AR, back when they were a company not a brand name, did extensive testing and found the minimum number of independent channels required to give a realistic soundstage was 16. That was one of the papers that helped kill quad.
I recently killed my center channel. We sit pretty much in front of the TV and whatever funny things the AVR does makes the center sound odd. We get better imaging, as in voice location, with just two very conventional speakers. I found I don't like the LFE output either, but do better with the full range speaker settings, no sub setting, and use a real external crossover to my subs. This is both on a big Denon and Rotel. Other brands may be different. I have never benched them to see what is up.
Tvrgeek,
When they came up with the what I will call second generation and said that the rear channels in a surround sound system should be band limited I knew that it was never going to be correct in any sense. The original quadraphonic sound systems we had in the 70's may have been very flawed but they had a better idea than the present implementation. 16 cabinets might not even be enough to get it right, but perhaps someday we will have a way to do things and give a real illusion of true surround sound.
When they came up with the what I will call second generation and said that the rear channels in a surround sound system should be band limited I knew that it was never going to be correct in any sense. The original quadraphonic sound systems we had in the 70's may have been very flawed but they had a better idea than the present implementation. 16 cabinets might not even be enough to get it right, but perhaps someday we will have a way to do things and give a real illusion of true surround sound.
Not exactly sure what NC10's are, but listening room reverberation has more influence on the sound balance than the frequency response can in terms of listening experience. Philip Newell and Keith Hollands book on Loudspeakers indicate different rooms have different purposes, so I would think that rooms would be tuned differently even if the same loudspeakers were used. When it was mentioned to me the need to be able to hear adjustment variation was really important, I could imagine that fast decay and lack of high energy reflections is a very critical factor for that purpose. If you have different rooms for different purposes, then back and forth between the rooms is a necessity. If a studio has all rooms designed for the same purpose, then certainly some capability is lost, which is in most cases a tradeoff for keeping investment and operations cost under control.
This really made me rethink what Accurate Recordings mean. To a violinist, he plays with the violin at his ear, and that is what he feels real; we listen at an audience location, and that is our perception of what is real. We have to realize this difference when we try to understand opinions from different people. We also never really know what we ourselves sound like to others because we hear ourselves from a different perspective than others. I have gotten lots of comments that tell me I should do broadcasting or singing because they feel I have a good voice when I talk, but when I record myself and listen, I think what the F........
If you hear yourself recorded or over a mic very often, you get used to it. It starts to sound like you.
How do you get stable center imaging without a center?
The type of speaker and/or how people place the center is what makes it sound odd. Putting the center below a TV in a cabinet will result in degraded performance.
LFE and the sub output are two different things.
That was caused by technical limitations of film. That limitation is long gone.
Markus,
So have they started to put full range information into the rear surround channels then. Are film soundtracks still following this model, or has something changed since I stopped paying attention to this format?
So have they started to put full range information into the rear surround channels then. Are film soundtracks still following this model, or has something changed since I stopped paying attention to this format?
A lot has changed since then. The surrounds are full range. Newest development is 128 fullrange "channels" mapped to 64 speakers: http://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/...by-Atmos-Next-Generation-Audio-for-Cinema.pdf
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Markus.
That is interesting. I only wonder about the compression scheme that Dolby has used in the past, it doesn't look like that has really changed. The frequency response if okay, but sure not to higher quality audio standards. I'll have to go to the new Dolby theater that used to be the Kodak theater here in Hollywood and see if they have installed a system like they are talking about. I haven't seen anything like that in any of the other theaters here in Los Angeles, I think it may be quite some time before we see anything like this in the real world.
Steven
That is interesting. I only wonder about the compression scheme that Dolby has used in the past, it doesn't look like that has really changed. The frequency response if okay, but sure not to higher quality audio standards. I'll have to go to the new Dolby theater that used to be the Kodak theater here in Hollywood and see if they have installed a system like they are talking about. I haven't seen anything like that in any of the other theaters here in Los Angeles, I think it may be quite some time before we see anything like this in the real world.
