Doesn't matter it they "seek" it or not - it will automatically happen anyway when the replay quality is good enough, because the human hearing system always tries to make sense of what it hears - it doesn't want to just perceive a jumble of sounds, if there are clues in there, within the sound elements that allow a mental picture to be created of what was happening in front of the microphones, or equivalent - then that 'illusion' is what will win through ...
Personally, I've experienced this with old, "poor quality", very busy recordings. First heard at conventional quality levels, these are a jumbled, raucous mess, almost impossible to listen to - then, at a certain above average system quality the chaos evaporates, the aural illusion springs into life, and everything you hear now makes sense, a complex sound scape is fully revealed in front of you, effortlessly ...
An analogy is using very powerful binoculars on a far distance, the focus is wrong, your hands are shaking the body too much - everything you see is a blurred, confusing, vague representation of what the light coming through the lens represents. Then, you finely adjust the focus, steady the body against a solid object - and what you are looking at is completely transformed, extremely fine detail is now clearly obvious, easy to see what all the previous blurry colours actually were - it all makes sense, and it becomes a pleasure surveying the far perspective.
Are you asking me Earl? I have always said that sound reproduction has become an art form in itself, more and more distanced from trying to reproduce an event as faithfully as possible.
I was in Vienna over xmas and went to two concerts. One a chamber orchestra concert, rather intimiate, front row, 20 feet from a dozen musicians.
The other was the opera Fidelio in the Vienna State Opera house. Balcony seat, about 120 feet south and above the orchestra.
Of course, there is the thrill of being there and the whole venue and environment and the well-dressed ladies that all contribute to the experience.
But music-wise, I take any halfway well recorded CD on my home system over the live event.
Anyway. We were on 'the illusion of real' versus a 'construct'. I believe that sound reproduction does not need to provide a simulacrum of a live event. I do believe, however, that we should try to reproduce music in such a way that the listener gets the illusion that a real human being is performing for him, voice, piano, what have you. And that he gets the illusion that he is listening to a real piano etc. But, as they say, YMMV.
Jan
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answering in order
1 Nothing
2 No
3 Yes
4 Yes
5 Yes
All art is an "artificial" construct bounded by talent, imagination and capacity to work.
The world is a construct we continually make as we move through it. So where does art begin to be art?
It's in some of the many JJ Johnston PowerPoints.
PowerPoint Presentations from recent (or not so recent) meetings.
Lots of other interesting stuff in those papers.
Cool, agreement there.
Significant in respect of doesn't show in the chosen measurements?
What I think is irrelevant so this is mere distraction. I have found that it is audibly significant in my own experience.
You responded to my remark about what I've heard with a post detailing measurements. Relevance any?
Consistent with my experience (I shoulda defined "classical" more clearly
) I must have a look at my early Hunters and Collectors - lots of that sort of stuff
No, he's talking about studies with actual people listening, which can always be further confirmed, or refined, or contradicted, but not by what you have "found" with your own subjective experiences (if that's not what you were referring to, I apologize, but you didn't indicate any justification for your italicized words).
On the 'illusion-of-the-real-thing' thing.
It is correct to say that the art intended by the producer is the reference on some recordings. But we have to be careful how to interpret it - was it meant to be reproduced in a practically anechoic environment (meaning non-environment, not anechoic chamber) or was it meant to be reproduced by letting the room add some spaciousness (passive surround)? Or multichannel? How much ASW from the early reflections (pinpoint vs big mouth)? And so on....
Thats the prblem with 2 channel, luckily multichannel, especially movie production have some standards to adhere to. If the producer inteds to transport the listener to a 'space', it is possible to correctly reproduce the image AND the reverberation component from the correct location, that includes psychoacoustically correct height cues. That includes a living-room sized 'space' for they-are-here illusion and a virtual-reality you-are-there illusion. Sadly 'musical scores for movies' doesn't make an entertaining listening material on its own.
