Processed sound is just that. It ’s processed.i repeat your words here because you said better than my post what i want to speak about...
thanks....
Processing cannot solve room problems.I will add this one...
And i dont need to post more here...
If you don't have a wide sweet spot, are you really an audiophile?
Hi, it’s me, professional audio troll. I’ve been thinking about something as my new home listening room comes together:
The glory of having a wide sweet spot.
We focus far too much on the dentist chair type of listener experience. A sound which is truly superb only in one location. Then we try to optimize everything exactly in that virtual shoebox we keep our heads in. How many of us look for and optimize our listening experience to have a wide sweet spot instead?
I am reminded of listening to the Magico S1 Mk II speakers. While not flawless one thing they do exceptionally well is, in a good room, provide a very good, stable stereo image across almost any reasonable listening location. Revel’s also do this. There’s no sudden feeling of the image clicking when you are exactly equidistant from the two speakers. The image is good and very stable. Even directly in front of one speaker you can still get a sense of what is in the center and opposite sides. You don’t really notice a loss of focus when off axis like you can in so many setups.
Compare and contrast this with the opposite extreme, Sanders' ESL’s, which are OK off axis but when you are sitting in the right spot you suddenly feel like you are wearing headphones. The situation is very binary. You are either in the sweet spot or you are not.
From now on I’m declaring that I’m going all-in on wide-sweet spot listening. Being able to relax on one side of the couch or another, or meander around the house while enjoying great sounding music is a luxury we should all attempt to recreate.
The glory of having a wide sweet spot.
We focus far too much on the dentist chair type of listener experience. A sound which is truly superb only in one location. Then we try to optimize everything exactly in that virtual shoebox we keep our heads in. How many of us look for and optimize our listening experience to have a wide sweet spot instead?
I am reminded of listening to the Magico S1 Mk II speakers. While not flawless one thing they do exceptionally well is, in a good room, provide a very good, stable stereo image across almost any reasonable listening location. Revel’s also do this. There’s no sudden feeling of the image clicking when you are exactly equidistant from the two speakers. The image is good and very stable. Even directly in front of one speaker you can still get a sense of what is in the center and opposite sides. You don’t really notice a loss of focus when off axis like you can in so many setups.
Compare and contrast this with the opposite extreme, Sanders' ESL’s, which are OK off axis but when you are sitting in the right spot you suddenly feel like you are wearing headphones. The situation is very binary. You are either in the sweet spot or you are not.
From now on I’m declaring that I’m going all-in on wide-sweet spot listening. Being able to relax on one side of the couch or another, or meander around the house while enjoying great sounding music is a luxury we should all attempt to recreate.
Showing 45 responses by mahgister
After these recordings start coming out en masse, all this 2 channel gimmickery is bound to look plain silly.I listen Scriabin on my 2 channel extraordinary 3-d holographic imaging encompassing even me , if the recording process was top notch.... But all my 10,000 files losless, were recorded decades ago, and i dont need your 5 channels.... In my next life when the bad actual recording of one of the greatest pianist, Sofronitsky, would be recreated for 5 channels i promise i will do.... In the mean time enjoy your few perfect recordings ... I will enjoy my less perfect numerous one on my perfect 2 channels filling my room with in some good recording of Weill operas voices behind my head from a 2 channel speakers system, do you believe me?...I bet no... Acoustic is way more important than electronic design in audio for now... But you are right it will not be so perhaps in few years to come... But for now it is and i am too old to wait A.I. in the 10 years to come in audio...A.I. will be the revolution not 5 channels recording process only... My best to you, apologizing for my rant .... |
You can treat your room all day long and keep praying. But, if you want the orchestra to come right home, those 2 speakers are simply not going to cut itFirst i apologize for my choice of the word "boasting".... I did not wanted to offend you but i did... Then my complete apology... I am like you a passionate temper... Second i intervened because your view even if right is not a balanced opinion... I dont have a God like understanding at all, in fact i am ignorant, but i figure out something that work but which is not taught in audio forum: the Helmholtz method.... I thank you for your passion we all like that, at least most of us .... But two opinions are better than one....😁😊😁 If not? Who knows how many people would trash their 2 way system in the river? My deepest respects..... |
My 15k multichannel setup beats the living daylights out of 100k+ 2 channel setups i have/had. 2 channel setups will have you chasing your tail forever. It’s the very nature of 2 channel setups!Boasting is not an idea.... I dont doubt that your multi channel is right and wonderful...I believe you completely till proof of the contrary... But 2 channel acoustical embedded right with passive acoustical treatment and active one like with Helmholtz method could be so good that the sound upgrading obsession die...Then advising all people to trash their 2 channels for a fad of yours , so good it is, is not an idea or a possibility for almost all people here... It is my case like many others who own a 2 channel system done right and by the way i am proud to boast about my 500 bucks system that tail behind anything at any price for musical pleasure ( not soundwise for sure)...Not because of the gear but mainly like a results of adequate controls in his 3 working dimensions... Price has nothing to do with accoustic, nothing at all, save for sellers....But i used only homemade stuff... |
With an electronic equalizer, the measuring "rod" so to speak, are a set of tested feed back precise frequencies with a microphone for a very narrow location in millimeters... With a mechanical equalizer , the measuring "rod", so to speak is the range and "timbre" of the human voice perceived by our ears in a room .. All music is derived from the innate and learned abilities of the human ears to recognize and evaluate the more subtle changes and hue in vocal timbre.... |
I will only add that a room is like an hearing aids...You must fine tune it for your specific ears problems and structure...No ears are perfect.... You set a hall or a theater for group of people....it is another matter with small room early and late reflections, reverberation short time etc... But SMALL room acoustic could be set for your own specific ears with Helmholtz method, not only passive materials treatment... I will add that i am not a scientist but i devised listrening experiments and it is my method to reach hi-fi experience at low cost.... |
You raised some excellent points but then get it so very wrong here. That can happen when you apply theory in absence of listening, and it’s why things in this hobby are not always as black-and-white as they may appear.It is my exact tought... You cannot reduce acoustic to recording practice or electronic engineering...."Imaging" for example is an acoustical perceptive phenomena first in a ROOM with no microphone but human ears... It is not a recording here...It is a human perceptive experience.... No trade off, only direct perception in a room.... Then you cannot reduce acoustic theory to recording needs and theory, it is the opposite, recording theory borrow from acoustical concrete experience in a ROOM...Ears are what is first and last, measuring dials are always in between hearing experience... It is common place fact and a scientific one in acoustic... Then the borrowing of recording theory and practice from acoustical experience when applied concretely always implies a trade-off when the engineer try to record anything, he must make many irreversible CHOICES.... To compensate for these choices in MY room i create my mechanical equalizer inspired by Helmholtz method...The founder of modern acoustical concepts... In my room my Helmholtz equalizer(a grid of precisely located tubes and pipes finely tuned) and other acoustical settings COMPENSATE, if the controls were rightly done, for the INEVITABLE lost of some "cues" in the recording process by the choices made in mic engineering, and these controls are made by myself to adjust to my specific structure of ears, because my mechanical Helmholtz equalizer dont use microphone to rune it, nor any very narrow test response frequencies from the speakers for ONLY a very narrow location in the room...NO. My mechanical equalizer need my ears for timing the many wavefronts of reflected and direct waves from the room precise geometry and topology, timing them mechanically for all the room when i select for example the different possible neck lenght on my 21 tubes and pipes modifying the different pressure zones of my room...I also use many small pipes near the tweeter and the bass drivers but asymmetrically located for a more refine timing tuning of the main or first frontwave... Cost: nothing S.Q. : no comparison at all on all counts between before and after.. Natural timbre perception and imaging OUT OF THE SPEAKERS, and soundstage out of the speakers with pin point imaging... Is it perfect ? no Is electronic equalization perfect in comparison? Hell, No..... comparison cost/ S.Q. : my method results are superior completely at no cost... it takes only time but it is fun to adjust each tubes and pipes to fine tune the results...If you are half deaf take electronical equalization....😊 In one sentense, imaging is first a room/ears response to the speakers, not first a drivers characteristic in itsef.....And the location of the speakers are only one factor, the main factor is how the room will response for my ears....TIMING of direct and reflected waves by first front wave law is key to imaging....No electronic or recording tech can replace that .... Then the question is not and never has been what are the speakers that best image, ANY speaker can imagine well if the acoustical settings of the room are appropriately set for them by some specific ears; the question is how do we set a room for the best imaging possible? The answer is Helmholtz method....I chose the mechanical equalization because it is " no cost", and very fun, and very efficient corresponding to MY EARS.... |
