Respectfully, all recording is phony stereo to a big degree, and I think that includes purist crossed-8s Blumlein.
A recording is a performance or realization of Beethoven's score. It is the score that the producer is bringing into your home.
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although I haven’t tried it I suspect a single wide dispersion speaker might work very well for mono instead of controlled directivity for stereo, maybe even omnipolar to allow the room to add it’s signature in a natural way. Hmmmmmm, now I got myself thinking about some experiments....
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Interesting and perceptive but probably "no cigar".
See my earlier comments that headphones leave anomalous cues. And correction of such cues, if possible at all, would have to be according EACH ear in the world.
Are you suggesting that recording engineers do their work in pickup trucks and/or using earbuds and/or with table-radio speakers, as the old theory goes?
When I play mix into my two large nearly full-range dipole ESL panels, its lousy, despite being very ambience generating dipoles. OK, gorgeous sound but the whole experience collapses into a tiny virtual source midway between my great panels. Possibly if the panels were in peculiar positions in the room such that no human perceptual brain could fashion a virtual image, might be as you say.
With a Behringer DSP, you can do the most amazing mock-ups in no time at all.
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For mono - I don’t think you want two speakers and potentially not dipoles either - for me the idea is to have a sound source like a musician sitting on a chair where the sound radiates from the source and interacts with room in a natural way. you’re not trying to create an image at all you’re just trying to allow the room you are in to be the room that shapes the sound rather than the recording studio or the concert hall . your brain hears what your eyes see .
Move far enough away and stereo turns into mono. Close to the stage, visual separation is high; far away, it's a single conglomerate. How do you convey this to a blind person without the "parlour trick"? How often have you been told to "close your eyes" in order to take the system to task?
If the reproduction is first class, then I prefer mono recordings although the actual reasons for this are no doubt many and complex. If I go to the Royal Festival Hall in London, I prefer the seats almost at the back of the balcony; the sound is still intimate there and I definitely do not like a large angular separation of the instruments. In contrast, some of my friends prefer the choir seats when available, i.e., almost on top of the orchestra.
Details can be lost due to reverb in bad room acoustics even at proper distance (per designed) from speakers. Details can be lost due to low speaker quality at any distance. There is a lot more going on with the audible details than just distance.
Yupp - either it wasn't god enough or the audience did not listen. Advanced signal processing and Earphones together with some acoustical feedback (think "buttkicker") to get the physical sensation of soundpressure might be a way.
I'm of course only taking about recreating the notion of a real, live musical event - be it a rock concert or a lute. But maybe it will require at least 3 speakers...
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Two speakers done well disappear and cause the whole room to be the host of the original sound.
Yes, one speaker removes the spatial cues of two speakers that are still apparent from other rooms or outside the house.
Lol.....virutalizer is a thing though.
I find two speakers done well with some but minimal room treatment sound good and sound 'stereo' and lively anywhere around or outside the house.
I also don't get 'head in vice' sweet spot......moving across the room gives a different perspective of the same image without losing the wide but centrally sourced image.....my speakers are essentially parallel, each toed in a couple of degrees or so.
One speaker (mono signal) although well capable still sounds like one speaker and loses spatial info but retains the depth information, sometimes better than stereo speakers due to change in room reverb masking of low level information.
I find taking great care with ensuring that both speakers are identical in every way and this includes properties like wire direction and insulation is critical to good sound in the first case.
Once this condition is satisfied then speaker placement becomes much less critical and the two loudspeakers work 'in unison' which is what is required to reproduce spatial information correctly and coherently despite room reflections and reverbs.
The likes of portable bluetooth speakers rewired correctly become stereo and mono at the same time......the stereo information projects from a single actual 'point' source same as the mono information and can sound spectacularly good as a convenient sound source with realistic and nice stereo 'projection'.
Decent size and power stereo+sub (2.1) single boxes can work especially well and are very suitable for many situations but still won't quite beat two hi-fi boxes plus powered sub......but that does not always matter.
Dan.
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I’ve never fully experienced the ‘three way’ that seemed popular back in the day! It always intrigued me though 😀
Dirty minds aside, I mean the old school Cornwall between two k-horn kind of thing......any of you old codgers have experience with that kind of setup?
I’ve had center channels in a 5.1 HT setup but that’s a different ball game, how were the original center channels setup?
Dirty minds aside, I mean the old school Cornwall between two k-horn kind of thing......any of you old codgers have experience with that kind of setup?
I’ve had center channels in a 5.1 HT setup but that’s a different ball game, how were the original center channels setup?
