Hi Earl
Yeah, I think this might be something like describing a flavor, one has to already have experienced it for the descriptors to carry appropriate weight. You can say that it is possible to have a solid phantom image and not hear the two speakers as “the source” (as described as three images) but until one has heard that, the meaning is only words.
It is like you said too, partly room, partly speakers. Earlier in the thread I had urged people to try listening to the system outdoors so that they can then make a judgment about the “desirability” of room reflections and to try a pair of small full range drivers’ on a flat baffle (while limited in many ways, they do radiate a simple pattern over some of their bw).
I find it weird that the “research” cited so often seems to draw conclusions without ever examining conditions where a speakers directivity reduced the reflections to a much lower level. I
t is also weird, well not weird but indicating a different objective, that room reflections are actually incorporated and thought to be essential to stereo.
I have thought that the goal is to be able to reproduce the feel of being outside or in a tiny room or anywhere in between depending how / where the recording was made, you can’t get there if the listening room is a strong contributor, it is then a “special effect” you can’t turn off.
It is funny too, take a speaker with a lot of pattern control and a typical cone/dome box, measure the burst decay or ETC for each one taken at the listening position in a room and examine the first 10-20ms following the first arrival. The one with the large directivity has “less crud on the floor” following the arrival of the direct sound. It is hard to picture how having reflected sound is thought to be the desirable situation but hey, there are fans of omni speakers too. Is the difference between Cheese and Chalk only an acquired taste?
Hey, it sounds like next season your alma mater with have a new full range point source sound system which will replace a large number of “California line array” hangs. The guys from the shop did a demo out your way too yesterday at U of M stadium so maybe there will be some of our larger Synergy horns closer to you .
Hope things are well out your way, I have been fiddling with something I want to bounce off you at some point when time permits. Well, back to work.
Best Regards,
Tom Danley
Yeah, I think this might be something like describing a flavor, one has to already have experienced it for the descriptors to carry appropriate weight. You can say that it is possible to have a solid phantom image and not hear the two speakers as “the source” (as described as three images) but until one has heard that, the meaning is only words.
It is like you said too, partly room, partly speakers. Earlier in the thread I had urged people to try listening to the system outdoors so that they can then make a judgment about the “desirability” of room reflections and to try a pair of small full range drivers’ on a flat baffle (while limited in many ways, they do radiate a simple pattern over some of their bw).
I find it weird that the “research” cited so often seems to draw conclusions without ever examining conditions where a speakers directivity reduced the reflections to a much lower level. I
t is also weird, well not weird but indicating a different objective, that room reflections are actually incorporated and thought to be essential to stereo.
I have thought that the goal is to be able to reproduce the feel of being outside or in a tiny room or anywhere in between depending how / where the recording was made, you can’t get there if the listening room is a strong contributor, it is then a “special effect” you can’t turn off.
It is funny too, take a speaker with a lot of pattern control and a typical cone/dome box, measure the burst decay or ETC for each one taken at the listening position in a room and examine the first 10-20ms following the first arrival. The one with the large directivity has “less crud on the floor” following the arrival of the direct sound. It is hard to picture how having reflected sound is thought to be the desirable situation but hey, there are fans of omni speakers too. Is the difference between Cheese and Chalk only an acquired taste?
Hey, it sounds like next season your alma mater with have a new full range point source sound system which will replace a large number of “California line array” hangs. The guys from the shop did a demo out your way too yesterday at U of M stadium so maybe there will be some of our larger Synergy horns closer to you .
Hope things are well out your way, I have been fiddling with something I want to bounce off you at some point when time permits. Well, back to work.
Best Regards,
Tom Danley
Isn't it why we all are here ? Everyone looking for the best solution for himself.
- Elias
No engineering background, and minimal understanding of theory on this stuff. So please forgive any ignorant assumptions here. I've always wanted to ask.
Does musical content belong in the discussion? If electronica/trance/house/techno etc fills 99 percent of your musical needs, then who needs directivity? You could care less on the dance floor. Why care at home? If , on the other hand, chamber music, acoustic instruments sans vocal content, fills 99 percent of your needs, an omni speaker would seem to make perfect sense. No? A cello or violin, live in a room with you, is behaving (almost) exactly so (omnidirectionally) as are most strictly acoustic (non verbal, non amplified, non electronic) sources of music. What's the problem in recreating these in the same fashion that they originated (from a point source, radiating equally in all directions, arriving at your ears with all the concommitant reflections according to the venue/hall/room. Think triangle (the percussion instrument). A very good example of a sound whose original directivity would seem ideally reproduced in your listening room via an omni design speaker.
