Ok then re read my first answer and then read the linked document.
You'll see there is a difference between what i called 'true stereo' and multi miced production technique.
True there is as much difference between recordings as there is artists, producers, engineers. This come from the fact we work on artistic material, not a truly technical approach to things. But that don't say there is no technical reference.
A 'true stereo' recording is done using only one pair of mics, period.
This is how the first stereo recordings were done by Blumlein ( he gave his name to the first stereo couple which use a pair of coincident bidirectional mic with an angle of 90* between both mic axys).
From there a number of different type of couple was tested as microphone technology allowed : different polar response of mics as well as using spacing, sometime matricing ( MS),etc,etc,..
And it was soon discovered they all give a different rendering, some better adapted to some aesthetic ( and technical) needs than others.
From there some reference and related artefacts were defined ( you can read about them in Williams document previously linked).
Those are the reference used to define 'stereo'.
In multi mic techniques we often use a mix of mono sources and stereo. As such the music created is virtual, an illusion, it doesn't exist in real life. A good example of this are the first Beatles recording using the new medium offering stereo: they experimented with what technology offered: sometimes having bass and drums on left and voice/guitar on right... you would probably not accept this nowadays as some standard had been defined since ( voice, kick, hh, bass paned hard center, guitar or melodic instruments left or right,etc,etc...).
So we use technique to try to fool our mind to recreate something 'real' ( or not, ) from this. But based on reference we have from 'true stereophony' recording technique.
You'll see there is a difference between what i called 'true stereo' and multi miced production technique.
True there is as much difference between recordings as there is artists, producers, engineers. This come from the fact we work on artistic material, not a truly technical approach to things. But that don't say there is no technical reference.
A 'true stereo' recording is done using only one pair of mics, period.
This is how the first stereo recordings were done by Blumlein ( he gave his name to the first stereo couple which use a pair of coincident bidirectional mic with an angle of 90* between both mic axys).
From there a number of different type of couple was tested as microphone technology allowed : different polar response of mics as well as using spacing, sometime matricing ( MS),etc,etc,..
And it was soon discovered they all give a different rendering, some better adapted to some aesthetic ( and technical) needs than others.
From there some reference and related artefacts were defined ( you can read about them in Williams document previously linked).
Those are the reference used to define 'stereo'.
In multi mic techniques we often use a mix of mono sources and stereo. As such the music created is virtual, an illusion, it doesn't exist in real life. A good example of this are the first Beatles recording using the new medium offering stereo: they experimented with what technology offered: sometimes having bass and drums on left and voice/guitar on right... you would probably not accept this nowadays as some standard had been defined since ( voice, kick, hh, bass paned hard center, guitar or melodic instruments left or right,etc,etc...).
So we use technique to try to fool our mind to recreate something 'real' ( or not, ) from this. But based on reference we have from 'true stereophony' recording technique.
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As I am into "studio recorded" music, I have to say that the quality of recorded music often is way better than many claim it to be. If I read audiophile forums I would think that the majority of recordings suck, and that I should only listen to a few selected tracks to get the best out of my musical system. Yet, the more I tweak and edit my own setup to be audible consistent, have a good tonal balance across the stage from far left to far right (yes, it may still sound a little different, as in practice a voice coming from a corner sounds different to one from straight ahead). Adding that Haas kicker I often have spoken of ads a consistent room, as far as balance goes. I absorb a lot of early reflections, yet I simply have to give something back in return to get a smooth and natural listening experience. The more I get this right, the more different recordings sound good as a byproduct. If it sounds great on headphones, it should have a great shot to work in the room too.
Are all recordings created equal then? No. Not by a long shot. But what I have perceived, there's actually more difference between different "ages" of music. What I mean by that is that recordings in the 70's are quite consistent. In the 80's we start to have a mixed bag. The early digitally recorded stuff isn't all that great. Later 80's and on get better until we advance so far in time that the loudness wars begins to mess up things again.
Next to the above, music mastering seems to differ from region to region. The same album that's distributed in USA may sound different from the one meant for Europe etc. The ones that are most often neutral sounding to me are the ones meant for the Japan market. Apparently they do care more? This is more of a mastering thing.