Audio2design, I am very sorry that your posts has been deleted... I am sorry because they made my point more clear about your lack of arguments...And resorting to only authority arguments... But i am sorry because i am for free speech... Then i am not ok with this decision...But it is not my decision and i dont want to complain about those who apply the rules here either.... I will accept all their decisions.... Ruling a site is not easy.... Anyway i post this because i dont want that someone could think that i had made a complaint about you...I never complained here ever against anyone ...Save in their face and frankly.... |
I don’t start off with "water is wet" when I discuss swimming.Using sound argument does not means using "common place" platitude...When discussing, precise meaning of words and concepts must be used and specified... Water is wet yes...For you, but that does not explain ice cube.... But "biases" in a newspaper sentence or in your post is not the same that reading it in a research paper...WHY? You called "timbre" perception a taste in audiophiles.... A pro musician going with my argument was called a liar by you about the "timbre" perception... Timbre is not like you said only a taste or a color in the superfluous sense of something that is ADDED to the sound accuracy... This is false...scientifically false.... "Imaging" is not a pure recording engineering phenomena first, and even if it is related for his experience to the right type of speakers and their location for sure, explaining "imaging " like this will not do it because it is FIRST AND LAST an acoustical neurophyisolgical phenomena... Then imaging explanation must be spell out correctly in the right phenomena ordering... I dont need to argue with you to nourrish what you accuse me of suffering: "grandeur illusions"....I am not like you.... You need to bash all audiophiles here to nourrish your own illusions my friend... I bash no one here myself but i REPLY with arguments when someone attack i dont reply only with authority arguments and insults like you did.... «Why do you try to drink ice cubes Groucho?-Harpo Marx «You water is not my water my friend.....»-Groucho Marx |
I am amazed at your lack of reading comprehension and falsehoods you post based on ignorance and/or laziness as you have done above, but we all have our burdens to carry. May I suggest broadening the topics that you read and post in, as opposed to only a narrow set.Insulting.... 😊😎 I wait for your argument about "bias"... About "timbre" About "imaging" Point to me where i was wrong.... All this discussion begun with your affirmation that all turntable owners ignoring Nyquist theorem were ignorant de facto, remember? I just replied using simple acoustical concept to justify human ears against digital recording engineering... Acoustic is first after all for any common sense scientist... One thing you said is true, your are the specialist in audio engineering not me.... I am only an ignorant audiophile who try to learn bits from his gear and room nothing else...You are absolutely right about that... But it does not means that i cannot answer to your posts with elementary acoustical or science concepts ... And unlike you i stick to truth and this is truth... But one thing you said about me is false: i know very well how to read and analyse concepts.... It was my day job....i teach reading.... Then reading your posts bad faith and conceptual limitations was child play....I even learned on the spot what you missed about acoustical concepts ....No technical sound replies from you, only insults and authority arguments... |
You may feel your response is erudite, but to me, you just told me "I like Oranges", after I told you it was 7 below freezing and snowing outside. Perhaps to you there was some correlation, but I am just shaking my head and I suspect others are too at this point.Insulting is your only argument... i just put a simple point here you never answer to it... Any reader can read that for himself... I will simplify my post for your own understanding... Acoustic explain imaging.....Engineereing use the acoustical explanation for better recording technique... yes toe in speakers matter and anything pertaining to timing and volume... BUT timing of wavefront matter MOST because it is ACOUSTIC science first... It is the same thing for the concept of timbre which is acoustical one... This was my point... How in the world this simple fact which is totally true correspond to you answer about orange and freezing... You are a very intelligent person, but you are not a very "gentle" and very trustfull one sorry... |
Audio2design, thank you for your post. You are mostly right. It is all about timing and volume. You are also probably right about certain situations.Half truth.... The missing half is in acoustic science and called the first frontwave law related to the different possible thresholds timing of direct and reflected waves and their interpration by the ears.. Imaging is not first a fact in digital recording tech. but in acoustic first... I created my own mechanical equalizer for balancing the timing of the different waves without microphone... It worked so well my imaging i call depth imaging fill the room...My measured standard is the range of the human voice and his timbre perceived by the ears...Not a a set of very narrow testing frequencies for a very minute location of the head using a mic... Then imaging is FIRST : timing + the law of the first wavefront.. After that you can speak of timing+volume ... missing this point is complete reversal and misunderstanding of the phenomena... Acoustic neurophysiology is FIRST recording engineering second for the explanation.... |
By way of background: The ear localizes sound by two mechanisms: Arrival time, and intensity. If the arrival times from both speakers are identical, the image will be shifted towards whichever speaker is loudest. And if the intensities are identical, the image will be shifted towards whichever speaker’s output arrives first. With conventional speakers, as you move off to either side of the centerline, the near speakers "wins" BOTH arrival time and intensity, thus the image shifts towards the near speaker, often dramatically so. I will use your excellent post to illustrate a listening experiment of mine suggested by this japanese article research to me... Adding then to your information the idea of 4 critical thresholds linked to LEV and ASW... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223804282_The_relation_between_spatial_impression_and_the_l... My experience is simple and improve greatly the " imaging" but also the "encompassing sound effect " factor or the auditory source width (ASW) and the listener envelopment (LEV) I use small Helmholtz pipes of the right volume and neck ratio near the tweeter and near the bass driver but in an asymmetrical fashion between the 2 speakers... One speaker tweeters is linked to 2 Helmholtz different pipes near the tweeter, the other not.... One speaker is linked with the Helhmoltz 2 different pipes, near the bass driver not the other speaker... The difference of timing of these frequencies between the 2 speakers illustrate this 4 thresholds law which spoke about the japan scientists... This experiments is mine and not in this article... The effect is huge and explained by the japanese article on the law of the first wavefront linked to their 4 tresholds law in audio.... This is my last experiments and device... I will put it in my audio thread: "miracles in audio"... Where i described my audio journey... COST: PEANUTS... Effect: imaging way better and also better timbre.... Conclusion : imaging is not ONLY the result of the structural electronic engineering of the speakers like suggested in this thread erroneously and ONLY their location , but first and last mostly the result of the law of the first wavefront and of their 4 tresholds in acoustic... I will repeat the definition of Toole of the law of the first wavefront in his main work : «In audio in the past, the terms Haas effect and law of the first wavefront were used to identify this effect, but current scientifi c work has settled on the other original term, precedence effect. Whatever it is called, it describes the well-known phenomenon wherein the fi rst arrived sound, normally the direct sound from a source, dominates our impression of where sound is coming from. Within a time interval often called the “fusion zone,” we are not aware of reflected sounds that arrive from other directions as separate spatial events. All of the sound appears to come from the direction of the first arrival. Sounds that arrive later than the fusion interval may be perceived as spatially separated auditory images, coexisting with the direct sound, but the direct sound is still perceptually dominant. At very long delays, the secondary images are perceived as echoes, separated in time as well as direction. The literature is not consistent in language, with the word echo often being used to describe a delayed sound that is not perceived as being separate in either direction or time.Haas was not the first person to observe the primacy of the first arrivedsound so far as localization in rooms is concerned.» Sound Reproduction The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms Floyd Toole Chap.6 P.73 |
