What Does Holographic Sound Like?

Bryoncunningham,
I am reading your earlier thread which is excellent. I have a few observations.

I have no idea what the word "neutral" means when referring to audio equipment because all audio equipment imparts its own characteristics to playback. IMO, all audio equipment adds "color" playback.

I listen mostly to classical music as well as some jazz, blues and popular music. I am from that generation that used to have a "collection". I still do.

I think one important thing we have overlooked is that music is essentially in the mind. There are the room, the recording and the equipment. But the ears are connected to the brain. It is the mind where all music plays. What we are actually talking about is the recreation of sound in the listening room of the mind because the actual room will never resemble the actual recording venue. Although a larger room may help reproduce in the mind the "being there" feeling, with some kinds of recordings, I believe you can have that "big sound" in the mind in a smaller room, as well, if the sense of scale is being reproduced by a well-evolved system.

In my system, with good recordings, the sound expands well beyond the walls. The reflected sound of my room will come into play but only to an extent. With my system, the reflected sound of the venue is much more predominant and important than that of the room and the mind perceives this as the "being there" effect.

I believe that room treatments like Synergistic Research ART and Steinmusic Harmonizers can totally change room limitations and their effect on how the mind perceives the sound. I have Shakti Hallographs in place with SR ART yet to be unboxed. The Steinmusic Harmonizers may follow in due course.

Bryoncunningham, regarding your earlier thread:

Cbw723 stated, "Finally, I'm not sure how much the playback system's coloration is an issue. Assuming the system is good enough to produce playback with a convincing live or nearly live sound (as judged by the system's owner/primary listener), it seems unlikely that the ambience cues are going to be distorted to a point that they become an impediment to a "you are there" experience.". I agree. But I think that coloration can become a problem with mismatched components or cables/tweaks. In this regard, the right choice of components and cables/tweaks is vitally important. This has been by experience with my system.

Learsfool paraphrased another poster, "you cannot put into your listening room something that was not in the recording in the first place." I agree. This goes along with my notion that, regarding the equipment's effect on sound reproduction, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Both of these elements will decide the quality of the sound more than room characteristics, IMO.

He also stated, "The engineer then takes these tracks, mixes them, and then adds digital reverberation to create a false ambience, one that he thinks sounds good.". Which is why I prefer classical recordings that recreate the actual venue with mikes, not with remixing like "the older recordings from the so-called "golden age," where folks like Mercury and RCA just hung a couple of mikes up out in the concert hall and therefore created much more of a "you are there" experience than anything recorded today.".

When Learsfool observed regarding a Berstein recording at the Met, "That recording has great sonics which really do create a "you are there" experience, but you need a system that has an appropriate soundstage and images well to fully experience it". This is exactly what I refer to as the silk purse. And when he states, "I am merely trying to explain why musicians place such a high priority on soundstaging and imaging. They are crucial to creating a "you are there" experience.", I could not agree more.

Bryon, when you stated, "I suppose there is no reason why, in theory, a virtual recording space couldn’t be as interesting as a real one.", if you listen to Zenph recreations I think you will understand why I feel, although they are technically excellent, they do not have the feeling of "alive" and "real" that actual live studio or concert recordings have. I have all of the Zenph recordings.

I also agree with Learsfool when he stated, "Hi Bryon - we are generally in agreement here. Where I would differ with you would be on the subject of the listening room being much of a factor at all in picking up what you are calling "ambient cues" in the recording ... The equipment would have a much greater effect on it in general." And, concerning ambient cues, I agree with Learsfool about Sonus Faber speakers. I have Joseph Audio Pulars that do an excellent job in this department.

I agree with Learsfool's observation that, with concert hall sound, "the overall effect is not PRIMARILY omni-directional, only secondarily so." As well, I agree with his observation that "listening rooms do not come anywhere near capable of recreating the original recording space, if this space is a concert hall (or a good jazz club, for that matter) - so this means that the listening space will ALWAYS be fundamentally different from the recording space, as I believe you put it, in these cases, and this is why I believe you are overestimating it's importance."

Rtn1,
I agree completely with you when you stated, "I have achieve[d] the 'you are there' experience for the majority of my recordings. This is achieved by lowering the 'noise' and removing electronic artifacts. I put noise in quotes because there is also noise and distortion you cannot hear. I believe it also takes a highly resolving source (i.e. DAC). I do not think the recording is a limitation. The spatial cues are there, they are masked by most equipment." This describes what Bybee products do so well in my system.

