Paul's Posts — 29 July 2012
By Paul McGowan
I was thinking about some of your comments about your systems: many of you mentioned that your systems were good enough to reproduce well recorded music as if it were live.
I am with you. I too have had moments with my system that I could believe the music was real enough to touch – but I was always aware I wan’t actually there with the music.
I have never felt that I was actually IN the room it was recorded in and that, my friends, is a huge difference between listening to something that “sounds live” to actually being in the room or the venue where it was recorded.
Without changing the room to become an active element in the chain there’s never going to be hope for that.
How cool would it be if it were possible, as I imagined in prior posts, to make the room active and a part of the presentation? How cool would it be to have the info of the recorded space attached to every recording and the active room reprogrammed to fit each time?
How cool would that be?
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edhofler
While attending a NAB show in Los Vegas about 10 years ago I had a chance to play with a device that looked like an over sized phone booth with just such a feature. The practice booth is designed to allow musicians to practice in the venue they would be performing in virtually. You selected the preprogramed hall of choice and when inside the booth would “add the room” to what ever you were playing.
Paul McGowan
Wow, now that’s what I am talking about. I know it is possible and can envision how to do it – it’s just a project beyond our scope to tackle as a company right now. It’d sure be neat if someone did.
socal77
Paul, you are right about “not really being there” with reproduced music. With an engineering and business background, as you and many readers have, I have finally come to accept that everything is a economic and engineering compromise. If I were wealthy enough, I would hire the Chicago Symphony to be my personal musicians, and, if I could, I would bring back George Solti and Carlo Maria Giulini to conduct, and while I was at it, I would take Adolf Herseth back 20 years (I have some recordings that kind of do that!). But then to make it real I should also hire some lady with a sinus problem to sit behind me, an old guy to snore next to me, and a young couple to sit in front so that the young gentleman can try to impress the young beauty by telling her what is coming up next at every transition.
A real plus for recorded music is that we get to pick the time and material. Sometimes I am at a concert of Mahler’s 2nd, 3rd, or 8th, and I don’t have the attention span or concentration to get into the music, no matter how well performed. On the other hand, sometimes at 10:27 am on a Saturday Mahler would be well received by my nervous system, but if not, maybe some Coltrane, Dire Straits or Willie Nelson would be. If so I am only a few clicks or a vinyl prep ritual away from a “close to the real thing” event that I can control. I won’t have the lady with the sinus problem behind me, however. Paul, keep up the good work.
Soundminded
Since this is hypothetical discussion let’s fantasize about what the experience might be like. You walk into a room that seems perfectly ordinary, nothing particularly special about it. As we discussed previously you form a mental image of it from what you see and hear based on the direct sounds and reflections of your own voice, other people’s voices, other noises in the room, noises from other parts of the building, noises that enter from outside. A coherent picture comes into your mind quickly just as you’ve experienced all of your life since you were an infant learning your world. And then you sit down and a recording starts to play. And immediately there is a sudden disconnect. The relationship between what you see and what you hear is completely broken. Visually you are in the same room but psychoacoustically you are in a room hundreds of times larger. So the first reaction might be one of astonishment just as it was the first time you saw what appeared to be a woman cut in half. Closing your eyes helps to dispel this disconnect as your brain begins to explore and understand this new space. The room is larger in every dimension. It’s much wider, much taller, and much longer. The musical instruments seem much further away, far beyond the front wall and much more powerful even though they aren’t louder than you’d expect. The walls and ceiling of the room you saw are gone, the speakers are gone, it’s as though Dorothy is suddenly discovering she isn’t in Kansas anymore. In addition to the overwhelming sense of space there are other differences you might notice too. The sounds of the instruments are different. They are clear, have a pleasing mellow tone without in the least being muffled or muted. Musical dynamics have increased without seeming to be exaggerated. When the sound gets very loud it is big and powerful but there is no sense of blaring or blasting and never any sense of compression. The whole space seems constantly alive with the reverberation of the sounds as their echoes die out, the echoes being completely natural without any peculiar mechanical quality or false resonances. Harmonies take on a new pleasing tone. After awhile it becomes completely natural but it is never something you can ignore or overlook. It grabs your attention and will not let go. You could never use such sounds as background for doing something else. And then the demonstrator turns this sound field off and it is as though the music had collapsed. It is immediately flat, fallen down dead, nothing more than a hi fi system in the small room you saw, no matter how good that hi fi system is.
