I agree - this is a major shortcoming of stereo as it is implemented in practice, (lack of standardisation) rather than stereo as a technology per se.
It's the whole debate about whether the bulk of the ambience should be provided in the recording or should the bulk be provided by the listening room. This is the crux of the "you are here" vs "they are here" debate.
"You are there" people are generally looking for the bulk of the ambience to be provided by the recording, not their own room, and this affects both speaker/room treatment preference, as well as music preferences.
You can debate how "realistic" this recorded ambience might be, but our brains have a remarkable ability to perceive something as convincing and real even if not all of the cues are present. As long as a large percentage of cues are present and there are no contradictory cues, the brain fills in the blanks.
"They are here" is probably a more pragmatic approach, but requires a fairly dry recording - too much ambience in the recording + ambience from the room will give you a mishmash of the two - it might sound good, but it won't sound very realistic.
Yes, a more complete questionnaire is necessary. No better or worse than before. We all know the info given.
Dan
Dan
The "I am there" crowd I know usually prefers broad patterned speakers and no room treatment...
Dan
Dan
"You are there" doesn't necessarily mean full 360 degree binaural envelopment, at least not to me. That also assumes that your frame of reference for "you are there" succeeding is an accurate rendition of a concert hall environment, again, there are different types of musical performances than that which are not in 100,000m^3 rooms, and don't necessarily have 360 degree envelopment. (An outdoor performance for example)
The "window on a venue" you describe is sort of what I'm talking about - imagine a 90-120 degree forward listening window, and that within that 90-120 degree listening window everything is in its place left to right, distance, and height, as well as the reverberation signature matching the original venue. It doesn't sound like your own room. That is my idea of a 2 channel "you are there" experience.
Sound is not coming from all around you, it's coming from in front of you, but over a relatively wide angular range with no obvious room cues. Speaker locations should not be identifiable.
The next step up is full surround of course, which can be simulated with 2 speakers with the right processing, albeit over a narrow range of listening positions, but I don't think this is necessary to have an enjoyable listening experience - a large part of feeling like you're there is the reverberation signature, which is quite well captured in 2 channels with the right recording techniques.
I've found that binaural recordings taken with a dummy head capture the sense of acoustic space and reverb signature very well even when played back on normal speakers without any processing. No, you don't get a full 360 degree out-of-head localization of sound like you do listening to the recording on in-ear earphones, but you can still get a very convincing sense of space and width from such a recording - more than I generally hear from conventionally mic'ed performances.
It's a pity more binaural recordings aren't made - although you only get the full benefit on ear-phones they can still sound very enjoyable on speakers.
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Not me.
I've never heard a convincing "you are there" rendition by wide dispersion speakers in an acoustically live room. It always just sounds like the room to me.
Poor Radugazon 😉 Welcome to the club 😀
Why be sad if you have proved you have superior hearing compared to others who cannot even hear where the speakers are ! 😉 Those wax ears 😀
- Elias
I thought it goes without saying that "You are there" and "They are here" requires a different recording technique ? Obviously the same recording is not optimal for both. I'm not sure why you're even labouring this very obvious point. 😀
Yes, it begins with the recording, and whether the recording has a significant amount of ambience on it. But it ends with the playback room, and whether the playback room attempts to override and drown out any ambience that may be on the recording...
I'm not sure that I agree. Yes, different music genres tend to employ different recording practices, but I prefer a sense of "you are there" when listening to most music, what that means in practice is I tend to play more music of genres that have this appeal, and less of other music genres. I still enjoy music that doesn't have this approach, but not as much.
In your opinion. 😉 Many of us experience perfectly good phantom images, and as far as I can see we haven't ruled out type of speakers and speaker set-up as the reason for poor high frequency phantom imaging.
In fact some of the comments made by Markus regarding his perceptions with different amounts of toe in / out and ipsilateral reflection levels suggest that excessive early ipsilateral reflections may be the cause of imprecise phantom imaging at high frequencies, making the problem a speaker set-up issue, not any fundamental flaw in stereo, as you try to paint it.
I agree totally, but the people who generally claim "they are there" have this type of speaker. That's why I think "sounds like HiFi" or "I can dream I am there" is more appropriate.
