Yes, it is different. My system is about trying to get a cleaner signal to each ear by minimizing stereo channel crosstalk across the head. It ends up being more complicated since it requires a third speaker and some signal summing and differential. But the resulting signal reaching each ear should be purer, at least in theory. Subjectively it seems to work quite well.
As for sound splashing on the sidewalls, I'm not sure how important that is in my configuration. I listened to it quite a bit in the listening room at work today where the speakers were surrounded by various amounts of acoustic absorbers. It seemed that it produced a great sound field even when heavily crowded with absorbers but the tone got a little dark. With no absorbers the room is too bright so it ends up being much like a normal two channel configuration in terms of optimal room acoustics.^^ Yeah these single structure stereo systems are all more or less the same concept. Three speaker configuration like normal stereo + center is bit different, but attacks the same issue, combating comb filter of the center sound, replacing phantom center with real center. I've build (and since scrapped) the elias single speaker stereo and it worked nice, except there was difference between the direct and side sound in a way that although there was nice mono and nice "canvas" like sound field on the wall I had the speaker against, it was somehow disconnected. Perhaps I had some issues with the build that are not directly related to the configuration or something.
Perhaps, if the tweeters were all pointed towards the listener, like here in this thread, the direct sound would have least amount of interference to it, cancelled by hearing system even if it works as advertized. I would imagine this works best with multiway speakers and not as good with fullrange drivers (like elias prototype) that beam the highs. I think there is need to have the sound splashed to side walls while having coherent direct sound which should both happen in this thread concept, if I'm imagining it right. Anyway, this could work bit better than the other schemes that splash the sidewalls and try avoid corrupting the direct sound failing at it
Yep reflections required for Elias' system. How much have you experimented with positioning with your system? What happens if you take it ouside to remove side reflections? Intuitively I would think the side reflections are in key role, as the L-R and R-L speakers would cancel each other out if they were perfectly coincident. Having them separated for small path length makes them decorrelate only at very high frequency and I'm not sure if hearing system masking has set in yet and so on, so I would assume the direct sound just mostly cancels out and what you hear is reflections in the room like in Elias' system.
Key thing!
If I remember correctly space station is Mid-Side system and has dipole driver playing side channel.
You think like I think! I've tried near field and rear field crosstalk cancelation schemes. They all work to some degree. Rear field with a divider works really nicely and beats the heck out of a front divider. You can now rest your head on the divider instead of planting your face into it. Still, all these setups end up being a pain to live with. This setup is easy to live with and works remarkably well.Free thinking about it: why not have open back headphones playing the sides signal, no crosstalk at all, and then single speaker mono somewhere in the room to get the sound out of head?
The speakers have to be spaced apart in their array at ear distance, but sets of cancelling speakers actually get farther and farther away from the ears as the array widens, which is why it becomes increasingly effective at crosstalk cancellation. You can spread the array wider and it sounds --- interesting. If you do it just right as you say, you can set the speakers up in a pair of arcs around each ear, with the two arcs converging right were the center speaker is placed. This arrangement requires the listener to sit in one location only, both in terms of left and right AND front and back to get proper crosstalk elimination. That's a much more complicated setup to establish and maintain.So the crosstalk cancellation system works as long as the setup is physically symmetric sides have signals L-R and R-L? spacing doesn't have to be distance between ears?
What if you spread your 5 speaker array wider as wide as you like? What if you gave 0.5*L-0.5*R and 0.5*R-0.5*L to the speaker between extremes and center, or how to further split the width into individual sets of speakers or is there any point doing so? Can you just leave out the in-between speakers and have three spaced out? What about distance, perhaps speakers should arc to maintain path length and clarity? Just thinking out loud
edit. well, perhaps I should get reading papers before posting anymore
Carry on
I haven't taken the system outside yet but I expect it would still produce a very wide and deep sound stage. The sound may be less enveloping though. I've read others including Don Keele report that stereo crosstalk elimination works great outside or in heavily damped rooms. In a normal stereo setup the room plays an important part in getting the stereo width established. The reflections off the side walls cross the head better than the direct signal, adding to the inter aural difference that is needed. Good crosstalk elimination produces excellent inter aural difference with no need for assistance from room reflections.Hi TIm, thanks for long replies
Yep reflections required for Elias' system. How much have you experimented with positioning with your system? What happens if you take it ouside to remove side reflections? Intuitively I would think the side reflections are in key role, as the L-R and R-L speakers would cancel each other out if they were perfectly coincident. Having them separated for small path length makes them decorrelate only at very high frequency and I'm not sure if hearing system masking has set in yet and so on, so I would assume the direct sound just mostly cancels out and what you hear is reflections in the room like in Elias' system.
