Glad you enjoyed it! Those demos at Espace Kiron were my idea, you know. 😀
The system was all Mr. Hiraga, of course. Quite literally jaw dropping.
Radugazon, he vowed me with similar effects in his garage. I'm really glad I went! For all the people in this thread who think stereo cannot do it, I say that its possible. You can have a very enjoyable, palpable, realistic experience through just stereo.
Edit: By 'he,' I mean Pano not Hiraga.
Edit: By 'he,' I mean Pano not Hiraga.
Some people are enormously dissatisfied with colour reproduction in photography so they invented improved underground practices like 3D mono photography. Brothers in arms. 🙂
Two media channels to satisfy two ears? I assume your car is an automatic because it has two pedals for two feet? I don't follow the logic of your claim in any way shape or form. The logic and rationale for the advantages of multichannel are extremely clear and widely agreed on by the best experts in the business.
What do you mean? ...could it be the explanation of a Brel's text signature you had ?
PS : "he" must have a BIG garage then
I was technical director at Kiron theater back then. I suggested to the William of the Audiophile crew that they come do a demo at my theater, as there was plenty of room and it was very close by. They thought it was a great idea and it turned out to be a big success.
FYI, the system at the first demo was meant to be all horn with Altec A2 cabinets on the bottom. But before the show someone stole one from the courtyard at Masion de l'Audiophile. No drivers, just one bass of the bass cabinets. The Onken W cab was used instead - and the legend was born. The W was used on all the demos after that, along with the W.E. 15A and Iwata horns.
I did a few other projects with them, it was always great fun. Gerard Chretien went on to be president of Focal, as you may know. Philippe Viboud took over direction of the magazine after Mr. Hiraga retired. I went on to work at IRCAM and other places, then off to America to spread the good word of Triodes and horns. 😀
Sorry for the interruption, now back to the regular program.
FYI, the system at the first demo was meant to be all horn with Altec A2 cabinets on the bottom. But before the show someone stole one from the courtyard at Masion de l'Audiophile. No drivers, just one bass of the bass cabinets. The Onken W cab was used instead - and the legend was born. The W was used on all the demos after that, along with the W.E. 15A and Iwata horns.
I did a few other projects with them, it was always great fun. Gerard Chretien went on to be president of Focal, as you may know. Philippe Viboud took over direction of the magazine after Mr. Hiraga retired. I went on to work at IRCAM and other places, then off to America to spread the good word of Triodes and horns. 😀
Sorry for the interruption, now back to the regular program.
How about if you try both a you are there and they are here? To me you are there is a multichannel set-up and they are here is 2 channel. 2 channel will never convince me I am there. A good multichannel set-up can really do a much more convincing job of fooling you about the size of your room.
Rob🙂
Rob🙂
I've tried that by leaving my front left and right main speakers off, running only the center and side speakers, which are up at the ceiling aimed straight across at each other. I'm not sure what my Yamaha AV receiver is doing with the side signals - they are doing something subtle. It may amount to decorrelation. It's surprisingly enjoyable. All five speakers are better though.I think the best might be to use single mono speaker for the direct sound, and multiple other speakers (decorrelated) at side and back for ambiance enhancement ! No stereophonic artefacts !
- Elias
Ok Pano, now I understand. That's a really prestigious reference.
As you remember much better than I do, what conclusions can be drawn wrt the actual topic ? This demo was stereo, but for the listeners of the last seats, the speakers were viewed in a narrow angle, I don't remember of anyone complaining of listening in a corridor or of not being in the axis.
This makes me think of the Elias mono + satellites of the post 1089 upthere. But in Paris, no ambient channel and the room was not lively at all. I'm puzzled.
As you remember much better than I do, what conclusions can be drawn wrt the actual topic ? This demo was stereo, but for the listeners of the last seats, the speakers were viewed in a narrow angle, I don't remember of anyone complaining of listening in a corridor or of not being in the axis.
This makes me think of the Elias mono + satellites of the post 1089 upthere. But in Paris, no ambient channel and the room was not lively at all. I'm puzzled.
The problem is that we have 14 subjects on 10 different speakers. In the case of Radugazon, none of his subjects were able to hear a phantom image at high frequencies. There might something be wrong with the speaker or speaker/room setup, we don't know. On the other hand, me and my girlfriend were perfectly able to hear the high freq image at the center.
So for both cases the observations per speaker are consistent. If we then group by speaker instead of observer, N=10, 70% of the speakers is able put the high freq phantom image at the corerct location.
uhm, I forgot - those pink noise tests - what are they for? can such pink noise panned in the center localization tests tell us anything meaningful about localization of virtual musical sources?
can anyone explain please?
can anyone explain please?