But one thing for sure, in the case of prominent local acoustics in the playback environment a 2 channel playback makes the they-are-here illusion easily believable. And if one wishes, passive-surround (like a modern RFZ/LEDE or what Linkwitz propagates) or active, up-matrixed surround from 2 channel can get the you-are-there illusion beleivable, if the recordings contain such ques. Thats why the test this thread is based on is rigged - from the get-go the speaker that does the 'passive-surround' bit the best, wins. Basically a BOSE clone. Just don't expect any 'image' from the front.
It is correct to say that the art intended by the producer is the reference on some recordings. But we have to be careful how to interpret it - was it meant to be reproduced in a practically anechoic environment (meaning non-environment, not anechoic chamber) or was it meant to be reproduced by letting the room add some spaciousness (passive surround)? Or multichannel? How much ASW from the early reflections (pinpoint vs big mouth)? And so on....
Thats the prblem with 2 channel, luckily multichannel, especially movie production have some standards to adhere to. If the producer inteds to transport the listener to a 'space', it is possible to correctly reproduce the image AND the reverberation component from the correct location, that includes psychoacoustically correct height cues. That includes a living-room sized 'space' for they-are-here illusion and a virtual-reality you-are-there illusion. Sadly 'musical scores for movies' doesn't make an entertaining listening material on its own.
But one thing for sure, in the case of prominent local acoustics in the playback environment a 2 channel playback makes the they-are-here illusion easily believable. And if one wishes, passive-surround (like a modern RFZ/LEDE or what Linkwitz propagates) or active, up-matrixed surround from 2 channel can get the you-are-there illusion beleivable, if the recordings contain such ques. Thats why the test this thread is based on is rigged - from the get-go the speaker that does the 'passive-surround' bit the best, wins. Basically a BOSE clone. Just don't expect any 'image' from the front.
Agreed.
I do find it unfortunate that when we disagree with someone's professional views and opinions, it always seems to end up in an attack to the person.
Linkwitz has done many great things to further the art and he should get our respect for that.
You have done great things to further the art and I respect you for that. I do not agree to many of your views, but I sure would hope we could share a beer if we would meet.
Jan
Bingo! That's why I stayed away. I could not understand how the guys who did this test did not see this.
I may be all wrong with the history of this thread. But if I am not, the test was based on a Behringer B2031P, which if anything is a Genelec lookalike, which has pretty much the same radiation pattern that I would expect from Earls's speakers.
So will we see a specific reference to a particular study which concluded 'IMD in electronics isn't a significant problem' where 'significan't is given a falsifiable definition? I'm all ears to learn of such.
Curious - why the scare quotes?
The Behringer and my speakers are all shown on my website (as well as the Orions) in the PolarMap app. The polar responses are "similar", but the directivity index for mine is a lot higher than for the Behringers. For the money the Behringer is very very good. It has a lot more limited headroom than mine however.
But that still doesn't mean that I agreed with the test being done, because I didn't. It focused on things that I do not consider all-important. It ignored a whole range of sound quality aspects that I consider just as important.
Because of your scare italics on the same word
. Geddes has posted distortion related citations all over this form, I'm sure you can find them. I would not consider the issue settled, because as far as I know the thresholds that must exist haven't been established in any detail, but there's no point in having arguments with "I think I heard" vs. "my controlled studies show". That won't go anywhere.
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Because of your scare italics on the same word
New to me this term 'scare italics'. I was showing contrastive stress by my use of italics, not designed to scare anyone
He doesn't (from my perusal of his website and papers) seem to have done anything related to IMD on music signals (meaning high crest factor signals). So do please give me a helping hand here. What I've read about is THD weighting for higher harmonics, but THD is old hat
'Winner' of the test was a custom speaker, BOSE lookalike/actalike.
Now combine the imaging of a regular speaker with the loudly stimulated 'reverberant field' of the BOSE clone (after 10-20ms) and we could get to somewhere. Duke LeJeune had something like that displayed at RMAF.