Well, when presented with evidence, what do we get? Well, Ed Simon is registered here at this website. If you have a serious question, why don't you ask him?
Soundstage is manufactured in 99% of the music out there. (which implies it is well understood) If you havent heard the mix in the room it was mixed in you dont know what its supposed to be.
First you have to define "better soundstage". More spacious is not necessarily better, if the original recording dosnt have it and your increasing it, your distorting the signal. (if you like more spacious, add a reverb unit to your rig).
These are the types of arguments that drive me nuts. Totally subjective, and without a proper understanding of the concepts. ( Read the books on sound localization, if you want to understand the soundstage concept.)
A claim was made that we could measure everything we hear. I can take 2 loudspeaker systems and drop them into the same positions in a room and using the same program material the imaging, sense of space and depth are different. The obvious answer is they are interacting with the room differently.
The question was what measurement set can we use that will predict the differences or at least show why??
The point was it's not as easy as it sounds to correlate everything we hear to specific measurements or a specific measurement set.
Thanks Earl and Kareface for your responses
Rob🙂
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Still waiting for some of that evidence (beyond "because I say so"). If you've done controlled listening tests demonstrating differences between wires or cables that are NOT due to mundane factors, you've not brought them up. Are you hiding these results or are you still running away from getting actual evidence?
Ed's stuff is interesting, but he hasn't done listening tests, he hasn't demonstrated relationship to your claims of audibility, and (because he has technical integrity) he doesn't claim that they're connected.
The polar response will tell you how the speaker will interact with the room. You'll need horizontal polars for sure and vertical are also important so you know where your nulls are (you certainly don't want to be your ear in a deep crossover response notch).
Another thing of importance is IACC. This definition will help you understand it:
Glossary: Interaural Cross Correlation (IACC) | Sweetwater.com
Message here is that very early reflections are less than desirable, but later reflections from opposite walls are more desirable if imaging and spaciousness are to be had at the same time. Knowing the polar response will enable you to make that happen or let you know that optimum results with a certain speaker are not possible in your room. Too bad almost no one publishes those! A fairly narrow pattern will be useful in every room I can imagine, but let the pros talk and listen to them. I am a relative newb, but this has worked for me. The second link in my signature has useful information in it for buying speakers. Well actually both links do.
You'll need well designed cables to connect it all. They are available at all electronics stores. 🙂
Dan
If the first reflections from the room boundaries come at least 6mS or so after the direct sound, your brain can figure out which is which, and you can hear the recording venue without it being messed up by the listening venue.
6mS is about 6 ft path difference. So, a measurement (with a band ruler) can give you a clear indication of what to expect.
How's that for a cheap audio measurement device ? 😉
jd
6mS is about 6 ft path difference. So, a measurement (with a band ruler) can give you a clear indication of what to expect.
How's that for a cheap audio measurement device ? 😉
jd
Hi Dan
Agreed, BUT - the vertical polars are only required to determine where the vertical nulls are, however, if the horizontal polars are shown at the ear or listening level, then, if these holes were a problem, they WILL BE in that data. The only other relavent question about the vertical polars is if they are fairly evenly spaced about the central axis. This is simply because this will give you the greatest possible range of heights for which these nulls are not a factor. I design my crossovers to yield symmetrical nulls and I check this, so all that is really required are the horizontal polars. I suppose if you did not trust that the design did have the nulls equally spaced then you might want to see the first 10-15° up and down, as I do, but beyond that is superfluous information.
I don't think so. Our hearing makes use of all information that arrives after the direct sound (see Blauert). There is no scientifically proven 6ms interval that divides good from bad reflextions. I know Linkwitz propagates that number but without objective data to support his claim.
There is NO scientific study on qualitative properties of room reflections in stereo or multichannel reproduction. None.
Poor john, everyone is picking on him for this comment. In all honesty tho it's warranted. Do you think in a peer reviewed journal you just write up a paper and it's published with out contention? It's right there in the name, peer-review. Scrutiny of the facts, regardless if they fit the expected picture or not, is healthy and vital to the weeding out of false information or mistakes. Were you expecting to post one unvalidated graph and expect everyone to drop to their knees in the praise of the cable gods? Remember, each claim has to not only be verified on it's own merit but the sum of evidence to support the claim must measure to the degree of the claim being made. If you plan to insist tomorrow the sun isn't going to rise you better have a lot more then a single graph taken out of context.
However, even if you were to do what you just said the results will measure very differently. Even if it's hard for some people to understand the relation between the measurements and the results 2 things that sound different will measure different, period. So what about something that doesn't measure different? If speaker cables produce no measurable differences in the sound produced by the speakers then there is no difference in the sound produced. I'll put money down that there isn't a pair of systems out there that can be readily identified from one another in blind tests but measure identically.
This I somewhat agree with, this doesn't mean it isn't hard to identify the window. It's different for each individual and the room. I usually just run a click test, starting with 2, expanding the delay between them and having the listener identify the point where the sounds get blurred more. Then a series at a lower interval and trying to identify when the sounds come across as a tommy gun only faster. I've only done this a few times myself tho, it's time consuming and usually doesn't change the limit you can correct for anyways. Even if you know the window there's a limit to how close to that you can get with acoustical correction.
No. There's no such simple thing like a window. All reflections contribute to what we perceive - level, direction, spectrum, delay, number of reflections. There's tons of psychoacoustic studies but NONE of them even asks the right questions.
Naqvi did some rudimentary but very interesting research (Naqvi et al. (2005), “The active listening room- a novel approach to early reflection manipulation in critical listening rooms”, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, S.385).
Toole's review is pretty good in showing what we know and what questions still need to be answered:
http://www.harman.com/EN-US/OurComp...p/Documents/Scientific Publications/13686.pdf
Don't get me wrong, I'm confident that we can measure everything we need to know but we just don't know (yet) how to relate those measurements to perception.
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Markus,
Do you agree with the concept that as the separation between direct and reflected sound increases, there will be a point where they are perceived as separate?
jd
Do you agree with the concept that as the separation between direct and reflected sound increases, there will be a point where they are perceived as separate?
jd
Yes there is, it's called the Haas window. This has been well studied, you can read many publications on the very subject.
Everyone can choose to have or not have any religious beliefs.But to equal someone's religious beliefs with cables or anything cheap without any reason,the way you do,it is provocative,and to say the least,pathetic.
Don't be afraid,no one wants to attack your lack of any kind of belief.Seperation would correspond to echo perception (50 to 80 ms). There's no separation at shorter intervals. The relationship between perception and physical properties of reflections is pretty complex. There are no simple rules like "first reflections must not arrive within 15ms and need to be attenuated by 10dB". Those numbers come from concert hall studies (see Beranek) and misquoted threshold measurements (see Schubert). They have never been confirmed to be of any relevance in small room acoustics.
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You do realize there is a difference between the Precedence effect and the haas window? One is an overarching set of effects, which the haas is a subset of. What does pointing out this wiki page have anything to do with the fact that there is clearly a window as described?
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