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Analysis of Paper on Measurements of RCA Cables by Kunchur (Video)

PeteL

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That is indeed a very interesting point! We are capturing instruments and voices that themselves have very complex radiation patterns, and using microphones and speakers that, by their design, MUST have a predefined and predictable radiation pattern with respect to recording and playback of sounds. Otherwise, they wont work the way we want them to. I think the opposite is likely true with respect to imaging. Imposing such constraints likely alters much of the spatial cues, which is probably one reason its so hard to get a good sounding recording with only two microphones. They only capture a small slice of the emitted spectrum, and any additional cues that we normally use to interpolate, such as small head motions and the interactions with our relatively large ears, are lost in the process. These cues are both the changes in spectrum induced by our ears with respect to relative position (that microphones wont include) as well as changes in tonality as we move about. Its one reason why head tracking is needed with headphones if you want full binaural audio. Its my experience that everything images just behind the head, and along the axis of the ears, otherwise in binaural recordings. Those subtle cues are missing.
Sure, you definitely thought it trough. Binaural recording work the way it does because of that yes. But in the end sperakers are still point source, I think, so everything in the end, is about tricking the brain, but it don't mean the perception is not real, whether you use some HRTF algorithm, frequency manipulations, a binaural head or a purposeful choice of microphone positioning arranged in a way that the recordist pick up spectral cues designed to give you this perception, if it works, it works. It does not mean that: At recording, we had one figure 8 mic and this trumpet was on a stand, so he will sound higher. It may just not be the right experience, nor the way to create this 3rd dimension.
In the end the audio mixing engineers, work with the whole system together the speakers, the microphones, the room, the DSP. They may not use complex calculation, but they hear the changes they do. They work with iterative methods.
 
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PeteL

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That is indeed a very interesting point! We are capturing instruments and voices that themselves have very complex radiation patterns, and using microphones and speakers that, by their design, MUST have a predefined and predictable radiation pattern with respect to recording and playback of sounds. Otherwise, they wont work the way we want them to. I think the opposite is likely true with respect to imaging. Imposing such constraints likely alters much of the spatial cues, which is probably one reason its so hard to get a good sounding recording with only two microphones. They only capture a small slice of the emitted spectrum, and any additional cues that we normally use to interpolate, such as small head motions and the interactions with our relatively large ears, are lost in the process. These cues are both the changes in spectrum induced by our ears with respect to relative position (that microphones wont include) as well as changes in tonality as we move about. Its one reason why head tracking is needed with headphones if you want full binaural audio. Its my experience that everything images just behind the head, and along the axis of the ears, otherwise in binaural recordings. Those subtle cues are missing.
To elaborate a bit more. (yes @Blumlein 88 I will do more listening assessment). If I understand you well.
Your Hypothesis is HRTF can give height, Binaural technique with head tracking as well. But anything else would only be 2D.
The rationale for it appear valid, I got nothing against the reasoning.
Now I'd take that as a premiss for my own hypothesis. If you can portray height that way, well height can be portrayed.
The Idea here is not: With a stereo recording, the physical position of the players will translate as such when reproduced. And I know that's what the study want to say but I am past that. It may not work for the reason you mention. I see it as an Art work where a 3D image is created. Not about the "capture" of a real, actual, soundstage. But just, can you position a sound element in a 3D space. I say why not.
 

Blumlein 88

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To elaborate a bit more. (yes @Blumlein 88 I will do more listening assessment). If I understand you well.
Your Hypothesis is HRTF can give height, Binaural technique with head tracking as well. But anything else would only be 2D.
The rationale for it appear valid, I got nothing against the reasoning.
Now I'd take that as a premiss for my own hypothesis. If you can portray height that way, well height can be portrayed.
The Idea here is not: With a stereo recording, the physical position of the players will translate as such when reproduced. And I know that's what the study want to say but I am past that. It may not work for the reason you mention. I see it as an Art work where a 3D image is created. Not about the "capture" of a real, actual, soundstage. But just, can you position a sound element in a 3D space. I say why not.
Where this 3D aural image artistry might finally take off is object oriented multichannel audio. The most common likely to be Atmos. The idea is simple, with Atmos you should be able to position the apparent location of any sound anywhere you want. If you have a picture in 3D of where things should be, dialing it up in Atmos mastering should be easy peasy and work well. I've not had the pleasure of listening to Atmos mastered music on a home system. Hopefully I'll get that chance at some point.
 