There's also a difference in how vinyl is mastered compared to a CD. Vinyl has a level of cross talk which isn't present in CD's. I've often wondered if that's part of the preference some people have for vinyl records. As that crosstalk does have an audible effect. Many years ago I spoke of a device called the BSG qøl Signal Completion Stage, which is a hardware device that does something similar as what the JRiver effect "surround field" does, namely boosting the side channel.
In the article linked, Mr. John Atkinson compares its effect to the way vinyl crosstalk works. The early CD's, but also later transferred CD's were certainly "missing something". I could never compare my Led Zeppelin albums on vinyl to the ones I had on CD. It wasn't until the High-Res remasters in ~2015 that I felt they finally had done justice to this old catalog.
I also seem to have a slight preference for certain mastering engineers, I seem to like the works of Steve Hoffman, so if he has done a master/remaster of one of my favorite artists, I'll hunt it down. He did the first Van Halen album on CD, it clearly is a better sounding album for me than the others out there (again, not comparable to the vinyl version). The tonality of the Van Halen remasters differs greatly between the CD version and the High Res downloads (High Res being more pleasing). Something that isn't unique. Quite often there are mastering differences between the high resolution versions and the "normal" CD versions. Easy to see by running a frequency analysis and seeing that difference in balance.
Even those type of differences affect our perception, so while I have brought up a lot of what I have encountered as far as mixed results, most of them have been about mastering differences, not mixing specific. There is a lot of well produced stuff out there in my opinion. I refuse to only play a couple of Audiophile approved songs, I'm in this hobby to play my preferred music. While I do tend to come across some worse results, where the drum kit sounds like a stripe without dimensions in the center with the high-hat panned extreme left and right, it's often done to quite a higher standard, especially when it goes back to the era that sound studio's were still the norm and the home studio's weren't a thing yet. I've seen lots of bands where certain band members thought to be able to do a job as good as a well paid professional. Sadly, that didn't always work out that well.
.
Even if the above reads like a horror story, I have been able to enjoy a lot of different music out there, my preferred music, even though some bands did mess up when they thought they could do a better job themselves.
Are all recordings created equal then? No. Not by a long shot. But what I have perceived, there's actually more difference between different "ages" of music. What I mean by that is that recordings in the 70's are quite consistent. In the 80's we start to have a mixed bag. The early digitally recorded stuff isn't all that great. Later 80's and on get better until we advance so far in time that the loudness wars begins to mess up things again.
Next to the above, music mastering seems to differ from region to region. The same album that's distributed in USA may sound different from the one meant for Europe etc. The ones that are most often neutral sounding to me are the ones meant for the Japan market. Apparently they do care more? This is more of a mastering thing.
There's also a difference in how vinyl is mastered compared to a CD. Vinyl has a level of cross talk which isn't present in CD's. I've often wondered if that's part of the preference some people have for vinyl records. As that crosstalk does have an audible effect. Many years ago I spoke of a device called the BSG qøl Signal Completion Stage, which is a hardware device that does something similar as what the JRiver effect "surround field" does, namely boosting the side channel.
In the article linked, Mr. John Atkinson compares its effect to the way vinyl crosstalk works. The early CD's, but also later transferred CD's were certainly "missing something". I could never compare my Led Zeppelin albums on vinyl to the ones I had on CD. It wasn't until the High-Res remasters in ~2015 that I felt they finally had done justice to this old catalog.
I also seem to have a slight preference for certain mastering engineers, I seem to like the works of Steve Hoffman, so if he has done a master/remaster of one of my favorite artists, I'll hunt it down. He did the first Van Halen album on CD, it clearly is a better sounding album for me than the others out there (again, not comparable to the vinyl version). The tonality of the Van Halen remasters differs greatly between the CD version and the High Res downloads (High Res being more pleasing). Something that isn't unique. Quite often there are mastering differences between the high resolution versions and the "normal" CD versions. Easy to see by running a frequency analysis and seeing that difference in balance.