Personally, I don't see how either camp can be really satisfied. Ultimately we are left with "sounds good" or "does not sound good". We do know at least one set of metrics that "sound good". With experience, goals, and understanding, I'm sure any of them can work.
Dan
Nice room 🙂
Interesting, that's definitely a bit more live than what I have at the moment, but then your room is quite a bit bigger and more sparsely occupied.
I can see what you mean in an earlier post where you talked about the left speaker being close to the wall and suspecting balance issues due to the proximity. That is indeed a very asymmetric layout you have there, (no doubt you don't have much choice about it, especially with a piano to contend with!) and you will definitely be getting left-right balance issues from that left speaker.
The rug will help a lot above about 1-2Khz, but there is going to be a lot of side-wall bounce in the low midrange that will do weird things to the stereo balance, if my own experiences are anything to go by.
I find that if both speakers are at least 1.5 metres from the side wall it doesn't matter if they're unequal distances, but once they're down to 1 metre or less unless both speakers are identical distances from their respective side-walls (within a few centimetres) the image is never perfectly balanced, and even then there is always tonal imbalance in the low midrange. (Just an equal tonal imbalance in left and right)
Not sure that I have any suggestions though, given your layout...
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I disagree, as the lack of standardisation is not the biggest problem, but the true major shortcoming is that the two sound sources at +/- 30 degrees (stereo triangle) do not satisfy human psychoacoustics very well.
Yes there should be no contradicting cues ! In case of stereo triangle, the fundamental contradiction comes from the two sound sources at +/- 30 degrees when there should be only one at the center (phantom panned at the center). There is no way to overcome this basic flaw of stereo, other than those famous unorthodox underground methods which break the classic principal rule of stereo triangle, and advance from this rebelness.
- Elias
The number is higher than you would normally find in any scientific peer revieved paper ! 🙄
Not quite, since I tried with 6 configurations which all failed. So we have 15 setups, 14 subjects. So less than 50 % of the setups were capable of high freq phantom imaging. Tossing the coin 😉
- Elias
Member
Joined 2009
Those numbers are quite different from e.g. here: See post # 470
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
- Elias
and
do not explain why stereolithic projection worked best for me even it produces most highest levels of ipsilateral early reflections of all configurations. The ipsilateral is not to blame. We are not in a war on ipsies !
Narrow directivity at the treble range is certainly not acceptable since the sound will be coming from the tweeters ! Who will accept this ?
Are you ready for the surprise !?! There was no cross over at all ! 😉 (of course not a real sursprise since I explained it already carefully, it was FE126En)
It is true, you don't understand !
- Elias
This is what I said several pages back. I did not expect the situation to meet the "ideal" but the fact is that it does work. The time-intensity tradeoff is certainly a big part of it, but it clearly cannot explain it all. Perhaps the data that Dave is using was for impulses or noise or some other signal that makes it extreme and that for music the ear becomes much more tollerant. Maybe it even learns to a certain degree.
I cheaked and Blauert's data is no where near as extreme as Dave was quoting (figure 3.5). His MAXIMUM level offset for a central image is about 9 dB, and that's for a 4 ms time difference. This is certainly different than what Dave was quoting.
Superior Hearing...I wish I got some, but it was a joke. I'm not the only one in my house to hear schismatic HF.
Statistically, I see that many domestic installations have the speakers close to the boundaries, show big asymmetry, are stuffed by some furniture (ahh, a piano...), AND have some acoustic treatment, mostly absorbing for HF only.
Mine is just the opposite (rigorous symmetry__see boris, post 1179__, empty space, speakers only close to the floor, membrane like boundaries reflecting mainly HF, all this for the sake of side firing).
I think that here are the roots of the difference. But after all, it's not a problem, each of us is happy with the best adaptated configuration.
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Radugazon, I think your explanation is more probable than Elias's. Hopefully he does too and was just trolling. Not very good odds that everyone you brought in all had superior hearing. He's always argued that he's a 'superior hearing, high powered pinna' anomaly. Not many people wanting to build a speaker or playback system for the one in a million. Not good business.
Dan
Dan
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