It comes to my mind an interesting metaphor about how active and able to be activated a room is.... The room is not ONLY a set of passive walls waiting for the sound waves to bounce on them partially reflected, absorbed or diffused also... This is market mythology of those who simplify acoustic to sells easy to use products... Like i already said this is only HALF of the story... The other Half is connected with my metaphor: What is the difference between a violin and a room? No difference at all.... Imagine if the waves of sound cross my room 80 times in one second , that these waves could be modified by their multiples crossings of my room each second by a tightening of the air, a compression of the air in different zones which will work exactly like the mechanism on the violin that will tighten or relax the tension of the strings , here in the room different pressure engines with the form of bottles or tubes and pipes devices will make the air tighter on a set of different frequencies in fonction of their volume/neck ratio exactly like the violin mechanism will tighten the strings ... The room become a violin and acoustic is the art of tuning it... Then nevermind the source of information, digital or analog, coming from the speakers in the form of waves, what we listen to is the room/ violin interpreting this physical direct waves of the speakers ALWAYS mediated by the early and late reflections yes but also mediated by the different pressure zones of the room in the form of the pressure engines but also in the form of the interacting waves themselves in relation to the geometry of the room which create in the room an array of cellular pressure zones themselves.... This impact of the room on the sound we hear is so huge that arguing about the sound of different piece of gear is most of the times ridiculous.... For sure no speakers or no amplifiers sound alike, but the room/violin is hugely more impactful on the sound you will hear than the choice between a Pioneer amplifier or a Sansui one....More than that you could modify the room and transform completely the response of the room and make your amplifier an another beast completely.... It is true also of the speakers.... It is the reason why reviews are relative to say the least...The sound of ANY system is mediated and transformed by the room at the end because ou ears/brain use the room to make the sound like a violonist use the shell of the violin to amplify and transform the sound.... For sure there is many other factors, like the way we can use materials to act on timing of the direct waves with the early and late reflections and the use of reverberations.... I used all that also but in an intuitive way, listening to my room for the tuning, and i will let the specialist explain all that way better than me... My post is only here to say something rarely said and never insisted on, compared to the huge marketing of electronic design in audio threads.... I am in no way a scientist nor an acoustician.... All these reflections are more the results of my experiments than direct knowledge... If i am wrong correct me.... Thanks.... |
Headphones are like a room, we must adjust the response in frequencies of the driver and the frequencies responses of the shell room... Between the 2 there is a hiatus in this hiatus are where we can inplement our possible controls and tuning between the 2 ... The timbre perception in an headphone is the most important characteristic like in a room... We can improve it by modifying the damping of the shell or his geometry...Like in a room...And like in a room the recording sources does not contain all the information necessary for the ears to recreate the timbre or imaging perception, we must complementarily add what is missing for a perfect illusion, we must control the shell like we control our room for the best possible illusion... For sure we can listen to intra headphone and here we have more of a direct experience of the direct sound in a sense of what was the recorded information at the live event it seems but is it right? No because the recording live original event was incomplete or better said imperfect because of the trade off related to the recording process, locations and types of mic. It is for this reason that internal headphones are not better than speakers for recreating timbre perception....And probably less efficient to recreate the illusion of a live performance as if the musicians were playing right now in our face....We can improve the room shell of normal headphone, and the room with many controls but it is more difficult with very small internal headphone... The best experience of music is for the time being always with speakers in a controlled room.... |
For sure.... Nobody reinvent the wheel.... But the japanese article is very clear... I dont pretend to anything myself except being the father of this maxim: Dont upgrade embed everything right before.... 😊 By the way i enjoy precise very good bass i hear with my stomach from a 7 inches driver in a square small room 13feet by 13 feet with bad location for one speaker in a corner, thanks to Helmoltz activation method of the room....Passive materials treatment is half of the story to tell.... Just a remark about the direct sound.... Image focus comes almost entirely from the direct sound.There is no direct sound separated from reflected sound, early and late reflections for the brain...The brain work with the three , direct, early and late at the same times in milliseconds to recreate the image and timbre experience.... Even in near listening reoom treatment and controls work in a huge way because of that... When someone speak of direct sound it is a "physical concept" about the wave coming from the source, but acoustically for the ears there is NO solely direct sound perception in a closede small room, the ears recreated the sound perception in milliseconds with the physical direct sound and the early and late reflections.... Here we must distinguish physical concepts and neurological acoustical one.... The sound we hear IN A SMALL ROOM is never the direct sound....It is a composite of the different multiple waves summed into one interpretation by the brain.... Many people missing these distinction affirm that near listening can spare someone of room treatment because of these confusions... The most astonishing fact in audio for me was meditating about the fact that the sound waves cross my room 80 times per second....Then what i listen to is this composite sums of waves i interpret like music in my room.... For sure for the brain the difference between what is a direct sound, and early or late reflections are linked to timing and distance in the room and the location of the listener.... It is relative....The brain recreate the sound when i move in my room with these 3 psysical concepts but what i listen to is a COMPOSITE always of these three.... i can for sure glued my ears to some inches of the driver to hear ONLY the direct sound but i am not sure that these noise will be interpretable by the name music....But even in a headphone my brain created the musical sound with the direct physical waves of the source with the early and reflected waves of the shell room...No headphones sound the same in great part because of the shell room vibrations and reflective properties... |
Mahgister-- OK. Now I’m following this. Your later posts seem (at least to me) to use the ordinary meaning of timbre. What I did not understand was the relation of this to things like "imaging" or "soundstage", which I believe in this context are essentially ’something else’ ’It is difficult concept of acoustics i work hard to understand them a bit in few hours i cannot make that more simple than the japanese article about Imaging and soundstage.... Nor more simpler than Toole explanation in his book... I has given the adress of the article and the book is on the net free to read... I cannot create longer posts here and take 3 or 4 hours to make them clearer .... I give the gist of the problem.... All that was to argue with someone who was arguing with everybody here.... 😁 i am not a scientist but i learned how to read in my daily 45 years work: counselling students for books and their reading abilities in almost any fields... I know nothing but i can create relations with multiple fields rapidly....It serves me well to create my own audio system at peanuts costs when parsing the essential bits of information percolating audio thread.... I only made a synthesis of these bits and i called that working with the three embeddings controlled dimensions of any audio system... I discovered this triple tuning of a system is more important than the system itself....Simple no? I hate the word "tweaking" because it miss the point, being interpreted to be SECONDARY additions and not essential installations controls and dogmatic mind call that "snake oil" easily because they are costly, or "placebo" because they are not always very audible in some conditions...For sure true snake oil and placebo effects exist... But thowing the baby with the bath waters is not a solution.... My best to you... |