I think this ties into the "they are here" ideal. I'm with Earl that "they are here" in the living room works best with small combos such as a jazz quartet. You can picture them in the space. If the recording is a little dry then it is almost happening for the first time in your living room. Now set up a pair of large speakers in an auditorium or concert hall and the stereo outside the speakers is the room itself. If it is a good venue then it will create (or be) the ideal environment, making the perfect stereo effect. We've offloaded the difficult task of re-creating an acoustic environment.
I suspect that was part of the success of the many live vs. recorded demos of the past, (AR, Wharfedale, RCA) that the reproduction, of whatever quality, was given perfect "stereo" by the environment itself. A pair of AR3s in Carnegie hall should sound like...Carnegie hall.
I've heard a few of my big speakers in an auditorium and it is a wonderful experience and very different than the home experience.
You could take "they are here" to the ultimate extreme with anechoic recordings of instruments or groups of instruments, with playback from various speakers of the right directivity for the group, placed and aimed as they should be in the concert hall. After the sound leaves the speaker the hall will do its thing. How would you know the difference?
Now all we need is a living room for each type of music we might want to listen to (concert hall, church, club, auditorium, stadium).
David S.
erjee, your remarks are legitimate and welcome. Joined pic, the speaker I used this day, made from recycled projects but very orthodox (if compared to my everyday system), triamp, DCX, EQ, more or less flat, no worries.
The 3 persons I had (women, 18, 30, 34 yrs old) are I think trustworthy. The first one was always showing the right side as a source, annoying ! I checked, and discovered that this speaker was 15 cm too close from the axis. All mankind has good ears, not only the audiophile crowd (and not at all the pro musicians, sorry...).
I conduced the test like that : the connected R & L speakers, and a fake speaker in the middle. I explained that the sound will alternatively come from the right, the left, both sides together or the center. This one being incarnated by the fake speaker.
Like this, no hesitation to show an empty place as the source (and I don't have to explain what's a phantom image). I think it's a valid process.
I was expecting variations, but looks like it's speaker/room related. We need more witnesses, because 10 cases is a ridiculous pool.
Ps: dave thx for the enlightment
The 3 persons I had (women, 18, 30, 34 yrs old) are I think trustworthy. The first one was always showing the right side as a source, annoying ! I checked, and discovered that this speaker was 15 cm too close from the axis. All mankind has good ears, not only the audiophile crowd (and not at all the pro musicians, sorry...).
I conduced the test like that : the connected R & L speakers, and a fake speaker in the middle. I explained that the sound will alternatively come from the right, the left, both sides together or the center. This one being incarnated by the fake speaker.
Like this, no hesitation to show an empty place as the source (and I don't have to explain what's a phantom image). I think it's a valid process.
I was expecting variations, but looks like it's speaker/room related. We need more witnesses, because 10 cases is a ridiculous pool.
Ps: dave thx for the enlightment
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Elias,
in your statistics you can firmly count on me as a member of the "center image only" camp. My pink noise test was done in a (dipole) system with strong ipsilateral reflection:
Very week first ipsilateral reflection (yellow), strong second ipsilateral reflection (green), week frontwall reflection (blue). Pole is listening position.
Compare that to Markus' comment:
Isn't this an indicator, that systems with strong ipsilateral reflections will make tweeters even more audible as separate sources than the usual stereo triangle?
Rudolf
@ Rudolf : to make it clear, you mean that your tweeter is dipolar ? If they have the figure of 8 (for sure you have measured) your conclusion makes great sense. Could it be lively rooms = tweeters audible as separate sources ? My room is indeed very reverberant in HF.
@ Graaf : pink noise is the mother of the voicing and the father of the localisation. With the possibility of instant comparison of two target curves, perceiving a difference is sometimes very hard on music but incredibly evident on pink noise. Same for determining a source or a reflection. Walking around the speakers is recommended. Personally I use a stethoscope for a fast insight of the directionality.
As pink noise has no transient, it's also good to use clicks. All this can be filtered at will.
It's absolutely relevant for music. I you feel in trouble with this, you can use natural pink noises (but never perfect) as a waterfall, the rain on a forest, or more simply a drum band (side drum with snares is OK). But this time, it's decorrelated (stereo).