As with any new powerful tool that exists in new and different dimensions unless the illusion were to be created perfectly there would be the possibility of new and unexpected distortions that could range from mildly irritating to unbearable and unlistenable. Such a technology that seems so difficult and out of reach to current thinking would have special requirements and penalties if those requirements were not met. If such a technology were developed assuming it were possible to make it work, premature introduction into the marketplace before it were perfected could condemn it to the same oblivion that other failed technologies such as quadraphonic sound suffered. Half hearted, insufficiently expert or underfunded R&D that would not be afforded the time to mature the idea sufficiently in a rush to make profits would just create one more disappointing disaster no advertising hyperbole could rescue.
Paul McGowan
Well, as usual you hit the nail with your head – or wait a minute …..
I couldn’t agree more with you Mark.
Soundminded
“I was just thinking…”
And so was I trying to think…but nothin’ happens
Todd Bankers
SRS Labs is working on something call MDA (multi dimensional audio.) There was a Home Theater magazine article by Scott Wilkinson about his vist to SRS Labs for a demonstration 12/8/2010 which i thought was very interesting. Not sure how it all works but it sounded like the software is put in during the mixing process and is accessed when you play the disc at home.
Todd
Paul McGowan
Todd, the problem with this approach IMHO is that it is changing the sound of the loudspeakers – not the room. The whole point of the article was to try and change the room not the speakers, the music or anything else.
KipnisStudios
Paul -
I created such a room, and first demonstrated it in the Fall of 2005.
It’s called the Kipnis Studio Standard (KSS)™ and it’s goal is to so completely immerse yourself sonically and physically in the actual acoustic found in each and every recording that you lose yourself in the illusion, completely! I have defined this as “The MIRAGE Effect”™.
Have a look (with a 12.12 Hemispherical Surround Sound System, with all matching Speakers (Drivers & Crossovers remade from scratch), and identical DACs, Amps, and Wiring:
http://www.Kipnis-Studios.com
Cheers -
Jeremy
Kipnis Studios
Soundminded
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who has the best……..idea of all?
A lot of people have worked on this problem for the better part of 100 years. Some of them were very smart. Some of them had enormous technical and financial resources available to them. Some were both smart and had those resources. And so far as is known, at least to the public at large nobody has solved it satisfactorily. I won’t go into why, it may read as too depressing and too disparaging.
There are certainly other efforts and ideas floating around. Among them is Ambiophonic Sound, a close cousin to Edgar Choueiri’s 3D Sound posted as the first entry in “Audio” on this site. Here’s a link to more about 3D Sound and a demonstration. It’s optimized for a laptop computers’ speakers.
https://www.princeton.edu/3D3A/Choueiri.html
A year ago I visited Ralph Glasgal, inventor of Ambiophonics at “The Ambiophonics Institute” which is actually his home in Rockleigh NJ. Ralph was the most gracious host possible, generous to a fault, and exceptionally smart. He has a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and seemingly limitless financial resources available to him. Many of these experimenters have impressive academic credentials. A mutual acquaintance had told me he wanted to meet me and I spent a most pleasant day obliging. Besides I wanted to hear the best embodiment of Ambiophonics available. I’d read his book which was written some time ago and there had been further developments since. You can visit his web site here and there are more demonstrations.
http://www.ambiophonics.org/index.html
My experience was similar to what I’d heard on his web site but on a much large scale. BTW every one of these novel ideas will produce interesting and unique effects that probably can’t be duplicated with conventional stereo or multichannel sound systems. Whether they successfully address the problem at hand is another matter. Regardless of the analysis of the theory, the only way to really find out what they’re like is to experience them for yourself. I give a great deal of credit and respect to anyone with the courage to try something that no one else has tried before no matter how far short of what they hope for is what you find in their results. Naturally, everyone will be partial to their own brainchild. I try to keep an open mind. I’m also aware that ideas with potential may not show their best face in early prototypes. Considerable development and further research may be required to tease out their full possibilities.