Even those type of differences affect our perception, so while I have brought up a lot of what I have encountered as far as mixed results, most of them have been about mastering differences, not mixing specific. There is a lot of well produced stuff out there in my opinion. I refuse to only play a couple of Audiophile approved songs, I'm in this hobby to play my preferred music. While I do tend to come across some worse results, where the drum kit sounds like a stripe without dimensions in the center with the high-hat panned extreme left and right, it's often done to quite a higher standard, especially when it goes back to the era that sound studio's were still the norm and the home studio's weren't a thing yet. I've seen lots of bands where certain band members thought to be able to do a job as good as a well paid professional. Sadly, that didn't always work out that well.
.Even if the above reads like a horror story, I have been able to enjoy a lot of different music out there, my preferred music, even though some bands did mess up when they thought they could do a better job themselves.
Finally got a chance to listen
. Lots of fun! Amazing that the bouncing you hear seems to eminente off of a certain height...Infected Mushroom still holds the candle for me in crazy sound staging and sound effects. Both Converting Vegetarians albums are simply out of this world. Do I call it music or art... I guess what Yosi Horikawa is doing is called art? Sound art to be precise?
Glad you liked it!
Yes, he can stage and spread the sound with ease.
If you check his other songs, I'd say he's more sound art, indeed.
He takes sounds from his own personal life and puts them into music.
For example, the one called Letter is him using a fountain pen on paper, pretty much!
Yes, he can stage and spread the sound with ease.
If you check his other songs, I'd say he's more sound art, indeed.
He takes sounds from his own personal life and puts them into music.
For example, the one called Letter is him using a fountain pen on paper, pretty much!
Got a new Active HDMI (2.1 spec) trough my crawl space under the floor. Did not have time yet to see if it works as it should.
I know that cable is fine, as I've used it several times already, I just don't like the job of crawling under the floor very much (lol).
The old cable (2.0B spec) will be replaced under warranty, so I'll have one in reserve.
Hope to do a movie night sometime soon. It has always worked well and sometimes I think I may love the movie/HT experience as much as I like the Audio hobby. I do get both, so no complaints. Still need to apply the latest tweaks to the Home Theater side of processing as well. Should be easy though, as I'm making it work more modular every time I change something.
I wish we had more hours in a day.
I know that cable is fine, as I've used it several times already, I just don't like the job of crawling under the floor very much (lol).
The old cable (2.0B spec) will be replaced under warranty, so I'll have one in reserve.
Hope to do a movie night sometime soon. It has always worked well and sometimes I think I may love the movie/HT experience as much as I like the Audio hobby. I do get both, so no complaints. Still need to apply the latest tweaks to the Home Theater side of processing as well. Should be easy though, as I'm making it work more modular every time I change something.
I wish we had more hours in a day
.
First movie night in quite a while has served us well! Still need to apply all the latest tweaks of the Stereo settings to the Home Theater side though. That should further improve the enjoyment.
The HDMI 2.1 active 10m cable is working well and can easily transport the 4K images stream. Even when up-scaled from HD to 4K, the picture quality is awesome (thanks to MadVR). The Nvidia 3070 TI card is loafing along.
@krivium has been busy to cook up some tracks that should help with the Griesinger experiment, you know, the paper where it states that low frequency sounds image at slightly differing positions than higher frequency sounds due to the way they were mixed/created.
I'm hoping to test that soon and if it works out we'll certainly share it as a tool-set.
(if it doesn't work out like that, I'm still keeping those tweaks as I love them anyway)
The HDMI 2.1 active 10m cable is working well and can easily transport the 4K images stream. Even when up-scaled from HD to 4K, the picture quality is awesome (thanks to MadVR). The Nvidia 3070 TI card is loafing along.
@krivium has been busy to cook up some tracks that should help with the Griesinger experiment, you know, the paper where it states that low frequency sounds image at slightly differing positions than higher frequency sounds due to the way they were mixed/created.
I'm hoping to test that soon and if it works out we'll certainly share it as a tool-set.
