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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
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,864 posts
 
Can’t say I’ve ever heard pinpoint imaging anywhere including with countless live performances or very good mega systems I’ve heard over the years.

Realistic sounding  imaging and soundstage, yes all the time, No problem.

Any example of pinpoint imaging that occurs either in real life or in any studio recording will suffice. My take is the term is merely hyperbole. Now what vendor in his right mind would ever resort to that?

Closest perhaps is my setup in the basement with a good quality mono recording. Not pinpoint but highly focused and detailed with ambience, like if live. Also it moves to the left as you move to the right and vice versa as it might if the performers were standing there live as you move around. Can anyone guess what the speakers I use to manage this are? Most will not have a prayer reproducing this trick no mattter the cost though there are some that can, perhaps even better.


prof
3,450 posts
 

I hear quite precise imaging in live unamplified sounds.

I was recently in a city park in which a large group of people were playing a variety of percussion instruments, large and small.  Eyes closed, the direction of the instruments were quite well defined.  I could point with good precision to any instrument I chose.

As to "point point imaging" that actually remains a bit too vague.  Just "how pinpoint" would be be talking about?  In one sense it can mean images squeezed to tight they have become miniaturized spots of sound in the soundfield.  "pinpoint sized."  On the other hand it can mean simply "the sound coming from a precisely localized space."  Which to me certainly doesn't sound bad and is actually how I experience most sounds.   So not sure which we are talking about, or if it's somewhere in between.

In any case,  I have come to value precise imaging.  It's not simply due to the visualization effect, but live sound sources to me have the characteristic of density and palpability, not a sense of being diffuse.When a speaker "lines up" the sound sources well, the sonic impression to me is that the instruments take on that added solidity of the real thing.

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,864 posts
 
Ill go along with "precise" imaging.  Just not "pinpoint".    But if people use the term I know what they mean so not a problem practically, just not an appropriately  descriptive term. 
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,460 posts
 

When I’m in a small club, with no mics on the drumset or guitar/bass amps---just the vocal mics, yes, the location of each instrument is very concrete. But what does that have to do with reproducing the imaging contained in any given recording? Nothing!

Expecting a loudspeaker to recreate the ambience and instrumental/vocal imaging heard in any given space---whether a concert hall or Jazz/Blues/Folk/whatever club---is folly. That’s one reason the Bose 901 sucks!

Recording engineers choose their mics, the locations of those mics in relation to the performers, how the numerous mic signals are mixed, in order to create a "sound field"---a sonic picture. It is the loudspeaker’s job to reproduce that recording, not to create the sound of a concert hall, small club, etc. If the recording contains pinpoint images, the loudspeaker should recreate them. If the recording contains diffused image locations, that's what it should sound like when played on your loudspeakers. Duh.

jtgofish
490 posts
 
Well in some acoustic environments you can certainly hear precisely where each instrument and voice is located .I agree that is not what you hear in large concert halls but in smaller performance spaces playing smaller scale music you certainly can.And for many of us creating that sort of sound in our system is what we aspire towards.And perhaps we can even get it better than the real thing.Just like a well filmed,lit and edited film might be better than a live play because it uses techniques to intensify ,focus and enhance the subject.

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