In Reply to: RE: A list of sonic properties "un-measurable" (or, not easily measured)? posted by stehno on July 30, 2014 at 01:54:03:
Most would agree with that basic sentiment, I think. There are things fundamentally wrong with record playback and we all want to find out exactly what it is.To me, one of the strangest things about record playback is that moments of glory really do exist. Every once in a while, the realism of my system startles me and I'm left scratching my balls in wonder. The man wakes up for a few seconds, only to slide back into sleep again. What do I believe is happening? I believe that the dispersion characteristics of my speakers are matching those of real instruments more closely than usual during those special moments.
Maybe it's my optimistic nature, but my hope has always been that the primary difference between live music and recorded music has to do with way the sound is dispersed into the room. I'm sure that there are other major problems as well, but to my mind this is one of the more glaring problems we face in record playback. We know that many musical instruments disperse sound much differently than loudspeakers do. Some loudspeakers come slightly closer than others to mimicking the dispersion characteristics of real instruments but, as far as my ears can tell, the differences between live and recorded playback are pretty significant ones.
In the future, I think that headphone systems will be the first types of systems to crack the dispersion problem. It's not that headphones are intrinsically better than loudspeakers, it's just that the headphone environment is easier to control. And so, as headphones systems become more and more sophisticated I expect that we'll see some ear-popping gains in realism.
I hope that I'm not wrong about this because I really want to see something change.
Edits: 07/30/14 07/30/14 07/30/14
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Follow Ups
- RE: "Something catastrophic is occurring" - genungo 03:33:50 07/30/14 (17)
- Binaural recordings - Brendan 04:50:23 07/31/14 (7)
- Binaural recordings... and much, much more! - genungo 06:32:00 07/31/14 (6)
- RE: Binaural recordings... and much, much more! - Brendan 18:57:17 07/31/14 (1)
- Going touchy-feely with headphones - genungo 20:36:37 07/31/14 (0)
- RE: Binaural recordings... and much, much more! - b.l.zeebub 11:36:36 07/31/14 (3)
- what im wondering....... - Brendan 22:29:29 07/31/14 (1)
- RE: what im wondering....... - genungo 04:11:33 08/01/14 (0)
- RE: Binaural recordings - genungo 12:50:37 07/31/14 (0)
- RE: "Something catastrophic is occurring" - stehno 17:48:08 07/30/14 (8)
- I think I know what you mean... - genungo 18:33:35 07/30/14 (7)
- RE: I think I know what you mean... - stehno 01:19:09 07/31/14 (6)
- RE: I think I know what you mean... - middleground 04:19:26 07/31/14 (1)
- Amen. - rick_m 07:18:06 07/31/14 (0)
- RE: "well-trained ears" - genungo 02:57:16 07/31/14 (3)
- RE: "well-trained ears" - stehno 19:11:09 07/31/14 (1)
- So then... - genungo 20:46:37 07/31/14 (0)
- RE: "well-trained ears" - middleground 04:20:24 07/31/14 (0)