I didn't read that, can you show me, what was the resultant angle perceived?
As far as I can see, apart from some very well recorded live classical performances, the stereo image in most music is just down to pan pot control. As your link says SJ I can't quite see how ITD is relevant to that.
As is observed earlier, point that in real life, auditory location is also connected to visual cues and head movement - head "panning" while eye scanning - and also to some knowledge of what the source is. That appears to be how the whole processing chain operates. And it's interesting to note some of the sounds that are incredibly difficult to locate. Some emergency service sirens are like that - you know it's there but it's very hard to say where it's coming from.
So, even assuming that ITD is audibly affected by speaker cable / speaker Z interactions, is it actually relevant to most source material?
As is observed earlier, point that in real life, auditory location is also connected to visual cues and head movement - head "panning" while eye scanning - and also to some knowledge of what the source is. That appears to be how the whole processing chain operates. And it's interesting to note some of the sounds that are incredibly difficult to locate. Some emergency service sirens are like that - you know it's there but it's very hard to say where it's coming from.
So, even assuming that ITD is audibly affected by speaker cable / speaker Z interactions, is it actually relevant to most source material?
Ah different link to your original one.
JN has repeatedly referred to <2uS ITD, hence all the discussion on low uS settling times. If this site had decent search I'd probably find his links
. But hopefully if he reads this he will re-post.
As I mentioned earlier I think the only effect is would have, if it exists (I think the focus has become how to actually measure it) would be to destabilize the image, but if it was the same in both channels it wouldn't.
Easy to understand and verify. To be able to discriminate a difference in time arrival, the brain need to have a recognizable signal or enveloppe. That occurs during attacks/wave front.
Just try to localize a pink or white noise, like your computer's fans.
Once an attack has been perceived, the brain is probably able to use some filter, then more time on resonance could give-him more time to calculate more finely the temporal difference ?
On a separate note, we went to a stand up gig last night. The venue is quite large, shoebox style, has a long RT and is very reflective. Not ideal for stand up, but it's usually ok. It's been revamped since we were last there, new sound system.
The sound was truly awful - very hard to understand what was being said. Especially the support guy wondered why he wasn't getting a of of laughs - his slightly higher voice was very hard to hear properly. The new sound system is one of the modern "boom and tinkle" style - down on midrange, which doesn't help.
I noticed the mixing desk was unmanned! In the interval I went and nosed at it. A nice bit of modern Allen & Heath kit, just set and left. The sound idiot had set 3 big parametric filters, quite deep and very low Q, not sharp filters, at 800, around 2k and around 6k! No wonder it sounded crap.
The sound was truly awful - very hard to understand what was being said. Especially the support guy wondered why he wasn't getting a of of laughs - his slightly higher voice was very hard to hear properly. The new sound system is one of the modern "boom and tinkle" style - down on midrange, which doesn't help.
I noticed the mixing desk was unmanned! In the interval I went and nosed at it. A nice bit of modern Allen & Heath kit, just set and left. The sound idiot had set 3 big parametric filters, quite deep and very low Q, not sharp filters, at 800, around 2k and around 6k! No wonder it sounded crap.
And I can't find it again...
JN refers to this publication:
Nordmark, J. O. (1976). Binaural time discrimination. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 60(4), 870–880. doi:10.1121/1.381167
Sine waves are not the most accurate test signal for ITD evaluation if read the latest research paper 2019 on assessment of smallest perceivable ITD I posted a while ago
"revisited pure-tone threshold ITDs using the above-mentioned modern standard techniques. They reported that best sensitivity occurs between 700–1000 Hz, which is in line with the historic references but more precise. However, their reported thresholds are much higher."
"all studies consistently report lowest thresholds near 10 μs for noise stimuli or complex stimuli (Klumpp and Eady, 1956, Mills 1958) and just above 10 μs for pure tones (Brughera et al., 2013)."
"The stimulus that yielded the lowest threshold ITD was Gaussian noise, band-pass filtered from 20 to 1400 Hz, presented at 70 dB sound pressure level. The best method was a two-interval procedure with an interstimulus interval of 50 ms. The average threshold ITD for this condition at the 75% correct level was 6.9 μs for nine trained listeners and 18.1 μs for 52 un-trained listeners."
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I’m having an issue with a Parasound Halo Integrated (thread over in solid state) that fits right into all this.
This is a brand new ‘original’ Hint that I got for close out price when the new Hint 6 came out. A few days ago I hooked it up for the first time directly swapping it out with a Yamaha RN 803 (dsp based 2.1 integrated) if you’ve read the thread it was a lot of your basic issues getting it dialed but one thing I can’t seem to dial out is a ‘slowness’ to the music.
This issue is most prevalent on percussion and plucked strings, the attack is gone and decay is limited leaving just the middle of the sound which greatly reduces the presence.
I’ve diagnosed it to it might be a low slew rate amp and the only square wave measurement I can find is 10usec short up and down.
https://www.stereophile.com/images/1115PHalofig14.jpg
I’m not sure if this is ‘slow’ or normal for an amp but something is definately ‘off’
The only other thing it might be is my Yamaha was a bit bright on top so I tried to tame it a bit with some high capacitance speaker wire (Cardas 101). Save any ridicule for someone else....I’m not about to spend stupid money on speaker cables but do know that wire does have different RCL properties depending on manufacturer/type and that can be used in fine tuning a system and don’t mind spending a couple extra $ a foot for bulk wire that gives the properties I need.