If you read carefully about the law of the first wavefront and the paper of the 2 japan scientists written in 2008, you will begin to understand why imaging is possible and guess how we can make it with materials means in the context of this law of the first wavefront and his relation to early and late reflections balance in a room... You will also immediately understand why it is impossible to recreate a natural timbre perception in a room where no imaging is clearly delineated or possible.... Then this is the reason why i affirmed that timbre perception is the benchmark of audio judgement of the balanced relation or the disruptive relation between room and gear.... The recording source i will repeat contains information and cues about the original musical event, but by the recording choices of the engineer about mic. location and types the information about timbre and imaging are no complete without the dynamical addition of what is missing in the recording source and is potentially in the activated room of the listener which will make possible the recreation of the imagin and timbre perception... The frequency response of the controlled room synchronize itself with the frequency response of the audio system....It is my way to describe that but i am not an acoustician.... I learn all that in few hours of arguing with someone who does not seems to know timbre concept nor imaging concept...And by my anterior experiment and experience with my room problem now solved... I am not a scientist only an average listener dreaming of Hi FI at low cost.... I succeed and anybody with a room can.... |
Thanks for the translation.... 😊 Save there is other means of controls in acoustic, and others in mechanical and electrical dimensions for sure... A remark: If you coupled this Helmholtz idea with the ideas of the 2 Japanese scientists i cited already in a preceding post about the law of the first wave front and his relation to the source width (ASW)and the listener envelopement concept(LEV) who gives us a very precise set of experiments to understand how it is possible by room material treatment and by room controls to create a balance which will make us able to create an image width also compatible with an enveloping listener sound, we have some idea about how it is possible to make the room an activated entity in the recreation of sound, imaging and timbre and no more a set of passive walls... I will give their introduction here and their conclusion.... «In 1989, Morimoto and Maekawa demonstrated that spatial impression comprises at least two components and that a listener can discriminate between them [1]. One is auditory source width (ASW) which is defined as the width of a sound image fused temporally and spatially with direct sound image, and the other is listener envelopment (LEV) which is defined as the degree of fullness of sound images around the listener, excluding a sound image composing ASW [1,2],» «In conclusion, it seems that the results of three experiments shown in this paper evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the components of reflections under and beyond the upper limit of validity for the law of the first wavefront contribute to ASW and LEV, respectively. Accordingly, it is possible to control ASW and LEV independently by controlling physical factors for each component. The important is that it is necessary to provide reflections beyond the upper limit in order to generate LEV. Furthermore, it is clarified that the reflections beyond the thresholds of LEV do not always lead to disturbance. In other words, it is possible to make the listeners perceive LEV without causing disturbance.» https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223804282_The_relation_between_spatial_impression_and_the_l... I will repeat what is the LAW OF THE FIRST WAVEFRONT: «In audio in the past, the terms Haas effect and law of the first wavefront were used to identify this effect, but current scientifi c work has settled on the other original term, precedence effect. Whatever it is called, it describes the well-known phenomenon wherein the fi rst arrived sound, normally the direct sound from a source, dominates our impression of where sound is coming from. Within a time interval often called the “fusion zone,” we are not aware of reflected sounds that arrive from other directions as separate spatial events. All of the sound appears to come from the direction of the first arrival. Sounds that arrive later than the fusion interval may be perceived as spatially separated auditory images, coexisting with the direct sound, but the direct sound is still perceptually dominant. At very long delays, the secondary images are perceived as echoes, separated in time as well as direction. The literature is not consistent in language, with the word echo often being used to describe a delayed sound that is not perceived as being separate in either direction or time.Haas was not the first person to observe the primacy of the first arrivedsound so far as localization in rooms is concerned.» Sound Reproduction The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms Floyd Toole Chap.6 P.73 |
I’m glad you have a really great room, mine is my living room so I do what I can but I don’t have any complaints.The most important is learning to be happy....You have it.... then you are lucky.... All the rest is only hobby matter.... But it is true that owning a dedicated room tough is one of the more important asset in audio experience.... Not the gear most of the times like always everybody think....It is simply because acoustic controls is so powerful.... Using all his facets is more easy in a dedicated room.... My best to you and i apologize for my sometimes rude answers.... Here we lost sometimes controls of ourself.... I am too passionnate.... You are more wise than i am.... |
I don’t know my old AKG 701s sound pretty good. I could tell drums from pianos so they get the timbre.You can also EQ headphones.Djones me too i was thinking at first that my headphones was good... It is only with many dofferent headphones comparisons, and my speakers increased S.Q. that i begin to love them less, and at some point never use them... Eq is like my modifications, only partial solutions... I never realized directly using them at first what i was missing, it comes whith my room and gear control improvement... Iike a i said elsewhere NOBODY can directly experience the impact of the three noise floors of his system, which all together if uncontrolled affect greatly our S.Q' without even we know it at all.... Nobody ever listen directly to his electrical house noise floor and say: " i know where you are".... It takes some form of controls to realize the level of the noise floor.... Nobody listen to his speakers say to them i know you vibrate and negatively impact he sound.... You put anything under them and you listen to a change. ,ore positive or more negative.... It is through these experiments that i learn about my specific noise floors presence... |
If you’re listening through headphones then you can toss out the room and it’s all up to the equipment.What do you think the shell of a headphone is? A ROOM.... Most of the times a bad room... a room with hard trade-off that you can modify and control better with damping for example.... i modified with success all my headphones because they were all unsatisfying... I trash my 7 headphones in a drawer: 2 stax, 2 dynamic, 2 magneplanar, one hybrid.... Only the hybrid one has a good timbre recreation but other limitation.... My room now is SO good at 2 locations for listening thay listening to headphones is unbearable.... Some years ago it was the opposite, listening to the same speakers was unbearable at times because of his limitations... in fact the problem never were my gear but the 3 noise floors uncontrolled: mechanical electrical and acoustical.... |
I assumed what we heard in relation to timbre was on the recordingTry any recording in a bad system and try to distinguish clearly the different instruments playing and their timbre distinctive voicing... Good luck.... After that try that on a good system, with a low noise floor in all his three working dimensions especially acoustical.... You will understand... The information about timbre in any recording source is uncomplete by definition and by the choices of the recording engineer.... Trade-off inevitable choices...This is the bad news... The good news is we can compensate this in our own room settings by making our gear able to sound at his best potential.... Imaging, soundstage but especially timbre is the test that our controls of the noise floors are right....It will never be the REPRODUCTION of the original event which is impossible but a good partial RECREATION... You room never reproduce your source but recreate it.... |
