Hi, there is quite specific position with my setup, one step, perhaps a foot or so, where the transition happens. I can literally step in or out from the sound, into enveloping involving sound, or out of it where the sound is frontal, hazy between the speakers kinda. Very big difference.
If I put my chair there at the transition I can lean back for relaxed sound and lean forward for involving sound. Some other people have reported they do not have it so distinct, so I'm not sure why is it here. Of course sound changes some more beyond this because all the changes continue by moving, but the auditory system stays with focus all the way to me standing between speakers, and if I start backing out there is this one particular transition the focus is lost and beyond it's hazy sound to describe in one word to contrast what it is when brain has the focus.
It's very repeatable, and happens with all friends I've pointed it out with my systen, and with their own systems as well. Just experiment and I bet you find it with yours. Pay attention to difference what you perceive when you listen the other side of the room, and very close to speakers, now move back and forth until you find where the soubd seems to change. Use mono pink noise for maximally strong phantom center, I tgink it's easiest to notice with it how the phantom center image gets into focus.
It's not property of room or speakers, but property of auditory system that is millions of years old and we all share it more or less the same, only common denominator between all of us, even though we have different playback setups and rooms and music, there is always a point where auditory system switches state. By point I mean physical distance from sound source beyond which sound is perceptually different, than closer of it.
If I put my chair there at the transition I can lean back for relaxed sound and lean forward for involving sound. Some other people have reported they do not have it so distinct, so I'm not sure why is it here. Of course sound changes some more beyond this because all the changes continue by moving, but the auditory system stays with focus all the way to me standing between speakers, and if I start backing out there is this one particular transition the focus is lost and beyond it's hazy sound to describe in one word to contrast what it is when brain has the focus.
It's very repeatable, and happens with all friends I've pointed it out with my systen, and with their own systems as well. Just experiment and I bet you find it with yours. Pay attention to difference what you perceive when you listen the other side of the room, and very close to speakers, now move back and forth until you find where the soubd seems to change. Use mono pink noise for maximally strong phantom center, I tgink it's easiest to notice with it how the phantom center image gets into focus.
It's not property of room or speakers, but property of auditory system that is millions of years old and we all share it more or less the same, only common denominator between all of us, even though we have different playback setups and rooms and music, there is always a point where auditory system switches state. By point I mean physical distance from sound source beyond which sound is perceptually different, than closer of it.
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It can get you in flutter echo location, in or out of critical distance sweet spot ( people think it need a lot of distance to be effected but in 'regular' small room it can be as low as 1,5m...), change the ER pattern,...
In control room build i've been involved in we used laser to define location and used 1mm tolerance about location of loudspeakers, acoustic treatments, furniture ( including 4meter wide console).
It's extreme but such are requirements of acousticians i've worked with.
Symmetry of room is really important, as well as frequency response matching of both loudspeakers. The overall 'shape' of frequency response of loudspeaker can vary but if you want stereo 'accuracy' both loudspeakers needs to exhibit the same exact response (+/- 0.5db was the acoustician target iirc, and why they insist on some brands of loudspeakers - not only because of directivity behavior but QC and consistency of end products).
In control room build i've been involved in we used laser to define location and used 1mm tolerance about location of loudspeakers, acoustic treatments, furniture ( including 4meter wide console).
It's extreme but such are requirements of acousticians i've worked with.
Symmetry of room is really important, as well as frequency response matching of both loudspeakers. The overall 'shape' of frequency response of loudspeaker can vary but if you want stereo 'accuracy' both loudspeakers needs to exhibit the same exact response (+/- 0.5db was the acoustician target iirc, and why they insist on some brands of loudspeakers - not only because of directivity behavior but QC and consistency of end products).
