The analogy should be a recording of music to a picture (photo) of a painting, so yes the picture should be photo realistic, or as realistic (close to the original painting) as you can make it.
Hello,
"Pin point imaging" is not essential for the survival of the species. It is enough to auditorily sense the rough direction of the sound after where the eyes are focused to find out the details.
When I go to concert I hardly "image" anything. I hear the sound and I see the artists 🙂 Often times you are located far away from the stage so all the sound comes from a ten degree angle and the reverberance is gross. What is there left to image auditorily?
I want to share this, I'm not very much interested about "imaging" at all. I'm much more interested about listening the acoustics of the original venue. I'm addicted to the reverberance tail!! 😀 Anytime there is a silent moment in the recording the bliss of extacy takes place - One can enjoy the sense of space due to the reverberance. THIS is the thing that takes me to the original venue - Not anykind of "imaging".
- Elias
"Pin point imaging" is not essential for the survival of the species. It is enough to auditorily sense the rough direction of the sound after where the eyes are focused to find out the details.
When I go to concert I hardly "image" anything. I hear the sound and I see the artists 🙂 Often times you are located far away from the stage so all the sound comes from a ten degree angle and the reverberance is gross. What is there left to image auditorily?
I want to share this, I'm not very much interested about "imaging" at all. I'm much more interested about listening the acoustics of the original venue. I'm addicted to the reverberance tail!! 😀 Anytime there is a silent moment in the recording the bliss of extacy takes place - One can enjoy the sense of space due to the reverberance. THIS is the thing that takes me to the original venue - Not anykind of "imaging".
- Elias
You might have seen this coming: I tried ambiophonics - terrible! Monstrously deformed, intransparent and highly colored sound. Like listening with some else's ears that has a seriously damaged hearing.
This thread is about treating the room and the speakers as a system.
If you want to try and duplicate "what the engineer heard", you do NOT want to duplicate the mixing engineer's environment. You want to duplicate the mastering engineer's environment.
Here's a good one.
About Us
Note the effort put into the design and treatment of the room and integration with the speakers. How many followers of this thread can honestly say they have put in an equal amount of effort in ther own systems?
You're missing the point. Pinpoint imaging is only one of the many auditory events optimal sound reproduction needs to be capable of.
By the way: I believe that localization is THE most important feature of our hearing and was crucial for our survival.
Best case, mastering has no impact on the auditory events saved in a recording. Worst case, mastering ruins everything ("loudness war").
Me 🙂 Did you read Bob's book?
Stereo imaging is an artefact. There is no case in evolution where survival of the species could have benefited from the phantom imaging. It's a rear case where our prehistoric ancestor in the savannah would have encountered two lions exactly at the same distance forming a 60 degree angle and lions producing exactly the same roar at the exact time for the ancestor to perceive a 'phantom image' of only one lion being present in directly in front. My goodness, if that would have happened we wouldn't be here today to disscuss about this!
Stereo is based on this artefact, as are 5.1, 7.1, x.x.... They are based on something that is not inherently the purpose of the human hearing.
- Elias
Stereo is based on this artefact, as are 5.1, 7.1, x.x.... They are based on something that is not inherently the purpose of the human hearing.
- Elias
You're missing the point again. We are talking about pinpoint localization. It is something that is very real. Have you never perceived it with natural sound sources? Maybe you should go more outside like our ancestors had to 🙂
yes, exactly therefore the trick works!
because stereo is a trick, an illusion
this illusion can be illusion of something that can be experienced in reality or an illusion of something that can never or almost never be experienced in reality - good example of the latter is "pinpoint imaging" of musical sound sources
while "pinpoint imaging" can perhaps be experienced as such under certain rarely met conditions eg. in the snow-covered field, the real question is who is listening to any kind of music in the snow-covered field?
therefore I call pinpoint imaging of musical sound sources in stereo sound system an artefact
Not yet. I was about to order it, when I heard about the second edition, so I waited. I seem to recall I was quoted in it - or it might have been another publication, I'll have to check my mail logs. (Memory is the second thing to go with age. I forget what the first one was.)
elias, graaf
Do you guys sometimes listen to natural sound sources with your eyes closed? Do you really never experience a high degrees of "locatedness"? I do.
And please stop narrowing down audio reproduction to music recordings only.
Do you guys sometimes listen to natural sound sources with your eyes closed? Do you really never experience a high degrees of "locatedness"? I do.
And please stop narrowing down audio reproduction to music recordings only.
Well, actually I think the cause relations are not so clear. I mean the reason WHY we perceive phantom images is unknown to the science. As I explained in the lion example stereophonic phantom imaging does not benefit evolution. Instead it is a detrimental phenomena for the survival! You cannot afford perceiving any phantom lions if you need to run!
That is, stereo is flaved since it is based on something that is not stable and not the primary function of the human hearing. The primary function of human sound localization would be to localize the sound source, that is the speakers and BOTH of them simultaneously. But stereo tries to achieve totally the opposite, hide the speakers.
If stereo (name should be changed because it wouldn't be stereo anymore) would be based on some other aspects of human hearing than phantom imaging, maybe we could call it something else than an illusion 😉
- Elias
That is, stereo is flaved since it is based on something that is not stable and not the primary function of the human hearing. The primary function of human sound localization would be to localize the sound source, that is the speakers and BOTH of them simultaneously. But stereo tries to achieve totally the opposite, hide the speakers.
If stereo (name should be changed because it wouldn't be stereo anymore) would be based on some other aspects of human hearing than phantom imaging, maybe we could call it something else than an illusion 😉
- Elias
🙂 The degrees of image focus is highly variable in stereo recordings. No need for omni speakers to experience that. You probably want to describe something else but don't know how?
Wittek's PhD thesis is (still) an interesting read: http://hauptmikrofon.de/HW/Wittek_thesis_201207.pdf
of course I do! 🙂
and the same "high degrees of "locatedness"" I experience when I listen to my CFS quasi-omni and to SLS (a la Stereolith)
so perhaps our "high degrees of "locatedness"" are not the same thing
I am not "narrowing down audio reproduction"
Rather I just don't care for "audio reproduction", because my hobby is high fidelity and high fidelity about music reproduction
That's a very idiosyncratic definition of HiFi that probably not many people share.
yes indeed, and this is serious problem impeding any significant improvements of stereo because how can we improve something when we don't know how it works?
That is true and probably the main reason why this tedious discussion won't end any time soon...
?
as for any descriptions on my part I simply describe what I can hear
and it is nothing uncomfortably "diffuse" nor "vague" at all,
not at all "un-pinpoint" in any negative sense
neither out of focus
in fact "images" are even more solid, almost "physical", I can move my head or even stand up and move and they stay where they "are", I experience this "reach-out-and-touch effect" - the name itself is an attempt at description of an "image of source" that seems to really occupy real 3D space
I don't experience such effects in standard stereo and in my opinion they add a lot to the realism of experience of listening to music at home