So there are other efforts like Wave Field Synthesis pioneered at the Fraunhaufer Institute in Germany, Ambiosonic (as opposed to Ambiophonic) sound which I think is being developed in England and has had some experimentation in California. And there are undoubtedly others. Good luck to all of them and may the best idea win.
In comparing notes with Ralph Glasgal, it seems to me that the mainstream of the consumer audio industry including manufacturers of esoteric equipment, are not interested in any of these non conventional ideas currently. They are content to continue along their present lines of thinking, trying to create more refined better performing versions of what they already have produced. There’s not much promise there IMO. A radically new idea, even one that fails seems much more interesting and exciting to me than an old one that has been driven to ground through countless iterations already.
oliver T. Finch
Interesting concept but almost impossible to implement at the present state of affairs. Also may not be worth the expense which will no doubt be quite a bit at least initially specially with the high end /astronomical pricing concept ruling the audio world.As it is the sound of a well balanced system with really clean AC supply can be so good that many may not even try it at the astronomical introductory pricing and wait for the price to come down which may or not happen. Regards.
Soundminded
The main problem with Ambiophonic sound as I see it and most likely with 3D sound as well isn’t that it’s expensive (it doesn’t necessarily have to be) or that it’s impractical but…..that it just doesn’t work. It does produce an interesting effect though but to me it’s not like hearing a live concert. One of the basic problems with phase cancellation systems as I see it is that they assume that the signal you’re looking for is on the recording, you just have to unmask it properly. I’ve concluded it largely isn’t there. Other problems include that you must sit where X marks the spot or the effect doesn’t work so only one person can listen to it properly at a time. Also room reflections will tend to work against the effect because they will create in-phase reinforcement components that deminish the cancellation effect. The idea works best in large dead rooms or where you are close to the speakers so that room reflections aren’t a significant component of the sound field you hear. What I heard was the source spread over a very wide angle nearly 180 degrees in a plane between me and the speakers. Hall reverberation and ambience even with all the digital signal processors and surround speakers was negligable.
acuvox
There have been various attempts. I have heard Gerzon, Glasgal, Johnston, Chesky and Lipinski demonstrate their systems, and discussed the limits of Chouieri’s technologies with him.
The only one that is satisfactory to my ears without a proprietary recording format is Steve Haas’s “Concertino” because it works for nearly every seat in the room:
http://www.shacoustics.com/concertino/
It works independently of the reproduction system, and serves equally for live music. It requires construction of a dedicated room that is substantially absorbent, with microphone and speaker arrays embedded in the walls. The reverb is somewhat generic, not reproducing a particular room but capable of duplicating the reverb statistics by augmenting the delays inherent in the physical arrays and boundary locations. Since so few people listen to acoustic music more than speakers in childhood, this is a compelling illusion and sounds great even to this hard-core acoustic fanatic (I was raised on a Mason & Hamlin, have a grand piano and three harpsichords in my home, and work at a venue with a Steinway Model D).
The reason Concertino sounds so good is the acoustician and programmer has a distinguished pedigree in acoustic music. Haas designed New York’s flagship chamber music venue, Zankel Hall, among hundreds of other acoustic projects at Jaffe-Holden and in his own firm. The others approach the problem from a mathematical perspective, deny Manfred Schroeder’s work in phase perception and don’t spend enough time listening to acoustic music. The original definition of “Stereo” is solid – and Steve Haas’s relation to acoustics is solidly physical.
Paul McGowan
Aha!!!