No one apart from "audiophiles" cares about the stereo effect and imaging and all that. Most music is mixed and mastered to sound good on earbuds, smartphones, bluetooth speakers and laptops as these by a wide margin are the main replay appliances. Most stereo-like soundsystems these days are part of home theater installations, geared towards enhancement of the projected image.
It may be the case that a 'speaker' mix can be more easily presented to a 'headphone' listener (e.g. by cross-mixing) than the other way round. However, in many cases the 'headphone' listener is simply hearing the 'speaker' mix and maybe doesn't know any different. Many folk have never heard genuine reproduced stereo (by either method), and may not spend much time listening to real life either - how can someone judge the quality of sound reproduction if they spend most of their life with earbuds in so have very little memory of real sounds.billshurv said:
They don't care if asked, or they're buying, but they certainly notice the difference. It's like an ergonomic mouse, or a car with a higher quality after-market shock absorbers. The basic stuff works and you really have to experience the top products to know the difference. And even then use them often and critically enough to want to spend money on them. Or fuss, like us DIY-ers.
Depending on the loudspeaker and room, sitting off-axis doesn't always degrade stereo-effect that much. Especially not with lots of indirect sounds bouncing around a room. So either wide dispersion or even omnipole, or maybe look into the JBL Paragon/Metregon way of keeping distance between soundsources the same over a wide listening are. I find that approach very interesting.
Studio produced records are mixed and mastered to sound good on a wide variety of speaker systems. That is too bad in a way, it means there are limits on how some instruments must be made to sound.
Kick drums may need some clicky beater sound at a few kHz as a cue that a LF sound is present in the mix. Bass guitar may need added 2nd harmonic distortion to be audible on small speakers. To accomplish the above types of requirements, it means the that sounds of other instruments must be sculpted in the frequency domain to make room for HF cues to LF sounds of possibly limited audibility.
If we had standardized speakers, then mixes could be designed to sound great on those rather than merely good on a wide variety of systems. Not going to happen though, just something to think about.
Kick drums may need some clicky beater sound at a few kHz as a cue that a LF sound is present in the mix. Bass guitar may need added 2nd harmonic distortion to be audible on small speakers. To accomplish the above types of requirements, it means the that sounds of other instruments must be sculpted in the frequency domain to make room for HF cues to LF sounds of possibly limited audibility.
If we had standardized speakers, then mixes could be designed to sound great on those rather than merely good on a wide variety of systems. Not going to happen though, just something to think about.
so true
Most of my friends and acquaintances have no clue what imaging, fidelity, live music not at a rock concert, etc. does or should sound like, even members of my age group from back b4 computers were all the electronic rage. Nor do they want to learn or even talk about it. 30 second attention spans brainwashed into the general populace may have something to do with it. Maybe everyone should be on Aderall, eh?
Even most musician friends could care less about the quality of reproduction, focusing more on the originality, execution, and provenance of the performance instead. Leaves me very few people I can converse with on a level above earbuds, what movies did you watch and/or binge, etc. when it comes to technical and reproduction ideas.
Even the formerly ubiquitous stereo shows (last went to AXPONA 2 yrs. ago) seem mostly structured towards the unobtainium high end market and sales, plus they are much fewer and far between. Maybe I should take up assault rifles and sidearms, since that seems to be the prevalent hobby here in eastern KY.
Most of my friends and acquaintances have no clue what imaging, fidelity, live music not at a rock concert, etc. does or should sound like, even members of my age group from back b4 computers were all the electronic rage. Nor do they want to learn or even talk about it. 30 second attention spans brainwashed into the general populace may have something to do with it. Maybe everyone should be on Aderall, eh?
Even most musician friends could care less about the quality of reproduction, focusing more on the originality, execution, and provenance of the performance instead. Leaves me very few people I can converse with on a level above earbuds, what movies did you watch and/or binge, etc. when it comes to technical and reproduction ideas.
Even the formerly ubiquitous stereo shows (last went to AXPONA 2 yrs. ago) seem mostly structured towards the unobtainium high end market and sales, plus they are much fewer and far between. Maybe I should take up assault rifles and sidearms, since that seems to be the prevalent hobby here in eastern KY.
All this is musical taste dependent. If you listen to classical/symphonical music, opera or jazz, you want to sit down in the sweet spot and listen to stereo. Enjoying the wide stage and depth is part of the game. Strangely the stereo field has nothing to do with channel crosstalk, and there is no recipe on how to reach good ambiance. (At least I don't know)
Other types of music mixed on a console (rock, electronic, pop, etc) usually don't aim for stage depth/ambience, and people listen to it in stereo because of tradition. IMHO
Other types of music mixed on a console (rock, electronic, pop, etc) usually don't aim for stage depth/ambience, and people listen to it in stereo because of tradition. IMHO