Key thing!
If I remember correctly space station is Mid-Side system and has dipole driver playing side channel.
FWIW the cross-talk persists regardless of the panning. What you are in fact doing with hard-panning is simply making the speaker that has the audio the sole source of the sound. This is then perceived as any other sound source would be using the typical methods the auditory center employs. The big difference with two speakers in a true cross-talk cancellation scheme is that the speakers themselves are no longer perceived to be the source of the sound. With recordings that have both ITDs and ILDs, the origin of sounds you hear are from the actual recording itself. With sufficient information, each sound source is perceived as its own entity in space at some point in your vicinity. This is one reason headphones with spatial effects sound so much better, is that there is true separation of the sound sources. Not only are they independent to some extent, but there is also much less spectral overlap between the sources in the recording. The auditory center does a much better job of managing it. With old-school "three-blobs" stereo, all of the spectral content in the recording ends up in three places: The left speaker, the right speaker, and the phantom channel. Usually good setups with well-treated rooms and well-behaved speakers will fall somewhere in the middle, hopefully towards the better end. There are some "spatial effects" that give at least some sense of imaging, and the speakers themselves are not perceived to be the only place the sound is coming from, but the recording as well with a phantom image. There are imaging cues that are helping to reconstruct to an extent what was recorded. I think this is one of the main reasons a speaker playing by itself can sound so dramatically different. The auditory center just processes it as any other source of sound, and speakers by definition have to have much different radiation patterns than things like voices or instruments. The tonality can be there, but the actual acoustical image will be quite different.
To me it seems that way, but without the need for programming that has dedicated center channel content. Also from his description of it sounding "hollow" without the center speaker there it does allude to there being some form of a null between the L and R speakers.
Or alternatively you could make a giant line of them with a camera and head tracking. As you move, the selected pair of speakers in use changes as well, meaning you never leave the sweet spotps. mount it on a turntable and make it aim middle of your head so you are always at sweetspot
. CS5's are relatively cheap, and audiophiles do have stranger things like speakers with field coils and bias supplies or subwoofers with a fist-full of whizzer cones to turn them into full range speakers. Its all a matter of perspective 
I did buy those! Those were my first floor standing speakers. I bought them with my enlistment bonus while in the Navy.
I think head tracking has a lot of potential. Even with just a 3 speaker array the time alignment could be maintained over a wider sweet spot by adjusting the delays of each channel. So if you move to the left you just have to delay the left channel and delay the center channel a bit less to maintain arrival times. I find it already sounds pretty good as you move off axis. The sound stays put in the middle of the listening area where the speakers are but the width and depth of the sound stage collapses. It still sounds clean and tight with good tone, just a bit more mono.To me it seems that way, but without the need for programming that has dedicated center channel content. Also from his description of it sounding "hollow" without the center speaker there it does allude to there being some form of a null between the L and R speakers.
Or alternatively you could make a giant line of them with a camera and head tracking. As you move, the selected pair of speakers in use changes as well, meaning you never leave the sweet spot
Just shows to prove that there’s nothing new when it comes to speakers.
Very Low WAF.There's a website about DSP crosstalk cancellation which allows one to test their product (can't recall the name).
To me it sounded phasey-weird and as if coming from the bottom of a well.
I did try something like this back in the day:
I was 16 at the time. But yes, very low MumAF.
That's the ultimate way to do it. Doing that is what got me started on the whole thing. It sounds MUCH better to my ears. But that darned thing right in your face just doesn't cut it. Well actually it does cut it - cuts the left and right speaker signals right in half! But I don't like having a divider in my face. Yes, the recursive crosstalk elimination sounds weird to me too - although some implementations have worked better than others, I've never found it to be something I could live with. I'm thinking with my 5 speaker array it could be applied sparingly just to the outside channels leaving the inside channels pure and unadulterated. I'm going to try it.I was 16 at the time. But yes, very low MumAF.
Mine was built of a hard thin cushion/matress proped up with a stool on each side.
It was purely by accident, I had absolutely no idea what crosstalk was but for some reason it made sense to try...
) so I do have something to compare with. My usual experience with this system is that it has the tonality of headphones on the Harman target, but with much more accurate spatial effects. Its not simply the usual "instruments in a line" but an actual sense of accurate lateral position and depth, with the sources in the recording being perceived as separate entities in their own right.
