Omnidirectional speakers. The future?

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the responses. As subjective as the listening experience is, it always boiled down to perception and preferences, so my "opinions" are simply that.

To answer a few of the questions:

Holzhauer asks:

"Real musical instruments have "wide dispersion" and "spray" music all over the room. Isn't it possible that a speaker that mimics this might come closer to the real thing?"++

John Casler (allow me to use my name) writes:

It seems that the confusion arrises when you try to apply what happens in the "recording venue" and apply it to your room.

The answer is "no". In a stereo system the two channels are mixed to "re-create" the original from TWO sources not "create" a performance "using" your room.

Re-creating the sound from two sources, is like a projection TV, blending two or three guns to re-assemble a picture. Adding room large amount of reflected room light to that recreation would have similar deliterious effects.

And the confusion about wide dispersion is that you can somehow hear all of it. You cannot and do not. You hear only what arrives at your ears. So any dispersion beyond the size of your ear will only serve to bounce all over the place and have effect to the "real recorded venue ambience" which then is degraded by it.

Holzhauer wrote:

But I'll bet a dollar thata majority of listeners would prefer the sound of a good pair of omnis over a monitor setup.

John Casler writes:

While that may be, it doesn't change the physics and psychoacoustic involved. KodaChrome and FujiColor look better than real life sometimes. Nothing wrong with that.

Holzhauer wrote:

Amar Bose really was on to something. Most "audiophiles" laugh about him and discount his work. I think they are making a big mistake.

John Casler writes:

While his research was true (measuring direct to reflected sound in venues) his reasoning was flawed. You cannot recreate the original event (or a close proximity) by overlaying another set of ambient signatures from close in reflections.

AudioKinisis wrote:

That sounds very convincing, but if it is true, then why are we not all listening to headphones? With absolutely zero degrading room interactions, wouldn't headphones be the holy grail - the "poor man's anechoic chamber", if you will?

John Casler writes:

You are partially correct, the sonic purity of headphones "is" sans room interaction.

But.... The problem is it doesn't offer the correct spatial relationships to the ear brain. That is it doesn't give you the sense of the performance happening in front of you, but "within" you.

While the absence of room is accurate, the way the pinna gathers the directional cues for a soundstage presentation isn't. The sound actually has to come from "in front of the ear", and have the correct angular incidence, for soundstage and image creation.

AudioKinisis wrote:

Let me start out by noting that recordings are made to be listened to in a reverberant environment.

John Casler writes:

Live recordings "are not made" to be listened to in a reverberant environment. Not sure where you got that idea.

No recording engineer knows what exact "environment" or system their work will be played back in. And many studios and mixing rooms are "acoustically treated" to a very high degree.

AudioKinisis wrote:

the loudspeaker/room combination must be doing something good to the reproduced sound, else we'd all be saving up for a pair of Stax headphones.

John Casler writes:

I was very careful not to say that reflective set ups don't sound good. Some sound beautiful. I simply said you cannot re-create the sonic event and venue, by overlaying another completely different set of environmental acoustics to it. It is simple psychoacoustics.

AudioKinisis wrote:

"Spaciousness is created by a large number of laterally arriving sound waves which are preferably delayed from the direct sound by more than 10ms. Only the reverberant field can possess this characteristic... In order to have the feeling of spaciousness, one must first be in a room location with a reasonably high reverberation level relative to the direct sound level." - Dr. Earl Geddes on sound perception in small rooms. So when it comes to spaciousness, reverberant energy is our friend.

John Casler writes:

I don't know what this was written for, but it is true as far as the recording venue, and false relating to the reproduction environment.

The recorded "ambience" carried on the software is subtle and delicate. Imagine the venue is say a Church that is 75' x 75'. The sonic ambience recorded is based on the delicate reflections of the instruments and performers in that space.

Then you use a highly dispersive and reflective system in your room and spray all those signals around a 20' x 30' room and harvest yet another set of ambient and reflective signals.

You actually think it will sound the same as the original?

AudioKinisis wrote:

The rich, lively sound we so enjoy in a good concert hall (and find lacking at an open-air performance) is largely the product of a highly diffuse, relatively late-arriving and slowly-decaying reverberant field (Pisha & Bilello on live end/dead end room techniques).

So reverberant energy does some good things, and some bad things. Generally speaking, strong, distinct early-arriving reflections are likely to do more harm than good, while late-arriving, diffuse reverberant energy is almost always beneficial in a home listening room.