How do i control this attribute in my room?Range between tonal and noiselike character Controls of mechanical and electrical and acoustical noise floor....With the many homemade devices you mocked and whichi used successfully at NO COST.... controls of decay with MY acoustical settings is KEY here.... In my room...Time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR, which stands for "attack, decay, sustain, release") Yes frequency modified response potentials of my room by my Helmholtz tubes and pipes modifying the original response of my room....Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation) Precisely the acoustical controls in my room play a greater part here also than the source recording Why?Prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration Because the best source in the world with the best system will NEVER give a good and natural perception of timbre in a BAD ROOM.... Have you forget the CRUX of this discussion possessed by the urgency to be right against all at all cost repeating this mantra of frequency response in the face of a complex problem ? The recording source is one HALF of the story when we speak about timbre perception, the most important half is the acoustical control of the room which will permet or not a good or very good RECREATION of the information encoded in the source....Remember that this information encoded in the source is NEVER complete nor perfect by reason of trade-off locations and types of mic. in use by the recording engineer esthetical or practical choices.... Then playback experience can never be equal to lived experience... This is the reason why RECREATION of timbre perception being a complex acoustical and fundamental experience is the BENCHMARK test if we want to know if our system is good or not..... |
There is a saying that people that understand a topic well can explain it in the simplest terms.You are right this times audio2design.... It is not always possible to reduce a very complex problem in simple term.... The tensor curvature problem in geometry cannot be simplified....especially not here... The "timbre" comcept and perception is in the same order... But some here are very able to explain it with 2 words... Frequency response only..... |
At some point Mahgister will learn or realize what he calls "timbre" is really just frequency response, though he will scream otherwise.First- at some point audio2design will understand that the timbre concept being a complex one cannot be understood FROM only one field but by many at the same times... And most importantly cannot be reduced by recording engineer to frequency response ONLY at all...even if he scream otherwise... 😁😊 Second- the reason why this is so is that when we speak of timbre in audio system playback experience we speak of timbre not from the musician perspective only, not from the recording engineer perspective only, but from an acoustical more general viewpoint including for sure the neurophysiology of hearing but also the particular listening history of the tested and testing subject, here an audiophile listening to his system in his own specific room and perspective.... The ears listening history of the subject play a part, the playback installation gear specific system play a part and the specificity of the room acoustic another part.... Reducing all that to frequency response is an engineer joke....Or a bad reply to a complex subject.... Third- reducing TIMBRE to frequency response only is so limited and beside the point, and reflecting a purely technological narrow view that someone saying this just prove he has no idea what the timbre perception or production is... Why? Because the complex phenomenon associated with timbre perception or production cannot be reduced to linear or non linear frequencies responses .... A problem spanning human perception, acoustic physic and neurophysiology and art and psychology or linguistic cannot be ONLY "really just frequency response".... Four- Not only then did you seems to know nothing about timbre but you dont even seems know that you dont understand the stating of the problem itself at all... Five- i will give you a clue: Read this text from a textbook on timbre about the limitations of the Helmholtz definition of timbre, and if you are able to understand this few sentences you will understand WHY timbre cannot be reduced to only frequency responses: Regarding timbre, Helmholtz stated: “The quality of the musical portion of a compound tone depends solely on the number and relative strength of its partial simple tones, and in no respect on their difference of phase” (Helmholtz 1877, p. 126). This exclusively spectral perspective of timbre, locating the parameter in the relative amplitude of partial tones and nothing else, has dominated the feld for a long time. But it is interesting to note how narrowly defned his object of study was, the “musical portion” of a tone: “… a musical tone strikes the ear as a perfectly undisturbed, uniform sound which remains unaltered as long as it exists, and it K. Siedenburg et al.7 presents no alternation of various kinds of constituents” (Helmholtz 1877, p. 7–8). By assuming completely stationary sounds, his notion of tone color was indeed a strong simplifcation of what is understood as timbre today. Most obviously, attack and decay transients are not considered by this approach. Helmholtz was quite aware of this fact: “When we speak in what follows of a musical quality of tone, we shall disregard these peculiarities of beginning and ending, and confine our attention to the peculiarities of the musical tone which continues uniformly” (Helmholtz 1877, p. 67). This means that Helmholtz’s approach to timbre had its limitations (cf., Kursell 2013). 1.2.2 Timbre Acoustics, Perception, and Cognition by Kai Siedenburg, Charalampos Saitis, Stephen McAdams, Arthur N. Popper, Richard R. Fay Page 7 Helmholtz was conscious in his definition of timbre that he must put aside some characteristics very fundamental but secondary for his purely mathematical approach with Fourier series... But in the modern more complete definition of timbre what was putting aside is at the core center of the timbre interdisciplinary studies.... Now for your understanding read this definition of timbre in wikipedia, a very elementary and simplified one and try to distinguish clearly WHY timbre cannot be reduce to frequency response ONLY... Range between tonal and noiselike character Spectral envelope Time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR, which stands for "attack, decay, sustain, release") Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation) Prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration A clue: the mechanism to produce and perceive "timbre" is not reducible to pure linear mechanic only,nor to the body/gesture of the singer or to the microdynamic gesture of the musician, neither to simply acoustic perception and acoustic variable and changing conditions but also implied changes in the brain subject and his precise listening specific history ... When a singer produce a tone there is way more factors at play than frequencies response only....It is the same thing for an audiophile recreating for himself in a specific room with specific gear the timbre experience and perception for himself....It is the same thing for speech sound recognition....Impossible to reduce this complex problerm to frequency response..... «For an idiot using all the times a hammer all is nails, and sometimes even for a wise man, if the hammer is near his hands, all he see is nails»-Anonymus Smith «My hammer was the only nail i had»-Groucho Marx |
Mahgister: with all due respect, I didn’t ask you to explain the normal meaning of timbre, with which I am familiar.I apologize for my first answer to you first...Here there are many useless arguing and personal attack then sometimes i react too speedily or too rudely.... I am sorry.... Second- i am not a "scientist" especially not an acoustician... Third- i only wanted to use my audio system at his best....Some years ago and with no big money in my pocket then upgrading cannot do for me what it did for many in the chasing tail race... Four-I discovered in an incremental sets of listening experiments 2 years ago that "tuning" a system could be way more important than the system itself or his price...I called that improving by controls the 3 working embeddings dimensions of any system... I created this concept to clarify a situation obscured by electronic market engineering and by "tweaks" as secondary addition ONLY to a system and often equated to snake oil or placebos... It may be the case for many but not for all.... And my listening methods use anyway homemade devices at low cost, then i dont sell or recommend any product.... I recommend instead to pay attention to these 3 working dimensions... Five- The benchmmark ears test for listening experiments is voice or instrumental naturalness of timbre.... Why? because it is by far the more complex factor to recreate.... Why? There is 2 reasons, the first is that you can recreate imaging in a relatively good manner with playing with acoustical factors .... But you cannot recreate timbre with only playing with acoustical factors linked to acoustic noise floor and timing only in many cases...You must also play with tools to decrease the mechanical and electrical noise floor also of the room/house/ gear... And the acoustical factors needed to be put in place for the recreation of the timbre experience are more complex than in the case of imaging.... And also this is the second reason, the conceptual mathematical modelling of the timbre constituting factors are way more acoustically complex than for example imaging comcept... In audio and in acoustic .... Six- i discover the complexity of the experience of timbre and the necessary multudisciplinary approach ne cessary to define it through recent articles and books...In audio thread it seems people, except pro musician dont even understand the concept sometimes... Seven- any acoustician will do a better job than me to define conceptually "timbre".... The musician frogman here send posts that illustrate to me that ANY musician must perceive timbre correctly and be conscious of the complexities linked to the conditions that make possible this perception...This is for sure... Why then audiophile ignore it and others players? My take for a partial answer to this question is this : I used the timbre experience