Steven
So I was correct, it really hasn't had a real roll-out yet. Like I said perhaps at their new flagship theater with their name on it. I hope it really is that good, but it will be some time before the productions start to use the process in new movies. A new thing to learn. Hopefully they won't get stupid like they did with 3D movies. So many of those were just terrible in how that was used. We will see how this works out. You are talking about a major investment in new speakers and power amps plus the decoding equipment.
Look through the linked thread. There are a couple of theaters equipped for Atmos. The 2nd Atmos movie is coming out soon.
If this wil be a success or if, when and how it will come to consumers is open. But object based audio is a step in the right direction for more realism in sound reproduction.
If this wil be a success or if, when and how it will come to consumers is open. But object based audio is a step in the right direction for more realism in sound reproduction.
references for what? floor reflections enable us to identify - by giving away their distance and height - the loudspeakers as the real sound sources in room which then perceptually compete with reproduced phantom sources
Do You remember Your mono flooder test?
You couldn't "localise the speaker at the floor", You had written: "it never happened" and: "the sound is coming a bit far away, from 'somewhere'".
Moreover, You had written: "turning my head has no effect on the sound, nice. This is better than stereo in this regard I can even face backwards without a change in sound."
What about HRTF and pinnae cues then? It seems that they were not strong enough to unmask the speaker in room in the absence of the floor reflection, and it was just one mono speaker, yet You couldn't hear it but phantom mono sources (interesting, isn't it?) instead, floating "from somewhere"
by reflections coherent with the direct sound I mean reflections that are sufficiently faithful copies of the first wavefront, sufficiently faithful copies in time domain
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it's the looks, most people judge by the looks, it is odd-looking and not very pretty
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Hopefully my next statement is redundant by now.
It is an essential survival tool to be able to distinguish direct sound from reflections. And of cause we can do it in real world situations. This is because the reflections have enough similarities with the direct sound.
Conventional speakers are very directional in the higher frequencies and omni directional in the lower frequency regions. The result is that the reflections from these sound sources have not enough similarities with the direct sound. Localisation of the phantom image gets more difficult and there are timbre changes. The normal solution is to put lots of bass traps in the corners and some broadband absorbers behind the speakers (omnidirectional characteristic in the lower frequency range of the speakers), broadband absorbers to the side and on the ceiling to deal with first reflections and diffusion on the rear wall (these reflections of cause do have enough relation to the direct sound)
But there's an other solution: Use speakers that have uniform directivity across the frequency range in a room with frequency independent and diffuse reflections. Now the reflections do have enough relation to the direct sound and we are perfectly capable to distinguish direct sound from reflections, just like in real world situations. One last thing: The room must have low enough RT60 (I wouldn't go much higher than 0,6 sec because higher RT60 would cause speech to become blurred) in order not to alter the reverb decay tail of the music chosen by the mixing engineer.
It is an essential survival tool to be able to distinguish direct sound from reflections. And of cause we can do it in real world situations. This is because the reflections have enough similarities with the direct sound.
Conventional speakers are very directional in the higher frequencies and omni directional in the lower frequency regions. The result is that the reflections from these sound sources have not enough similarities with the direct sound. Localisation of the phantom image gets more difficult and there are timbre changes. The normal solution is to put lots of bass traps in the corners and some broadband absorbers behind the speakers (omnidirectional characteristic in the lower frequency range of the speakers), broadband absorbers to the side and on the ceiling to deal with first reflections and diffusion on the rear wall (these reflections of cause do have enough relation to the direct sound)
But there's an other solution: Use speakers that have uniform directivity across the frequency range in a room with frequency independent and diffuse reflections. Now the reflections do have enough relation to the direct sound and we are perfectly capable to distinguish direct sound from reflections, just like in real world situations. One last thing: The room must have low enough RT60 (I wouldn't go much higher than 0,6 sec because higher RT60 would cause speech to become blurred) in order not to alter the reverb decay tail of the music chosen by the mixing engineer.
Where did you get the idea that reflections similar to the direct sound would help localization of phantom sources regardless of time, level and angle?
I assume that a continuously increasing directivity isn't even the worst scenario. Really bad are speakers with a good on-axis response and a very rugged off-axis response in this respect. Combining big midwoofers and dome tweeters for instance might lead to such a response.
Regards
Charles
Toole talks about sound absorption and transmission on page 472/473 so I'm not sure what you're referring to.
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