How important is it for you to attain a holographic image?

The only way you can get everything you want in a speaker is to do it yourself. While that was impossible for me to do alone, I discovered a crossover design engineer who could help me. He was about as eccentric as anyone I have ever encountered.

Since I’m a do it yourself technician, I was shopping at a speaker store that sold high quality wire of all compositions, and any kind of drivers that you wanted. Me and the owner had become quite well acquainted, and I told him about my new project. That’s when he told me about his new engineer that he would introduce me to if he was in. (if he’s your engineer, why don’t you know whether or not he’s in)?

This is where things really got interesting. The owner took me to the room where the engineer was working; it was a darkened room where the engineer was peering into a computer screen that had two solid colored, red and green, geometric figures with numbers on them that he was moving around on a screen. (how can you have pictures of a solid cone and sphere on a flat screen?)

After I was introduced, he said "Hi", just barely turning around, and went back to moving his figures with the numbers on them around the screen.

That’s when I realized he wasn’t the talkative kind, and I went to blabbing about what I wanted. I had read every thing I could find about "crossovers" in the library, In "Audio" magazine, in "Stereo Review", in the UK magazines, and in "Stereophile".

I went on and on while I assumed he was listening, but he didn’t give much indication that he was. I told him Theil was the closest speaker I had auditioned that I could use as an example, but I wanted to also incorporate an AMT driver. That’s when he responded (at last I knew he had listened)

"That’s not going to be easy. You say you want a 3 way with a 12 inch woofer and a 6 inch midrange with a AMT tweeter. Come back in two weeks".

The owner said, "I think he likes you", when I left. How he could tell, I don’t know; maybe it was because I had communicated that I knew something about crossovers.

After two weeks, he showed me his drawing on paper. The owner told me he would have the crossover together in two or three weeks. When I returned, there it was; 3 separate crossovers; one for the tweeter, one for the midrange, and one for the woofer; a total of 6 crossovers, one for each driver in two speakers.

This is the way it went; They gave me the parts, and it was up to me to put them together; but I knew his crossover would be magic.

After I built a cabinet, put it all together and listened; I went back and told the engineer about something I thought should be changed. He told me he would crack my knuckles if I changed anything, and he wasn’t smiling. If his convictions were that strong, I wasn’t about to change anything.

That was sometime in 1990, and since then, I have switched to the highest quality parts, plus I don’t know how many modifications to the cabinet; but I have not changed one single value of any part, and I couldn’t be happier.

Just a couple thoughts on the holographic image discussion.  No doubt that the better the holographic image, the more likely that the home listening experience will improve. 

A few things I've noticed from attending live events are that when you sit front row center, you easily perceive width but depth and height seem to be somewhat compressed..in other words, if the singer is 20' in front of the drummer, you don't sense 20' of depth.  And if the drummer is on a 5 foot elevated platform, you probably don't sense the whole five feet.

Therefore, I want my system to produce width at least 3 feet beyond the speakers, realistic height (4-6'), some depth and a strong center image when appropriate.  My system is 2.1..with towers running full range and a 15" sealed sub coming in below 45hz....turn off the sub and the whole hologram colapses inward substantially.

And as mentioned in a prior thread...if the tone, texture and dynamics aren't right, the hologram won't carry the day!!

It just goes to show not everyone’s on the same page about this, although some try to narrow it to one view only.

@rvpiano, yes but it’s far too complicated to narrow down to just one view. At least for us audiophiles.

I do think that in these download times it should be easier for the recording industry, if they could be bothered, to deliver multiple recordings with little extra cost.

That way we could chose to buy uncompressed over compressed or those made with a more natural microphone position if we want that live, ’you are there’ feeling, or original remaster over remix etc.

The industry however seems to be against live recording and instead obsessed with correctness of performance via overdubs and innumerable takes. Glenn Gould was an early fan of this new technology and the opportunity to record a perfect performance, at least from the performers perspective.

Since there’s a huge difference in piano sound with the microphone positioning (eg placed under the lid as opposed to a more natural distance, same for guitars/drums etc) it follows that most recordings are a concoction dreamt up by the artists and producer rather than any attempt to capture a live performance. Multi-tracking has many uses but also a lot to answer for.

Perhaps if we’re looking for holographic sound we could begin by compiling a database of recordings that were made with a microphone perspective of the listener sitting in the audience rather than a slapdash conglomeration of numerous immaculately recorded audio tracks piled on top of each other.

I've never seen a record with "holographic image stamped on it".  I've never bought a record specifically for "holographic image"  with out consideration for the music.

As much as I enjoy it when it occurs, everything is still about the music.  Although most of us want our rigs to be able to produce this when it's on a record,  we buy records for the music we like, not for holographic image.  That's like only buying records for excessive bass.

Most of us realize the "relativity" of all the elements being discussed.