So maybe this amp (all things combined) doesn’t appreciate a high cap wires?
Can a high capacitance wire ‘slow’ perception? I was thinking about this last night as I listened and it does seem to have an overall ‘capacitive air’ about it.
If that’s the case it’s Simple enough to order up some wire with faster character.....I think the Belden wire has low capacitance? Any suggestions?
Bob
This is a brand new ‘original’ Hint that I got for close out price when the new Hint 6 came out. A few days ago I hooked it up for the first time directly swapping it out with a Yamaha RN 803 (dsp based 2.1 integrated) if you’ve read the thread it was a lot of your basic issues getting it dialed but one thing I can’t seem to dial out is a ‘slowness’ to the music.
This issue is most prevalent on percussion and plucked strings, the attack is gone and decay is limited leaving just the middle of the sound which greatly reduces the presence.
I’ve diagnosed it to it might be a low slew rate amp and the only square wave measurement I can find is 10usec short up and down.
https://www.stereophile.com/images/1115PHalofig14.jpg
I’m not sure if this is ‘slow’ or normal for an amp but something is definately ‘off’
The only other thing it might be is my Yamaha was a bit bright on top so I tried to tame it a bit with some high capacitance speaker wire (Cardas 101). Save any ridicule for someone else....I’m not about to spend stupid money on speaker cables but do know that wire does have different RCL properties depending on manufacturer/type and that can be used in fine tuning a system and don’t mind spending a couple extra $ a foot for bulk wire that gives the properties I need.
So maybe this amp (all things combined) doesn’t appreciate a high cap wires?
Can a high capacitance wire ‘slow’ perception? I was thinking about this last night as I listened and it does seem to have an overall ‘capacitive air’ about it.
If that’s the case it’s Simple enough to order up some wire with faster character.....I think the Belden wire has low capacitance? Any suggestions?
Bob
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I believe that is it, but for some reason I was thinking 1972.
The tests were done with headphones, so the discernment is considered lateralization, whereas in the wild it is referred to as localization.
Nordmark got down to 1.2 uSec in that case, and IIRC, 5 uSec at up to 12 kHz.
He also reported that dithering the signal increased the sensitivity. I believe the lower numbers were in fact dithered, again it's hazy at the moment.
In the wild, I would suspect our capability to be consistent with the lateralization numbers. For synthesized location, I suspect there is degradation as a result of the process of integrating wavefronts from two directions.
Consider an equilateral setup, each speaker 30 degrees off axis. Signal from R hits the listener with ILD and ITD specific to a sours ear the speaker. Signal from L hits at the same time, it also has It's own specific information, that is it comes from the left.
There are two distinct phases. First contact presents the exact information intended by the mix. Second contact, each ear hears the signal a head delay later, and that is a combination of the mix ITD and the head ITD/ILD. But the opposite ear is getting the content intended for the initial ear with a delay consistent with the ITD of a source 30 degrees to the opposite side.
How the brain interprets that, I've no clue. But that is why I mentioned that a true ITD/ILD will be heavily dependent on the setup of the speakers.
My initial reference to septum and septum equations refers to a setup where an absorbant barrier is placed in front of you, arranged to prevent cross content. As headphones do.
So while the human does have capability at the 1.2 uSec level in lateralization, I believe the higher numbers of 6.9 uSec in localization would be consistent, as the test conditions are confounded by crosstalk.
However, the link Merrill posted was indeed headphones. So it is not clear why Nordmark was so low.
Of note is the statement that they identified seven independent parameters but culled down, as statistically it would probably have taken a million tests (my WAG) to get down to a .05 level.
They culled down in what appeared to be a nice way, but perhaps something was dropped that Nordmark kept. Unknown.
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As a test, reduce the speaker cable length as much as possible, if necessary place amp and speaker next to each other and listen to just one speaker, mono recording if possible
I think this might be the Nordmark paper you are thinking of, JN - from 1976
Indeed, what I think one of the major differences between the 2019 paper I referenced & Nordmark's 1976 paper is the jitter he introduced - this brought the frequency threshold above 1500Hz which is beyond any other ITD study without jitter. So I suspect that this jitter is also a significant factor in the lower ITD threshold Nordmark reports
Not sure if I want cut any off the 101.....I’ve already got it at minimum length.
I do have some 14ga cord I can swap (what I used previously), but it’s not a ‘known’ so I’m not sure....still easy enough to try.
Also of concern, the position of the bass driver during large excursions will introduce timing jitter of higher frequency content by virtue of time of flight. Meaning that actual program level can introduce yet another confounder.
Sheesh, if we introduce another 10 or 20 confounders, this stuff might actually get complicated, no?
Jn
Also of concern, the position of the bass driver during large excursions will introduce timing jitter of higher frequency content by virtue of time of flight. Meaning that actual program level can introduce yet another confounder.
Sheesh, if we introduce another 10 or 20 confounders, this stuff might actually get complicated, no?
Jn
Isn’t that physically accounted for (offset) or with delay?
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