Cars-N-Cans

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To elaborate a bit more. (yes @Blumlein 88 I will do more listening assessment). If I understand you well.
Your Hypothesis is HRTF can give height, Binaural technique with head tracking as well. But anything else would only be 2D.
The rationale for it appear valid, I got nothing against the reasoning.
Now I'd take that as a premiss for my own hypothesis. If you can portray height that way, well height can be portrayed.
The Idea here is not: With a stereo recording, the physical position of the players will translate as such when reproduced. And I know that's what the study want to say but I am past that. It may not work for the reason you mention. I see it as an Art work where a 3D image is created. Not about the "capture" of a real, actual, soundstage. But just, can you position a sound element in a 3D space. I say why not.
Well not 2D per se. Good, natural imaging can be had, esp. if the crosstalk and reflections can be managed, but there is no way to get height. With depth and lateral position the recording itself can dictate those, so the speakers can be transparent with respect to that portion of the imaging. But the height cues are lost. I don't think this is a problem as perfectly natural sound reproduction can be had, otherwise. If you wanted to use multi-channel and go with something like Atmos, that would be one possibility. But for me at least, accurate lateral and depth imaging are what do the most for giving a sense of true, natural sound reproduction along with getting neutral tonality and deep contrast. There is also the expectations of listening to music live. Almost always, you will be standing in front of a stage somewhere, so the sound will emerge from in front of you. If you can get accurate lateral and depth depicted over the loudspeakers or headphones, your job is pretty much done in my experience. But maybe in the future multi-channel can provide something more.
 

MacCali

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The problem is with that is if misinformation is posted and not addressed, some readers may think that the comment is correct. So it is quite important for incorrect comments to be responded to with correct information and for clear agenda types to be jostled.


JSmith
So this is why I say providing a informal response rather than make fun of someone is a better approach.

I get your point and fully accept it, because you are right. I’m not asking you to accept mine just entertain the idea.

But as stated misinformation would be bad, but as I said I really wouldn’t be surprised if what they say is true based on my comments above.

I think also for the most part, the items we own that were not measured and hit the chopping block are the most interesting

“It sounds good to me” is something we take as misinformation. Yet based on personal experience I can say for certain that if it was mediocre measurements wise it would sound good when the worst possible measuring piece of equipment is alright.

But that’s why I say it’s a learning experience to have both spectrums of measurements to have a foundation. This goes both ways clearly, for the subjective and objective. But for us who are objective we believe in the measurements and seek them out. To where a subjective person would buy something and it sounds good but there experience has been products which range from 70-90db. Even harder to distinguish a difference on such a small range and having no care for how the product measured
 

Cars-N-Cans

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Where this 3D aural image artistry might finally take off is object oriented multichannel audio. The most common likely to be Atmos. The idea is simple, with Atmos you should be able to position the apparent location of any sound anywhere you want. If you have a picture in 3D of where things should be, dialing it up in Atmos mastering should be easy peasy and work well. I've not had the pleasure of listening to Atmos mastered music on a home system. Hopefully I'll get that chance at some point.
I only ever heard it on a demo system a few years back. I thought it sounded pretty good, but that was with the demo recordings they had. One thing I would like is to see more development on crosstalk cancellation. In the near field when the crosstalk is brought under control, there is a nice sense of spaciousness and immersion that is missing in normal listening setups, and to some extent even in multi-channel. But the inherent difficulties of making that something you can stuff in a box and sell at the store make that remote in two-channel systems. Still I love to be able to hear a BACCH setup, and they are not too far from me, either. But I don't have a big fist-full of cash to wave around to get them to show me one. I did read the chapter Prof. Choueiri wrote in Immersive Sound when I got the book and the math behind the filters is something else. Immediately makes my eyelids extremely heavy like they used to get in courses like graduate continuum mechanics back in college.
 

Cars-N-Cans

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Their JAMBOX LiveAudio demo is something else! Don't have one but still pretty trippy stuff over the speakers! It really is like the sounds are all around you. I wonder how it was over the little consumer-type bluetooth Jawbone thingy? Never heard of it before going on their site and the video is from 2016 so I'm guessing it was a bit of a flop. :(

 

PeteL

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Well not 2D per se. Good, natural imaging can be had, esp. if the crosstalk and reflections can be managed, but there is no way to get height. With depth and lateral position the recording itself can dictate those, so the speakers can be transparent with respect to that portion of the imaging. But the height cues are lost. I don't think this is a problem as perfectly natural sound reproduction can be had, otherwise. If you wanted to use multi-channel and go with something like Atmos, that would be one possibility. But for me at least, accurate lateral and depth imaging are what do the most for giving a sense of true, natural sound reproduction along with getting neutral tonality and deep contrast. There is also the expectations of listening to music live. Almost always, you will be standing in front of a stage somewhere, so the sound will emerge from in front of you. If you can get accurate lateral and depth depicted over the loudspeakers or headphones, your job is pretty much done in my experience. But maybe in the future multi-channel can provide something more.
But if you don't have height, you only have width and depth, it's one plane by definition is 2 dimensional, sorry to state the obvious.
 

