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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
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
erik:
I think you missed the point a little, Miller.

How natural is pin point imaging in acoustic music? Roy argued, as do I, that it’s really not.

Well, let's see. So Bruce is sitting right in front of me playing his acoustic guitar and singing. My eyes are closed but I can tell for certain right where he is. He's not some vague diffuse disembodied blob somewhere either. I can tell with my eyes closed to within a few inches exactly where he is. I can tell the guitar is just below his chest. I can tell all this with the same precision as when I drop a pencil and know where to look by sound alone.

I think you missed the point a little Squires. Might want to go read my post again. Pinpoint imaging is every bit as natural in music as it possibly can be because pinpoint imaging is part and parcel of reality. Deal with it.


The second question is whether you want it, and want it more than other features of reproduction.


Now here again it will help to go back and read again this time maybe with a little more comprehension. Since pinpoint imaging is inextricably interwoven in the reality of the original performance then it follows irrefutably that accurately reproducing that performance must necessarily entail replicating that information. Otherwise either your recording is crap, or your playback is crap.

Now granted you may have hit on the one thing that matters: some people, instead of wanting to hear what was recorded come what may, they prefer to impose their own preconceived notions on how their music should sound. They mess with it.

Or maybe they just don't care as much for accuracy, fidelity and realism as they let on.

Well, whatever floats your boat. 
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
For starters, images shouldn’t necessarily be points. There can also have size to the voices, instruments. A piano 🎹  should probably not appear as a point. It should have size. Especially a concert grand. The trick is to reproduce the correct size of whatever. 
erik_squires OP
15,791 posts
 
Point taken, geoff.

I think a lot of that is in the reverb too, so there's something to be said for speakers with rear facing drivers.


Erik
audiokinesis
2,722 posts
 

In many things audio, tradeoffs are inevitable.

There is a tradeoff relationship between imaging precision on the one hand, and envelopment/immersion on the other. The tradeoff has to do with how much energy is in the reverberant field.

Imo a reverberant field "done right" benefits timbre, soundstage depth, and a sense of being immersed in the acoustic space on the recording (as opposed to being immersed in the acoustic signature of a small listening room).

Imo the way to minimize the detriment to imaging precision from having a well-energized reverberant field is to minimize the amount of energy that goes into the early reflections, as these are the ones that have the most effect on imaging precision.

Erik wrote: "I think a lot of that is in the reverb too, so there’s something to be said for speakers with rear facing drivers."

I agree, which is rather predictable, since I’ve been using rear-firing drivers for years, along with relatively narrow-pattern front-firing drivers (which minimize early reflections). Still, I would have to concede that achieving the most pinpoint imaging would call for minimizing all reflections.

Duke

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Adding extended and articulate deep bass to my system did indeed improve the sense of envelopment. Not by extending the sound stage per se, but by increasing the feeling of being in the room. The main performance is still up front with every instrument palpably positioned, especially bass and drums which are now even more palpably real than before. But there is now an additional sensation of deep bass that just feels like you are in the room. Even though the meat of the performance is still up front, its more like you are in it now.
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