(if it doesn't work out like that, I'm still keeping those tweaks as I love them anyway
)
@krivium has been busy creating test files that split up the vocal part of an AI voice into a number of groups that get panned across the stage.
To get an idea how it works, just check out these reverence test files that show the original text before it is split into band-passes to test its position.
I've been using the preliminary files to test my own setup and we're still making tweaks to the files. However it is quite a fun exercise and tells a lot about the imaging capabilities of your setup. It's also useful to test tonality across the stage.
You guys may remember it, my whole mid/side tweak thing started to correct tonality across the stage!
Based on the preliminary test files I did make a couple extra tweaks, this time correcting the positions of the top end (above 4 KHZ!). Lots of the tweaks I've done were based on remembering what did what and dialing it in one at a time. Re-reading the Griesinger paper we've been so busy with discussing made me correct a mistake that I had not fixed ever since I put in the Scan Speak drivers.
For those that follow along and are into "recorded music" like Pop or Rock as I am, that paper can unlock a whole lot of fun!
It also tells me that I made the right choice when I went for "Stereo Bass"!
If you think that bass stream of the lower notes in mono anyway, think again! You're missing out! I used to call those lower notes the atmosphere creators for a good reason. They really define the feel of space. The lower it goes, the better it is. But keep it stereo and tweak it so it's width is similar to the higher notes. We'll soon have a tool-set that should help check that property.
Have your cake and eat it, great imaging, tonality, dynamics and envelopment. You really can have it all at once.
Lots of songs really open up with these tweaks. Some are insane, like Shakakaw from Infected Mushroom.
The best part is that you can have the feel of envelopment and space without those early reflections. I've said so many times, but this time I guess I intend to prove it for anyone willing enough to try.
To get an idea how it works, just check out these reverence test files that show the original text before it is split into band-passes to test its position.
I've been using the preliminary files to test my own setup and we're still making tweaks to the files. However it is quite a fun exercise and tells a lot about the imaging capabilities of your setup. It's also useful to test tonality across the stage.
You guys may remember it, my whole mid/side tweak thing started to correct tonality across the stage!
Based on the preliminary test files I did make a couple extra tweaks, this time correcting the positions of the top end (above 4 KHZ!). Lots of the tweaks I've done were based on remembering what did what and dialing it in one at a time. Re-reading the Griesinger paper we've been so busy with discussing made me correct a mistake that I had not fixed ever since I put in the Scan Speak drivers.
For those that follow along and are into "recorded music" like Pop or Rock as I am, that paper can unlock a whole lot of fun!
It also tells me that I made the right choice when I went for "Stereo Bass"!
If you think that bass stream of the lower notes in mono anyway, think again! You're missing out! I used to call those lower notes the atmosphere creators for a good reason. They really define the feel of space. The lower it goes, the better it is. But keep it stereo and tweak it so it's width is similar to the higher notes. We'll soon have a tool-set that should help check that property.
Have your cake and eat it
, great imaging, tonality, dynamics and envelopment. You really can have it all at once.Lots of songs really open up with these tweaks. Some are insane, like Shakakaw from Infected Mushroom.
The best part is that you can have the feel of envelopment and space without those early reflections. I've said so many times, but this time I guess I intend to prove it for anyone willing enough to try.
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I saw this driver and I was thinking it could be fantastic as a line array driver, until I read up to the Xmax value...
Too bad.
https://www.parts-express.com/pedocs/specs/264-830--tang-band-w23-1287si-spec-sheet.pdf
Too bad.
https://www.parts-express.com/pedocs/specs/264-830--tang-band-w23-1287si-spec-sheet.pdf
I miss when Erin used to post his reviews there. Same problem, if you don't agree with the head honcho, it's a banning.
At first I thought that the idea behind ASR was a great one. Get the myths and snake oil out of the picture and concentrate on what really counts.
But it turned into another realm all together, one that promotes all Harman studies (not a bad thing) but doesn't leave much room for any other key research area. The studies done by Toole/Harman are incomplete but they did get some key work done. To defend that (and only that) without a wider knowledge of what has been studied in other area's seems silly though. Studies like the ones done by Griesinger don't seem to get much traction.
