The sound - amplitude, frequency dependent level alterations and timing/phase - reaching your ears from a single discreet sound source is substantially different from that same source played back through two speakers, even discounting the recording process. Your brain has to adjust for the context.
Odd dual microphone techniques used by nature recorders often work around this by employing techniques parallel to binaural, often resulting in incredible spaces. On my system the sounds on "An early morning chorus along Murderers Creek - a robin takes center stage. Grant County Oregon" from here https://rockscallop.org/JVp2.html extend beyond three walls with high localization.
@mtidge , very interesting. I seem to be on the opposite end of your spectrum - I think in pictures, full colour, moving plus sound. Took until mid high school to read fluently. Consequently very day-dreamy.
However in the engineering lab at uni was an anechoic chamber. Big enough to play basketball in but floor and walls/ceiling covered with sound absorbing non-reflective structures. Entry was on a removeable gantry. Without audio cues inside the silent chamber I felt so disoriented I couldn't stand upright, quite disturbing. I wonder how an anechoic experience might affect your spacial processing?
However in the engineering lab at uni was an anechoic chamber. Big enough to play basketball in but floor and walls/ceiling covered with sound absorbing non-reflective structures. Entry was on a removeable gantry. Without audio cues inside the silent chamber I felt so disoriented I couldn't stand upright, quite disturbing. I wonder how an anechoic experience might affect your spacial processing?
like said before, spacing in recordings is mainy due to how it's recorded and mixed. I have experience with mixng also, as mixing engineer and as music producer (altough not that much and i'm not that known outside some niche genres). Most music (except classic) recordings are not a true representation of the musicians playing, it's a faked image assembled often from different recordings, often even in different rooms and time frames to give the listener the impression he is listening to a band performing. Even with older recording from back to the mid 50's that is the case. As soon as multitrack tape was availeble (1955) engineers started to play with this, and when digital processing came arround it only went worse...
The panning, eq and use of delay and reverb creates the image you may hear. Panning is obvious, but what is less known to people who don't understand the process of mixing is how you create depth with delay and reverb on the channels of certain instruments. Basicly with very short delays and reverbs you create the impression that one musician is behind the other one.
If speakers are high enough quality and set up right in stereo in a relative good sounding room, that fake image should be very present. But it's not the speakers or the amp who does create that, it's created in the mixing studio of that music.
The panning, eq and use of delay and reverb creates the image you may hear. Panning is obvious, but what is less known to people who don't understand the process of mixing is how you create depth with delay and reverb on the channels of certain instruments. Basicly with very short delays and reverbs you create the impression that one musician is behind the other one.
If speakers are high enough quality and set up right in stereo in a relative good sounding room, that fake image should be very present. But it's not the speakers or the amp who does create that, it's created in the mixing studio of that music.
I'm very impressed by your self awareness. You also have an excellent ability to express yourself with written communication. I feel like I can almost imagine your world.
We all live in different worlds. I imagine there will be some people who are adults and still haven't worked out they have a colour blindness.
Loads of people with anauralia probably have no idea.
I think you are very likely to be correct that your brain has been wired up genetically with some strong innate abilities eg logical analysis but with less common sensory processing. Its impossible for the brain to be great at everything.
But your lack of depth perception with stereos is common. Lots of stereos just have no depth. Most stereos just do images glued to the speakers and extending between the speakers on a 2D plane which may be forward or back. Great recording on great system can create a palpable 3D image. Ive had the uncanny sense of wanting to get up and reach out to try and touch a singer hovering clearly in front of me. Those systems and tracks are rare. They need excellent DACs or sources with super timing all the way to each driver.
On the other hand your opera singer location finding may not be indicative you have 3D sound location. You would need to go in blindfolded as vision trumps spatial location and the mind can then project from other cues. In terms of testing your ability to locate sounds Id suggest a wee experiment. Go to a park with a good friend who claims to hear perfect stereo imaging and don a blindfold. For five minutes comment on what you hear and where eg dog bark 100m away as you point to it. Then swap. That should indicate if something is different.
Heres some more info:
scientists at the University of Exeter coined a name for the inability to see images in your mind – Aphantasia. They believe that 2% of the world’s population could unknowingly suffer from it.
Alan Kendle, from England, has never been able to visualize images. He explained to TheJournal.ie: ”It’s an inability to visualise in your mind. It’s not that you can’t think of something, but the thing you think of doesn’t have any physical structure or form as an object in your head.”