John Casler writes:

Don't confuse the room interactions in the "Concert Hall" with the interactions in your listening environment. They are two totally different things. This is where I think much of the confusion starts.

Again it is like saying "lighting on a movie set is good" so maybe we should add some more lighting in our HT. It doesn't work that way.

AudioKinisis wrote:

So while it makes intuitive sense to say that anything the room does to the sound is degradation, I'd argue that the room does some very good things to the sound: It adds spaciousness and timral richness and liveliness, hopefully with minimal detriment to image localization. Indeed when it comes to votes cast with our wallets, I think most of us have voted in favor of at least some room interaction.

John Casler writes:

The argument that room interaction does some "good" things goes back to subjective preference.

In my limited room interaction system, I would counter that I hear the real (or closer to) "spaciousness and timral richness and liveliness", and my images, original ambience and soundstage it breathtaking.

My point "was" and "is" that room created sound does not give you the original performance and its sonic environment.

Zaikesman wrote

An anacheoic chamber will not make a good listening environment primarily because recordings are not mixed and mastered by people operating in anacheoic conditions, and well-designed stereo speakers will take into account the fact that they will not be used in anacheoic conditions. If recordings and speakers *were* made to be listened to in anacheoic chambers, we would perceive the inadequacy of stereo to provide convincing reproduction and prefer some sort of well-implemented scheme involving more channels, coming from more directions (with the artificial exception of recordings whose original performance space was an anacheoic chamber as well).

John Casler writes:

Thanks for your thoughts Zaikesman. They are well thought out.

Those who state that live recordings will not sound "real" in an anechoic environment have not listened (properly) in that environment.

In fact, just walking into such a chamber and "not hearing" the room is startling to some. I would doubt that many have actually done any serious nearfeild listening in such.

I have.

For those who want to experiment see below.

Just take your best "live" recording and place your system "outdoors" (not today if you live in the Midwest/Northeast) and sit as nearfeild as your system will allow and be prepared to be amazed. It may be the first time many have heard a recording, so close to the original, without hearing their room colorations.

Zaikesman wrote

I could probably go on, but I'll lay out for now. For the record, I use dynamic, box, monopolar, multi-point speakers intended to have relatively broad, even dispersion and low difraction, and to sum with minumum phase and time distortion at the optimal listening position (they are Thiels). This approach, like all others, has its advantages (some of them purely practical, some of them quite possibly purely theoretical) and disadvantages - and also like all others, fails in the end to achieve a realistically convincing portrayal of the actual thing.

John Casler writes:

You state it well. In the end it is just a goal to "reduce" all the elements that can "degrade" the original sonic.

Your, "low difraction, and to sum with minumum phase and time distortion at the optimal listening position", speaker qualities, are all focused at arriving at a more accurate recreation.

Each component, cable, tube, or whatever is generally used to either feed a preference, or achieve accuracy to the orignal perfromance.

My original premise is still the same, and room created "distortion" (and it IS a distortion of the orignal signal) is some of the easiest to treat, but as you said, impossible to eliminate.

Good discussion, and thanks to all for their thoughts.

Hi All,

This response is not to questions anyones opinion or sonic preference, "but" it seems that there is significant misunderstanding (even by major manufacturers) regarding reproduction of what is on a recording.

First and foremost, "ANY" sonic artifact created "after" the recording process, in the reproduction space, cannot be reality, and can do nothing but degrade the original.

While bouncing sound around the room can be quite pleasing, it is not true to the original recorded event.

Additionally, the concept of "wide dispersion" as a good thing, is ill conceived. The psychoacoustic recreation of a performance through 2 stereo speakers will only be accurate if all room interaction is reduced as much as possible.

Further, the miked ambience and reflections from the original venue are extremely delicate and subtle. They are easily destroyed by adding a second group of "in-room" sonics that cannot be filtered out.

The soundstage, and images on, and in it, are recreated by the "combination" of clear and detailed information from each speaker by the ear/brain.

A serious audiophile is generally after the most accurate reproduction of that signal. Degrading it by "spraying" sonic info all over the room cannot accomplish this.

Now, in all my years, I have certainly heard "many" beautiful sonic delights that "were not" true to the original, and further more, might even have been "better sounding" than the original, by using the room.

Amar Bose worked for years studying this application to a science. Only problem is, it doesn't work to reproduce the original performance.

Again, this is not meant to "ruffle feathers" of those with Bose, or B&O, or MBL, or even Maggies, but taking the room "out of the sonic equation" will take you closer to the original performance.

Really, its a preference thing.