This is EXACTLY whatI dreamed up and presented in my post. I had no idea this existed but it’s exactly right and exactly what i had imagined. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It is heart warming to know it exists.
And, by the way, the reason it works certainly is in part because the guy knows what he’s doing – but more important than his pedigree is he got the IDEA right. You change the room, not the sound from the two speakers.
Wish i could afford to have something like this.
Soundminded
How well it works depends on what mathematical model they used and how well they executed it. Experience shows that either the wrong model or poor execution is sufficient to create a fatal flaw. The model must take into account among many things the variables of the recording and the type of venue to be created. IMO that’s very difficult, beyond the skill of audiophiles to make adjustments for themselves. The other issue is, are we talking about a million dollar room to accomodate a million dollar sound system? That puts it out of almost everyone’s reach.
Every “pioneer” has made the same claim. So far all have failed. My suggestion Paul is that you listen to it before you buy. Don’t let fast talking salesmen or a slick web site bamboozle you
Paul McGowan
I couldn’t afford it anyway – but I love what they have proposed and said they did. Had I that kind of money I’d surely want a demo – because you’re absolutely right – they just have all the right elements in place. Now it’s down to execution.
Soundminded
I think a sound system that can do what they claim theirs cand should cost no more than about five or ten thousand dollars, fifteen tops and be engineered to adapt itself to your room. Standardizing the room may make the problem easier (although far from simple if it really works) but many of us not only can’t afford to buy a standardized room, we live in places like apartment houses where they might not fit no matter how little they cost. I looked at the web site and I don’t really understand how that system is supposed to work, that is the underlying principles on which it is based. Naturally I’d like to see the math model but if they have any secret at all, that’s it.
Soundminded
I took a closer look at the Concertino website. There are at least two disturbing things about what is revealed about the approach. One is that there are a large number of speakers burried in the walls and ceiling. Ever been in a large open landscape office area with a public address system? No matter how many speakers there are, when there is an anouncement or music coming out if it, it always appears to come from the one closest to you. This is because direct sound falls off at 6 db for every doubling of distance from the direct field created by a point source. Being able to localize the acoustics (reflections) is one thing you never want to hear in a concert hall. If you can there is a serious acoustic defect. This same defect was the first thing I noticed about quadraphonic sound. Glassgal instinctively seemed to deal with this problem by using panel speakers. At first as described in the first printing of his book they were three pairs of relatively narrow TNT panels for the surround sound. The main speakiers were Duntech Crown Sovereigns. In the prototype I saw last year all the surround speakers had been replaced with a continous array of wide Soundlabls panels that surround you 360 degrees horizontally. The phase cancellation process for the front speakers which were 8′ tall Soundlabs panels still requires you to sit where X marks the spot. The Ambiophonics web site shows this system photographed from a balcony above. Either way this is not active use of the existig room as you correctly suggested is necessary. Glassgal’s room is enormous, I’d guess about 40 to 50 feet long, 30 to 40 feet wide, and around 30 feet high. It’s also heavily treated with Armstrong Soundsoak, fiberglass panels with a fabric covering that are designed to absorb sound. This is intended to prevent destructive interference that would arrive at the listener in-phase degrading the phase cancellation principle ambiophonics is based on.
The other problem is the mention of systems integrators, outside contractors. This implies that the designer does not have complete control over the installatoin unless he has his concept executed to his exact drawings and specifications. The software and hardware are proprietary so we don’t really know from what’s revealed exactly how it works.
To understand how a room can be actively used, think of the walls and ceiling as being to sound what a distorting mirror is to light. You need to project images at them that are “conditioned” such that when their distortions are added, the result is exactly what you are looking for. That’s how you turn a small room into a large one acoustically. The math model explains what that end result must be. The alternative which can be far better controlled but is also far more complex and expensive is to use those thousands of speakers shoulder to shoulder Choueiri had envisioned when he was young in a huge anechoic room. That’s possible building a very expensive laboratory but it’s not for use in a home.