concept here when i realized that many people erroneously underestimated the role that acoustic settings and controls plays in audiophile experience, hypnotised by other useless debate like tube/S.S., vinyl/ digital , branded name high quality product/versus mid fi quality product, etc all debates motivated by engineeriong design market not by acoustic nor science anyway.... Then people talks about anything except the fundamental question: Is my audio system able to give a natural timbre experience in my specific room with these specific pieces of gear? If not, why? My answers to this was given with my listening experiments in my own room with my gear and are about the controls of the 3 working embedding dimensions related to any audio system potential optimal working anyway... My solutions are NOT always practical for everyone nor esthetically attractive.... But my goal was not selling products, my goal was achieving Hi FI experience at very low cost for me first, and after that suggesting here some idea and concepts which may be useful or not in some case... The most important asset for my audiophile experience was not the quality of my gear, which is only average and good tough, it was the fact that i was able to enjoy the luxury of owning a room that could be only dedicated to my audio experiments... I realized that i have not answer really your question... What is timbre? Timbre is the factor that make each of us able to distinguish with the same musical tone the playing of any different instruments very precisely.... If you listen a brass orchestra if your audio system is not good all hues and colors linked to the microdynamics of the playing gesture of the musician will be lost.... Lost also the distinctive tonal voice of each instrument related to his physical and materials properties constitution and his own vibrating microdynamics... This is why tonal timbre perception is key to audiophile experience... I will not enter to the details of the mathematical modelling of timbre in acoustic science but they are very complex....I beging only to read about that weeks ago because of heated debate here where i realized some people undersetimated totally the timbre experience in music. audio and acoustic in general... These 3 fields are different fields completely by the way and each has his own perspective about the timbre concept... My deepest respect and best wishes to you.... |
To illustrate my point from my last posts here about "imaging" and the link between imaging and room acoustic....I copy some text from a book of Toole and some paper research from japan scientists who wrote something very interesting in 2008 about The law of the first wave front and the early and late reflections in room and the way a listener live the experience of localization of a source or the experience of being surround by sound... You will remark that it is not question here of the speakers drivers type and characteristic but ONLY of acoustical elementary law...The reason is simple imaging is fundamentally an acoustic phenomenon not a speakers driver phenomenon, even if drivers types can play a part for sure...And it is not the recording technique and concepts that make us able to recreate imaging, it is basic acoustical law. Period. It is the acoustician field not the recording engineer field first.... That was my point from the start....Time and timing between ears and the speakers/room acoustic relation are fundamental in the experience of imaging... Give me any speakers i will make it imaging well modulo the right acoustic controls of the room... I will use passive materials treatment but also ACTIVE Helmholtz pressurized tubes and pipes, different resonators and others devices i will not name to start a new debate.... All that will also modify the relation of the frequencies waves intensities or amplitudes in the room... I am not a scientist at all.... But i know what i did in my room for gaining imaging at my 2 listening positions.......And natural timbre perception....The second experience is way more difficult to recreate and encompass than the first one... Forget branded name speakers company concentrate on live acoustic law if you want to understand imaging..... And there is no reflexion about BITS recording technique here in these text nor DRIVERS speakers debate names naming in these texts...... 😁 And to conclude i will repeat here that the TIMBRE experience is more difficult to recreate in a small room than only some imaging.....Timbre experience is the benchmark test to know if an audio system is good or not.... Not imaging....Not bass perception... Tonal instrumental or voice TIMBRE perception..... In audio in the past, the terms Haas effect and law of the first wavefront were used to identify this effect, but current scientifi c work has settled on the other original term, precedence effect. Whatever it is called, it describes the well-known phenomenon wherein the fi rst arrived sound, normally the direct sound from a source, dominates our impression of where sound is coming from. Within a time interval often called the “fusion zone,” we are not aware of reflected sounds that arrive from other directions as separate spatial events. All of the sound appears to come from the direction of the first arrival. Sounds that arrive later than the fusion interval may be perceived as spatially separated auditory images, coexisting with the direct sound, but the direct sound is still perceptually dominant. At very long delays, the secondary images are perceived as echoes, separated in time as well as direction. The literature is not consistent in language, with the word echo often being used to describe a delayed sound that is not perceived as being separate in either direction or time.Haas was not the first person to observe the primacy of the first arrivedsound so far as localization in rooms is concerned. Sound Reproduction The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms Floyd Toole Chap.6 P.73 In 1989, Morimoto and Maekawa demonstrated that spatial impression comprises at least two components and that a listener can discriminate between them [1]. One is auditory source width (ASW) which is defined as the width of a sound image fused temporally and spatially with direct sound image, and the other is listener envelopment (LEV) which is defined as the degree of fullness of sound images around the listener, excluding a sound image composing ASW. In the field of room acoustics, it is popular belief that the early and late reflections contribute to auditory source width (ASW) and listener envelopment (LEV), respectively. However, some papers have demonstrated results not necessarily in agreement with the belief. In this paper, a hypothesis is proposed to clarify the essentials of ASW and LEV from point of view of the auditory phenomenon. The hypothesis is that the components of reflections under and beyond the upper limit of validity for the law of the first wavefront contribute to ASW and LEV, respectively. Two experiments were performed to evaluate the hypothesis. In the first experiment, the results showed directly that the components of reflections under the upper limit of validity for the law contribute to ASW. In the second experiment, four kinds of threshold were measured to evaluate the relation between the effect and LEV: image-splitting which corresponds to the upper limit of validity for the law, LEV, reverberation perception, and reverberation disturbance. The results showed that the threshold of image-splitting coincides with the that of LEV. This suggests that the components of reflections beyond the upper limit of validity for the law contribute to LEV. In conclusion, it seems that the results of experiments shown in this paper favor the hypothesis. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223804282_The_relation_between_spatial_impression_and_the_l... |
I do know what ’timbre’ means in music, but I confess I have absolutely no clue what that word means in the context it’s being used here.Try wiki read it 2 times.... You will at least understand the complexity of the acoustical mathematical modeling of the problem and understand why without acoustic right settings in a room timbre sound perception is degraded... |
Speakers play a role, their internal design for sure....Their relative electrical audio synchronisation also... But take relatively good speakers and the imaging will magically appear with the right acoustical settings, location in the room et their relative positions...Decreasing electrical noise and mechanical noise will help also but will be secondary to acoustic settings... We NEVER hear the sound directly from the speakers ONLY and MAINLY we listen to the speakers/room....EVEN in near listening....In ANY small room.... It was my experience with imaging in my room which is now very good in my 2 listening locations....Not so at all before acoustical controls...My speakers are averagely good, it was not their superlative precise design that was creating imaging here.... But the room/speakers link and interactions did ALL my work.... For sure i am NOT at all competent nor an engineer....An attentive listener..... |