Sorry I'm in LA, but there are a couple dealers in Chicago and Wisc.

The reason I sell RM40s (since you brought it up) is their limited dispersion.

But let me continue to say, I love the sound of many speakers, systems, and rooms. I trust no one felt I was "downing" the sound of any speaker.

I might further comment that many speakers, well set up, can sound marvelous.

Haven't heard any Shahinians lately to bad your not closer (I'm in LA, CA)I'd love to hear them, and what they can do. I meant to drop in on them at CES, but time gets away from you there.

All the best,

Hi Guys, Just dropped in to see this thread still going.

Lot of interesting ideas floating around, but the concept of "dispersion" mimicking instrument size, or cone size making an instrument sound larger is slightly off the mark.

Must be a visual thing. That is, we are comparing it to how we "see" things.

That is not how recorded stereo sound works at all.

Recorded sound is more like a three gun projector that has three beams that have to be perfectly converged to form a visual image. In the case of stereo, it is two "sonic projecting guns" that have to be converged to form a sonic image for the ear brain.

It the "projectors guns" are diffused and dispersed, the visual image is blurry and washed out. If they are clear and focused, they form a highly resolved and detailed image on the screen.

Wide dispersion from a speaker does not have anything to do with the way you hear it unless your ears are 3 feet wide on each side of your head.

Spreading the sound out 90 degrees, 180 degrees or 360 degrees, will not cause it to sound like the real instrument since your ears only sample TWO "very small" samples. And that image is formed by sampling 2 signals that combine to make the image.

The illusion or "confusion" is related to perceiving that we somehow hear recorded sound from stereo, as we do a live event.

We don't.

In real life, we have millions of sound sources coming in from any and all angles. In stereo, we have 2. Trying to make (disperse) the 2 into that million is not only futile, but impossible.

This is an attempt to "disassemble" the two signals, by sending them all over the place to somehow be reassembled at you ear.

Taking these two samples and trying to make them disperse into some sonic spray, and expecting that this spray will then gel into a soundstage, won't happen.

Now don't get me wrong, it can sound beautiful, but it really won't do what most are thinking.

The Bose 901s developed by Dr Amar Bose in the late 60s, tried to perform this by firing all that info into a reflective surface (wall) and using that dispersion and about 17-22% direct sound to give the mirage of a "sonic projection with direction".

Few use them any more.

Regarding Anechoic Chambers.

I have built and used many anechoic chambers, and was thinking at one time about building a small 7' x 7' x 6' chamber to sell to audiophiles who might find them fun to assemble and use in apartments or other applications where they wanted to listen at concert levels, without disturbing neighbors or whatever.

They could be placed in large closets, garages, basements, attics or where have you and the sound would be unbeleivable. Even modest equipment yeilded some very impressive, realistic, listening.

The sonic virtues of this type of listening has not been experienced by many, and I can only say the you can place yourself into a live recording far deeper than any other listening environment.

I have been there many times. I currently use a "modified" LEDE type room which also works well for most purposes.

Don't make the mistake of visiting JBL or some speaker company's chamber, (designed to measure speaker sound only) and think you know what anechoic listening really is.

But in any event, I just wanted to "sound off" on the dispersion issue. The point being that any dispersion any wider than your ear is not used in the ear/brain recreation, unless it has hit a surface and becomes a reflection, and then as someone else has stated it is a "distortion". A distortion is any thing other than the original signal that has be added to or subtracted from the original.

In the standard listening room we probably have a "very high" % of reflected sound/distortion. I mean it could be 40% or so. Imagine buying an amp that had 40% distortion!!

And as a final thought, many seem to read the scientific literature written by well respected Acoustic Engineers and researchers and "mis" interpret the info, and worse yet many well credentialed Acousticians,and experts do the same thing.

While physics and acoustics are "in stone" as to their properties and principles, their applications to venues and reproduction environment are "VERY" different.

The largest and main difference is that in a "performance venue" the space is designed or treated to "USE" the environment. Devices like diffusors and such "are" valuable to acheiving a good even covering of the original space.

In the "reproduction environment" that is not the case.

Anyone who confuses the two will never hear what is on the recording from the original venue.

Again, this is not a problem if you like the "sound shaping" you are doing. I certainly used to.....Until I heard about 90% of the real thing, and I haven't been the same since (OK no jokes)

I hope that all makes sense, and I also trust that those who are ecstatically happy with their sound do not take offense. It is just physics and acoustics, and beleive it or not, you're as much an expert as the next guy, cause you know what you like.

And that is what counts.