When you say room curve, do you mean in-room frequency response? If so, then it's not the same thing as house curve. Also, equalizer isn't the main tool for working on room acoustics.
You mispresent the actual facts in this matter starting with the title of the thread: "The Weak Links of Today's Audio".
Then you proceed to claim that Toole identifies two weak links in his posting, when in fact he only identifies one. Namely, Recording Quality.
While FT clearly has a well known preference for multichannel, he never states that 2 Channel Stereo is a actually a 'weak link.' This is something you are making up to further your campaign for universal multichannel.
So I'll repeat my previous statement again and stand by it. Most people on this forum are highly satisfied with 2 channel stereo and are not clamoring for something different like multichannel. If it can proven that multichannel can bring them significantly increased satisfaction for a comparable price they certainly will be interested.
But most people here aren't holding their breath over it. Instead they are enjoying what they have today and certainly do not consider it to be 'weak' in any sense at all. It doesn't take reading very many posts here to prove exactly what I've just said.
However, if someone has already made up their mind that 2 channel stereo is no longer any good, and is a 'weak link', then they probably won't be able to see what most of us here know.
So if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. There is a very good chance you'll just screw it up and make things worse.
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It looks like a room curve is a house curve.
You don't want to use microphone room measurements in an attempt to match a room or house curve above 300-500Hz. Instead, you want to design the loudspeaker so it follows your preferred curve independently from the room.
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"Most people on this forum are highly satisfied with 2 channel stereo"
They're so satisfied with two channel stereo that they spend hours, months, and years trying to correct the problems caused by two channel stereo.
They're so satisfied with two channel stereo that they spend hours, months, and years trying to correct the problems caused by two channel stereo.
I don't where you are getting that from. Certainly not this forum.
Most of the people here who build a reasonable design report outstanding sound quality and great satisfaction with the speakers they create.
If there are posts here by people struggling with stereo implementations I would sure like to see them. Because I don't recall many at all. Just the opposite, in fact.
You appear to be making up things in order to justify your preoccupation with multichannel.
Its just phisics, 2 sound sources give huge audible distortions when trying to reproduce a mono (or centre phantom immage) sound.
A single centre channel has no such problems, hence Toole et al promote multi channel reproduction (also because then we can determine how much ambient and bass we want to listen to).
This is already a reality in emersive sound reproduction.
Years ago I was at a demo where you could walk arround reproduced sound sources inside the listening enviroment, they used lots of speakers in a circle.
Good 5.1 multi channel reproduction can come close.
There is a lot more to room acoustics than frequency response. Absorption, reflection and diffusion make big audible differences.
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Agree!
1) is the most annoying of all because we have so little control over it and worse, the recording industry actually doesn’t appear to agree with us, they see no need for improvement so there’s actually not much hope. Thank goodness for Chesky, but too few are like them.
2) single speaker mono has been my solution
So now we find out that all of us who have been listening to 2 channel stereo and thoroughly enjoying it for many years have been enduring 'huge audible distortions' that we didn't know about.
Wow. That's big news.
We must all be very foolish to have endured all that distortion for so long. I wonder if we can still return our stereo speakers to the manufacturers who apparently hid this problem from us when we bought them. I certainly don't remember any 'huge audible distortions' warnings in the specifications.
Oh well. Thank goodness multichannel is here to save us. Or at least it's coming soon. Maybe. Or maybe not. No one seems to really know.
But I better go ahead and return my 2 channel equipment while I still can. I'll just have to be without any music system until affordable multichannel systems and recordings are here. I certainly don't want to be listening to anything with 'huge audible distortions' in the meantime.
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A few things:
1) Phantom center collapse when a listener moves closer to one speaker than the other which leads to different strategies to try to deal with it.
2) All the discussions on directivity patterns and room reflections. (refer to the Salon2 vs M2 shootout referred to at the start of this thread.)
3) Interaural cross cancellation dip, which I think Pano was just talking about his strategy for dealing with it earlier in this thread.
4) And of course, the recording engineers who do or do not add spatial information in their recordings. Which has a great deal of bearing on the discussions in #2.
I'd expect the people most happy with two channel stereo are those who don't post in this forum devising strategies to overcome the weaknesses of two channel stereo.
I read something smart from someone in this forum but I have to paraphrase it because I don't remember exactly how it went.
The road to hell: insisting on method, accepting results
The road to heaven: insisting on results, accepting method
or something like that
The trick is making it affordable and broadly useful (meaning access to a large music catalog). Streaming seems to be the primary enabling technology. Absent streaming I'd say it was a no go.
I suspect that works due to something Toole described: many engineers work close to their monitors. Those recordings would work in your favor.
Then move closer equally.
What about them?
Other than people in the income level of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, we are constrained by budget and space. If you want to spread your budget on 5.1 speakers, go ahead. There are others who would rather get the best 2.0 or 2.1 speakers for the given budget.
I wonder how many here have actually experienced an optimally correct speaker placement geometry. There are threads by well experienced audiophiles, some probably among us here where it's full of differing opinions on correct speaker placement whether relevant to the room or listening position. This is not a subjective issue at all but just as technical as any. It's either correct or it's not. Is there a formula by which to calculate it? Probably. We have bass management eq that does it for you. But it takes into consideration the sub optimal locations it's faced with. What if the speakers were placed in the exact correct position for the room to begin with especially with the main speakers? I would wager those huge amounts of distortion would definitely come to light..in hindsight.
Today it's known that frequency response, directivity index, and power response determine the basic qualities of the loudspeaker. Other attributes contribute to quality but do not take priority over the basics.
In the past people didn't have good loudspeakers so they had to compensate with room treatment. Today, the amount of necessary room treatment is reduced because the speakers are better. Room treatments might even be as little as the existing room furnishings.
I'm going to have to partially disagree with you. I have heard some great demos which throw an illusion that leaves you scratching your head as to how. The sort where the walls and ceiling of the listening room seem to vanish. BUT the whole illusion is in front of you. When you go to a live orchestral performance there is sound all around you. Subtle compared with the effects of some 5.1 material but you can feel the space you are in. Even more so if you like choral or organ music where a medium sized cathedral can have an 8 second echo.
I suspect I am in a limited group who want that enveloping sense of space. Sadly my current listening room is way too limiting, but a guy can dream. Many don't care, and others love the close miked presentation some classical labels prefer and then moan that real music doesn't sound like their hifi.
In conclusion, we all have our preferred musical genres and our own view on where to make compromises on the replay system so total agreement is never possible and TBH no-one is right or wong.
Yes, "partially" is the operative. Everything Toole mentions is correct..in the right circumstances.