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A Broad Discussion of Speakers with Major Audio Luminaries

So this is all about monitoring in the studio, but at the end you bring in your mother about the immense impact of AE in every day enjoyment?
Everybody can hear AE, and a listening room creates some as well, but not Notre-Dame-de-Paris-amounts as discussed in a previous thread where my mom was mentioned. In monitoring, you need to hear what is in the source - which could be a cathedral, or bone-dry Steely Dan.

And about that science thing: science is actually a bit more than "a string of temporary opinions" and paradigm shifts might happen or not...
Science is the best method we have found for systematically improving recording, reproduction, medicine etc. Sometimes, however, human perception is just the best place to start :)
 
Everybody can hear AE, ...
Science is ...
... to find a cause, not just correlation. I miss that in most of the discussions of "AE". If the need for causation is acknowledged, it is served with just speculation. I've even found notions like "... with the onset of the single tone ...", which doesn't make sense in my book at all (Fourier).

See https://www.genelec.com/-/blog/how-to-analyse-frequency-and-temporal-responses

There are two plots of a GRADE (Genelec) report, comparing speakers (fig 3), and the statement says, one's good, the other not so. No reason is given. There are 'patterns', but these - as such - could be easily sensed and played back in mono also. O/K, I could argue, that the long decay time, if I read it correctly, of the worse speaker may smear out the 'pattern'. But wouldn't it prolong the rise time also, effectively postpone the pattern a bit, and that was it, and not the least, may it be the room's contribution to begin with?

I wonder about the answer on how the insinuated localisation would work in case of phantom sources. I would sum up my personal understanding of my readings as "people tend to prefer to be sonified by somehow decorrelated sources even when it comes to bass and maybe even in smaller rooms given the original recording was taken in a larger room for plausibility". What's a workable hypothesis we could test?
 
Again, you need to properly quote the paper and explain what it was about. First, they used an impulse function for the primary test. That showed that bass group delay threshold is quite high:
...
To raise audibility of group delay in bass region, they had to modify the already corner case signal of an impulse by convolving it with pink noise. Only then the threshold of hearing for bass frequencies lowered. As a result, their key finding was that of the threshold for 300 to 1000 Hz.

But before you go celebrate, you need to pay attention to the last paragraph in the paper:
I haven't had any plans to celebrate with that study because it is done with headphones. Headphones are able to tell about audibility, but ears do not cover all perceptions especially at LF and therefore also dynamics with wide range transients. I've been repeating that studies using headphones only are not valid for all-inclusive GD studies.

You are more keen to refer existing studies and have some history and present with Harman; their methods and products and religious marketing experience so it's perfectly natural imo to be denial for different experiences and and the truth that timing error is able to drop transient pressure and RMS to fraction from original. Humans may not be as incapable of sensing that as you and many others seem to believe. This is primarily for investigators who have resources and motivation to make inclusive and valid studies - for once in history. Manufacturers do what they can and want, and ASR is free to continue with blinds down.
 
but a shortcut is also possible: To listen. My hard of hearing mother can tell AE, and she enjoys it immensely. David’s reverb designs are still unsurpassed, and he surely used that same shortcut.

Due to the auditory compression mechanism, we can either get better frequency resolution or better timing resolution (as SPL increases), but not both at the same time, because filter bandwidth is affected. For people with normal hearing, the perception can even be tested by increasing the environment noise greatly. Possibly in the midst of a hair dryer or a vacuum cleaner, of course not something that I would recommend.
 
Coming back to JJ’s horrors, science of course is a string of temporary opinions. In this field, a paradigm shift is bound soon to happen. Aalto University and others are scrutinising old dogma; but a shortcut is also possible: To listen. My hard of hearing mother can tell AE, and she enjoys it immensely. David’s reverb designs are still unsurpassed, and he surely used that same shortcut.
The problem with this "shortcut" is that you can get all sorts of anecdotes from wives in kitchens, hard of hearing mothers, and all sorts of people (often second-hand females, for some reason) about the obvious and magical improvements resulting from... speaker cables, power cables, shamanistic rituals to expel the reverb demons, and so on. There's ample evidence that we absolutely cannot simply "trust our ears", and should be even more skeptical of second-hand accounts from other people's ears.
 
The problem with this "shortcut" is that you can get all sorts of anecdotes from wives in kitchens, hard of hearing mothers, and all sorts of people

My personal favorite is "My Mom could hear the difference between Original Monster, 12 Gauge Discwasher and 14 Gauge lamp cord from the other room while doing dishes!"