I realize now that I am all in with tweak, the verb, whereas with tweak the noun its way more hit or miss, mostly miss. I just really do not think getting really good home audio sound is so hard that the rigjht knowledge and addressing the fundamentals via tweaking can't solve the problem for most.

"Here's an interesting gadget that might actually work as best I can tell and perhaps even help holography:"

Mapman, I was fortunate enough to get a chance to hear the Harmonizer with new Harbeth 30.1's at my local shop last month. The difference is not subtle and yes, it's the first time I've ever heard what I would consider to be Holographic sound in my life. Walter Swanbon of Fidelis in New Hampshire is a distributor for them and was rolling through my home town and I was invited to an audition. Everyone in the room that night was in awe over this product. I will not pretend to understand what it's doing but it's doing.

Donjr wrote,

"I will not pretend to understand what it's doing but it's doing."

That's the ubiquitous line almost all reviewers use when reporting on tweaks with, uh, difficult or preposterous sounding explanations. Perhaps, Mapman would like to chime in on how it works. As I recall his BS Detector didn't go off on the SteinMusic Harmonizer.

Hi Sabai - Thanks for your comments, which are thoughtful and reasonable. It sounds like we have somewhat different views on the importance of the listening room, not only for creating the illusion that "you are there," but also for creating a sound that is "holographic." In my view...

In the listening room, the ambient cues of the room combine with the ambient cues of the recording. To the extent that the ambient cues of the listening room resemble the ambient cues of the recording, the listening room serves as a *simulacrum* of the recording space. I agree with both you and Learsfool that this is rare, both because typical recording spaces are so unlike the typical listening room and because the typical listening room is acoustically untreated. The problem, as I see it, is that the typical listening room is both...

1. Acoustically reactive, and
2. Acoustically distinct.

RE: 1. Acoustically reactive, or "live" rooms, provide an abundance of ambient cues. When those ambient cues fail to resemble the ambient cues of the recording, as they often do, the result is that the sound at the listening position during playback is acoustically contradictory, and therefore confusing. IMO.

RE: 2. Acoustically distinct rooms provide ambient cues that are highly recognizable. We all know what our own listening room sounds like. We have all been in public spaces with a distinct acoustical "signature." The more distinct the acoustical signature of the listening room, the more audible the differences between the listening room and the recording space will be. The result is that, during playback, acoustically distinct rooms are more likely to sound acoustically contradictory, and therefore confusing. Again, IMO.

Two solutions to these problems are to construct a listening room that is either…

3. Acoustically non-reactive, or
4. Acoustically non-distinct.

RE: 3. Acoustically non-reactive, or "dead" rooms solve the problem of contradictory ambient cues by eliminating most of the ambient cues of the listening room. Hence most of the ambient cues heard during playback are the ambient cues of the recording. IMO, the flaw in this approach is that the ambient cues of the recording will be presented BIDIRECTIONALLY, or at best HEMISPHERICALLY, which tends to diminish the illusion that "you are there." Another common problem with dead rooms is that they can shrink the size of images and the size of the soundstage, both of which diminish realism. IMO.

RE: 4. Acoustically non-distinct, or "ambiguous" rooms solve the problem of contradictory ambient cues by having ambient cues that are less recognizable, and therefore less audible during playback. An acoustically ambiguous room sounds less like "that room" and more like "any room." Of course, no room can be perfectly ambiguous. But, IME, good listening rooms provide a range of ambiguity that reduces contradictory ambient cues during playback and therefore creates a more convincing illusion that "you are there."

To bring all this back to “holographic” sound. To me, “holographic” sound is about…

a. realistic images, and
b. realistic soundstage (i.e. the spatial relations among images)

IME, realistic images can be achieved easily enough in acoustically dead rooms, with the qualification that acoustically dead rooms sometimes shrink images of instruments and performers to unrealistic sizes. IME, a realistic soundstage is more difficult to achieve in acoustically dead rooms, for the reasons I mentioned above.

Finally, I believe that efforts to increase the acoustical ambiguity of a listening room will make the soundstage more realistic on a wider range of recordings, and therefore acoustically ambiguous rooms are more likely to be “holographic.”

Just how to create an acoustically ambiguous room is not something about which I have any real expertise. I have some ideas, mostly gleaned from the characteristics common to the rooms I've experienced as ambiguous. The ambiguous rooms were...

-Reactive
-Large but not huge
-Few surfaces that create coherent reflections
-Lots of diffusion
-Medium reverberation time
-Mixture of surface materials

I don’t know how to order that list, but the rooms I’ve experienced as acoustically ambiguous had most or all of those characteristics, and probably others I’m not thinking of.

IMO, IME, YMMV etc. etc.

Bryon