Let me get this straight - you are saying that you have heard an audio playback of a full orchestra in a small room that was so convincing that you felt as if you were actually in the venue? Because I am sorry, I've heard a lot of sound systems and recordings and nothing ever achieved that feat.
Try a dry recording of an orchestra. Its sounds just like an anechoic orchestra playing over speakers!
Recording of September 1989: <I>Denon Anechoic Orchestral Recordings</I> | Stereophile.com
🙂 Still a feat. Most all speakers sound like speakers playing down the hall.
My first measure of power response is what my speaker sounds like while washing dishes.
No, you'll have to read my post again.
But I have heard audio playback (both vinyl and CD) in a medium* sized room that was astounding. It stretched the limits of believability - not just mine, but the 60+ other people in attendance. Not just width, but depth and hight too. Very precise and nuanced hight - I would never have believed that could be contained on a 2 channel recording. It still puzzles me. Not all recordings have it, or course, but a good number do. It is really like being there in the concert hall. It's uncanny. Something akin to seeing a very good 70MM print at the cinema. So real that you feel you could reach out and touch it. Imagine a the illusion of a life size orchestra on the floor and the choir in 3 distinct rows behind - from a stereo recording. Amazing.
Even studio recordings with real or added reverb give the impression of being "there." There is so much information on good recordings it boggles the mind. The limitation is not the medium.
*Medium being relative - but much smaller than a symphonic hall. About 150 sq. meters or 1600 sq ft.
We certainly have different experiences. And its not like I haven't heard all the best systems out there, because I have.
But the room size is not a minor factor. Once the room gets large enough then the lack of very early reflections and its own reverberation make for a decidedly different situation. Thats why I always restrict my comments to "small rooms", because everything changes with room size, its the small room that posses so many problems.
It is NOT the limitation of the medium. It is mostly a limitation of the speakers and to some extent the room. I know, I've heard it. It was one of the most surprising experiences of my life.
It's not going to happen with 3 cubic foot box speakers in the typical living room.But it is NOT the medium - amazingly - it's far better than most people expect.
Now you're teasing us. Were they using conventional type speakers? Was it a private effort or something done by a business or institution? How big was the room? Were they using proprietary processing?
I see others have been asking you about this.😉
Pretty odd from the logical-discussion point of view.
"Golden Ears" claim to hear shortcomings that others don't - like "distortion" in copper wires made with too much oxygen.
In this thread, some claim NOT to hear shortcomings (from realism) that others claim they do hear (like me).
I've never made my hifi sound much like a piano - which is considered a toweringly hard instrument to record do to the complexity of the way it issues sound from its many surfaces*. It is possible I've never been exposed to a recording made by anyone with Earl's genius.
Hey, I forgot an old vinyl demo record that KLH issued long ago with a real hifi instrument that does sound realistic and not even too far down the hallway: music box. We can also rank "radio sound effects" for realism... anybody ever heard a car door slam on the radio as if you were standing there or ice-cubes in a glass?
*FrankWW, does that help clarify why you can't reproduce a piano using two speakers? First of all, you can't even record it right, let alone play it back with a bunch of speakers.
"Golden Ears" claim to hear shortcomings that others don't - like "distortion" in copper wires made with too much oxygen.
In this thread, some claim NOT to hear shortcomings (from realism) that others claim they do hear (like me).
I've never made my hifi sound much like a piano - which is considered a toweringly hard instrument to record do to the complexity of the way it issues sound from its many surfaces*. It is possible I've never been exposed to a recording made by anyone with Earl's genius.
Hey, I forgot an old vinyl demo record that KLH issued long ago with a real hifi instrument that does sound realistic and not even too far down the hallway: music box. We can also rank "radio sound effects" for realism... anybody ever heard a car door slam on the radio as if you were standing there or ice-cubes in a glass?
*FrankWW, does that help clarify why you can't reproduce a piano using two speakers? First of all, you can't even record it right, let alone play it back with a bunch of speakers.
Last edited:
The automatic room EQ products he describes all have the same problem, they are based on steady state room curves so they must guess what a proper in-room response shape should be. (See my comments and his response April 18th)
This once again shows the basic problem. An in-room measurement with no time discrimination is based on some mix of early sound and room reverberence. We have to guess what steady state response target will give the flattest early sound (it will vary from room to room and speaker to speaker) and base the target curve on what worked the last time we did it. Automatic EQ locks you in to an algorithm whether it is appropriate or not.
The only way these systems work is if you can adjust the target curve until it sounds good, which makes it far from "automatic". I base this on having installed all the Snell RCS1000 systems and working with the Tact/Lyngdorf people and later the Audysey system, all with the same flaws.
Until the measuring system takes a curve in a psychoacoustically correct way you have no hope of an automatic system working with consistency.
David number 3
Dave, you're number 1 in my book. (aww everyone)
I wrote a little diddy about "why" what you are saying is correct. audio blog: Hearing Beyond Haas
Ben would probably get the most kick out of this being the perceptual guy.
And again, maybe this AES E-Library: A New, Psychoacoustically More Correct Way of Measuring Loudspeaker Frequency Responses paper Dave presented earlier may be the future of ARC?
Dan
I wrote a little diddy about "why" what you are saying is correct. audio blog: Hearing Beyond Haas
Ben would probably get the most kick out of this being the perceptual guy.
And again, maybe this AES E-Library: A New, Psychoacoustically More Correct Way of Measuring Loudspeaker Frequency Responses paper Dave presented earlier may be the future of ARC?
Dan
By that I hope you mean commercially available systems. Because there are systems out there far beyond the commercial offerings one hears at shows or dealers.
