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In Reply to: RE: Julian Hirsch at least... posted by mkuller on March 03, 2011 at 15:25:28
The concept of the sound stage had, I think, a huge positive effect on speaker design. Before HP called attention to it, we treated stereo as essentially a lateral phenomenon, despite the fact that the enhanced reproduction of depth is discussed in Blumlein's original patent. Such imaging as occurred was almost accidental, what with enclosure diffraction, asymmetrical driver arrangements, poor speaker placement and acoustics, and bad polar response. And yet when I first heard it, imperfectly realized in a friend's KLH-9's, I realized right away that an entire dimension had been missing from my listening. There followed a period of frantic and ultimately failed experimentation in an attempt to get my own speakers, a pair of AR-11's, to do the same trick.
So much for the measurements of the time! It was an important lesson in what counts.
Follow Ups:
My old high school audio buddy, J. Peter Moncrief, had a pair of KLH-9's at his apartment in Boston in the 60's and I was amazed at the depth. But getting good imaging was nothing new, we used to take our KLH-6's to the chapel and play prerecorded tapes (around 1960). We couldn't get enough volume though to match a large orchestra in this room that would seat several hundred people. But the quiet portions were pretty realistic if you didn't mind tape hiss.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
AFAIK, good imaging did happen, as evidenced by Blumlein's original patent, but it seems to have been a pretty much hit-or-miss affair. Forex, I gather the KLH-6's were symmetrical two-ways, but my AR-11's were asymmetrical -- midrange and tweeter side by side, but not mirror imaged. Which caused problems with crossover lobes, too, something that wasn't understood until a few years later. Also, I don't think the deleterious effect of early reflections on imaging was understood. Loudspeakers were regularly placed against walls, when pulling them only a few feet out into the room would have improved things dramatically. I also suspect that edge diffraction and symmetry issues are less deleterious at a significant distance, as in a large hall.
As I recall, the tweeters weren't exactly above the woofers when the speakers were sitting on the floor (woofer down). But I could be mistaken about this.
In this time frame (early 60's) KLH had another model that had two tweeters, but I was suspicious of this one (heard it only in the store) as I had already experienced the bad results from running two KLH-6's side by side for each channel, with obvious comb filtering of the treble. That summer three roommates, E. Brad Meyer, Clark Johnsen and myself, had a lot of KLH-6's betweem us. At one point we had a fifth KLH-6 running an A + B center channel. When we were running only three speakers with the center channel we got good imaging on our Mercury Living Presence prerecorded tapes.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Sounds like you had fun! Were the tapes discrete three channel recordings, or the two channel mixes?
They were commercially stereo recordings.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I can assure that my old Kef 104 speakers,which came out in 1973, could do plenty of depth of image, and indeed, there is an LP I have somewhere called "Depth of Image" on Opus 3.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
...before HP no one talked about "soundstaging".
He identified it and gave it a name.
Did Hirsch mention it or imaging?
Ever?
How about the other publications and reviewers you mention circa 1973.
How about you - did you say in 1973 - "Wow, my KEFs image and throw a soundstage like a mfer!"
"...before HP no one talked about "soundstaging".
He identified it and gave it a name."
HP may have given it a name that stuck, but he was hardly the first to identify it. Lot's of us were familiar with the effects possible with a properly set up system and true stereo recordings. We may not have used HP's terms, but we certainly were looking for the same effects and knew how to fine tune a system to achieve them. This goes back to the early 1960's in my experience. And of course, Blumlein was familiar with these effects in the 1930's.
Around 1960 I was first introduced to stereo at a demonstration in the art gallery of Philips Exeter Academy. Brad Meyer was a student there (one year ahead of me) and a friend of Bill Bell who ran a Hi-fi store in Wellesley, Massachusetts called The Music Box. Brad arranged for a demo, and Bill Bell brought a huge Ampex 350-2 and a pair of Klipschorns, plus some microphones. The gallery had a grand piano and some local musicians provided the source material. As I recall, results with the piano were unsatisfactory until Brad's "condenser" microphone, a Neumann, was used instead of the the other microphones, which I believe were dynamics. Another student who heard this demo was J. Peter Moncrief. We noted the depth of field as well as left right positioning in this demonstration.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
...I could tell you stories.
He was managing an apartment building in Berkeley, writing his first couple of booklike editions of IAR when a couple of friends and I started the Northern California Audio Society in 1979.
"...I could tell you stories."
I'm sure you can. :-) Perhaps we'll get together some day and tell our tales...
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
E-Stat just mentioned that, it seems that HP praised their imaging in Issue 8 of TAS. But I don't think that affects my point, which is that before HP came on the scene, speakers weren't designed with the reproduction of depth in mind. Even if they'd wanted to do that, they wouldn't have known how. Clearly, though, Blumlein had observed the phenomenon back in the 30's, so there were speakers that did it.
I watched a demo stereo film made by Blumlein at a SMPTE presentation once, and the imagining was spectacular, even in a commercial movie theater. He was walking around on a stage, and you could hear not just his lateral position, but his distance from you.
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