Make a test with mono and a single loudspeaker.
It does not recreate spatial cues but the brain concentrates on the theme better and this plays tricks on you.🙂
George
I don't listen to music as test music, I listen to music. What I have learnt from this is the limitations of how the music is played back as a systemic holistic entity. And especially so when listening to stereo recordings summed to mono.
This 'entity' suggests to me that the limitations of extreme bass and treble are overcome by my inner ear making up secondary and further harmonics from the fundamental notes. If for example, I play back a 20hz sine wave and stick my head right inside the horn (as you do!) it is loud, and the horn hums. When I stand back just 3ft away, it is barely audible. This is a 6 inch speaker and if I crank it up to properly hear said 20hz tone, it would wreck it. So the extreme bass is there, but heavily masked by all the other frequencies.
The speaker spec is (optimistically!) between 80hz and 10khz, and the eq at unity gain is set at 50hz@+7db 120db@+5db 400hz@-4db 800hz@+2db 4.6khz@+6db 10khz@+8db and as the horn by nature is attuned to mid frequencies, the eq settings more or less equally distributes the tonal palette along the Fletcher Munchen listening curve to create the illusion of - musical fidelity. The rest is all going on inside my head.
This is not the same as hearing chest deep bass and sizzling treble, I can listen to music through headphones if I want to do that. Though I must admit I am seriously thinking about my next horn speaker build.
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And in my small sample of film capacitors higher dielectric absorption also corresponds to higher vibration sensitivity.
For some reason when I mention Cdv/dt + Vdc/dt =i folks seem to think dc/dt is only related to V. It is not of course and a bit more interesting is the phase component that can be related to V may vary also.
Room resonances.
What Are Room Resonances & How Should You Locate Them? – Acoustic Fields
Though you would not agree, you need some elementary acoustics knowledge to understand what you hear.
Hello PMA, I do indeed emphatically agree! I am listening to a massive horn speaker that barely fits in the hayloft crawl space of a barn under a corrugated sheet steel roof, encrusted in multiple layers of bitumen. Hardly the friendliest of listening environments. There are two listening sweet spots, one at 6ft the other at 14ft away from the horn. In between there is a dead space of phased mush.
As a short gap measure, I have a massive bowl of sawdust sitting directly underneath the front lip of the horn to soak up spurious bass frequencies from rattling the flooring - such is life in an imperfect world
Nevertheless, I shall read with thoughtful care what you have kindly suggested.
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Some folks. Of course the full story includes mechanical parameters which are hard to measure.
Agreed for so many reasons, some of which we have been discussing.
I'll harp again on the visual factor: I have been watching some live streaming videos on my main HT system and I have to tell you: if you increase the volume to near what a live show would be, the 'experience' and closeness to 'live' is so much better with the visual...it is almost as engrossing.
However, listening that loud without the visual is annoying, what an interesting phenomenon! I think it may be due to the missing cues we have been talking about which can be fatiguing as your brain searches for cues...imagine being in a live show with your eyes closed. It would be interesting to compare notes with someone who is blind on this.
Cheers,
Howie
Yes, what we are listening to in our playback system is art & not meant to be a carbon copy of the original.
The success of the art is in producing a believable illusion & a communication of what the various artists involved in piece intended - musicians, producer, recording engineer, etc
Your comments about the visuals goes directly to how perception expects multi-modal input - this is our natural state
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The making up of harmonics, wherever it happens, is not beyond the realms of possibility, however, I can't see how this helps when it comes to reproducing the music.
Can we have some pictures of your massive horn please?
Indeed. I've never heard a system where the spatial positioning worked usefully for me (except where it's deliberately used for effect!) - even though others are wowed. Perhaps I'm immune to the illusion, it just never seems worth worrying about.
I like to fill the space with sound, creating a good quality nearfield to reduce room resonances, and I think I like it louder than some here... 🙂
"my inner ear making up secondary and further harmonics from the fundamental notes."
Is it not the opposite - the missing fundamental is perceived because the harmonics are present?
Is it not the opposite - the missing fundamental is perceived because the harmonics are present?
Of course, you are absolutely right. That is what I was trying to say, but didn't. Sorry, sometimes I get things the wrong way around, and need to be corrected, and for that, I thank you.
Yea but based on aging ears (don't know TOS age?) & the fact that most stuff is happening in the mids then he's probably not missing much. But the bass perception is often needed to allow drive & tempo in the sound
No - and that would be interesting. It's not that I don't get the spatial illusion though - I hear it, but for me it's not sufficiently like the real thing to be worth any great effort, even if it's entertaining...
Yes, he says his system is working to 10kHz, which is probably enough for his hearing, but what about all that high frequency information we don't hear? 🙄🙂
Do you mean you don't perceive width & depth of soundstage in any system?
Edit: Sorry, I see you already answered
This remind me of something related to ITD detection - There's interesting research on rise time detection - Rise time perception and detection of syllable stress in adults
with developmental dyslexia
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