|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
184.145.165.36
In Reply to: RE: Hhmm... posted by b.l.zeebub on July 19, 2014 at 12:58:31
How can anything go beyond the walls of your room in that fashion, how does that work, objectively speaking that is, as I have no doubt you hear what you hear.
Like your walls all disappear and you are out on the open range or something...acoustically speaking of course.
Follow Ups:
"How can anything go beyond the walls of your room in that fashion, how does that work, objectively speaking that is, as I have no doubt you hear what you hear."
This is why nearfield minimizes the reflections of the room. You sense an image that seems larger than the confines of the room.
Exactly right. It is kind of strange at first, and I don't know if it's "right", but I love it. Free "sonic space". Treatments rein it in, and you get to hear more the space captured in the recording, or designed in.
Not for everyone, some prefer a certain type of "sonic space", but I like to hear what's in the recording, for better or worse.
In case I gave the wrong idea before, this is not at all just sitting closer to your speakers, it was a *lot* of time and work and listening. Could never quite get it when not using a near-field setup.
The best recordings always create the auditory illusion of a greater space than the physical confines of your room. When you close your eyes, you are transported to the size of the recorded space, however large that may be.
That was always the magic of hearing HP's systems at Sea Cliff - the walls of his room disappeared and you found yourself laughing out loud hearing the music in a huge apparent space with a clearly defined width and depth. While that happened more frequently using classical content, there were some pop recordings that created the illusion. I remember first hearing Madonna's Frozen on the big Nola Grand References. The apparent stage width was about forty feet and the hall as deep.
And what is the explanation for this?
How does near field listening create this illusion with only two speakers, how can reducing the effect of the room make the room seem bigger?
With two speakers the room is in front of you, not behind. In addition to the Left vs. Right from the two speakers you get depth information from the instruments based on reverberant sound vs. direct sound and also volume. You can also hear reflections off of walls in the hall, e.g. the back wall of the stage and the side wall and the stage floor. The wet computer between the ears figures out the sounds. This process works best if there are only a few microphones, e.g. one for left channel and one for right channel in a Blumlein pair.
It seems rather hard to believe that someone could call themselves an audiophile and not have experienced the walls disappearing and then sought out an explanation.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Have I ever called myself an "audiophile"? Perish the thought!
This is a forum for audiiophiles. If you are not an audiophile then what are you? You are registered as an (A). However, if you are a music lover and not an audiophile why are you commenting about image depth?
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"How does near field listening create this illusion with only two speakers, how can reducing the effect of the room make the room seem bigger?"
It doesn't make the room itself seem bigger. It removes the room reflections so you sense the venue instead of the room.
So you basically require a recording made in a real acoustic space that has the proper spatial cues and a belief that, somehow, the listening room's reverberations will be subdued enough merely by placement of the speaker pair and the listener's ears in relation to it to have the direct wave swamp out the delayed ones.
Two speakers simply are not enough to make a room disappear, unless that is there is magic involved.
What good stereo reproduction does is to open an acoustic 'window' into the recording venue between your speakers.
All the acoustic cues needed are already present in the recording either because the way it was recorded by careful mic placement or by judicious adding of artificial reverb during the mix process. (Obviously not all recordings are the same in this respect.)Unfortunately this effect is counteracted by visual cues in our rooms. When ears and eyes disagree the brain will practically always side with the eyes, this was determined by the evolutionary pathway humans took ie trusting our eyes over our ears leads to an increased survival rate.
Which presumably is why many believe that free-standing speakers have more spacious soundstaging than wall-mounted speakers. They don't, you just have to close your eyes to remove their input from your brain to give both types of speakers a level playing field.
Edits: 07/20/14
I fully agree with your last paragraph.
Where I disagree though is that there are more terribly dry recordings out there than you can shake a stick at.
Also, every real room that music is played in has an acoustic signature, real concert halls always have pros working overtime to get the acoustics just right and it is a simple fact of life that the acoustics of the room recorded music is played in will be added to whatever ambiant cues are on the record.
I understand full well what good speakers in a good room can do and the fact that when the sound appears really detached from the boxes you get a most pleasing effect, one that I have called for a good while now the "spook factor". What I think is that this can only work when the listener sees the speakers. Hide any kind of good speakers behind a curtain that is acoustically transparent and the sound remains the same but the spook factor is not as, well, spooky.
It's too bad multi-channel systems have never been implemented properly as my long gone one could do things that actually made one beleive he/she had been transported to different size venues.
Generally audiophiles are like believers in homeopathy in that they think a tiny dose of whatever is better than actually taking real medicine.
Near filed listening falls into that category as far as I am concerned, but whatever lifts your dirigeable I guess...
"Two speakers simply are not enough to make a room disappear, unless that is there is magic involved."
You nailed it! There IS magic involved and it's all in your head. The stereo just creates a sound-field that emulates an actual event sufficiently that your ears and brain can accept it as valid input and interpret it correctly.
Every used a view-master or seen a well done 3D movie? Same deal.
Using even more channels can improve the experience, because then your pinnas interference patterns add to the data, but two channels are definitely adequate to mostly make the room go away...
Rick
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: