Your hears as microphone support would be better, because we are more interested in this case by the directivity than phases and stereo. The Newman K100 is quite expensive ;-)
My idea, that was difficult for me to explain in a clear way, is: trying to get a measurement where the relative amount of direct sound from the enclosures and room reverberations is as close as possible from our hears, trying to mimic, a mic with the same directivity in all the directions than the one of our hears, if we want to use this mic for a room equalization.
Yes, we aren´t, but we shouldn´t conclude that it is a matter of black and white, it is more a wide range of gray.
Our models need constant refinements otherwise concluding from measurements tends to be erroneous.
Wrt studio design (more related to one of your previous posts) i remember a presentation from D´Antonio where he talked about the history of studio/control room design and presented the various design ideas, ending half way joking that despite all efforts "the music survived" .
It´s always interesting to see the different approaches to control room design when comparing for example work from WSDG, Newell or Northward acoustics, the latter seems to be the "newest hot stuff" (just kidding), although all are working on the same scientific basis.
I (30+ too) totally agree with you. "Magic rooms". You perfectly analysed the reasons ;-)
In Europa (stupid producers), for popular music, we used to make a lot more re-recording than in the US.*
I say "used", because, now, rap and home studios, you know...
First take with the rhythmic section only, then brass section or/ and violins if any, then synthesizer and percussion dressings, , then the guitar solos or chorus, then, at the end, the singer. And sometimes, even after, the choirs.
As the musical magic only have a luck to born when musicians share the same feeling together, each one influencing the way the others play, it produce clean but sterile recordings.
It is for obvious economical reasons.
Despite live recordings of concert is far less optimal than studio ones on a technical point of vue, I tend to prefer those because of those stupid practices.
And, in my music library, I have very few records of what is called, in French-speaking countries "La bonne chanson Française".
*Practice as stupid as the last advice of Donald T. to the 500 professional firemen of Paris fighting to save "Notre dame" to use ... our water bombers planes. (Perhaps because the burning wood frame of the cathedral was named "The forest" ? ;-)
Deliberately missing my point. Once again, your motive as someone who is in audio business attempting to shill is visible.As i wrote:
there obviously is no connection between your sentence above and my post.
Which raises the question why you cite me if you just want to post pure fantasies of yours?
Strange approach to strawmen?
So basically you agree with my post.
As a friendly advice;if you´d more often respond to the content that was actually written and less often to something that you only imagined you surely could contribute more sensible posts.
Just read the according publications and the discussions about it....
I would like to precise a point. With binaural recordings, we try to mimic the relative phases and level differences generated by our head between the two points of our ears in order to get a stereophonic landscape in space. Most of the artificial heads use an average form of head, but just an omni mic at the place of our ear pavilions.
My point was , here, I supposed that the ear pavilions have a major influence on their directivity in all the directions of space. And it is that we need if we want to measure the non linearity of our listening rooms and its influence on what we will hear, correcting in a same time the non linearity of the speakers and the one of the room.
Yes, the outer ears (pavillions) are individual and do affect/effect ear directivity.
Spectacles in front of eyes or on top of head also affect/effect perceived sound and ought to be measurable with dummy head.
Dan.
Dummy-Head recordings are the approach which is closest to the reproduction/reconstructions of the original soundfields.
You´re right, the pinnae (i suppose "ear pavilion" is the "pinna") do have a major influence about our directivity perception especially for front/back distinction, but also for above and below although there the individual torsi with their reflections come into play.
Sometimes the microphones are placed at the entrance of the ear channel,sometimes even in the channel of the dummy-head.
With todays toolbox (like 3d scanning,molding ....) it is much easier than before to create and use individualized torso/pinna "dummies" .
The RWTH Aachen used the scan method (with manual postproduction) and maintaines a database of pinnas.
Deliberately? Surely not, as i thought you didn´t make a relevant point in responding to imagined statements.
But i don´t claim infallability so please help me out in stating your point.Please don´t just use blank statements (so the reader has to speculate what the points might be) but arguments related to the statements.
That illustrates what i´ve said before; it just happens in your (obviously vivid imagination) but not in reality (or should i say in "this reality").
Could be or could be not,as it usally depends on the conditions.
But what´s your point? In which way is it relevant to our discussion about the listening skills needed to evaluate which way to get the best sound from a given reproduction system in a given room (or even in a broader sense to design an environment for production/reproduction)?
I've noted a lot of variability with binaural recordings. The BBC experimental recordings and the chesky ones just don't give the expected illusion. Although 3D sound is mainly being researched for the gaming market I do hope that something will come out that will create a personalised binaural experience. At least if people start recording that way.
Unfortunately i´ve used the terms "binaural recording" and "dummy head recording" myself ambiguously sometimes in the past, but we have to keep in mind that "dummy-head recording" is a subset of the "binaural recording" class.
Using an individualized torso/head/pinnae-dummy with in-ear microphones and (maybe) in-ear headphones will be up to now the closest approach.
Although i found the reproduction of recordings -that used universal dummy-heads- via Stax headphones already quite convincing. The former german Stax distributor (R.I.P.) did a few dummy-head recordings himself using the Neumann KU81 (iirc) and loved to stun listeners with sound/speech effects coming from behind (perceptionwise).
Could you tell me which BBC/Chesky records you were referring to? Maybe there ares some informations available how they´ve done those.
When I was working for movies and to record ambient backgrounds, I used two miniature electret mikes fixed on the glasses branches above my ears and a little recorder in my pocket.
The purpose was to be as discreet as possible to do not modify, by my presence, the ambiance when humans were present.
They were "very convincing" indeed ;-)
That could be my issue as I was listening on my etymotics not my Koss ESPs so different delivery.
BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06drb3s (not sure if you can access that)
Chesky I cant find the exact piece but youtube if you enter 'binaural chesky' you get some of them.
It will be anyway interesting to see if that changes your perception. Orthodox reasoning should lead to the conclusion that inears are preferable as normal headphones potentially could introduce additional reflections/alterations that should be disturbing but otoh it might that mixing in some familiar patterns helps if the binaural processing doesn´t match exactly. (kind of uncanny valley mechanism? )
It works; so they didn´t use dummy heads for recording but a "3d microphone array" with binaural processing to emulate the "real thing" .
A method that is attractive from a production point of view but needs an additional processing step (introducing potentially disturbing side effects) to emulate a dummy head recording that itsself (due to nonindividualization) might be missing the correct cues.
Furthermore the 3d capturing will be imo most likely not as correct as a "ear channel recording" can be.
Otoh people trying out the Smyth realizer reported good results (intersubject differences evoking different judgements?) so principially binaural processing could be working.
The BBC websites mentioned real dummy head recordings, but the weblink:
https://rdwebcms.virt.ch.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2013-03-listen-up-binaural-sound
doesn´t work for me (maybe defunct or due to distributing constraints) but a search might find something to see if that makes a different perception for you.
Edit: search for dummy head recordings on youtube delivers some material too
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Very persistent. The business interest if very strong indeed.
Regardless of conditions, subjective observation is subjective observation, not a proof.I've already spelled out my point and you ask what it is. See, this is what I've been describing.
I saw your exchange on other forum. The value of objective comparisons has been explained to you by those who are at the leading edge in this field and yet you continue to act as if that hasn't happened.
As for "stereo" only recording/playback ..... and if mixed down on stereo/2-speaker system..... Only the symmetrical equilateral playback will produce Imaging that is accurate to the source/mix.
Stereophonic images broaden --- "As an image moves away from stage center, it's width increases for frequencies up to 300hz, while above 300Hz the reverse starts to occure."
[Electronics & Wireless World. Nov 1985]
There is no way a 2 speaker system can or will have good/accurate imaging off center. Or accurate imaging over a wider listening area.
THx-RNMarsh
Stereophonic images broaden --- "As an image moves away from stage center, it's width increases for frequencies up to 300hz, while above 300Hz the reverse starts to occure."
[Electronics & Wireless World. Nov 1985]
There is no way a 2 speaker system can or will have good/accurate imaging off center. Or accurate imaging over a wider listening area.
THx-RNMarsh
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Which makes me think the following is far from a measure of anything real
Shouldn't it be,
"There is no way a 2 speaker system can or will have good/accurate imaging off center. Or accurate imaging over a wider listening area.
[THx-RNMarsh. Apr 2019] "?
Yes I tried it with Jan and SY the effect was impressive and the calibration was not that transferable from person to person.
Yes I realise the BBC proms performances were processed as this was the experiment but to me you lost the centre blob in the head and just had a left and right soundfield. No front to back depth annoyingly, which when you have a rowdy audience would at least give you a good effect.
Generally the dummy head demos on youtube that are non-music based DO work for me.
I will try on the Koss when I get a chance and see if that changes things.
It does intrigue me when so much music is consumed on mobiles these days using headphones that there have not been at least some attempts to deliver at least popular music in an immersive soundfield. Studio sourced music would be perfect for that. I know they do 5.1 releases of a lot of stuff but I feel a big trick has been missed. Conclusion can only be that the target market don't actually care 2 hoots!
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