You may want to check the phase meter yourself. I'm sure that a few plugins are available.
Um....yeah, right. I designed an audio phase meter for tape alignment in 1978.
Look, every inexpensive tape machine has issues with azimuth and guidance, but the good pro ones are fairly stable. There's typically a bit of phase instability above 10kHz, but less than 20 degrees at 20KHz. That's life with analog tape. And that phase instability isn't contributing to anything audible. So, 180 degrees at 20KHz in air is .85cm, which explains why phase isn't used in localization at high frequencies, but timing is. But the phase skew on a pro tape recorder is well under 20 degrees at 20KHz, which is difference of under 3uS. Again, not useful in localization. So no, the tape path issues that cause phase skew in an analog recorder do not contribute to any kind of soundstage change.
I watched the video and tried the sound test. I heard a slight difference in my voice as I walked away from the wall, but not anything that got instantly clearer. It was more of a subtle difference in the sound that increased slightly after moving a few feet away from the back wall. I certainly couldn't assign a specific location to the change like they do in the video.
Perhaps I couldn't detect it very well due to my somewhat compromised hearing. Or maybe it was muffled by the very thick carpet in the room. Or maybe both reasons. I really don't know why.
So, thanks for suggesting it, but I don't see this procedure working for me.
Okay. It was just to confirm that the sound of one's voice, or a speaker, is better at a certain distance out from a wall.
Yeah, that makes sense. Particularly at lower frequencies where the sound from your voice is more omnidirectional than at higher frequencies. So, you would expect to get reflections from the low frequencies off of the wall behind you.
I think this video is really much to do about nothing. At least nothing useful to most people.
And even if you were successful in tweaking speaker positioning as they suggest I think you would end up with a situation in which you would have to keep your head in a very tight specific spot to maintain that same result.
The so called "head in a vice" problem.
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Well. not quite, sorry.
The Wilson method of speaker positioning by audio cues is very effective at doing exactly what the video says it does. It is just that it is impossible to do unless one knows what the audio cues actually are. One needs to be a trained Wilson employee to do that. So it is not a DIY friendly method.
It still seems to me that a speaker positioning method, Wilson method or any other, that results in critical placement where the difference of an inch makes a major difference is not a practical solution at all. It might satisfy the perfectionist tweeker in the short run, but not the real listener who is more comfortable moving around in his chair from time to time. In other words, some tolerance in the listening position is worth giving up a little bit in sound perfection.
Actually, the placement and listening position problem are true in any two channel stereo setup. It's one of the problems with two-channel stereo, it only "works" well in one very specific listening position relative to the speakers. This problem was completely known from the inception of stereophonic reproduction. The Bell Labs experiments of the early 1930s revealed it, which is why they recommended that the minimum (not ideal) speaker and channel count was to be 3, not 2. We got two because of the impracticality of 3 discrete channels in a single record groove. It's inadequate, we're stuck with it. BTW, their idea of "ideal" speakers and channels was in the hundreds, which accurately reproduced the original sound field. How's that for impractical? Oh yeah...Atmos. Totally different speaker plan, still impractical.
Non-critical listening can always be outside of the ideal listening position. And 99.99% (or something like that) of all listening is non-critical, and the compromises (mix balance changed, phantom images shifted, nothing in phantom center, soundstage skewed or reduced) are fully accepted.
All listeners I'm aware of are "real". None are "fake" as far as I can tell.
I used the term "real" listener to distinguish between someone who is listening for the pure enjoyment of the music, even if the reproduction of sound is not as perfect as it could be, versus someone who is preoccupied, and therefore distracted, by issues of the sound quality itself. I don't think you can do both at the same time.
But of course you can do both... and you can also do it with a nice drink too...
One of my favorite songs...
Slow down, you think too much
You gotta let the tunes go punch
Just listenin' to the stereo's tones
Ba.... it's aplayin' groovy...
Hello cartridge, is that ahumin'?
I've come to dread your static agrowin'
Aint'cha got no real soundstage?
Doot... I'm ahearin' loonie..
I got no noise to do
No dynamics to keep
I'm attentive and drowsy and ready to dance
Let the music wash all its notes over me
Stereo, I love you
Music is groovy
Note, if listening in surround you will need a back up singer.
Of course, being an audiophile forum
Hello, silence, my old friend,
Which tubes went bad again?
Because the glow is softly increasing,
The heat is flowing and burning,
And the vision of my money gone again,
Gone again,
Within the sound of audio silence
In quiet questions I stood alone
With a trusty soldering iron
And a Fluke Dee eM eM
I twisted the knob and looked at the schem
When my eyes, were stabbed by the flash of a tube blowing up
That would leave a big mark
In my wallet to fix the silence
And in my silent audio room I saw
Ten thousand bucks, likely far more
Russkies making tubes in dark caves
Germans making caps in dark forests
Americans selling me the cables to empty my wallet
No one else dared
Fix the sound of silence.
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No, you cannot do both at the same time. If you are sitting there thinking about how the sound could be better, you can't fully enjoy the music. At least not with classical music which is what I listen to.
Maybe you can do it with other types of music where you don't get so deeply immerse in it. But not with classical.
If you start thinking about the speaker performance or room acoustics you will most certainly miss the beauty in the music itself.
Now there are of course times when I listen with the purpose of finding ways to improve the sound quality. But those are not times when I am trying to just simply enjoy the music. The two things cannot be done at the same time.
OK, so YOU can not do it.... it doesn't mean others can't.
But then, my stereo sounds like music nowadays. And Classical is one of the best... just listen to the brass, the strings, the timpani, the decay... if it sounds like music, then you have put together a system that has achieved nirvana.
DSP as in DEQX, Lyngdorf and the like. This is perfection, but at a steep cost. For an even steeper cost is a complete speaker/system like the Dutch & Dutch.
This may seem so to you, given what you understand now.
However, you can never move your listening chair in the precise small movements needed like you can a speaker. And the speaker will stay fixed in that position while a person in a chair is never in a fixed position.
The cardioid you mention is an interesting thing. It can take a large speaker to get good results in a small room.. and not just any large speaker. The cardioid shows that at the cost of efficiency, which can be achieved, you can make that smaller still.
I do both. Been doing it for years. Classical? No problem, at least with most composers. Try grabbing a full score sometime and follow along. Just knee-slappin' fun. Jazz? Walk in the park.
The only time I can't actively listen and be analystical is with Polish dance music. Or newage (rhymes with sewage).
But here's a tip: If you get your acoustics and speaker placement right, you no longer HAVE to think about them. Ever. Again.
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