TBH I would have assumed anti-phase made no difference had not people testified that switching to normal phase made their CDs sound more equivalent to vinyl(!)
I’ve always striven to ensure that all elements of the systems I used were “phase correct” and that’s pretty much it.
I regret if I had read through George’s notes concerning “inverted polarity” before trawling through a shedload of LPs & CDs and making my own notes I wouldn’t have bothered writing all of this(!), however I still believe it is relevant. :(
Question : is 3D Soundstaging better on LP or CD?”
(Please note one should first mention the global disclaimer : “No height information is captured in stereophonic recording”.)
What is helpful about the 3D aspects of audio reproduction is that, on my main system at least, they are easily, “quantifiable” and “demonstrable”.
Initially, I had decided to focus on what one might call extreme examples which are rarely heard from typical sources.
The “Voice of God” moment on Michael Moorcock's "New World's Fair" is one such example. This particular voice is differentiated from others on the album in that the vinyl version projects this voice in an extraordinary way, very distinct from the mic-ing and processing used elsewhere in that production and indeed from the countless other examples of 3-dimensionality within it.
His voice appears as a wholly realistic, corporeal, tightly focussed, tangible ball of sound manifesting itself in the EXTREME TOP LEFT HAND CORNER of the room.
(Note : The bottom corner is over 5ft from the speaker).
It’s hard to say what the Sound Engineer was striving for in the studio when effects were added and indeed “3D impressions” from 2.0 are not often discussed in Forums because few folk have verifiable or all-encompassing opinions on how they are contrived. It’s unlikely that a “vertical dimension” or some sense of “scale” was the engineer’s primary goal but my guess is he was hoping to hear a noticeable difference sufficient to make it stand out(!) I can only report that when reproduced through planar speakers it is quite spectacular!
Now, I just happened to have an ostensibly "well recorded" version of the album on CD in addition to that *standard* LP so there was no reason to feel initially prejudiced against the CD. ;)
I was curious to see whether it manifested the aforementioned 3D effect...or at least made the listener aware of the difference?
A reminder first that the point here is not to guess the ultimate goal of the recording engineer but to decide whether the recording engineer’s efforts were well enough represented to be actually NOTICED or not!
So how was this purposely “differentiated” voice rendered on CD?
Disappointingly, the voice appeared just centimetres outside the TLHC of the speaker frame rather than metres! In fact, decidedly UNdifferentiated from normal vocal presentation which would routinely appear at that height and location (choruses, harmonies, multi-voicing etc).
Note : For these tests I was using electrostatic line sources. A quick explanation of how my particular ELS sources work might help : A pure electronic sound with no “effects” will appear to emanate directly from the centre of the panel, regardless of room acoustics! When the sound engineer adds “effects” it will change location in any/all of 3 dimensions. The evidence of Cause & Effect is quite clear but this is not to imply that room and speaker interaction are not also involved.
These subtleties will be either reproduced in a dramatic and/or quantifiable way or they won’t.
Conventional speakers can also do this, perhaps not with the same precision/magnitude. The important thing to remember is that it all starts with the source/master. The speakers and the room can only work with what you give them.
Even allowing for the influence of different loudspeaker systems and rooms, if I had always been a CD-only listener to classic albums and such was the only viewpoint I was getting, I would be concerned I was missing out on something in the general sense (at the very least being made AWARE and able to appreciate Engineering intervention within the performance).
The next example is more “geometric” than the first but it's a cracker!!
(I can even provide the time stamp for those who own the CD album and wish to try the A-B for themselves, with or without conventional speakers.)
It concerns a Jan Akkerman guitar solo on the Focus album “Moving Waves”. Many A’Goners will have a copy of this item.
This 3D example is hypnotic on vinyl. The solo guitar’s panning and movement describes a perfect rectangle in the vertical axis. Quite eerie “watching” a guitar climb from panel centre to the top in a perfectly straight vertical line (a distance of approx. 2ft) then pan horizontally to the top of the opposite speaker where it would descend, slowly, by 2ft etc.
To summarise, the pattern that the guitar describes is a vertical rectangle 7ft wide x 2ft high. Clearly defined and easily capable of being followed.
How did the CD fare on this test? Again the CD appeared to register some movement of the guitar at “tweeter height” and it DID end up traversing from one speaker to the other but there was something strange going on. I was unable to pick up on the initial “vertical” movement of the guitar. Also, my ears struggled at times to “lock on” to the guitar sound and track its movements during the horizontal panning. It took a few moments of re-winding to realise that the vertical “pan” had started only a few inches below the first turning point.
So, in summary, the guitar, on the CD, was describing a vertical rectangle 7ft wide x 3 or 4 INCHES high...
(Note that everything else in the soundstage also fell along this axis/line therefore one could summarise the presentation as 2-Dimensional.)
I played a few more “well recorded” CDs derived from the 70s era, Kate Bush etc. Interestingly, as above, all instruments and voices coalesced at “tweeter height”, decidedly 2D. Even “sidewall” sounds projected beyond L & R stage were at this height. A line could be drawn across the room from wall to wall! I was beginning to wonder if the system was actually working properly(!)
Time to switch to vinyl to see if this disturbing “consistency” was reflected there...
It was as if the fetters on the soundscape had been inexplicably released. Suddenly there was no “restriction” in the vertical sound field. It was instantly audible, accompanied by a palpable sense of relief.
Conversely, switching back to CD, the “flatlining” of the soundscape was instantly audible. Plenty of depth just no height.
Mastering may cover a multitude of evils but the trend that we’re seeing here gives the impression of being associative with each medium. I’d also hate to think they were mastering (digital) to be specifically replayed through headphones or something as exclusive as that. It may be that in the case of “true analogue”, we are seeing the vinyl capture an event close to the TIME of it’s inception (if you purchased the LP at the time of release) while the CD transcript was “captured” decades later from the original tape/s.
Just speculation. Whatever is going on here is not easily explainable but it’s effects are easily described.
Of course, all of this hinges on whether you personally consider a flattened 2D soundstage a disadvantage or not. If you love 2D - and I don’t - then you only need concern yourself about the subjective SQ.
“3D” and “2D” descriptors are generalisations and as with all things you might occasionally hear exceptions. One significant exception seems to be classical music in general where both formats appear 2D. Not sure why, perhaps the distance perspective as well as the technique.
General listening to both formats also suggests that whole tracks recorded in specific studios have their own idiosyncrasies (from a 3D viewpoint).
It seems, from the tests I’ve performed so far, that the subtle contributions by the Sound Engineer which generally enhance your appreciation of the musical event/performance can be posted missing from CD (even the best ones).
For CD aficionados, I guess it’s a case of what you never knew won’t hurt you. ;)
Despite knowing that digital recording is as capable as any other medium (I personally use digital recording too) this is a reality of how classic albums are rendered by the 2 formats. IMO it would matter little even if someone came up with a lossless True HD Blu-ray version of it, the observational differences would, in all likelihood, be the same not to mention the immediacy issues and the sense of the vocals etc being fully “fleshed out”(in fact I've even demonstrated that problem in other A-Bs but that's a story for another day).
The bottom line is that whilst *every* vinyl album I tested will exhibit 3D sound (even the crappiest ones), you’ll have to work hard to find a CD that doesn’t sound 2D. For the bulk of music that we “old-timers” prefer this isn’t satisfactory.
So, the next time someone who favours vinyl insists that they hear “more interesting content”, or say it’s, “like listening in Super-Cinemascope”, cut them some slack, they’re probably right... ;)
