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Pin point imaging isn't for everyone

A subject my posts touch on often is whether pin point imaging is desirable, or natural. While thinking about wide-baffle speakers in another thread I came across this quote, courtesy of Troels Graveson’s DIY speaker site. He quotes famous speaker designer Roy Allison:

I had emphasized dispersion in order to re-create as best as I could the performance-hall ambiance. I don’t want to put up with a sweet spot, and I’d rather have a less dramatically precise imaging with a close simulation of what you hear in a concert hall in terms of envelopment. For that, you need reverberant energy broadcast at very wide angles from the loudspeaker, so the bulk of energy has to do multiple reflections before reaching your ear. I think pin-point imaging has to do with synthetically generated music, not acoustic music - except perhaps for a solo instrument or a solo voice, where you might want fairly sharp localization. For envelopment, you need widespread energy generation.


You can read Troel’s entire post here:

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/Acapella_WB.htm

This goes, kind of, with my points before, that you can tweak the frequency response of a speaker, and sometimes cables, to get better imaging, but you are going significantly far from neutral to do so. Older Wilson’s were famous, and had a convenient dip around 2.4 kHz.
erik_squires
freediver
1,216 posts
 
There is a point when listening to music becomes "more"than simply an auditory experience.When you can see the event as well as hear it,suspension of disbelief becomes easy & we are transported into the event..For example a live Rush recording where 2 guys who whistle REALLY loud interact from what appears to be about 300’ apart.Or a bootleg recording of a Janis Joplin demo tape where a secretary madly types away about 25’ behind Janis as she belts out "I Need A Man".Or even an obscure recording of Mozart’s Gran Partita,from a small church in Germany with a U shape,multi level layout that has the Woodwinds & horns moving back & forth over a 3’ height difference with about 50’ between the sections.
If the truest representation of the recorded event,weather live or studio is the eventual goal of our hobby then sound staging & pinpoint imaging are critical to a complete "picture"of the musical event.
han_n's avatar
han_n
105 posts
 
Call it pinpoint, realistic sounding  imaging and soundstage or any other fancy name, the bottom line is that when we sit and listen to the music, we want it to sound as natural as possible. Rarely that is the case, due to the many limitations we have to deal with, from (1) the recording environment, (2) the recording engineer/equipment, (3) equipment used to reproduce and (4) the listening environment. Some (item 3-4) we can influence, others not. Forums like this are mainly established to address the items 3-4, as there are many ways to come closer to the desired end product, and certainly not always money related. For those who say it is not that important to them, they can save themselves some money, as you only need to buy one speaker ;)
rodman99999
6,159 posts
 
This Stereophile article may interest some:    https://www.stereophile.com/content/stereo-image
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Yes the "Decca Tree" technique was a three mic boom (left centre right) over the orcheschra which captured those early Decca recording imaging properties when listen to with good speakers like Quad 57’s, but sadly the image got splashed all over the place, with things like Klipsch Horns ect.
And it’s still used today in live recordings, but with more mics in between the main three to get even better imaging.

Cheers George
erik_squires OP
16,134 posts
 
Speaking of 3 mike recordings, for those of you with a multi-channel setup, I strongly suggest you try the Neo6 music mode if you can. It’s really pretty good.



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