As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, the wavelenght of tones in the treble can be quite short, therefore the head transfer function plays a role and if you move your head, you change phase relationships. Combine that with change in early/late reflection ratio and changes in phase in those reflections and you have a chaotic phase relation across the room that vary with the listening position. That is how I understand that perceived sound changes by moving the seat a few inches. Normally, in real life, we do not pay attention to this phenomenon (our brain filters out all kinds of sensory input, otherwise it would be overloaded with stimuli) but as active listeners we can perceive it and use it to our advantage to create the illusion of imaging.
It’s nice to see some people thinking hard on this……and it’s all case by case room dependent. DIYers take note…..design for YOUR space…..it’s the one true advantage you have over commercial designs built for many environments and variables….all submitting to compromise along the way.
immersive audio is going to dominate in this space a with more sources introduced, swamping out the sound profile of the room itself. Won’t be long now before a multi axis laser will be able to map a 3D space and then process the system accordingly……much more effective than a microphone once the data sets are in place.
immersive audio is going to dominate in this space a with more sources introduced, swamping out the sound profile of the room itself. Won’t be long now before a multi axis laser will be able to map a 3D space and then process the system accordingly……much more effective than a microphone once the data sets are in place.
You can read the sentence this way...when you replace only one item in the audio chain...it can make or break the image...
Audio system, as you know, is a chain and may consist of multiple things like signal source, signal selector, buffer, volume control, equalizers, active crossover, preamps, amps, plate amps, speakers, room treatment, listening chair, beer...
When I am critically listening to certain cds with great stereo image (i posted link to that thread), i get to proceed to replace just one item in the signal chain. It can be any item, even speakers, or amp, i then re-adjust ultracurve for flat response in the listening position, and listen to favourite cds with great stereo image again. Someting change is detrimental, sometimes it just all clicks and you have arrived...
I happened to mention preamp, because i consider preamp quite critical. Truth is, all parts of chain are critical. You get the point. If you have terrible signal source, frankly, rest does not matter.
I can tell you which preamp i mean, i already mentioned it in AN39 thread. I rotate amps and currently best sounding amp for me is Alpha Nirvana. I use wolverine, j2, alephJ and others often. But AN39 is there most of the time. Then i have more than dozen preamps. I use headphone amps often as pre, as some sound great in this application. So i rotate preamps too, or used to. Till one particular preamp. SCG by Rahul. Amazing musicality. Instruments just floating in the air. Brain needs to make no effort to see each ingividual singer or instrument on the stage. Listen to the petersens (
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Thanks for the reply. But, if it were a HF comb-filtering kind of sound interference behavior, it probably would not be "Imaging On" for the entire, (say) continuous 2 inches (6.8khz full wavelength) of front/back head movement, but rather much finer/more "toothy". And left vs right channel phase differences "at-the-ears" stops working direction-homing-wise below HF, again due to short wavelength vs normal unavoidable asymmetry (as has been mentioned by several). It seems doubtful a change in L vs R SPL differential would be audible moving forward/back a few inches along the midline.
Well I've stated many times "my theory" (something really mundane) that "great imaging" came from >10khz very high frequencies in phase (better, time-aligned as well) with lower frequencies forming a coherent bundle of fundamental/harmonics. Same is required for great details and transcient response. As we all know very high frequency soundwave is extremely directional.
Please measure frequency response "at-the-ears" both inside and outside the "great imaging" circle. This can be done using just a tone-sweep app to determine highest audible frequency at normal volume; or, a smartphone's built-in hearing test.
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It is already possible to detect sound without a microphone, the Origin AI that uses RIS, a Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface developed by DARPA (military complex i.o.w.) makes this possible. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.14423 It is aimed at other goals, but researchers found out that they could even detect sound with this technology.
If AI can be taught how to extract voice from complex recording, it can be very useful.
We could pull out voices of long gone opera singers, clean them up from noise and re-record new songs.
We could pull out voices of long gone opera singers, clean them up from noise and re-record new songs.
