The Weak Links of Today's Audio

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The additional channel improved the system, despite the fundamental flaws in two channel stereo.

I've been reading this forum and other similar ones for about five years and I have never seen anyone denigrate 2 channel stereo the way you do. Most people understand that there is a listening sweet spot and that if you move too far out of it the stereo image will be compromised. That’s not news. But it’s also not anything that preoccupies or concerns most people or prevents them from fully enjoying their 2 channel systems.

Nevertheless you repeatedly disparage 2 channel stereo, and by association the people who enjoy it, every chance you get. If you don’t like 2 channel stereo that’s fine. You’re welcome to add as many speakers as you want. But most of the people here are more than satisfied with 2 channel stereo, continue to increase their investment in it, and are a long, long way from replacing it with anything else despite your negativism about it.
 
Since we are discussing listening rooms, can anyone say something about actually MAKING a listening room? Say for those that actually can wrestle some unfinished, dedicated space from the significant other. What does the checklist look like? The larger the better? The more square the better? Minimal furniture? Do you cover all four walls with some kind of treatment or diffuser panels?
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/room-acoustics-and-mods/
 
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^ i had to turn it up yes but was surprised it didn't need this much. Very well engineered.
The drums are really pushed in front of the mix. This is unconventional but it works great in this track.
Indeed the track sound lifelike : drums like a real drum dynamic wise, voices... this can works only with great musicians as they are in charge of the whole dynamic.
Only the bass got a bit of compression and have automation on it for what i detected.
All the percussive instruments happening along the track in LR ( steeldrums, rototoms,...) are used as 'punctuation'/ 'highlight' within sections of track is very smart approach.
They don't do it like it anymore... no transient seems squashed or limited the way it is done now but there is some very gentle compression on the snare: the advantage of tape vs digital... when used wisely it is discrete.

What are you trying to show with the snare Billshurv?
 
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Ok got it. I missed the de cliking part.

About my observation on the track not sounding deceptively low on volume i had same astonishment some years ago: after listening to an overly smashed thingy i like i switched to an Otis Redding album ( yeah i know i'm all over the place about my preference in music genre) and was surprised how louder it seemed... despite having a wide dynamic!

Very revealing of what i was doing wrong in my work at the time. :rolleyes:
 
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The other interesting part is that a lot of the most 'dynamic' music was recorded in the tape era. Not sure about flying cowboys (1989) but other than some early 'wow' factor recordings (Flim and the BB's on DLP for example) and telarc classical CD quickly settled down to being more squashed than vinyl. Which then makes me giggle when people push 24 bit recordings as meeting some need in replay.
 
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Since we are discussing listening rooms, can anyone say something about actually MAKING a listening room? Say for those that actually can wrestle some unfinished, dedicated space from the significant other. What does the checklist look like? The larger the better? The more square the better? Minimal furniture? Do you cover all four walls with some kind of treatment or diffuser panels?

Evenharmonics is right: start a thread in the acoustic subsection.

There is a fair amount of knowledged people about that subject and willing to help in diyaudio: figure you can even have Dr Geddes giving you answers and explanations in an understandable way to regular human being!

This is priceless in my view.
 
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Most people doesn't react to the subject. Daunting at first? Not as sexy as a piece of gear? Who knows...

But it seems to change.

As i'm always interested in this i'll take a look. Do you remember the title you gave to the thread Pano?

Edit: i looked at the list of thread you started but except the one you started in 2010 about your new room there isn't more and the older thread you started belong circa 2005.
I believe i recall you changed your avatar name at one point? Maybe it is under your previous alias? What was it?
 
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So funny:

https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/roo...ng-toole-geddes-stereo-setup.html#post6542210

I keep on posting this one since i'm member here.

I've heard a room based on this priciple and really liked it, the RFZ have a different 'flavor' than one which only use absorbption.
I once commented ( to Mitchba iirc) it is more obvious when you are into sweespot than when only absorbption is used: i suppose this is because you can listen to the redirected ER when you move inside the room.
The real gain i've seen in it is about the confort inside it ( room): the one i've heard wasn't as dead as typical control room i lived in. Something like 0,5s rt ( vs 0,3 i was used to).

It seems to be used by acousticians commonly now:
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/mul...gineer-mastering-monitors-29.html#post6168855

And see my answer in post 286

I understand peoples not reacting to it: this is pretty invasive treatment for domestic room.
 
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Thanks for the links krivium

The common thing in rooms where I've heard the uncanny real effect is space behind the speakers and behind the listener - and with that distance being roughly equal. The bigger rooms had more space to the sides of the speakers, which also helped. Other than that the rooms where very different.
 
This is the setup that got it done for me, I suppose soffit mount would be a good description ......they were in the opening of a loft with 14’ of sloped ceiling for a front wall.
Behind my 9’ LP was only about 2’ to the rear wall.
When I got this setup dialed, I described it in earlier posts as being in a ‘snow globe of music’ boundaries disappeared and there was a oneness and reality that I’ve never experienced before in 45+ years of messing with audio.
 

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Nevertheless you repeatedly disparage 2 channel stereo, and by association the people who enjoy it, every chance you get.

I said stereo increases preference ratings of bad speakers over mono reproduction yet you accuse me of being a stereocidal maniac. Admittedly though I am a bit monocurious. I suspect a good speaker in mono located in a large subterranean lava cavern would beat stereo like a drum. Because room acoustics.
 
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Anyone running a center channel? seems easy enough to generate from the LR channels in a DSP*.

*I can't recall the source but the signal should be (L+R)*k (where the value of k is in a source I can't recall!)

It was a freqeutly used configuration during the early days of stereo exprimentation that seems to have been dropped just for cost reasons:

Bell Laboratories gave a demonstration of three-channel stereophonic sound on April 27, 1933, with a live transmission of the Philadelphia Orchestra from Philadelphia to Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. over multiple Class A telephone lines. Leopold Stokowski, normally the orchestra's conductor, was present in Constitution Hall to control the sound mix. Five years later, the same system would be expanded onto multichannel film recording and used from the concert hall in Philadelphia to the recording labs at Bell Labs in New Jersey in order to record Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940) in what Disney called Fantasound.
Stereophonic sound - Wikipedia (also mentioned in the horn book)
 
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