What is the ideal directivity pattern for stereo speakers?

Status
Not open for further replies.
So what do you think happens audibly when you play back a recording, which was assembled on a "standard" studio speaker, on a CD speaker ? Do you think that the systems are incompatible ?

No speaker is incompatible as long as it's making a sound 🙂 But, it will sound spectrally different. Depending on the actual speaker design, the reflection pattern will be very different, so it will also sound spatially different. All of this has never been thoroughly investigated.
 
Aren't most studio speakers used as nearfield monitors, so that the direct to reflected would be higher than speakers used in most homes (other than those that also use nearfield monitors)? It would seem that the way most listening rooms are, a speaker with significant directivity would be a better match to the nearfield studio situation.
 
Aren't most studio speakers used as nearfield monitors, so that the direct to reflected would be higher than speakers used in most homes (other than those that also use nearfield monitors)? It would seem that the way most listening rooms are, a speaker with significant directivity would be a better match to the nearfield studio situation.

The direct signal is stronger in nearfield monitoring but the speaker's spectral room signature is the same.
Dubbing stages on the other hand don't make use of nearfield monitoring.
 
I think a good amount in the studio is for nearfield listening. But there are also products for listening at a greater distance and you just cannot know what has been used.
So I agree that recordings have "not been made for CD speakers". But what are they made for really ? What is the reproduction side anyway ? Cars, living room, specially prepared listening rooms, headphones, multi-channel, a mixture to make ones fits all ?
In addition, the studio folks hear very differently than "regular" people because they deal so much with reverberation. And that is also the difference between listening at work and at home. That means they will anyhow translate what they hear into something that they think might be OK for the "unknown" reproduction side.
So I am not convinced about this whole notion. If you want the real thing, go to a concert.
Stereo remains flawed from production to re-production. It is an illusion. All we try, is to make this illusion sound convincing, natural and pleasing. And for that I say, constant directivity is a requirement. That does not tell anything yet about the width of the dispersion. That has to fit to the room and again, to preference. Also the final listenting distance is subject to preference. Some like more direct sound, some like less. And hence the "recommendation" to sit somewhere between the critical distance and twice the critical distance.
It is my experience that speakers where the critical distance and ITDG varies with frequency sound unnatural. You can always tell that the sound comes from speakers. That cannot be the goal of reproduction.
 
In the studio most listening is done nearfield to minimize room influences but mixes are also checked for translateability on car stereos, boom boxes and home stereos.
The speakers least like monitors are omni-directional ones so there might be a few issues there if you use them.

I for one am glad that lately waveguides have found their way from studio monitors to home stereo speakers. It has been a very long time coming…
 
I did reading two related books and was occasionally referred to specific part of third one, building some prototype and measuring it. So I came to conclusion that controlled directivity as a feature of any type of loudspeaker correlates strongly with pleasantness factor (preference) for in-room stereo listening.

However, it came to me that one seeking most pleasure for the human ear should not go for CD (controlled directivity aka smoothly increasing DI) but must build loudspeaker that conforms to specific directivity curve instead plus make it at least bi-directional by all means if not omni-. Is anybody interested? It may take a while to put it all on.. err.. paper 🙂
 
I did reading two related books and was occasionally referred to specific part of third one, building some prototype and measuring it. So I came to conclusion that controlled directivity as a feature of any type of loudspeaker correlates strongly with pleasantness factor (preference) for in-room stereo listening.

However, it came to me that one seeking most pleasure for the human ear should not go for CD (controlled directivity aka smoothly increasing DI) but must build loudspeaker that conforms to specific directivity curve instead plus make it at least bi-directional by all means if not omni-. Is anybody interested? It may take a while to put it all on.. err.. paper 🙂

This might be a good thing for the "article" portion of the forum (..vs. tucked away in this thread).

Then you can open-up a thread on the article and get feedback and help with formatting and grammar. The new thread should also help increase awareness of the article for at least a short time, and if participating in a another thread at some other point that is on-topic with your article - then you can provide a link in that thread to your article.

The alternative is your own web-page, but that requires maintenance.

I'd be interested. 🙂
 
OK, finally got enough time at home to put this together.
In CARA room simulation software I drew the CID control room as found in the BBC paper Speaker Dave found. http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1995-04.pdf

I drew control room B12, as seen in figure 12. It put in very little acoustic treatment, just Berber carpet and the absorption on the inside of the arches. All front walls and the ceiling are hard. The rear wall is heavily padded for no back slap.
Click here to see animation of CID Room

Also below you will see the same room with mucho sound deadening. Front wall, first 1/3 of the side walls, ceiling. Acoustic tile on the ceiling, too.
Click here to see animation of Dead Room

The animations show a Direc pulse from its origin out to >20ms after arrival at the listener. Red=76dB, Black=56dB or lower. The paper sets -20dB as the goal for reflections, so if you see black, it's been reached. You'll notice that both the highly treated "Dead Room" and the CID room do well in achieving -20dB reflections thru the first 20ms. They do it in very different ways, though.


Why is the Dirac wavefront of the direct sound so rugged ?

I would propably not reach the same with my FDTD simulation. I expect the direct sound wavefront to be clean regardless of the 'tail' following.

edit: What method CARA uses to calculate the wave ?

edit2: Is the simulated Dirac true impulse with flat spectrum ?
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.