But point taken. Almost all of us have to deal with small rooms, and that's a problem. As long as we realize that as the main problem. The seemingly vulgar consumer music media - LP, 1/4"tape, CD are not the limitation. They hold far, far more information than we are typically able to extract. Recovering that info takes some care on the electronics end, but requires almost heroic efforts with the speakers.
My point is only that the stereo is actually capable of far more than we give it credit for. Consumer stereo formats are not the bottleneck.
...and you are the number one dantheman! The whole Hass and timing effects related to response perception is key and warrants more study.
Second Bruce Ah, here comes the Bossfella now! - how are you, Bruce?
Enter fourth Bruce with English person, Michael
Fourth Bruce Goodday, Bruce, Hello Bruce, how are you, Bruce? Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce a chap from pommie land... who'll be joining us this year here in the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaloo.
All Goodday.
Fourth Bruce Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce.
First Bruce Is your name not Bruce, then?
Michael No, it's Michael.
Second Bruce That's going to cause a little confusion.
Second Bruce Ah, here comes the Bossfella now! - how are you, Bruce?
Enter fourth Bruce with English person, Michael
Fourth Bruce Goodday, Bruce, Hello Bruce, how are you, Bruce? Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce a chap from pommie land... who'll be joining us this year here in the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaloo.
All Goodday.
Fourth Bruce Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce.
First Bruce Is your name not Bruce, then?
Michael No, it's Michael.
Second Bruce That's going to cause a little confusion.
Sorry for the tease. I started working with high definition video in 1988 (yes, the 80's) so knew how good video could look, if done right. Not many friends would believe me. Only in the past few years has that become common place. Alas, I don't think we'll make the same progress in speakers that has been recently made in video display.
The biggest, bestest, most impressive system I heard was at the demos we did at Kiron Theatre in Paris, were I was technical director. There were several done over the late 80s thru the 90s by the crew from the magazines "Revue du Son" and "la Revue de l'Audiophile."
Conventional speakers? Kinda, sorta.
Bass: Onken W. Big double walled (sand filled) reflex box with 2 Altec 515s
Mid Bass: Western Electric 15A horn with Westrex driver (50s vintage).
Mids: Iwata horn with TAD driver
Highs: JBL slot tweeter, IIRC.
A rather large system. All good stuff, but not real exotic, like plasma or something.
Special processing? All passive crossover (4-way). Integrated EL34 tube amp. CD player, TT and phono preamp. Pretty straight forward. There was more gear there in later years.
Room: The Kiron Theatre. Little black box theater that seats about 100. I've attached a floor plan below. Also see the articles of some later demos in the 90s.
Kiron Demo 1993 (shows the system layout) Kiron '94 (color photos)
Not a living room system, by any stretch of the imagination, but a demonstration of what is possible with well engineered, well implemented equipment. The speakers and the walls simply vanish. You are there - where the recording was made. It can be done.
Attachments
Can anybody post all or a summary of this old paper or Toole's summary?
You'd think all these years later, AES'd release it to the web for free.
Yeah we had a little theatre here about the same size. I'm sure it was not as well set up as the Kiron. Live sound in it was quite good but I never heard any amplified music played there.
I read French slowly and I just skimmed the article. I'll read it carefully when I've more time tomorrow.
Thanks.
Lots of info on conventional media. True. I remember being shocked by what was on 78's back in the 60's when I had 3speed Dual or Garrard TT and a cartridge with a big, fat stylus that rode along the top of the groove above all the damage caused by the old needles.
I read French slowly and I just skimmed the article. I'll read it carefully when I've more time tomorrow.
Thanks.
Lots of info on conventional media. True. I remember being shocked by what was on 78's back in the 60's when I had 3speed Dual or Garrard TT and a cartridge with a big, fat stylus that rode along the top of the groove above all the damage caused by the old needles.
Last edited:
I never claimed one could do it with two speakers but I don't see why one could not.
It's not the shape of the piano which is a problem for the recording and playback systems, it's the very complex waveform presented to recording and playback systems. The same waveform that's presented to our ears when we're listening live.
Is there a theoretical reason it cannot be done?
It isn't the complex wave-form (which is a piece of cake for ESLs); it is the complex total wave-front generated in the room by a piano that CAN'T be duplicated by speakers*. You are still visualizing sound in too-few dimensions.
I think some people are mistaking, "Gosh, that sound sure resembles a piano in some respects and could be nothing else" for "that sounds like a piano in my room" or "that sounds like the Vienna Philharmonic in my room".
If you can't be fooled (and none us ever are), it isn't a piano. Only people who can say, "despite being sober, my system fooled me as I sat and listened" can make the claim..... or need to hear real pianos a lot more.
*There are special cases where we aren't quite sure what a piano would sound like in a swimming pool room or in a concert hall from the gallery and maybe speakers could trick us into thinking the sound kind of is the same. Or walking way down the hallway.
Last edited:
An interesting thing happened years ago: While helping my brother work on his car, I heard the most awesome boogie piano playing. Even though I had trouble telling the direction it was coming from, I never question wether it was real or a recording. It was certainly real. I got out from underneath the car, ran up the hill in the yard and discovered it was from my house! It was my dad................ I never knew he could play anything but classical and gospel. Now I know he played in a professional band way back in the 60s! Mind blowing. I mean can you believe they had pianos in the 60s!
Dan
Dan
So what's your theoretical reason? Saying it can't be done, saying people make mistakes, is not a reason.
I think that I follow your meaning now, but at first it sounded like you were saying something else. Ultimately I do believe that the medium is the limitation as two forward channels is simply not enough to yield good spatial information. But practically speaking the average, nea the BULK, of audio systems that I hear don't even come close to yielding the quality that is there on the medium. So I think that in this context we are in complete agreement.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.