Cars-N-Cans

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But if you don't have height, you only have width and depth, it's one plane by definition is 2 dimensional, sorry to state the obvious.
Yeah but not in the sense we would normally think. This is far better than having only a "2D soundstage" with respect to only having the lateral position and that's it, and even there its pretty myopic. If you have been to a concert, the sound is "2D" in the same manner that all the sound is coming from the stage, and not over your head, behind you, etc. (unless you happen to fall over or be drunk!). If you have to omit a particular dimension, the elevation is the one you can most easily do without. The ones that are more "costly" from an imaging standpoint are accurate lateral and depth information as those are the ones that you rely on the most to locate things. Edit: A good example would be spatial effects in neutral headphones from having the ITDs and ILDs intact in the recording. These substantially improve the listening experience via the ability to provide some separation of the instruments so the spectral information from the various sound sources doesn't end up all bunched up in one spot (e.g. "three blobs" stereo). Better results could be had if those fully translated to HRTFs and HRIRs, but still its substantially better than what you would have with crummy headphones or speakers.
 
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Cars-N-Cans

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But if you don't have height, you only have width and depth, it's one plane by definition is 2 dimensional, sorry to state the obvious.
From the LiveAudio thing I referenced in my earlier post they do have some demos that do accurately convey, to some extent, height in the recording. Caveat-emptor for me, however, is the origin for said effects originates between the speakers and along the tweeter axis laterally since I don't have a device with LiveAudio included. I presume the intent was to have the origin at the seating position instead. Still, it adds a novel aspect that you don't normally have in conventional recordings that makes it a bit more immersive. Tip: Listen in the near field if you can or it wont work. Over headphones it seems to work as well.

 

Cars-N-Cans

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But if you don't have height, you only have width and depth, it's one plane by definition is 2 dimensional, sorry to state the obvious.
Of course, this requires additional processing of the mix beyond what Kunchur would have had in his old recordings. Those will have (or should not have, at least) no height at all.
 

Sokel

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For me,who don't care how the recording is made and if they use effects to recreate height,is it enough to trust the LEDR test for positioning (at the any limits I may have) or I need something more?
Theories are 99% but we have to put in in use,thats the value.
 

PeteL

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Where this 3D aural image artistry might finally take off is object oriented multichannel audio. The most common likely to be Atmos. The idea is simple, with Atmos you should be able to position the apparent location of any sound anywhere you want. If you have a picture in 3D of where things should be, dialing it up in Atmos mastering should be easy peasy and work well. I've not had the pleasure of listening to Atmos mastered music on a home system. Hopefully I'll get that chance at some point.
In the field of live sound reinforcement, I assisted to the Demo of the D&B soundscape systems that also use a object oriented audio concept. It was to my hear quite telling. in this case, interestingly the premise for it was not about the limitation in stereo to portray 3D. What they where trying to solve was the fact that a stereo image will only be accurate for a very small portion of a large audience This was about in this application allowing someone from the sides to have a similar experience than those front and center. So even tough we are talking about "spatial" audio, and a multiple speaker matrix, It was still about delivering a so called "stereo" image.
Whether the presenter semantic may raise questions.

 
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JSmith

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Hanlon's razor
I find though those that are just uninformed are assisted here, whereas those that show signs of malice tend not to be assisted.

In relation to this thread though, I'd suggest Kunchur should consider a different razor;

1662031733780.png



JSmith
 

PeteL

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Hanlon's Razor is an epigram, or saying, that has no scientific value. I must admit, however, that those who advance its status to the standing of scientific principle may inadvertently prove it to be true.

Jim
It wasn't meant to be a science based answer, not everything is.
 

tomtoo

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If you had to mix a radio play. And you want to give the impression that a person climbs up some stairs in a room, and speaks from above? You have the typical tools, eq, reverb, delay,.... What would you do?
Now add another speaker that stands on the floor?

What i like thats maybe thought about is, that for a 3d impression the canvas has not to be 3d. Its enough to fool the brain into 3d.

What bring us back to a sitting or standing trumpet player.
 
