Keele's CBT? That design raises a lot of questions. I like the idea but I'd also like to see (measurements) and hear it implemented in a real room.
When I read Toole's papers I find that he doesn't recommend a particular radiation pattern.
He dislikes dipoles and finds they do poorly in his listening tests with regard to perceived spaciousness. The speakers that do well in his tests are typical forward firing multiway systems with flat axial response and non-flat power response (therefore nonflat directivity).
He vacilates somewhat on speaker directivity, considering smooth power response to be beneficial but admitting that no particular power response shape is a requirement of good sound.
David S.
He dislikes dipoles and finds they do poorly in his listening tests with regard to perceived spaciousness. The speakers that do well in his tests are typical forward firing multiway systems with flat axial response and non-flat power response (therefore nonflat directivity).
He vacilates somewhat on speaker directivity, considering smooth power response to be beneficial but admitting that no particular power response shape is a requirement of good sound.
David S.
Indeed, because all of the work I've read with regard to "spaciousness", or "spatial impression", is *derived* from concert hall acoustics - which does not apply in this context.
(..even Blauert and Lindemann's work is a derivation of Barron and Marshall's.)
Intelligibility on the other hand is from a distinctly different grouping of research, though it has also been *derived* for other uses.
Exactly.
There is no real agreement on most of this in our use/context.
"Sound Reproduction" is packed full of caveats, but how many actually heed them?
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What papers are you referring to? Most studies presented in Blauert's "Spatial Hearing" don't have anything to do with concert hall acoustics. Here's a list of relevant literature for small room acoustics:
Lesenswerte Fachartikel zur Akustik kleiner Räume, Akustik - HIFI-FORUM (first post)
Ah, then I must say we do hear differently. (Or, there're too many variables leading our debates back to the very beginning.... )
Well designed (and made) "typical forward firing multiway systems" can be very good I know. I myself have listened to some of them, from dome-cone-boxes to big active horn-loaded systems.
OTOH, various planar type speakers provide different wonders. So do those OB speakers.
I'm not going to say which is better. I can't even say which I like more. They shine on different areas. (sometimes, somewhere, I even like single driver wideranger very much... )
And, what kind of speaker 'shines' on the largest area? I don't know. That's a big question. I'm currently playing with (the concept of) omni maybe because it's new to me, very different from what I had experienced before.
There are a lot of things in audio that I feel strongly about, that I consider as absolutes. But when it comes to speaker directivity I have to accept that it is a matter of taste. Some people like very broad directivity, a lot of interaction with the room, speakers that disappear and sound that is similar no matter where you sit. Vague imaging is okay as long as the sound is big and spacious. Others want the opposite: pin point imaging, no room interaction, headphone like stereo where you must sit dead center between the speakers.
Arguing absolutes here is like saying "you must go to a concert and sit front row center", or "no, no, no, the only good seats are back in the balcony". Different people have different preferences.
With only 2 channels you will have to pick your poison. With 5 or more you can start to create diffusion via a multiplicity of systems, even if they are individually quite directional. In that case you can choose between direct sound and diffuse sound.
David S.
Arguing absolutes here is like saying "you must go to a concert and sit front row center", or "no, no, no, the only good seats are back in the balcony". Different people have different preferences.
With only 2 channels you will have to pick your poison. With 5 or more you can start to create diffusion via a multiplicity of systems, even if they are individually quite directional. In that case you can choose between direct sound and diffuse sound.
David S.
Toole writes in his book that musicians and studio professionals usually prefer less reflections than ordinary people.
Normal, they are at work, evaluating the qualities of a record session, and not as you and me at home, enjoying some music. That's not the same goal, and then it's not a necessity to do like them.
My HT speakers are far more omnidirectional than my controlled directionality stereo speakers, and I believe that, as a rule, the wider dispersion pattern approach trading off some ultimate accuracy is more suitable to an environment where people will often necessarily be located in different places(such as for HT), and the opposite would pertain to a listening environment where the highest attainable accuracy is the prime objective where an optimum listening location is acceptable.
My problem is that I like wide and narrow--just for different reasons. Which means I need a couple sets of speakers. When I get bored with one, I can just switch. Plus it's nice to check my recordings on different types of patterns to see the effects. My 2 favorite speakers I've tested/owned: the Mackie HR624mk2 and the JBL LSR 2325 sound a lot alike even though their patterns are different--JBL is more broad than the Mackie.
Seems like the smoother/flatter the plots, the better the speakers sound especially when the off axis drops off consistently. The JBL definitely can't hang with the Mackie in the output department. That's the biggest reason I like the Mackie over the JBL, but they also seem to have a little more clarity in general. Not sure of that's d/t the cast baffle, motional feedback in the woofer, passive radiator(vs. port in the JBL), bigger amp, or the titanium tweeter. They are also more that twice the price.
Dan
Good thing my Iron Lawbreakers are not conventional then. They don't need an assist from window glass or flapping sheetrock to 'help' me hear anything in the program material.
More seriously, speakers that depend on room reflections to develop a soundstage 'bring the performance into the room'. Speakers that don't and are of sufficient quality 'bring the listener to the performance'. I prefer the latter 9 times out of 10 unless they're pretty bad (e.g. mp3's) or have totally incompetent recording technique/processing.
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One thing I never really understood: if your ideal is to simulate an anechoic studio why not just use headphones instead?
If my headphones could kick me in the chest I might consider it, it would certainly be cheaper.
An interesting and easy headphone experiment for you guys who have software with convolution reverbs is to record a dry piece and put is somewhere in a virtual room. Do this with several instruments all in the same virtual room but at different locations. Now add a different virtual room on the master track. Now adjust the levels of the 1st virtual room and the one added on top of. Interesting huh? Maybe the ITU are not a bunch of naive idiots.
Dan
Dan
Wellll perhaps if you put your HT lounge chair equipped with transducer with ON your chest.😉
Standard mounting of tactile x'ducer gives you a kick in another place🙄
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Well, I do have a woofer mounted in the bottom of my couch that I feed with the subwoofer output on my receiver for watching movies...
It's quite fun 🙂
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