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In Reply to: Why Doesn't It Sound Live? posted by crutschow on March 21, 2007 at 10:16:50:
"Until recently it had been a puzzle to me why it was still generally easy to tell the difference between live music and reproduced music, even though the quality of the source material, amplifiers, and speakers has significantly improved from my young days with tubes and vinyl (subjectivist tube-and-LP loving audiophiles notwithstanding)."That presumption alone is questionable. Especially if "tubes and LPs" are removed from the equation. Aside from loudspeakers, where design IMO has indeed improved to a demonstrable degree. And I think digital sources have been getting worse, not better.
"Although audiophiles often go to great expense (including such snake oil products as magic power cords, HiFi fuses, and exotic cables) to strive to get ever more accurate music reproduction from their box speakers, there is still usually something lacking in the end result that prevents the music from sounding 'live'."
Although there are a lot of awful-sounding speakers, and a lot of awful-sounding speakers due to poor design of box enclosures, I don't believe good sound is limited to designs that are devoid of box enclosures. The best speakers I've heard, including homemade designs by Peter Clark and Don Allen, had box enclosures as well.
"Perhaps that's part of the reason for the never ending pursuit of better fidelity, sometimes to ridiculous lengths. The listener is aware something is missing and thinks it's some lack of fidelity, when perhaps it's really just a lack of the live music ambience."
Kind of like drinking orange juice that doesn't taste quite right, and citing the lack of added sweetener.....
"They have a desire for this ambience, even if it's not recognized as that, and the hope that it will somehow appear with the next small increment of improved fidelity, that fractional dB improvement in frequency response flatness or small percentage of distortion reduction or more power output or.... But, with typical box speakers, I now consider that a futile pursuit."
I don't see how "box speakers" have anything to do with ambience. I think sources and electronics failing to resolve low-level information are at fault here. The digitization of audio signals is an unavoidable cause of lost ambience as well. (Even with dither applied.)
What I think is lacking in music reproduction is sustained microdynamics along the entire dynamic scale. Part of that is indeed ambience, but I think the biggest culprit is lost linearity in the signal. Cumulative from source to speakers. Particularly in the bass, where any compression gets translated into congestion elsewhere in the spectrum, robbing the music of its ambience and microdynamics. (This is why high-efficiency/SET systems excel- They lose that linearity far less than high-powered amps driving inefficient speakers.) I've never heard a system that had both "saturated" bass and superior microdynamics and ambience retrieval.
"After reading numerous reviews and articles about speakers, and in particular, information on The Audio Critic and Siegfried Linkwitz's websites (which I consider to be two of best sources for accurate speaker information on the web), I believe I now understand the puzzle of the live music sound. To recreate (not just reproduce) the sound of live music in one's home, high fidelity sound alone is not sufficient. Indeed, I suspect that one can probably have reduced fidelity and still perceive sound as live, though with the flaws in fidelity apparent, if the ambience clues are correct. (The optical analog of this is looking through a pair of smeared glasses. You perceive a real appearing, if blurred, image, even though it has low optical fidelity, because the 3D clues are still there.) The ear-brain uses reflected sounds to determine the structure of the sound in space and these have a characteristic pattern for live music. Speakers that recreate this best in a normal room appear to be those with a dipolar or omnipolar radiation pattern where the patterns are reasonably uniform up to at least 3 kHz."
Once again, I've experienced no such correlation.
There is the one big question- Do you want the illusion of being at the venue of the performance, or the illusion of the performers being in your living room? I personally think the latter option limits the type of music the application would be ideal for. And I've never heard a "reflecting" system that sounded right with large-scale (rock, orchestral) music.
"These generate the proper room reflections that are interpreted as having the character of the original music sound stage, giving that U-R-There feeling of live music."
How would one determine if the room reflections are "proper?" Seems like this may be subjective.
"Of these two radiation patterns, the dipole would seem to be preferred for having less interaction with room acoustics, but as the Pluto speaker design by Mr. Linkwitz demonstrates, an omnipolar pattern can also be effective."
As long as the "bipolar" in question does not utilize the back wave of a forward-firing diaphragm. That back wave is inverted absolute phase..... (Provided the signal directly out the speaker is non-inverted.) And most omnis are not particularly efficient.....
"Only a few other available speakers exhibit these radiation patterns. Examples are the Magnepan dipolar planar speakers, the Orion dipolar speaker designed by Mr. Linkwitz, and the omnipolar Ohm Walsh Speakers. All are reported to give a wide, realistic sound stage (although the Magnepans are directional at higher frequencies due to their large flat radiating surface which tends to reduce their sweet spot)."
And as I stated, the back wave is inverted absolute phase.....
