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In Reply to: RE: Is soundstaging important? posted by Gary on April 19, 2016 at 17:44:02
Most stereo playback offers soundstaging that is far far more precise and defined than what one actually hears in real life music. But we compensate in real life with our eyes. We don't get that with stereo playback. So better perceived soundstaging is anything but accurate. Accurate soundstaging is very blurred.
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"Accurate soundstaging is very blurred."
In a live acoustic living room sized concert with piano, standup bass and cello the soundstaging is not blurred at all.
When you stand in front of two friends talking at the same time the soundstaging is not blurred....is it?
One friend is clearly to the right and one friend is clearly to the left and if the distance is unequal you have no trouble hearing that....right?
I think a true stereo recording can have pretty actuate soundstaging.
Three or four musicians playing acoustic instruments together in a nice sounding room being recorded with one single point stereo microphone gives a believable, natural sounding soundstage.
At the 1987 Stereophile Hi-Fi show in LA John Atkinson gave a very informative demonstration of various recording techniques and their effects on soundstage.
Two ribbon microphones in a Blumlein pair does a pretty credible job.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
A piano in a living room most certainly will be blurred as far as perceived "soundstaging" is concerned. It's worse than blurred. Any decent piano will overload just about any living room and screw the sound up in many ways.
"When you stand in front of two friends talking at the same time the soundstaging is not blurred....is it?"
Actually it is pretty vague depending on the distance you are from the two of them. It seems otherwise due to the McGurk effect.
"One friend is clearly to the right and one friend is clearly to the left and if the distance is unequal you have no trouble hearing that....right?"
Wrong. By sound alone it is not nearly so clear as you might think. Again, the McGurk effect is in play.
"I think a true stereo recording can have pretty actuate soundstaging."
I think it can too. It just won't sound as good as inaccurate soundstaging that is perceptually more precise than accurate soundstaging.
"Three or four musicians playing acoustic instruments together in a nice sounding room being recorded with one single point stereo microphone gives a believable, natural sounding soundstage."
Indeed it can. But it aint even close to accurate. If it were accurate the separation of instruments would be completely blurred and it would be next to impossible to point to exact positioning of the instruments.
" But it aint even close to accurate. If it were accurate the separation of instruments would be completely blurred and it would be next to impossible to point to exact positioning of the instruments. "
If it were accurate it would be as it was. And as it was is the real thing.
You can describe it as "blurred" or whatever, but whatever is was in real time with only your ears (no PA) is what we want in the playback of a recording.
Exaggerated separation is not accurate or what we want.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
the sound stage you **see** and hear together at a live concert is better simulated by a less accurate more precise than real soundstage in audio playback.
"....less accurate "more precise than real"..."
You mean "more exaggerated than real", to make up for not having the visual cues.
Do you ever close your eyes at a live show?
Note;
pre·cise
prəˈsīs/
adjective
adjective: precise
marked by exactness and accuracy of expression or detail.
"precise directions"
synonyms: exact, accurate, correct, specific, detailed, explicit, unambiguous, definite
"precise measurements"
If the recording and playback had precise soundstage it would not be over exaggerated to make up for the lack of visual cues and in your opinion would not be as "good" as one that does.
Whatever.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
I would take issue with precise and accurate being synonyms because in analytical science they are most definitely not the same thing.
A common analogy is throwing darts at a dart board. If the bullseye is the absolute correct value for an analytical measurement then the closer a dart is to that center then the more accurate is that dart. Precision is the measure of variance if many darts are thrown at the dart board. So accuracy would be the absolute closeness to a hypothetical true value and precision would be the overall variance of a collection of values.
What this means is that a collection of values can be precise but not accurate if they are far away from the true value and a set of values can be accurate but imprecise if the mean is close to the true value but the variance is high. OR a set of values can be both accurate and precise if they are both close to the true value and are clustered close together.
In the example above about precise directions, they can be very expicit, very detailed...and totally inaccurate! So, whatever dictionary you pulled this definition from is IMO inaccurate in its definition of the word precise.
A precise soundstage would mean things are tightly grouped in their own space and easy to discern as separate entities but this might not be true to the original arrangement of the musicians and therefore inaccurate. In this case, we would probably prefer a fictitious and precise soundstage over whatever was done in the studio originally as it might not even have been done all at the same time!
Sorry to nit, but as a scientist it is an important distinction to make and the two words are constantly being confused.
nt
"If the recording and playback had precise soundstage it would not be over exaggerated to make up for the lack of visual cues and in your opinion would not be as "good" as one that does."
Nope. aural "imaging" in real life is not as precise as what we get in audio recording and playback. But real life music is perceived to "image" better than it actually does due to the McGurk effect. If playback had the same imaging as real life concerts it would be perceived as inadequate because of the ambiguity of that imaging. Or lack of precision.
It is if you are sitting close to the musicians like the microphones usually are.
But you can see them. That affects what you think you hear when it comes to the directionality of sound.
Yes I got that, which is why you need a string quartet recording to have more accurate and precise sonic localization than the real thing might have so your perception is at least similar to close up at a sighted concert. However, that being said on can still close the eyes and have a clear mental image of where the sound is coming from. Recent Memory plays a role for sure but not entirely.
One effect that cannot be related to sight is the change in distance perception do to perceived loudness of an instrument. A note played soft vs. loud is not the same at a distance and many instruments breathe. Soft sounds at the instrument loud expands like a bubble away from the instrument. Horns really do this but so do violins. The makes localization easier as well.
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