presented. I will read it again and see if I can decode it.

Next time you are localizing something between say the center and the right speaker please turn off the left speaker and let us know if the image shifts or not.

Ralph Glasgal

[layhzer]

Poldus, since you asked. I have tried very hard to like Ambiophonics. That is the reason that I read this thread. It has nothing but advantages for me. That said, it just doesn't sound good to me. Every time there is a new implementation of RACE, I give it another shot. And every time there is 180 degree imaging combined with some sort of artifact that give me instant listening fatigue. And that is with three different speaker systems and multiple different room setups.

The artifact, what ever it is, is so offensive to me that I actually bothered to write my own version of RACE with less recursions. It was better but not good enough to get me to change.

I am open to suggestions.

BL

[audio-kraut]

Living with the free software for some time, I grew somewhat annoyed at the rather limited controls. So I decided, because I like the concept and the possibilities the free software hinted upon, to purchase this processor:
Electro-Music.com

What a powerful component this is, one has to be very careful changing the parametres, especially zentrum and space. Talk about the image removed from the speakers...listened with this tool now for almost a month, and almost any recording - though there are exceptions - portray a spatial image that is much beyond stereo, and really portrays the instruments in their space.

This is what my settings are as an example:
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
Discussion forum
electro-music.com :: View topic - AmbiophonicDSP VST Plugin Now Available

Hi,
yesterday I was able to try the system at more than background music level.

Even at that level the differences between stereo and ambiophonics were discernible, but there are then problems with balance, and the resolution of the sound image does not fulfill all its promised.

At an output level at above 90db however (at the listening position) things change radically. The sound image is other than in stereo mode completely disassociated from the speakers, the instruments, the voices are just there in space, extending in depth and breadth to an extend that in stereo I have never heard.

This leads to a layering of the image that lets you hear instruments really as individual units, the background voices are not mashed together but can be heard as either individual voices or groups that perform different duties.
A good example is Jimmy Vaughn's "Six strings down". The background choir is revealed as actually two groups vocalizing two different rhythm patterns, something I did not hear before.

The clarity of almost any production wins to an extend that going back to stereo would really be a step backwards, not sideways to a different option.

The best 25$ spent on a real improvement in sound reproduction, and thanks for an exquisite component.

[markus76]

Originally Posted by poldus

Markus: I don´t mean you in particular. There is something going on that I don´t understand. There is Ralph Glasgal and then there are a very few of us who said: this is totally better than stereo, there is no way we will go back.
Where is everybody else? How come they don´t hear the overpowering superiority of ambio?
Theories explaining why ambio cannot improve on stereo don´t mean a thing to me because I´ve been sitting in this chair listening to ambio with a smile on my face for over eight years now. It is the fact that some have tried it and are not astonished at its beauty. That is what I don´t understand and would like to hear details on.

Well, I can think of a number of reasons why people don't care about the "overpowering superiority of ambio"

- Ambio isn't perceived the same way by everybody
- 99% of all recordings are "incompatible"
- Having two speakers in front of your TV is "impractical"
- Putting a panel in front of your face is even more impractical
- People don't like solutions that put your head in a vise
- People don't care about realism (99,9% of all great paintings aren't photorealistic)