Immersive Audio and How to Achieve It

Immersive audio is NOT the same as immersive acoustic...

Immersive audio use DSP generally without psycho-acoustic measures of the inner ears and HRTF. ... ( save for example the Smyth realizer)

Immersiveness in PHYSICAL acoustic is created by passive material treatment and active mechanical control of the room...

Immersiveness in psycho-acoustic use measures of the inner ears and also Head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) describe the filtering of the acoustic field produced by a sound source arriving at the listener’s ear. It is used in smyth realizer but at a more sophisticated level by BACCH filters...

Many audiophile are more interested by stereo system able to give a REALISTIC natural timbre instruments experience than interested by DSP as such ...

They will use physical acoustic and psycho-acoustic measures to create acoustic immersiveness not mere audio immersivenes or dsp immersiveness as with many more speakers than two ...

The only DSP preserving the integrity of the timbre natural experience , and the only dedicated audiophile one is Dr. Choueri BACCH filters...

Without the BACCH filters and without psycho-acoustic measures we can create a relative partially convincing immersive stereo experience with passive acoustic treatment and active mechanical control of the room...

But BACCH filters are a DSP perfect control of the room without distorting the timbre , the only one preserving timbre quality from the acoustic original recording conditions...Other DSP can create immersiveness artificially but loosing integrity of the original acoustic timbre recorded experience in various degree ...

Immersiveness from a living show with amplified music as in pop and rock is not the same as immersiveness in a concerrt hall with non amplified instruments as the recording engineer proposed his set of acoustic microphones trade-off ...

Then stereo and home theater DSP are two different experience , in these two we can experience a form of immersiveness... One is digitally driven , the other serve and emerge from mechanical acoustic and/or from a set of specficic psycho-acoustic measures for EACH listener ...

It is my limited understanding... 😊

In digital audio of home theater for music theater the main point is NOT PRESERVING the physical recorded experience of a specific non amplified musical instrument , which reflect the trade-off choices of the recording engineer IN A CLOSED ACOUSTIC SPACE , the main point with home theater music experience  in is rrecreating the general atmosphere of AMPLIFIED instruments ...

A live concert of pop in open air on an outdoor scene  with big speakers is not the recording of an organ concert or a piano concert  in a church or in a small studio ...

@waytoomuchstuff 

Great post, I think "suspension of disbelief" is spot on in terms of what people want from any audio system.

@brianlucey Wrote:

 There is no contest between stereo and atmos/spatial, they are parallel deliverables, so please leave me out of your agenda :) 

I agree! 😎

Mike

@jonwolfpell

A really good, two channel home system can .reproduce a large, deep, detailed soundstage w/ great dynamics & sound better than most live venues.

I don’t disagree, but I don’t think I would ever confuse a recorded playback on any system for a live performance of am orchestra.

More speakers & electronics etc is just more, not necessarily better.

Yep, more speakers also means more ways to screw it up, but you can screw up a stereo too. I found that although the Dolby specs for speaker setup are meticulous they were still not right for my room. Their diagram has the MLP toward the back of the room, equidistant between front and back walls worked better for me. Here are dolby’s specs:

This model where the MLP is equidistant was night and day better for my room:

Floyd Toole uses an equidistant MLP as well, our systems are almost identical, we both chose book shelf speakers mounted high on the wall as height channels, we both use wide channels, center channels above and below the screen and VOG channel.

https://www.thescreeningroomav.com/single-post/2019/03/06/The-Ultimate-Real-World-Home-Theater-and-Listening-Room