@ddd1 You certainly point our one of the often overlooked challenges, miking. Got to first collect the sound before one can even think about reproducing it. I'm sure we'll get there. I wonder what the arguments will be about in Audiogon a hundred years from now. I think we can assume the power cord debate will never be settled
Is the seated-centered solo listening to music a dated tech?
Is the seated-centered solo listening to music a dated tech? Is the design of modern loudspeakers that facilitates stereo wrong? Are we surfing a compromised tech please recall early 3 channel was superior they used stereo because it was a compromise? I have worked with a research group that used MRIs and sound to light up areas of catatonic people’s brains the research showed that higher quality playback lit up more areas but that stereo caused the brain to work harder is this a source of listening fatigue? After all, we are processing 2 unnatural sources that trick the mind into perceiving a sound field wouldn’t it be better to just have a sound field that actually existed? Stereo is a unnatrual way to listen to music its something that sound doesn’t do. Real music floods a space in all directions stereo design requires beaming and narrow dispersion to form an image is this just wrong? Mono had benefits over stereo modern loudspeaker design can make one speaker with a 360d radiation pattern that can form a soundstage for listeners almost anywhere in a room yet we still sit mostly alone seated dead center not wanting to move much because the image collapses just all seems wrong to me today. The more I experiment with non-traditional sound reproduction the more right it feels to me and those hearing it. Music should exist in a real space not a narrow sliver of it.
Showing 5 responses by surfcat
If I correctly understand what you're saying, JohnK, then, yeah. I can easily imagine systems in the future comprised of 30 or 40 or more "sound generating devices" spread around the periphery of a space, maybe wall and/or ceiling mounted. They'll be of some future technology that energizes the air to create the compression/rarefaction that is sound without the need for a moving mass driver. The amplification electronics will precisely measure and deliver to each device the exact amount of energy and frequency to create real performance presence. I'm not being glib as I don't doubt we'll get there and when we do people will look back at our chunky speakers with their moving diaphragms and dumb amps and pity us and wonder why we'd even try to reproduce music that way. But we're not there yet. Your point, though, is well taken. Realistically there's no way two or three or 5 sources of sound can precisely and accurately pull it off. But accurate and engaging are not necessarily the same thing so at least we can go for musically engaging while we wait for the future to arrive. (of course tomorrow never comes, but we all know that) |
@redlenses03, I'm not talking about home theater, at least not as we envision it today but, rather, a truly transformative evolution in the collection and reproduced presentation of audio information that will undoubtedly happen given enough time and technological advancement. We didn't always have stereo. Adding separate low frequency devices already takes us out of the purely 2 speaker configuration to sometimes great benefit. I also absolutely agree that a really good home theater audio set up is at best a mediocre to poor music audio system. They may both like water, but one is fish and one is a duck. quack quack |
@soix BACCH is dangerously interesting. I know that many will reject it as interfering with pure reproduction, and they are not wrong. But DSP is seriously impressive tech. As we know, every component, every circuit or length of wire has a signature it adds. What we often forget is every feature of the room also adds it's signature to the sound and that's where DSP can be so powerful. I've heard it in the Kef LS50W where the onboard DSP was used to account for the speakers being placed on an open shelf and the result was very surprising. If I hadn't seen them I'd have assumed they were appropriately placed in the room, away from the back wall. Stage depth of lateral projection were very good for such little rascals. |