Since the discovery of the condition, scientists have also come to understand that some people with Aphantasia can’t hear sounds in their mind. “I don’t hear anything in my head, people say they can hear music in their head but I don’t hear anything,” Kendle said.When I read a book, I don’t hear words. If I’m speaking to someone and they say something it doesn’t pop anything into my head, nothing at all.
Also a study with survey and good discussion:
An association between auditory and visual imagery, including both their absence in anauralia and aphantasia and their abundance in hyperauralia and hyperphantasia, is broadly consistent with neuroimaging work. When participants perform multisensory imaging tasks, complex network activations involving multiple brain regions have been observed. Some of these activations appear to reflect modality-specific activation of sensorimotor representations (Yoo et al., 2001; McNorgan, 2012), while other activations appear to reflect supramodal mechanisms involved in generating sensory imagery regardless of modality (McNorgan, 2012; Kleider-Offutt et al., 2019). In an important study, Lima et al. (2015) studied individual differences in sensory imagery, and investigated associations between auditory and visual imagery, and their relationships with brain structure and function. In common with the current study, auditory and visual imagery vividness were associated. Interestingly, grey matter volume in the supplementary motor area (SMA) was associated with individual differences in both auditory and visual imagery vividness (Lima et al., 2015).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551557/pdf/fpsyg-12-744213.pdf
If you cant hear in 3D you might really enjoy headphones. Always look on the bright side.....
@mtidge: late to the party, but I find this very interesting.
We all know that stereo is an illusion build up inside our brains, it's a perception thing.
Are you saying you also do not experience stereo? How does a sound field 'appear' to you, by want of a better word?
Edit: I see you answered that in post # 6.
Jan
We all know that stereo is an illusion build up inside our brains, it's a perception thing.
Are you saying you also do not experience stereo? How does a sound field 'appear' to you, by want of a better word?
Edit: I see you answered that in post # 6.
Jan
Syn08 also claimed inability to experience 3D illusion in Sound Quality Vs. Measurements Post #19,332
Does this work for anyone? I just get panning from left to right, even with headphones
Brian
In answer to a few of the questions, I can locate sounds quite well, geese flying overhead, a squirrel in the leaves, people in a room, it seems that this just doesn't happen when listening to recordings on a stereo. I think my real time system is normal, but the playback system is missing something, I remember without triggering the real time processing part of the brain. I kind of just know something without seeing or hearing it. What I hear is sounds coming from the speakers, maybe the drummer from the right speaker, the bass and vocals from the left. Sometimes it is more of a wall of sound in front of me, but no separation across the front. Never any feeling of height or distance. An interesting thing was my experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs when I was young, I never once had a hallucination and this was with LSD, peyote or mushrooms. I always thought that I got a bad dose or just didn't take enough. Mostly my mind would seem to be thinking at high speed and all scrambled up, no sights and sounds, no colors. More than once I even took heroic doses of LSD, but no show, just insanity (of the fun, temporary kind). I have owned a few sets of head phones over time but I've always preferred playback from speakers, headphones always seemed boring and I would use them so I wouldn't disturb others. So I would say I never listened to any Binaural recordings.
Interesting thread. I am surprised nobody has mentionned Helmut Hass study about the precedence effect. See also https://www.aes.org/par/h/#Haas_Effect
Interesting. Also fascinating about the LSD non-effect.
There are people with two eyes who do not see in stereo, but as far as I know that is because their eyes don't track together. But what you are describing is like someone who has normal stereoscopic vision but who can't see the effect with 3D glasses.
H
Roger waters - the ballad of bill hubbard
Diana krall (live in paris) - a case of you
Please write you're impressions of those 2 tracks so we can have a common grounds.
Have u tried the 2 tracks i recommended?
Roger waters - the ballad of bill hubbard
Diana krall (live in paris) - a case of you
Please write you're impressions of those 2 tracks so we can have a common grounds.
Have you heard a highly evolved system widely renowned for spectacular 3D imaging? Owner praise doesn't count. The system needs to get astounded praise from multiple visitors.
Even off YouTube there is some 3D image/soundstage. Hangs between the speakers, and a bit back
I have the 16/44 of that, and it is very 3D. Diana seems to be sitting behind the piano (as opposed to in a video we see it from the front, she if facing us and the piano between her and the listener. A bit of sibilance in the track.
Lorenna McKennitts, The Mystic Dream is even better at the illusion.
dave
the bill hubbard track - its specific on the dogs barking and tv/radio conversation