If "live" staged rock music (and this is tricky since live music isn't simply recorded from the perspective of a front/center attendee although the aim is still to make it seem so) is supposed to be a reproduction of the experience of the ticket paying attendee, and such music fills 99 percent of your needs at home, then it seems reasonable to assume that forward facing conventionally baffled boxes with vertically mounted forward facing drivers (just like those at the bar or the arena) are going to reproduce the music with greatest accuracy (fidelity to the original experience).
Few out there have musical tastes fulfilled by 99 percent of one type of music. But is there any truth to the assumptions above that to some extent, the type of music you're primarily "into" might affect your satisfaction with the directivity of your loudspeakers?
Does musical content belong in the discussion? If electronica/trance/house/techno etc fills 99 percent of your musical needs, then who needs directivity? You could care less on the dance floor. Why care at home? If , on the other hand, chamber music, acoustic instruments sans vocal content, fills 99 percent of your needs, an omni speaker would seem to make perfect sense. No? A cello or violin, live in a room with you, is behaving (almost) exactly so (omnidirectionally) as are most strictly acoustic (non verbal, non amplified, non electronic) sources of music. What's the problem in recreating these in the same fashion that they originated (from a point source, radiating equally in all directions, arriving at your ears with all the concommitant reflections according to the venue/hall/room. Think triangle (the percussion instrument). A very good example of a sound whose original directivity would seem ideally reproduced in your listening room via an omni design speaker.
If "live" staged rock music (and this is tricky since live music isn't simply recorded from the perspective of a front/center attendee although the aim is still to make it seem so) is supposed to be a reproduction of the experience of the ticket paying attendee, and such music fills 99 percent of your needs at home, then it seems reasonable to assume that forward facing conventionally baffled boxes with vertically mounted forward facing drivers (just like those at the bar or the arena) are going to reproduce the music with greatest accuracy (fidelity to the original experience).
Few out there have musical tastes fulfilled by 99 percent of one type of music. But is there any truth to the assumptions above that to some extent, the type of music you're primarily "into" might affect your satisfaction with the directivity of your loudspeakers?
Last edited:
YOUR problem, not a general problem. I've never had a problem localizing high frequency phantom sounds like a cymbal, quite the contrary. Phantom source localization of such short transient sounds works particularly well for me.
Lots of theorizing but no speaker. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The typical argument against the omni is that the reverb times in a concert hall are radically different to your home listening room. So all home listening rooms are referred to as small rooms.
Those who argue against omni's will suggest they add an element of sameness to the recordings, more of the sound of the room acoustics on top of the recorded acoustics.
If you listen to Linkwitz Pluto with appropriate speaker set up you will discover this is not true. The counter argument will probably say that if you listen very close or in the nearfield then the dispersion will not matter anyway.
Some will argue the example I give is flawed as Pluto is not a true omni since it becomes progressively directional after 3khz.
Maybe you will have to listen to German Physics or MBL in a "small room" to find out for yourself.
Did I? What did I say? I can't remember which side of the arguement I'm on!
David
You mentioned early on(please don't ask me to find it) in this thread (I believe) that when anything is hard panned it essentially becomes mono and thus the speaker is localized. Just what Dr. Toole is saying that Elias Quoted via e_twinkle. This is actually a mixing issue. The books I've read on mixing find this desirable b/c it spreads the stereo field and gives a stable, concrete image if desired. They tend to find the diffuse center image less desirable but also say that most people will not be listening with a center channel so there is no fix.
Everyone has a preference I guess. If you ask me, it depends on the song as to what I want. Some things sound better diffuse and spacious, some things sound better dry and in the real world. The only way I know to get that is good(a totally subjective thing) mixing, mastering that doesn't do too much damage and hopefully make a genuine improvement, narrow pattern speakers and a decent playback set up. A dedicated center would seem like an ideal solution if the mix/playback setting is equipped. Maybe even a more broad patterned center... hmmm
Surround channels also seem like an ideal addition. 
Since this is a stereo thread, looks like the only accurate option is narrow patterned speakers for the end user. All other things need to be done at the mixing desk. Certainly won't cure the stereo condition but I can't feeling like it's not a serious ailment to begin with.oh, just one more
ahh,
Dan
That's a big question and beyond the scope of DIYA. I bet there are other forums where you can discuss such matters.
Dan
This cannot be the goal of accuracy because the perception of the producer/engineer is not defined !
