As a fan of electric and electronic popular music as well as the acoustic and classical stuff, I find this debate quite unproductive. I want my stereo equipment to do an excellent job of reproducing any kind of music I might care to listen to, and I don't think this is an unreasonable goal either. If the original recording was supposed to be a realistic capture of an acoustic space, I want to hear that. If it was synthetic, I want to hear what the record producer intended, or at least something that isn't obviously weird or unpleasant.
If it helps, you can imagine that in electronic music, the recording studio is the instrument, and the "original sound" is what the composer heard from his monitor speakers in the studio when programming the piece.
FWIW, I downloaded Dr. mcclain's free MP3s and am listening to them right now. The sound quality and production values on the electronic tracks are very good (apart from the occasional buffer overrun glitch) but as far as I can tell they are completely synthetic, no actual microphones or acoustic spaces seem to have been harmed in the making of them. 😉
If it helps, you can imagine that in electronic music, the recording studio is the instrument, and the "original sound" is what the composer heard from his monitor speakers in the studio when programming the piece.
FWIW, I downloaded Dr. mcclain's free MP3s and am listening to them right now. The sound quality and production values on the electronic tracks are very good (apart from the occasional buffer overrun glitch) but as far as I can tell they are completely synthetic, no actual microphones or acoustic spaces seem to have been harmed in the making of them. 😉
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The stereo image is part of the sound. The stereo image on the vast majority of recordings is a total fabrication.
You will never hear anything like it in reality from sound produced acoustically rather than through electronics.
In most recordings, each instrument or singer is picked up by one microphone (mono) and mixed into the recording.
Just because the sound is in both speakers doesn't mean that it's stereo. It's more like mono in various places.
Of course, this is distinct from the way that a reproducing system creates an image, which can be tolerable if care is taken.
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Erm, have you just redefined the term then? What do you define as 'stereo'. To me if there are 2 speakers and sounds come from various points between them (and above and behind in many cases) then it is stereo.
No, actually it's commercial practice that has redefined the original term. Think of visual depth perception, and how two eyes are necessary.
With sound, two microphones picking up the music, each slightly differently, are necessary to get the natural perspective that real stereo can have.
You've been cheated of this in most studio recordings. Try a binaural recording with headphones, you won't believe how realistic it can sound.
This is a very good question. I ceratinly have not found that anything has to be given up - except perhaps floor space and money.
And? So are CG, matte painting and cell animation in the movies. Does that mean they are not worthy of good reproduction? A Van Gogh painting is far from realistic. Does it not deserve a good rendering in a print?
I have - many of them. They don't sound very realistic to me. Nice, but no more real than some other techniques.
Stereo just means using 2 speakers to create an illusion of an acoustic space. "Soundstage" or "image" if you prefer. It is doing for your ears what 3-D glasses and those "Magic eye" prints do for your eyes.
It doesn't say anywhere that the acoustic space has to be based on a real one. You can generate 3-D computer graphics that look solid and have the illusion of depth, but have no basis in real life. Think of the CGI alien spacecraft in a 3-D movie.
The same goes for stereo sound, you can use electronics and DSP to create abstract acoustic spaces and place synthetic sound sources in them. The overall effect can be quite believable and enjoyable even if it has no more basis in reality than the CGI spaceships.
More speakers would work better, but 2 (oddly enough the same as the number of ears on a human) is the minimum number that gives any sort of spatial illusion at all.
It doesn't say anywhere that the acoustic space has to be based on a real one. You can generate 3-D computer graphics that look solid and have the illusion of depth, but have no basis in real life. Think of the CGI alien spacecraft in a 3-D movie.
The same goes for stereo sound, you can use electronics and DSP to create abstract acoustic spaces and place synthetic sound sources in them. The overall effect can be quite believable and enjoyable even if it has no more basis in reality than the CGI spaceships.
More speakers would work better, but 2 (oddly enough the same as the number of ears on a human) is the minimum number that gives any sort of spatial illusion at all.
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How important is a stereo image
On the recording side, you can have your cake and eat it, but it comes with flavour enhancers.
On the recording side, you can have your cake and eat it, but it comes with flavour enhancers.
What is the meaning of "good reproduction" if there is no original acoustical sound to reproduce?
Any sound coming out of the speakers could qualify as "good" in someone's opinion, because there is no original to compare it with.
Yes, a nice copy of a painting is fine, but we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it is like the original.
Reproduction of live acoustic music was traditionally the yardstick by which performance of a hifi system was judged. It is still a very good test of reproduction quality.
But it doesn't mean that you must always be listening to live acoustic music, or always testing your system every time you listen to it. Many people like to listen to other sorts of music just for enjoyment.
