Is the seated-centered solo listening to music a dated tech?


Is the seated-centered solo listening to music a dated tech? Is the design of modern loudspeakers that facilitates stereo wrong? Are we surfing a compromised tech please recall early 3 channel was superior they used stereo because it was a compromise? I have worked with a research group that used MRIs and sound to light up areas of catatonic people’s brains the research showed that higher quality playback lit up more areas but that stereo caused the brain to work harder is this a source of listening fatigue? After all, we are processing 2 unnatural sources that trick the mind into perceiving a sound field wouldn’t it be better to just have a sound field that actually existed? Stereo is a unnatrual way to listen to music its something that sound doesn’t do. Real music floods a space in all directions stereo design requires beaming and narrow dispersion to form an image is this just wrong? Mono had benefits over stereo modern loudspeaker design can make one speaker with a 360d radiation pattern that can form a soundstage for listeners almost anywhere in a room yet we still sit mostly alone seated dead center not wanting to move much because the image collapses just all seems wrong to me today. The more I experiment with non-traditional sound reproduction the more right it feels to me and those hearing it. Music should exist in a real space not a narrow sliver of it.

128x128johnk

Bob smoking ops Seger sang it best : “ horizontal bop “….. are there other alternatives ? Perhaps hundreds…. a book may have been written….

Leonard Cohen also had something to say….. about… “ various positions “…

i think if you look at control room speakers, or the cited singular multi cell speaker without context of what and where the engineer  / artist / producer might be in the process…it would be easy to draw the wrong conclusion…..  in general lay down the track, evaluate and tweak, add in other tracks, eventually mix down to ? 

Stereo listening is certainly dated tech…mono even more so.

I prefer stereo. Another dated tech I prefer is “constant directivity” which eliminates the narrow “sweet spot” listening.
Reason being is I enjoy mulling around the room…and also having cocktail parties where all others can enjoy the same uniform sound.


The problem is to accomplish this horns are involved (usually) which some folks hate so YMMV…

 

Not dated tech.

The only way to listen to music.  From a front soundstage the simple two microphone set-up cannot be beaten.

And why should listening privately to music in your home necessarily be a social event?