@ Graaf : pink noise is the mother of the voicing and the father of the localisation. With the possibility of instant comparison of two target curves, perceiving a difference is sometimes very hard on music but incredibly evident on pink noise. Same for determining a source or a reflection. Walking around the speakers is recommended. Personally I use a stethoscope for a fast insight of the directionality.
As pink noise has no transient, it's also good to use clicks. All this can be filtered at will.
It's absolutely relevant for music. I you feel in trouble with this, you can use natural pink noises (but never perfect) as a waterfall, the rain on a forest, or more simply a drum band (side drum with snares is OK). But this time, it's decorrelated (stereo).
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😀 wow thank You! now I know that someone is reading my posts, that I am not yet totally "ignored", how nice!
Are You sure? Music is all about transients, however actually very rarely about clicks 😉
my point is that all those test with all those various kinds of synthetic test signals are most probably missing the subtleties of the hearing mechanisms of such complex signals as musical sounds
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Thats the answer to every question actually. In answering any question you need to list your "assumptions", which are really a way of listing what it is you are try to do. We have noted that we are assuming small rooms (optimum directivity in large rooms is well known) and that we need to recognize that the answer may depend on if the room is designed for the speakers directivity or is it a given. Finally, there might be variations due to listening expectations and media types.
I have tried to show why, to me, this later assumption is not a strong factor unless one is looking for a fairly unique (but still may be quite common) set of circumstances ("I am there in a large room listening to a large orchestra."). Hence, I have concluded that, in general, a controlled narrow directivity is the optimum for a small room for all of the reasons that we have debated.
The issue is not nearly as wide open as your comment implies.
Thank you Markus!!
I downloaded the test tones, my room/setup is far from ideal, but I thought I'd give them a try.
first up a rather wide mush but pretty much central, image seemed to narrow a bit going to the 1500hz and 3000hz, I'm hazy on the 6000hz but it seemed softer (lower volume), not sure if that is my hearing getting less sensitive at higher frequencies, less info in the signal or something else.
I decided to try towing out, not much change.
I decided to try towing in. Weird result. Moving my head to the left caused the image to shift to the right, moving to the right caused the image to shift to the left in both cases the shifted image seemed somewhat more focused.
I figured I'd toed in too much so I backed them off a bit, that seemed better.
Another odd observation was that if I tilted my head forward, looking down, the image became more focused and higher pitched.
Anyway after that I put on Ella and Louis (verve remaster) sat down and listened, and it's the best it has sounded since I made the speakers! Probably the closest I've had to a decent soundstage at my sitting position any time in the last 10 years. I always knew speaker placement was critical but had no way of adjusting it in a simple way. The 3Khz signal is perfect for this for me 🙂
I'll be most interested to see how they go when I make my new crossovers. The simulation shows much better phase tracking through the crossover region than the current crossover has. With a bit of luck I might get some coils done this weekend.
cheers,
Tony.
I downloaded the test tones, my room/setup is far from ideal, but I thought I'd give them a try.
first up a rather wide mush but pretty much central, image seemed to narrow a bit going to the 1500hz and 3000hz, I'm hazy on the 6000hz but it seemed softer (lower volume), not sure if that is my hearing getting less sensitive at higher frequencies, less info in the signal or something else.
I decided to try towing out, not much change.
I decided to try towing in. Weird result. Moving my head to the left caused the image to shift to the right, moving to the right caused the image to shift to the left in both cases the shifted image seemed somewhat more focused.
I figured I'd toed in too much so I backed them off a bit, that seemed better.
Another odd observation was that if I tilted my head forward, looking down, the image became more focused and higher pitched.
Anyway after that I put on Ella and Louis (verve remaster) sat down and listened, and it's the best it has sounded since I made the speakers! Probably the closest I've had to a decent soundstage at my sitting position any time in the last 10 years. I always knew speaker placement was critical but had no way of adjusting it in a simple way. The 3Khz signal is perfect for this for me 🙂
I'll be most interested to see how they go when I make my new crossovers. The simulation shows much better phase tracking through the crossover region than the current crossover has. With a bit of luck I might get some coils done this weekend.
cheers,
Tony.
This is possible, or even true. But a DIY system is about building something, a complex setup. As I am not golden ears, these signals are of great help for progressing and saving time. See the experience of Wintermute above. The process is measure, pink, click, listen. All this with the perspective of a DSP behind it.
Click? it's a damned sharp transient ! Not only reduced to a shy noise in the tweeters. A big one can fry an array of 15", or switch off the power supply of a house.
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yes, but here some people think that such pink noise test can be helpful for concluding anything and therefore something must be wrong with Your speakers and/or with Your geographical location 😉
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