TIME is arrival time. Ignoring Xover phase, a flat baffle box with a 8" woofer and dome tweeter has a driver arrival delta of about 500µS or about 2kHz. In a 2 way system, the kick beater will arrive ahead of the fundamental. In a multi woofer system, the direct arrival is at multiple times, PLUS first reflections varying in both time and intensity. Imaging suffers.Very clear and very right....Thank you for the post.... Timbre recording technique induce a trade-off that exclude perfect reproduction, and ask for some acoustic room conditions also for his recreation....It was more difficult in my experience to create acoustic condition for naturalness of timbre envelope perception in my room than some imaging...But if someone enjoy very natural timbre perception in his room i am sure that his imaging will be very good....i am not a scientist, i speak only by my experience and wait to be corrected if this is the case.... Imaging is NOT level (volume). Imaging is when the speakers disappear and one can walk into the stage! Most systems fail miserably. Ditto rooms.I am happy to say that i enjoy this phenomena in my room... But i must add that if some systems fails miserably, it is probably most of the time, with relatively good design audio system and speakers, it is i said probably most of the times because the acoustical settings of the room is not adequate and in synergy with the acoustical properties of the speakers....It was my case .... My best to you.... |
Yep, and a good sounding room will often gets people off the merry go round of gear buying and trading.It is what happened to me....Any upgrade, even some good one i dream about, seems to me now a bit ridiculous like useless spending of money for some improvement, yes, but no more comparable to what my acoustics controls and treatment were, huge S.Q. increase, then.... Most well chosen good gear, the right speakers for the right room for sure, will create miracles only with acoustical embeddings treatment and controls.... Not so much without any in most room..... I am with you about that 100%.... My best wishes to you..... |
I agree that if you arrange the speaker and room to obtain a wide area with some stereo imaging, you will compromise the imaging at the ideal spot in that area. If you utilize the extreme toe-in described above to trade off cues for loudness against early and late timing of arrival, you are presenting the ear/brain with conflicting cues that may may create a hazy picture or maybe fatiguing to resolve. Also, location is not merely determined by timing and intensity of the signal. When sound arrives at your head it hits both ears, and with some of the sound hitting one side diffracting around the head to also hit the other side. This changes timing, phase and the spectral content (frequency response) and these are also cues that the brain detects. Thanks this is very well said and explain my point about the necessary acoustical settings in the imaging perception....This is also my exact experience in setting my room for imaging... I will only add here what i said before, reaching better timbre perception ask for more precise or complex tuning than just imaging... The timbre"envelope" is a complex experience to recreate...It is the reason why i think audiophile must put their attention on the "timbre" perception...It is also more difficult to assess the presence of naturalness of "timbre" than just passing a test to assess the presence of imaging.... For imaging the test is about spatial experience, not for timbre perception... Then in my experience,one encompass the other in the sets of acousticals precise controls and treatment we must set in place... By the way i succeeded to create a good imaging for 2 spots in my room.... The better for imaging is near field at 3 feet from speakers... The better for timbre perception is regular listening in my room at 8 feet from speakers...But the 2 locations are very good even if very different from one another, very good on imaging and timbre account...I cannot chose one over the other.... 😊 In nearfield it is so good imaging with a good timbre, i trash my 7 headphones in a drawer....In regular position the timbre is so natural with a good imaging, i decide to use no more any headphones.... Nearfield best any headphone experience i had; regular position of listening is more akin to a lived event and exceed my headphones possibilities.... I begin my audio journey 7 years ago with headphones including 2 Stax,one hybrid, 2 magneplanars, 2 dynamics one, because the speakers gear was not on par at all with them....Even my actual speakers bought before my 2 years acoustical room settings journey weere not at all so refine like they are now......Then it was acoustical controls the key not my choice of speakers..... I was prefering hedphones 2 years ago, it is the complete opposite now....😁😊😎😊 Acoustic controls could often be, or generally, more powerful impact than the upgrade of any piece of gear....Imagine the controls over the 3 embeddings working dimensions together.... My best to you |
I was guessing you are right, guessing that changing my room controls will give me a timbre and imaging experience.... My guess was right i have them now without changing the gear nor buying any tweaks... It is my my guess about the way i could install a better noise controls in the mechanical,electrical and acoustical working embeddings dimensions of my system that gives me my imaging and timbre experience... But for the "latching onto one thing" remember that i only suggest after my guessing experiments and experience that a better perception of timbre or imaging ask for more than optimal recording tecnique.... I own the same files than you....If not the same i can buy them.... But to be able to enjoy natural timbre perception and imaging i needed way more than only a good source.... My guessing was that i need an optimal noise controls especially in the acoustic dimensions... I dont pretend to anything....But you have never proved me wrong and when some pro musician was approving me about timbre concept you called him a liar... I just this evening read your post where you called another engineer wrong...About phase and time... I am not competent you are right to judge and give the final answer... But being arrogant with you like you are with others , i replied and give my guessing experience born from my own experiments in my own room... Phase and time of sound waves in a room matters for imaging perception not only the bits in the source sorry... I apologize to be arrogant with you .... I will wait for your own apology to others.... By the way it is the sum total of my homemade "toys" that give me my Hi-Fi experience, not any costly upgrade nor anything sold like tweaks... Then how in the world is it possible? my answer was controls in mechanical electrical and acoustical embeddings...I listen with my ears open.... I was arrogant with you yes but perhaps not completely nuts... |
Ok i give you something.... I am not competent for sure.... I am only an audiophile experimenting.... But explain to me how in the world we dont need a room? Nevermind the recording technique used we need A ROOM not only a source... Do you think we dont need timing and phase also for the acoustical waves in the room to optimize image and timbre perception also ? With the same gear, the same source, i never had imaging and timbre....NEVER .... I worked the acoustical settings for months and the other noise sources and now i have plenty of the 2.... Then...... The room acoustic is central in audio and it is not a sum of bits.... I am perhaps totally wrong i will admit it ..... Explain that to me..... And about my arrogance remember that my arrogance was an answering to your own about turntable users and other audiophiles....I admit my arrogance with you for sure you are right about that.... Admit your own arrogance....i will not name all the others you call liars or wrong.... By the way the question is not only about the way spatial positioning is recorded but also about HOW we recreate it in the room .... Even if the information of the spatial positioning is recorded rightfully in the source how can we enjoy it in a BAD room? I never enjoy it like i said BEFORE i installed my acoustic controls; same gear but different acoustical setting in my room and i now have natural timbre and imaging why? It is not the BITS in the source that has changed, it the the timing and phase of the sound waves in my room that has changed (the electrical and mechanical noise were also decreased)... Mahgister you don’t appear to have any idea of how recording works, or how spatial positioning is communicated in recorded music |
As a recording engineer I am blown away you would claim this. This is totally not true. Timing is true in the live music world, but for playback, most of our imaging with the exception of specific dual microphone setups rarely used, imaging is primarily volume, and phase does not play into it, not even one little bit as long as the phase response is consistent on each channel. It is incredible that you make the same mistake about imaging than about the timbre concept not knowing that it is necessary to take into account the acoustical settings of the room to recreate the timbre "envelope" perception rightfully... For imaging, the distance between 2 speakers must be optimal at a precise critical point, and their location in the room will also play a role, to create a center image ... Then this distance between the speakers would need some precise room acoustic settings to work optimally in timing and phase.... You cannot replace acoustic....By a better files or recording technology....With an A.I. we will be able but it is not the actual matter of this thread.... What we hears dont come from the speakers, it come from the speakers modified by the room acoustical settings.....All information in the world in a digital files or on some vinyl cannot be recreated in a bad room.... Even if all the information of the source could be perfect...And it is never neither perfect nor complete anyway....We need acoustic not only bits.... Imaging is not a phenomenon reducible entirely to recording technique it is also for the listener a live musical event, then an event where acoustic play his part....It is the result of the acoustic sum of the room and the system....It is the same conditions for the timbre experience recreation for the listener , it is the result of the sum of the room and the system...No recording technique can REPRODUCE perfectly the original timbre event...we need the settings of the room acoustic to recreate it optimally... Ok i am not an engineer only an average audiophile....But it is my experience and experiments.... |