Whoever deviates from what they hold as their gospel is going to have a hard time. Luckily Erin is still out there measuring real speakers, as the umpteenth test of another bookshelf has little meaning to me. Not for one minute do I think a small bookshelf and a couple of subwoofers could replace what I enjoy so much. A spinorama sure is interesting, but some very important key points are simply missing.
Based on my own restoring of the tweaks at bass frequencies and what that does I think the whole multi-sub studies are incomplete without leaving room for Stereo bass and what that can do for envelopment. Bass was super tight without restoring those tweaks, no doubt, but after fixing what I had before, the mid/side EQ expanding into bass frequencies, a lot of the true fun factor was missing! It had a much bigger role than even I remembered from my own experiments.
But it turned into another realm all together, one that promotes all Harman studies (not a bad thing) but doesn't leave much room for any other key research area. The studies done by Toole/Harman are incomplete but they did get some key work done. To defend that (and only that) without a wider knowledge of what has been studied in other area's seems silly though. Studies like the ones done by Griesinger don't seem to get much traction.
Whoever deviates from what they hold as their gospel is going to have a hard time. Luckily Erin is still out there measuring real speakers, as the umpteenth test of another bookshelf has little meaning to me. Not for one minute do I think a small bookshelf and a couple of subwoofers could replace what I enjoy so much. A spinorama sure is interesting, but some very important key points are simply missing.
Based on my own restoring of the tweaks at bass frequencies and what that does I think the whole multi-sub studies are incomplete without leaving room for Stereo bass and what that can do for envelopment. Bass was super tight without restoring those tweaks, no doubt, but after fixing what I had before, the mid/side EQ expanding into bass frequencies, a lot of the true fun factor was missing! It had a much bigger role than even I remembered from my own experiments.
If I had not achieved great imaging in my car, I wouldn't have known what fun it can be. Prior to that experience I only valued tonality and dynamics.
Right now I'm trying to get a mix of all things I like, but I do well realize that I don't have the "greatest" or "best" sound out there. I like for it to sweep me off of my feet, bring an illusion of something real and exiting, evoke an emotional reaction. Probably why I call it My-Fi.
I couldn't have gotten this far if I would have obeyed all the rules of what ASR promotes. There's much more freedom in experimenting, but with valid and sound research as the source of inspiration.
Last night I watched the movie "The Doors" with my son. I'm quite certain I've created another life-long fan for that band by doing that. The magic is in the music, the job of a Stereo or Multi channel system is to do it justice.
Right now I'm trying to get a mix of all things I like, but I do well realize that I don't have the "greatest" or "best" sound out there. I like for it to sweep me off of my feet, bring an illusion of something real and exiting, evoke an emotional reaction. Probably why I call it My-Fi.
I couldn't have gotten this far if I would have obeyed all the rules of what ASR promotes. There's much more freedom in experimenting, but with valid and sound research as the source of inspiration.
Last night I watched the movie "The Doors" with my son. I'm quite certain I've created another life-long fan for that band by doing that. The magic is in the music, the job of a Stereo or Multi channel system is to do it justice.
The issue is they are at the other end of the spectrum of 'subjectivist'... with the same issues in mirror image an as such display 'the objectivist' bad side: one dimensional in the approach and what seems to be a ( vain imho) 'quest' with absolute answers.
Not much more enjoyable that the other side and in the end to me something related to 'beliefs'.
Middle of the two extreme makes more sense to me.
Isn't it true even in pro field? I mean he's on a weird path: he is recognised into 'pop'(ular) genres as the one who created the best tools for voices one could find but he is active into room acoustic and classical music... it lost most people. And his method are against the flow ( into classical)... promoting the use of coincident mic techniques in a world where distant mic is the defacto aesthetic norm is... ballsy!
Sure but what surprise me is the fact some takes measurements ( whatever they are) as gospel, without understanding it's only a fragmented view of more complicated picture. It gives some ( very useful) info but nothing definitive about how it will 'sound' in the end...
I don't know. Mono bass can be mandatory in some case if you don't want to run into trouble with the reproducing chain.
