@johnk , you should look into Ambiophonics. Have fun?!
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.
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2 channel playback is the simplest form of stereo. Listening tests suggest that people generally prefer two or more speakers to a single speaker even when listening to mono recordings. Even for a person deaf in one ear there may be perceivable benefits to having more speakers in a room. It might help to smooth out some serious peaks and dips in the response, or mask some of the room’s characteristic sound. As for trying alternate approaches to putting sound in a room, I’m not above trying unorthodox arrangements. I’ve gotten interesting results by putting the tweeters very close together in the front, with the midrange drivers spaced wider and the upper bass even wider still. Of course it sounds very different. There was a lot to like about it even if it was strange in some ways. It had a better sense of live presence of sound in the room than when the drivers are all more closely arranged as a point source. I An arrangement I’ve been playing with lately involves pointing the stereo speakers away from you at a window, large screen TV, or large bare wall and listening to the stereo image reflected back at you. Absorption between the listener and the speaker to minimize bleed, although I’ve found this isn’t necessary for the image to move forward away from the speakers. It can help with the tonality. This set up can be surprisingly good sounding in some situations. The speaker’s virtual position is now behind the wall from an imaging perspective, so the sweet spot widens and the soundstage is big and spacious. The sound can become overly "wet" and revealing of the room’s colorations as you are virtually further away from the speakers so the room sound dominates. But after listening to this arrangement for a while, going back to the standard setup sounded too dry and rather small. I’m thinking a dipole speaker like Magnepans could be a good candidate for this setup. The listener could be positioned off to the sides of the speakers in the cancellation zone, so the bass wouldn’t tend to reach their ears too soon. That’s the problem with this setup and conventional speakers - the bass gets to you early compared to the reflected highs.
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crustycoot re:
One of my favorite recordings is Ry Cooder’s "A Meeting by the River", with V.M. Bhatt. It was produced/recorded by Kavi Alexander of Water Lily Acoustics. He used two superb mics made by audio legend Tim de Paravicini, placed in a "Blumlein configuration". It is a gorgeous recording. "A Meeting By The River is universally praised for the authenticity and realism of its recording and its 2008 vinyl release is often cited as audiophile-quality reference material. The session was captured using two customised valve mics in a Blumlein-array arrangement into a converted Studer two-track analogue tape recorder and the louder you play it, the more every rattle and scrape of slide on fingerboard and every microtonal flurry draws you into its rarefied, spontaneous atmosphere." https://guitar.com/review/album/the-genius-of-a-meeting-by-the-river-by-ry-cooder-and-vishwa-mohan-bhatt/ |
Didn’t read the other posts, but almost all music is recorded in stereo so why wouldn’t you play it back that way and situate yourself in the position where it sounds best? Yes, there are speakers like Von Schweikert, Boenicke, etc. that use rear-firing tweets and others like Ohm and MBL that that are omnipoles, but as great as they may sound (and I do think they sound great) they’re the designer’s interpretation of the sound rather than how the engineer recorded it. And IMHO that’s perfectly fine and may even be preferable for many. For those who really care about optimal sound, having to sit in the sweet spot is a small price to pay and well worth the small effort. And I doubt even omnipole speakers, although they can sound very good off axis, sound as good or as balanced that way as opposed to sitting in the sweet spot. Hey, if you really care that much about walking around and getting the same (crappy) sound, just get a Bose Wave Radio and live it up. |
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