Should I become a producer/engineer and start mixing tracks by listening the two tweeters and not hearing high freq phantom images??Then, customers who bought my records would also be listening to the two tweeters, and not hearing high freq phantom images ! Nothing more, nothing less.
- Elias
Have you heard of the El Greco Fallacy? I've read several books on mixing and one on mastering. They fail to mention your problem.
Dan
I've listened to my setup in the open several times. Somewhere in this thread I must have posted about it. My experience is that it sounds very clean and imaging is very good on some material, but on other material I experience a slight bit of in-head localization. When I got off the center-axis between the speakers, the image moved to the closer speaker.
Also worth noting, the floorbounce reflection has a much stronger influence on timbre than indoors.
Then do you think that the open field - without any reflections at all - is the best possible listening environment? Then I have to disagree. Stereo in itself is flawed and some reflections (maybe only reverb and no significant discrete reflections?) are needed to give a sense of spaciousness and envelopment. Although listening outside can be impressive in ways, it ultimately sounds too dry for me.
What about an ITDG of about 10 to 20 ms and then have normal room reverberation? In my experience it can make the room sound much bigger than it actually is. Also you do get some envelopment/spaciousness, without having VER clutter imaging and causing coloration.
Do you mean the problem of Elias not hearing high frequency phantom images? I've heard of the problem before. After all, there are two sources and a phantom source is just a trick. People learn and adapt, so I don't think it is strange that some people don't perceive phantom images...
I think this depends on "how" the room is a strong contributor.
It appears that the tendency is to proclaim: "more reflections, bad. Solution? Increase loudspeaker directivity."
This is the same basic thought process that both the telephone industry and the public thought of external noise vs. intelligibility with a (monaural) telephone handset. (..telephone booth's were in part the "fix".) Just about everyone thought that if room noise was raised (i.e. greater amounts of noise in the room where someone was listening to a speaker on the telephone), then it was more difficult to listen to the conversation via the telephone. Of course *good* research proved that at best this belief was inaccurate, and at worst it was totally wrong. And this research was performed what? ..more than 60 years ago?
It's unfortunate that the basic tests with regard to stereo reproduction and small room acoustics and their subjective effects on listener's have been so poor and misguided. (.."poor" in that the controls across the entire test have had "gaping" holes, and misguided in that most of the testing done in this area has assumed that external synthesized reflections are a viable substitute for real reflections.)
To this day "more small room reflections for stereo reproduction - bad", has not been proven. To compound this the "solution" (increasing loudspeaker directivity), has not only NOT been proven to be a "cure" (again, for a problem that itself hasn't been proven), but none have really broached the subject of any *problem* with increasing loudspeaker directivity (in this line of "research").
Exactly ! I strongly believe learning and adaption is what has happened to me: I learned myself out of stereophonic illusion, at least at high freqs. (On the other hand I do hear phantoms at mid freqs < 2kHz, the problem is at high freqs only). Now it seems impossible to unlearn and let myself go with the illusion.
All this is very on topic of this thread since this problem can be circumvented by properly selecting the directivity pattern of stereo speaker ! One might even say an ideal directivity pattern for stereo speakers could be found. I've stated many times how it would turn out.. but hesitating to talk about it now since during earlier discussion of ideal directivity pattern for stereo speakers moderators exercised split-a-thread action
- Elias
Last edited:
Well that is a very rare problem(or perfection depending on POV). Only he and Radugazon's listeners seem to have it. I've never heard of it before. You have. Go figure.
Perhaps he and Radugazon's friends/family have some form of superior localizing hearing. Possible... Likely?
If it were just Elias, I'd say demonstrate the superior hearing argument, and I'm happy with the assertion. Everyone that someone invites for a listen with the same unusual and rare adaptation seems like something must be awry. I actually have demonstrated and documented 'superior' hearing. You won't read me using it as a serious argument. This is the El Greco:
Elias said:
Dan
but hesitating to talk about it now since during earlier discussion of ideal directivity pattern for stereo speakers moderators exercised split-a-thread action
- Elias
Yes.. I wasn't too keen on that either.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/everything-else/198771-curious-case-edited-thread.html
Maybe it will be so harmful, I'll have to adapt to it.
Dan
Cheapest and most effective advert for Guiness yet!
Guys there were a number of complaints, both publicly and privately that the thread was going way off topic. As the discussion that was considered off topic was still important it was solit into another thread. Elias, you will note if you check that the first post of that thread,was also kept in this thread as it was relevant to both
Tony.
Tony.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.