Electronic music will translate well onto a system that was designed to reproduce live acoustic music, because no matter the genre of music, the monitoring systems used at the recording and mastering stages are similar to a good quality domestic hifi.
(Disclaimer: Or maybe a crappy pair of computer speakers, as seen on Hugh Padgham's meter bridge and as we also used on our latest project as an alternative to test laptop and smartphone friendliness.)
If you want perfect stereo localization, hang a picture of the musicians between your speakers and the localization will be perfect. The drum beats will come exactly from the drummer and not an inch to the side. Promise. So much for the illusion of localization and the cues that bring it about.
Back to the original question (and to billshurv question about the need for trade-offs), I think anybody who has examined the acoustics of rooms (as opposed to the naive fantasy version of recording and playback room sound) or has read a few pages from Toole's essential book, will know you just can't get it all, even if you were good buddies with the recording team.
Each system has its own set of virtues and no system has it all. At the top, you can't have the best pin-point sound, resistance to room modes, good ambiance, and multiple good seats*. But you can have a good middle ground (and from what has been posted, you can also have a lot of enjoyment from systems failing in all those regards).
Ben
*us folks in the ESL crowd would add a special further virtue of clarity which we get with ESLs which are almost always dipoles and have other shortcomings
Back to the original question (and to billshurv question about the need for trade-offs), I think anybody who has examined the acoustics of rooms (as opposed to the naive fantasy version of recording and playback room sound) or has read a few pages from Toole's essential book, will know you just can't get it all, even if you were good buddies with the recording team.
Each system has its own set of virtues and no system has it all. At the top, you can't have the best pin-point sound, resistance to room modes, good ambiance, and multiple good seats*. But you can have a good middle ground (and from what has been posted, you can also have a lot of enjoyment from systems failing in all those regards).
Ben
*us folks in the ESL crowd would add a special further virtue of clarity which we get with ESLs which are almost always dipoles and have other shortcomings
Yes... I still have some including Thelma Houstan / Pressure Cooker (I've got the music 😉 )
Great atmosphere and exceptional sound 😎
I think that you'd enjoy finding out about this for yourself, The area of recording techniques is an extensive subject, do some reading.
Just think, why do we have two ears? Each side has a different perspective on the same sound.
Having a single microphone pick up sound, played back through two speakers (just at different volumes in each speaker) is not stereo, it's really mono.
There's no more information there, the sound is just coming from a "virtual single speaker" somewhere between the actual speakers.
If the sound came from just one speaker, you'd call it mono. If you moved the speaker, you'd still call it mono.
Why is it suddenly "stereo" when the studio pan pots the sound for you, instead of you moving the speaker?
and if the original painting itself is not photo-realistic - as the bulk of "true art" would be- is it "unworthy" by that criteria?
I can remember listening to only a couple of "dummy head" binaural recordings on headphones a few decades ago - not a big fan of headphones in the first place, but I couldn't get them off fast enough. I already have enough voices of my own inside my head, without inviting others in.
Does self awareness of such a personal "bias" render all one's musical enjoyment invalid?
I can remember listening to only a couple of "dummy head" binaural recordings on headphones a few decades ago - not a big fan of headphones in the first place, but I couldn't get them off fast enough. I already have enough voices of my own inside my head, without inviting others in.
Does self awareness of such a personal "bias" render all one's musical enjoyment invalid?
Yes, this is how conventional stereo recordings sound through headphones. The recording flaws are not hidden by room acoustics.
Not so for true stereo, or binaural, which recreates a space outside your head, unlike the fake stereo.
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If the studio just did that with a single source, it would be mono. It is the combination of multiple sources, panned to different locations and the addition of reverb, that make it stereo.
So, if there are two instruments playing, it's stereo, but if one instrument stops playing, suddenly it changes to mono?
I have a whole bunch of Sheffields. For sure, the Harry James small band is exceptional and his band "aiming" at the mics produce wonderful sound in many respects. A world-class marker of recording art*.
But the large orchestra pieces (Wagner, Debussy) are quite unimpressive soundwise, even for those of us who hoped for great things from Sheffield.
If you don't close-mic the woodwinds, you can't crank them up when Beethoven wants you to crank them up. So with Sheffield purist technique you are unable to bring to the consumer a good reproduction of Beethoven's score... just a big mushy poorish sound... as if you just did the purist (and naive) thing and stuck the mics on a seat in Row 6 at head height (where the woodwind sound is almost always blocked by the first and second violins)**.
Ben
*for a comparable contemporary masterpiece, Marsalis' big band doing The Big Train
** when YOU sit in Row 6, you have the hearing cues that enable you to attend to the woodwinds just fine, close to what Beethoven intended albeit for a vastly smaller hall in Vienna. Not so by the time the recorded sound gets to your ears.
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