More please. I am interested.
But still interesting info on its own.
But I want it to sound like 100 real musical instruments at once...
If you look at the original advertising posters for QUAD as attached you can see the ESL is stuck in a corner, possibly for bass reinforcement but that is going to mess with the performance of a dipole, even with the rear wave damping the ESLs had.
If you look at the radios George posted, they were designed for as wide dispertion as the form factor would allow and certainly not to appear as a point source. It seems they wanted to 'fill the room' and maybe that's whats' needed.
Interestingly a number of archivists and restorers of old recordings do add some reverb at the end of the process and claim their customers prefer that. Acoustic recordings in particular were very dry as the horn had to be close to the orchestra but I do also wonder if that helps with the issues noted by Pano and the Late Mr. Heyser with sending the same signal down two channels.
If you look at the original advertising posters for QUAD as attached you can see the ESL is stuck in a corner, possibly for bass reinforcement but that is going to mess with the performance of a dipole, even with the rear wave damping the ESLs had.
If you look at the radios George posted, they were designed for as wide dispertion as the form factor would allow and certainly not to appear as a point source. It seems they wanted to 'fill the room' and maybe that's whats' needed.
Interestingly a number of archivists and restorers of old recordings do add some reverb at the end of the process and claim their customers prefer that. Acoustic recordings in particular were very dry as the horn had to be close to the orchestra but I do also wonder if that helps with the issues noted by Pano and the Late Mr. Heyser with sending the same signal down two channels.
Attachments
Oh and go here Michael Gerzon Audio Pioneer for an example of domestically unacceptable speaker placement 
You always need very wide dispersion speakers, because everything -baffles, horns- that limits dispersion also introduces coloration.
... What? How?
One of the things that was certainly not on the original recording is my listening room. Having loudspeakers strongly illuminate my room adds another layer of stereographic information, which can only ever distort the original.
If a "you are there" sound is required, then the listening room must be eliminated as much as possible.
If "they are here" is required, then you'll need a recording with close-mic'd instruments, a multi-track setup, and a speaker at each position. Moreover, the speakers must reasonably approximate the dispersion of the relevant instrument.
That way, your listening room will be illuminated by the speakers in the same way as if the musicians were actually present and playing for you.
The latter is unrealistic. We're stuck with two channels and must do what we can with them.
It's my experience that there are often acoustic cues in the original recording, meaning a "you are there" presentation is optimal.
Following that, I conclude that controlled directivity is the only sensible route in HiFi.
Chris
"We" (well, a some people who were alive then and spent the money) had four channels in the early-mid 1970s. DVDs had multichannel formats, and studio recording programs have practically unlimited channels.
I can imagine a multichannel setup where each channel goes to a speaker as you described (with manual setup, but eventually all-robotic, though surely low WAF factor). You could have speakers with various dispersion patterns, and choose a speaker to match each instrument.
This is likely not beyond anyone here. Surely I'm not the only one with a few extra power amps and speakers one could collect and set up in the "main" listening room. The only thing missing is a multichannel D/A box to go between computer and amplifiers, and they're available as "ProSumer" home recording items at reasonable prices.
It's well within my own capabilities - I happen to have the following on-hand:
- QSC TouchMix 30, which can output 18x channels if you do the routing just right
- 10x channels of Powersoft T-series amplifiers, plus a load of others
- More speakers than I know what to do with.
- Some multi-track recordings taken from live gigs I've done
The thing I lack is inclination - it'd be a big job to set it all up, and would require the re-arrangement of the living room in a fairly major way. Maybe if I get really bored.
Well, there's no way that a pair of stereo speakers can interact with a room the same way as a singer w/guitar standing between those speakers. The reflection times would be all wrong.
So, we must arrange the speakers as the musicians were.
Chris
- QSC TouchMix 30, which can output 18x channels if you do the routing just right
- 10x channels of Powersoft T-series amplifiers, plus a load of others
- More speakers than I know what to do with.
- Some multi-track recordings taken from live gigs I've done
The thing I lack is inclination - it'd be a big job to set it all up, and would require the re-arrangement of the living room in a fairly major way. Maybe if I get really bored.
Well, there's no way that a pair of stereo speakers can interact with a room the same way as a singer w/guitar standing between those speakers. The reflection times would be all wrong.
So, we must arrange the speakers as the musicians were.
Chris
But what I am trying to explore is what if you only have one channel? A lot of great music with a single source varying from an acoustic horn to an omni mic above the conductor. Is there a right or wrong way to enjoy these classic recordings?
Bill,
Some are best enjoyed with a good microbrew ale, specifically the big band jazz...whereas the classical albums may be enjoyed more with a fine wine... (...ya left yourself open for that one, bud...)
In the limited listening I have done to good mono recordings, I find I still enjoy the lateral breadth and sense of envelopment which a pair of speakers delivers.
Cheers!
Howie
Some are best enjoyed with a good microbrew ale, specifically the big band jazz...whereas the classical albums may be enjoyed more with a fine wine... (...ya left yourself open for that one, bud...)
In the limited listening I have done to good mono recordings, I find I still enjoy the lateral breadth and sense of envelopment which a pair of speakers delivers.
Cheers!
Howie
http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/Vioshvillo_2002_Horn_Distortion.pdf
But distortion is not the point, sound power and imaging are.
Two things here.
First the point Chris made about wanting to exclude the room as much as possible. Reflected sound is not perceived in the same manner as direct sound. As a matter of fact, only the first wave front to reach the ear is perceived consciously. This effect was first described by Haas. Sound power, which is the total of direct and reflected sound, determines timbre. In order to achieve the most continuous curve for sound power, sharp discontinuities in dispersion need to be prevented. Baffles and horns display such discontinuities.
Second about imaging. I found imaging to be vastly improved the more the loudspeaker behaves as a true point source. There is an easy logic behind this. An object that is large compared to the wavelength of the frequency that is produced can never be localized with more precision than the size of that object. In other words, for pin point localization, you need a point source. And every point source is non directional.
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I'd suggest that paper starts with a premise that's irrelevant for home HiFi. Operated at full power, it's likely that squeezing all that sound through a 1" aperture will introduce extra distortion.
At the tiny power levels that might hit a 110dB@1w HF+horn in domestic use, this is a non-issue.
Chris