Eg: electronic and dance music ( in general, including hip hop derivative). In most case they are supposed to be played in a club or sound system where stereo is almost never respected and it is even more true for low end. As with that styles the effect with bass is reached by the feeling given by high SPL then it makes sense to mono low end.
At home it can be different as the reproducing chain is ( theorically) better respected, so stereo bass can makes sense. And the system should be able to play anything swayed at it.
Multi sub approach is one amongst other and in a way it doesn't really is totally mono either ( the mains should go as low as possible in freq as pointed by Geddes so there is in part stereo info in the low end, with supports from mono info).
Anyway it offers option to adapt to one's preference regarding style played and expected rendering which is nice in my view.
I take him for an incurable enthusiast, something I do recognize somewhat
.With these tweaks suggested in this thread you don't loose any of it. You still have perfectly capable mono bass, but it's ready for some stereo trickery if it's in the recording. And that happens much more often than many assume.
Don't get me wrong: I believe in using (time aligned) multiple subwoofers, also of having the mains be part of the sub frequencies. Use all you've got to manage that low end, the wavelengths are forgiving to make use of multiple sources that together can create a much more stable, room independent result. But I'd say, optimize it in stereo first, check the mono sum later. So use multiple sources for left, multiple sources for right and optimize them together to wring out all the negative features of the room (the modes). That's what I do. This way I get to keep the stereo capability without losing mono capacity.
Slowly but surely checking all the little things. Or should I say: re-checking.
Did a trial with the anti-cross talk I have running. Slowly trying the delay, starting at 220 us up to 290 us to see which I liked best.
Could not choose between 270 and 280 us, so I'm using a mix of these two:
2x TrackControl to set delay summing to one middle ground delay between 0.27 and 0.28 ms.
(In real life this doesn't have to be 0.275 ms, I still need to check that by running a dry loop and view it in REW)
Edit: turns out to be a 0.267 delay dip in the IR. This is a 44100 file upscaling to 96000 before processing which can change/influence what TrackControl is able to do.
(most delay VST's I tried produce way worse in accuracy, that's why I decide to listen and pick the one I like)
Did a trial with the anti-cross talk I have running. Slowly trying the delay, starting at 220 us up to 290 us to see which I liked best.
Could not choose between 270 and 280 us, so I'm using a mix of these two:
2x TrackControl to set delay summing to one middle ground delay between 0.27 and 0.28 ms.
(In real life this doesn't have to be 0.275 ms, I still need to check that by running a dry loop and view it in REW)
Edit: turns out to be a 0.267 delay dip in the IR. This is a 44100 file upscaling to 96000 before processing which can change/influence what TrackControl is able to do.
(most delay VST's I tried produce way worse in accuracy, that's why I decide to listen and pick the one I like)
The above tuning isn't what I expect to end up with, but it was an indication of a direction I had to move in.
Let me explain: half of the end result is the EQ I use, the famous mid/side EQ. The other half is a cross talk cancellation dip on top of that EQ.
That's that little dip after the main pulse at 276 us. But it is meaningless when viewed without the accompanying EQ.
I've altered the EQ to match the direction this was pointing towards and did some further testing. Currently the cross talk dip is centered at 265 ms after another session. Still need to check if I end up at 260 or 270 us or stick with the 265 us I have dialed in today. Another little tweak in the EQ, ready for another round.
(the difference can best be heard in vocal parts, the more I get it right, the more intelligibility increases)
More trials: 265 ms it is...
Let me explain: half of the end result is the EQ I use, the famous mid/side EQ. The other half is a cross talk cancellation dip on top of that EQ.
That's that little dip after the main pulse at 276 us. But it is meaningless when viewed without the accompanying EQ.
I've altered the EQ to match the direction this was pointing towards and did some further testing. Currently the cross talk dip is centered at 265 ms after another session. Still need to check if I end up at 260 or 270 us or stick with the 265 us I have dialed in today. Another little tweak in the EQ, ready for another round
.(the difference can best be heard in vocal parts, the more I get it right, the more intelligibility increases)
More trials: 265 ms it is...
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