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Sokel

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For me,who don't care how the recording is made and if they use effects to recreate height,is it enough to trust the LEDR test for positioning (at the any limits I may have) or I need something more?
Theories are 99% but we have to put in in use,thats the value.
Thank god I didn't need a medical doctor,he would slowly talked me to death :facepalm:.
 

PeteL

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If you had to mix a radio play. And you want to give the impression that a person climbs up some stairs in a room, and speaks from above? You have the typical tools, eq, reverb, delay,.... What would you do?
Now add another speaker that stands on the floor?

What i like thats maybe thought about is, that for a 3d impression the canvas has not to be 3d. Its enough to fool the brain into 3d.
It's a complex subject, I don't have an answer to your question, but in the context of music reproduction, an other factor that could be brought in, and I know it is opening a whole other can of worm, but just thinking of it now, and yes it's not about pure science but it's about perception.
What if... The third dimension when referencing a music mix was not, or not necessarily "spatial"
I am thinking, and it's I admit disturbingly simplistic. The frequency spectrum. At the end of the day it's a scaled quantity of a fixed size. If we are still thinking of the analogy of putting objects in a box. A stereo mix obviously has a width (paning of the instruments) a depth (reverberation, delays) but elements are also "positioned" from bass to treble. Sure it has nothing to do with height, but is it not a "dimension"? If things are not distributed on that scale, a mix will be congested, instrument "separation" will suffer, etc. Those are still dimensional concepts. Just tought of it 3D, or "third D" Could be just as stupid as that... I know it's quite a side track compared to the rest of my discourse, just brain storming here, conceptually.
 

tomtoo

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It's a complex subject, I don't have an answer to your question, but in the context of music reproduction, an other factor that could be brought in, and I know it is opening a whole other can of worm, but just thinking of it now, and yes it's not about pure science but it's about perception.
What if... The third dimension when referencing a music mix was not, or not necessarily "spatial"
I am thinking, and it's I admit disturbingly simplistic. The frequency spectrum. At the end of the day it's a scaled quantity of a fixed size. If we are still thinking of the analogy of putting objects in a box. A stereo mix obviously has a width (paning of the instruments) a depth (reverberation, delays) but elements are also "positioned" from bass to treble. Sure it has nothing to do with height, but is it not a "dimension"? If things are not distributed on that scale, a mix will be congested, instrument "separation" will suffer, etc. Those are still dimensional concepts. Just tought of it 3D, or "third D" Could be just as stupid as that... I know it's quite a side track compared to the rest of my discourse, just brain storming here, conception-ally.

We can do easy science here. Just a radio ,a person that carrys it around in a room, directed to the stereo mics. Going down to floor and up as high he can with the radio while walking. Thats it, do science. I would say its easy to hear he tonal change, and with this the brain gets a good impresion what happens.
 
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Blumlein 88

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It's a complex subject, I don't have an answer to your question, but in the context of music reproduction, an other factor that could be brought in, and I know it is opening a whole other can of worm, but just thinking of it now, and yes it's not about pure science but it's about perception.
What if... The third dimension when referencing a music mix was not, or not necessarily "spatial"
I am thinking, and it's I admit disturbingly simplistic. The frequency spectrum. At the end of the day it's a scaled quantity of a fixed size. If we are still thinking of the analogy of putting objects in a box. A stereo mix obviously has a width (paning of the instruments) a depth (reverberation, delays) but elements are also "positioned" from bass to treble. Sure it has nothing to do with height, but is it not a "dimension"? If things are not distributed on that scale, a mix will be congested, instrument "separation" will suffer, etc. Those are still dimensional concepts. Just tought of it 3D, or "third D" Could be just as stupid as that... I know it's quite a side track compared to the rest of my discourse, just brain storming here, conceptually.
You will have to ask someone adept at mixing. When I've tried to do such things if there are more than 3 tracks it just ends up sounding like a hashy mess. Or almost (almost mind you) as bad as a Phil Spector recording. As odd as it seems, I can process each channel as it needs up to 8 channels anyway, and if I pan everything left, right or center it sounds much more distinct. Much better result for listeners. And having multiple tracks in one of those three positions doesn't make them sound on top of each other in a way you would guess would happen.


If you ever watch the documentary on Muscle Shoals, and if you haven't you might want to, they show some of the old original equipment used in the 1960s there. The mixing board didn't have pan pots. It had 3 way switches. Each switch was Left, Center or Right. Some were 3 way flip switches and some were 3 way rotary switches.

Universal Audio 610 Vacuum tube mixing board. See how each channel in the board has a switch, labeled L(eft), M(iddle) and R(ight).

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