Frequency response beyond a certain point is irrelevant. Imaging is about PHASE and TIME. Most systems are appalling on those parameters.It is not my gear and his "superiority" over other brand that give me my imaging.... It is my acoustic settings and controls in my room...With also some controls over electrical grid noise and over mechanical noise... But the main cause is acoustical controls... I bet hardly any Audiogon commenters set things up with DSP and bi or tri amping and have no clue.Audio thread are filled with electronic design market mythology, not by acoustical laws and subtleties.... People not knowing acoustic use partial electronic solutions that could be useful as tool if they were not used replacing acoustic itself by limited programs... A room is not a passive set of walls nor for the speakers neither for the ears..... I am not a scientist just an average guy able to give to himself at low cost audiophile experience without buying anything....The opposite experience to all audio thread mythology..... The question is not to know if your system is good or the best.... The question is how do we install our actual system optimally in his 3 working embeddings dimensions... The most important one being the acoustical one....No upgrade are most of the times necessary.....Contrary to all audio market conditioning... |
Image specificity in the extreme doesn’t exist in a live acoustic performance, and yet it’s a devoured trait in audiophilia.Very important observation....Thanks.... Which observation make me able to say that imaging is important soundwise but LESS difficult to obtain than natural timbre perception in an acoustic settings which perception and experience are the benchmark test of not only sound perception in audio but also of musical perception.... Audio is important but music surpass it, including it .... Electronic is important but acoustic surpass it making it shine or not.... It is MY experience for sure....But the experience of any musician i suppose.... Then the main central concept is no much mainly the "sweet spot" but more the dynamical "envelope " of the sound... One concept is more deep and englobe the other in a SMALL room and this subordination is understood well by any small room acoustic experiments which demonstrate that it is more difficult and ask for more fine tuning of the parameters controls to recreate the timbre dynamical envelope over some imaging .... If this is true,we could begin to understand WHY we never listen to speakers ONLY in a small room, but to the room itself united with the speakers... If this is true we could begin to understand why the room could be conceptualize not like a passive set of walls but like an ACTIVATED and ACTIVE participant filled with variable potential pressures zones able to participate and recreate the timbre perception.... «There exist a hierarchy of concepts and of their function. It means that my ass is not less important than my head but serves it, not the opposite»-Groucho Marx «Is it true for the hierarchy of angels too?»-Harpo Marx «You bet!»-Chico Marx «Is this means that economy is the ass and politic the head?»-Gummo Marx «Are you a communist?»-Zeppo Marx |
Acoustic is the most misunderstood subject in all audio by audiophiles and ordinary people alike...They all think that the gear magically give the sound almost by itself out of the room acoustic almost and at best "tweaks" are added....Pricier the gear and tweak better it is for sound... This is the market myth.... The room is not first a sum of 6 walls surfaces which passively reflect /absorb/diffuse sound waves... The room is and could be ACTIVELY an heteregenuous pressurized set of air engines...Helmholtz science here... Imaging and soundstage are important features of audio experience, but the benchmark of musical experience with an audio system is musical TIMBRE perception... You can have a apparently relatively good imaging and soundstage without a natural timbre experience... You cannot have a natural timbre experience without a good imaging and soundstage associated with it... This is a big distinction....It is my conclusion after my own experiments ....And reading some facts about TIMBRE perception .... |
Anyway most speakers at any price are so bad without a controlled room that most dont even know what they miss from their own speakers...They called audiophile experience something which is costly.... 😁 Acoustic is so powerful and virtually absent of audio threads compared to electronic.... Save for bass traps or some passive material treatments at best .... And described falsely as non necessary in near listening...Total ignorance of acoustic here... The sound waves cross my 13 feet room near 80 times for 1 second...The air’s room is like a rigid tense set of strings for the ears....I can change and i had changed the S.Q. of my room with the few inches shortening of an ordinary straw... This is how subtle and powerful room acoustic is.... It is amazing....I learned that by experiments....Nothing prepare me for this, reading audio reviews for years...I dont read them at all now...Upgrading being a ridiculous obsession of the past for me... Then wide spot or not, it is more relaxing listening a real musical natural instrumental timbre....Imaging without good timbre is like making love at best with condom or at worst clothed.... I think i just stir the pot a bit here..... Truth is a hard stick for stirring any pot anyway and better than half truth.... Then never mind the characteristic of the speakers, you must think with the room synergy with them... The speakers give almost NO sound from itself alone, almost all is coming from the walls and pressured interacting zones of the room and this is true for all types of speakers diffusion.... Even in near listening...Helmholtz science... I never read that in audio thread why? Consumer market electronic design conditioning..... It is not acoustician that wrote about audio it is electronic engineers mostly... Alas! If it has been otherwise i would not have lost money and years in upgrading electronics or dreaming to do it... 😂😁😊 I will never upgrade my 500 bucks system thanks to Helmholtz....Why? The piano fill my room with his natural timbre....And no it does not come from my specific very good branded name speakers, dac or amplifier choices mostly .... It comes from my controls over workings embeddings dimensions, acoustic first and last.... |
I am reminded of listening to the Magico S1 Mk II speakers. While not flawless one thing they do exceptionally well is, in a good room, provide a very good, stable stereo image across almost any reasonable listening location.I just learn that my low cost 50 dollars used Mission Cyrus 781 give me something like Magico in my room... 😁😊😎😎 Like the OP i think a wide large sweet spot is more relaxing indeed....Even if any "large" spot is anyway limited by acoustic laws... |
With acoustic controls we can accommodate ANY speakers easily in the appropriate room for sure... Sometimes even in a less appropriate one... For an acoustician the speakers type is less important than the room geometry and topology and content.... What we bought is less important than the way we embed it in our room..... |
Even a system that is defined as having a "wide" sweet spot will still sound it’s very best in only one location. You can’t change physics.Physics is more large than you think.... We can have 2 ideal listening spots in some room geometry....With the appropriate acoustical embeddings controls... I know i have it.... But the wideness of each spot is limited for sure and precisely located.... To create it we must use not only passive material treatment methods but also Helmholtz more refine pressurized engines called Helmholtz bottles to make the room activated and no more only a set of passive reflecting absorbing walls....I use bottles but more tubes and more pipes....This greatly help to vindicate the constraint of my room geometry in the bass domain and in the imaging domain EVEN in nearfield... When people say that nearfield help to liberate us from the acoustical constraint of the small room it is not true at all in my experience... Acoustic is more complex than what customers buying bass traps think about.... |
I enjoy 2 optimal listening spots in my 13 feet square listening room (8 1/2 feet high) One i call near listening my head being at 3 feet between the speakers on my desk 5 feet from the front wall.... Listening here is better than with any of my 7 headphones....I put them definitively in a drawer... Other location being near 8 feet from the speakers, 5 feet behind the back wall then, regular listening position, and here the less detailed sounds are replaced by a more bass more natural event, no more like headphone but resembling a lived event... I like the 2 positions much,unable to prefer one over the other... Save for my embeddings mechanical electrical and acoustical controls devices, i attibute this 2 ideal position to the fact that my 2 positions are exactly in my room in the golden ratio: 1.6 or 5 feet from the front wall for the seating chair of my desk or 5 feet from the backwall in my extended chair in regular position.... 8 divided by 5=1,6 I must say that for me geometry is music for the deaf...... |