"The old Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speaker dating from 1967 (amazingly still available from Bose) was on the right track, but generates too much reflection from 8 rear speakers and only 1 front speaker."
I personally think the "direct/reflecting" was more a marketing gimmick than anything else. Technically, it suggests the sound is dependent on the acoustics and dimensions of the room. I've never experienced such application that to me sounded right. Even with speakers other than Bose. (Although since Bose uses separate rear-firing drivers instead of the back wave of forward-firing drivers, absolute polarity is a non-issue.)
"Bose based the reflection percentage on concert hall acoustics, but with this value in a typical sized listening room with its much shorter reverberation times, the sound at the ear is overwhelmed with multiple reflections (think hitting a golf ball in a tile bathroom). This muddies the virtual sound stage. It's apparent that if a dipolar or omnipolar radiation pattern works well with 50% of the radiation directed to the rear hemisphere then 89% is way too much."
In certain rooms "89%" may be "just right"....
Another problem is since a concert hall is much bigger and has a much longer reverberation time, it would be really difficult to re-create that effect in any living room. Unless you have a net worth comparable to that of Howard Hughes, and build a room the size of a concert hall....
"Standard 'monkey coffin' rectangular box speakers, large or small, with forward-firing dynamic drivers, have a frequency dependent radiation pattern. They radiate forward in a unipolar manner at higher frequencies and approach an omnipolar pattern at frequencies below a few hundred Hertz. Even if a box speaker reproduces the sound with perfect fidelity, the reflection versus frequency from its radiation pattern in a normal room is atypical of live music and this is readily recognized by the ear-brain as music from a box."
That may be true, but I really doubt sending reflections off the walls of the living room walls is any batter. I think it be worse.
And remember, the hall's ambience is on the recording. And a good recording on a good system will retrieve it, creating an illusion of the actual hall that's IMO far better than any ad-hoc wave reflection schemes within the room.
"It will never really sound like live music. Of course one can still enjoy such music, as we all do, even without the live music ambience, perhaps by learning to accept (or ignore) the box speaker radiation pattern. It's a personal preference as to the importance of the live ambience to your music listening pleasure. But I suspect it may be more important than many people realize unless they've heard speakers that produce the effect. To me, it's essential, since I believe the holy grail of high fidelity is recreating the essence of live music, not just the sound."
I've never heard the "essence of live music" effectively enhanced with reverberant room or reflected sound within a typical room. One may try that, in hope of making the sound more like Carnegie Hall. But in doing so, he could end up making the sound more like that of the local high school gym. It's a crapshoot. One is at the mercy of his listening room, which could be an acoustic gem or an acoustic disaster. (And if it's the latter, he'll have to spend thousands to fix it. And improvements are not guaranteed.)
What makes live music "live" is not the reflections alone, but how well the reflections are controlled and damped, to where the reflections in moderation enhance the live event. But what comes from actual musicians is not the same as what comes from a stereo. Otherwise one should be able to easily replicate live music with a stereo system by simply placing one inside the concert hall itself.
"Of course that eliminates all the loudspeakers made which exhibit the box radiation pattern."
I thing you're presuming all box speakers have forward-facing drivers, and all speakers that have forward-facing drivers are box speakers....
"And that would seem a rather disconcerting conclusion for the many box speaker manufacturers and owners. It requires a new paradigm for them as to what constitutes the best way to recreate the sound of live music. Box speakers RIP."
What do box speakers have to do with that? The Bose 901, which you touted above, is technically a box speaker.
If I had to list my reasons for why I think reproduced music doesn't sound live, I don't think "speakers designed with box enclosures" would make my top 100. Heck, it may not even make my list, period. For the vast majority of what I call the "extreme performers" in speakers happen to be of the box enclosure design.
My top reason for music not sounding "live" is simply the fact live concerts move so much air, actually replicating that in a living room would blow out the windows in one's house. Recordings, sources, and most speakers simply do not have the dynamic and linear capability to do so.
So in other words, if one designed a great "reflecting" system with non-box speakers, it would still not be satisfying to listen with a typical digital source. Although if one has a bad digital source, reflections may be a good way to mask the sonic ills.
So you may be mistaking the amusical effects of a bad digital source with lack of ambience.... The same lack of ambience you claim is caused by box speakers and lack of reflections in the listening room. I think it's caused by the disappointing across-the-board performance of digital audio. Which I would cite as the number one problem in sound reproduction.
Follow Ups:
...is well-taken. My top reason for music not sounding "live" is simply the fact live concerts move so much air, actually replicating that in a living room would blow out the windows in one's house.Right about the air, but geez Toodd I've had concert instruments in my house and the windows remained intact.
It was part of the original post.
c
Jeez, I cannot even get away with impersonating a cable basher....
zz
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