In itself, probably not but in combination with changes in the reverberant sound field such as fase shifts in reflected sound etc. , yes I think so. I use a "beamy" speaker myself and noticed an nice improvement in the size of the sweet spot, when I started to apply diffusion and absorption panels in my room. Before that it was noticable when you moved your head -shifting image f.e.- , hence "the head in vice" experience that some mention as a negative effect of "beamy" speakers and the preference for wide directivity speakers in untreated rooms.
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It's already there Adason.
De-mixing feature are availlable in most last gen DAW. It's not perfect still, but closer to ideal than what i heard from Ircam 20 years ago when first introduced to it.
In some ways it's a game changer. Not for what you think about though: for anyone tracking drums, microphone bleeding can be a nightmare ( cymbals all over 12 different mics leads to some headache regarding stability of tone and stereo rendering). With last gen plug ins we can clean up eg kick or snare from such things. For metal genre it means i'm not forced to trigger sample in place of original sound anymore as i can emphasis attack without accentuating cymbals sound.
It's already there Adason.
De-mixing feature are availlable in most last gen DAW. It's not perfect still, but closer to ideal than what i heard from Ircam 20 years ago when first introduced to it.
In some ways it's a game changer. Not for what you think about though: for anyone tracking drums, microphone bleeding can be a nightmare ( cymbals all over 12 different mics leads to some headache regarding stability of tone and stereo rendering). With last gen plug ins we can clean up eg kick or snare from such things. For metal genre it means i'm not forced to trigger sample in place of original sound anymore as i can emphasis attack without accentuating cymbals sound.
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Been doing this for years already…where u been?
https://www.izotope.com/?srsltid=AfmBOooTRWtq7abR_jb59uRcKy1_qYUBM_bcWZKBqAQH8lGuWNXxk_Iz
Or removing the wall completely. I have done this experiment and posted about it. Getting the speaker far from that wall also helps, and can be better than no wall at all.
It depends.
But yes absorption is in no way a cure for all acoustical disease. It can lead to awful results if not used with delicacy. And as you experienced diffusion can sometimes be a better answer. It's case relative.
But yes absorption is in no way a cure for all acoustical disease. It can lead to awful results if not used with delicacy. And as you experienced diffusion can sometimes be a better answer. It's case relative.
@mayhem13 and @turk 182 and @adason Convieintly ducked the question, You've all been reading every comment, obviously fail to speak up when it mattered the most... So telling..., and frankly predictable
That is a weak answer. You say a 5.1 surround will image better, but also say it is un able to be measured. Reverse engineering is what I was trying to do, Theres nothing circular about my thinking, but I won't hold it against you to understand where I am coming from. Potentially I am not the best at communicating my ideas and you really aren't that slow. The Tools they use to simulate and the tools they use to capture the sound field. Are all evidence that Imaging (before perception) can be measured. It exists without human perception.
Once you admit that a loudspeaker (obviously a stereo set) can indeed image in an anechoic chamber, you have admitted that we can measure Imaging because there's nothing going on there that cannot be measured. So it was not circular thinking, it was a set up to trap you into logical scenario. I also know that some of my detesters aren't knowledgeable enough to debate the angle so that was fun too...
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About anechoic and stereo image: i suggest to read page 3 ( no, the entire document!) of what i linked in post number 191.
It's not about getting rid of reflections, it's about treshold and timing.
And from my understanding if you need to be at the apex of triangle to experience stereo in anechoic room, then you need tightly matched loudspeakers ( but matched about which parameter is the interesting question imho).
In that i think Campo's claims about IR are not wrong. But they probably don't answer everything either.
It's not about getting rid of reflections, it's about treshold and timing.
And from my understanding if you need to be at the apex of triangle to experience stereo in anechoic room, then you need tightly matched loudspeakers ( but matched about which parameter is the interesting question imho).
In that i think Campo's claims about IR are not wrong. But they probably don't answer everything either.
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In florida, mostly...
Can you post Enrico Caruso extracted voice? I would like to hear him without music. Just few famous arias.