Holographic imaging

Be contented then.

Sayeth the hcat zealot.

Detlof, I return your sentiments. I never intended to advance knowledge, however, only to reveal my experiences.

Happy listening to you also.

Pubul57, Something fun to try is to listen to a live performance and see if you can place the mics in such a way that a 2 channel playback over speakers has the same perspective as your ears. This is usually not an easy thing to do, but when I was preparing to record Canto General, I had convinced the ensemble to rehearse for the final week in the concert hall. So I had a week to goof off with mic placement, set up a nice playback rig on location and the like.

IF you have time to do it, a recording can be made that will sound remarkably like what it sounds like if you were sitting where the mics are. In most recordings, the mics are often **above** the ensemble, which produces an odd perspective, unless you happen to know that that is where the mics are placed.

Modern mics are remarkably sensitive- with them you can hear things in the hall that you would not notice with your ears! One time I had robins chirping in the mikes- hear it as plain as day over the monitors, but stand by the mic stands and you could not hear them. I found an open door in the rear of the hall... the robins were outside.

Another thing to keep in mind that will help you understand how realistic or not a system is being, is the model of what it should sound like. Don't think for a second that the system is going to sound like the hall- it isn't. It **can** sound, and very convincingly, like your listening room is grafted onto a space (which might be a hall) wherein the music is happening. A real hall will have hall sounds beside and behind you. Your system will have the real hall sound in front, but your room sounds beside and behind you. If you keep this model in mind, you will see that we are a lot closer to the Absolute Sound than most folks think. For a long time and to this day, the bottleneck is the media, not the playback!

Thanks for your contribution here Atmasphere. Several in this thread don't seem to appreciate or understand your contributions, but your input is very useful and your actual experience is particularly valuable to me.

The thread shows that some audiophiles are clearly enamored with holography, whether accurate or not. You explanation of why some tube amps add holographic effect help me what I've heard in a few amps, but didn't understand.

Dave

Ralph,
The setup you describe reminds me of the "Kunstkopf" experiments, done in Germany in the 90s. The results were fascinating as far as ambience rendering of the recording venue was concerned, but you had to wear special earphones to really appreciate the results. That was the reason that this technology never hit the mainstream. The few recordings that were made are collectible items now.
According to my long listening experience I would intuitively agree with you, that the media constitutes the biggest bottleneck for realistic rendering and indeed, as you also have suggested, I've been battling with my various rooms all of my audiophile life to minimize its interference. A task comparable to that of Sisyphus indeed!
Your tale about the chirping of the robbins makes me think as well:
I've been complaining quite often here, that what keeps us most away from the "Absolute Sound" at home,is what I call bloom or aura, that magic moment, where a note played, say from a solo violin spreads into space, emanating almost from all around the instrument. That is something distinctly different, I think, from what we have discussed here. Too much of holography spoils this by masking just that effect.
Quite possibly you are right, that it is the media, not the gear.
I do not have one CD that can do it. Mostly to mimic that effect, they mix in a bit of hall around the voice or instrument, which I find annoying. I know of a large number of classical piano recordings on LP, where you hear exactly where the right pedal sets in, but that is not quite the same thing either.
If it is the medium and not the "messenger"-rig, do you know of media that do truly render this "bloom", which apart from room-interference, as you so rightly point out,is to me the biggest obstacle to the "Absolute Sound" at home?

Cheers and thanks for your most valuable inputs here!
Detlof
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