Propeller Head Plaza

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The idea that the

Posted by Presto on May 24, 2012 at 08:50:37:
...acoustic "information" of the venue is captured in such a way that it can be recreated is wrong.

Look, imaging is wonderful. It's fun. It's neato. It's up, down, back side to side, hell last night I had sounds coming from beside me. Must be some phase-related Q-sound type effect. Damned impressive.

But the physics is the physics Tony. You're grounded in physics are you not? Look, if someone is using two mics then they are getting the closet thing to a binaural recording as you can get. Why the fuss about binaural recordings? If the mics don't "hear" the venue (and of course the sounds in it) the way humans do, then it's not going to be anywhere near accurate spacially. Yes, you get the impression there are performers in front of you and off to the left and off to the right and towards the back. These are a result of relative levels between left and right channels, reflections in the roof, phase distortion from the speakers, interaction of speaker polar patterns determined by speaker spacing... distance of speakers to back wall.

If you can change your soundstage by purchasing new speakers or just moving them about the room, how can one then say what accurate is? If the mic-to-mic distance on a two-mic soundstage changes soundstage attributes, then what is the "correct" distance to capture the venue's acoustics so they are accurately conveyed? The answer is "you can't". The recreating is a nifty simulation, some more real and convincing than others but a simulation nonetheless.

Look, I am all for "tricking the listener" into FEELING like he is there. Get it all the time. Wonderful effect caused by artifacts, delays, phase shifts and all kinds of constructive and destructive interference. But to say that "the venue acoustics are captured on the recording and if you have a RESOLVING ENOUGH SYSTEM you will magically extract this wonderful information".

There are tricks to recreating room reverb times and it has to do with capturing an impulse of the space and convolving that impulse with the music material. Assuming the guy will use cans, the time-domain info needed to SIMULATE the acoustics of the venue is indeed captured. I say simulate because when you're listening to cans in a 8 x 10 room you're not in a cathedral, so obviously getting cathedral sound is indeed a simulation. Now if he's NOT using cans, he has two additional problems. He's got his OWN room acoustics and he's got speaker attributes when added give you the "speaker-room" equation. To use speakers in a room and impulse response convolution to simulate a space, you would first need to remove the amplitude and time-domain errors of the speaker/room combination - one could create a single impulse that removes the listening room and adds the listening space. I'm not a huge convolution fan so I never got quite that far. Using cans will obviously be much easier which is probably why binaural recording fans seem to more often skip speakers.

"Transported back to the original event". Maybe emotionally, but not acoustically. Believe, guffaw, point and laugh all you want. The emperor has no clothes again. Recording methods and speaker/room interaction obfuscate "room" info, if what is there on the recording is even worth a lick "spacially" in the first place. Most concerts I've seen have mics on instrument groups as well as mics for individual instruments. Now c'mon - tell me this recording setup was done with capturing the venue in mind. Sure, you have some ECHO captured, but when you mix all these mics what you have is a bunch of echos who's time-domain info is now completely irrelevant. You have multiple locations from which you are recording - spacial game is over. Neato effect? Still there. Acoustics of venue captured? Nuh-uh.

But hey, if you believe your stereo is a transporter beam that takes you back to the hall, then wow, what the hell are you doing typing on here?

Cheers,
Presto