Edit: This was an actual claim by a reviewer from an online audio mag, and not said in jest.
 
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I suppose this is as good as thread as anywhere to ask this question:

What is the relevance of Doppler distortion in loudspeaker performance, in particular with regard to drivers?

So for instance, you’ve got a two way speaker with a 10 inch woofer and a 2.5 way speaker with smaller dual 5.5” woofers, and those smaller woofers have a long throw motor to get a lot of bass performance out of them.

As I understand it… and this is what I’d like clarified if it’s wrong… the smaller woofers moving in and out along a significantly longer distance would be more prone to producing Doppler effects with the higher frequencies that are also being produced as the woofers move back-and-forth for bass frequencies.

Whereas the big 10” driver doesn’t have to move back-and-forth as deeply to produce the same bass response, and so would be less prone to Doppler distortion for the higher frequencies it’s also producing

Is that right and if so how audible or relevant does this Doppler distortion tend to be?
 
For all of you who have doubts about AE, it’s quite easy to set up a listening test to hear the difference between mono and stereo bass. If you want, your can also invite your mother to the listening test if she's interested. :)

First, set up your subwoofers in a stereo configuration on each side of your main speakers, and obviously connect them in stereo. Open a DAW and put an HPF on the master track, and set it at 80 Hz and with a 24 dB slope. Import all kind of different music tracks you want to test, and just listen to what happens to the bass under 80Hz in isolation when toggling between mono and stereo on the master tracks (most DAWs should have that functionality).

To me, it's easy to hear the effects @Thomas Lund describes as “big”, “open”, “free”, “pleasant”, “light” in favor of stereo bass, in opposite to mono bass, which is described with words like “unpleasant”, “claustrophobic”, “small”, “restricted space”.

How much of a difference it makes is of course highly dependent on the audio production, and if they contain stereo bass information or not.
 
For all of you who have doubts about AE, it’s quite easy to set up a listening test to hear the difference ...
Not quite. As I said above, every theory must comprise a causal reason for an effect to occur - basically that *is* the theory. That's missing here (as far as I know). So, we have no theory. Hence we cannot test it. As I said before, it might not be the 'stereo' thing and localisation of phantom sources, but it could simply be decorrelation speaker one and two in conjuction with room modes. I do not dismiss observation, but without reasoning, how to properly recreate it to begin with, just doing things somehow?

In medicine / pharmacy, that would be o/k. To heal people comes first, driven by empirical knowledge (that's why there is so much statistics), and the exact mode of action is sometimes too complex to be deduced. Should we go this route with audio likewise? It gave us 'stereo' which is fundamentally flawed, funny indeed.
 
What is the relevance of Doppler distortion in loudspeaker performance, in particular with regard to drivers?
Spoiler: don't read if calculations are not for you.

>> on Doppler converting to amplitude modulation, also consider the phase relation is disturbed too

I posted it so many times now, and got ignored at best and got rebuked also. Seems like Linkwitz (or: math) is not as much of an authority anymore. Maybe it will go like with the 'lobing' where people told me "no problem" until a OEM came out with a speaker model that solved it, which then was celebrated for exactly that reason ...

I could also give a link to a self-test that I posted as often, but - literally - got ignored every single time, funny indeed.
 
For all of you who have doubts about AE, it’s quite easy to set up a listening test to hear the difference between mono and stereo bass. If you want, your can also invite your mother to the listening test if she's interested. :)

First, set up your subwoofers in a stereo configuration on each side of your main speakers, and obviously connect them in stereo. Open a DAW and put an HPF on the master track, and set it at 80 Hz and with a 24 dB slope. Import all kind of different music tracks you want to test, and just listen to what happens to the bass under 80Hz in isolation when toggling between mono and stereo on the master tracks (most DAWs should have that functionality).

To me, it's easy to hear the effects @Thomas Lund describes as “big”, “open”, “free”, “pleasant”, “light” in favor of stereo bass, in opposite to mono bass, which is described with words like “unpleasant”, “claustrophobic”, “small”, “restricted space”.

How much of a difference it makes is of course highly dependent on the audio production, and if they contain stereo bass information or not.
You are simply changing the frequency response at the ears. Duh.
 
If the "as intended by the artist" is what they heard at the control's room main monitors (that's what they buy from the studio) then stereo bass (freq+phase) is the way to go.
It's as simple as that.
 
If the "as intended by the artist" is what they heard at the control's room main monitors (that's what they buy from the studio) then stereo bass (freq+phase) is the way to go.
It's as simple as that.
No, the artist should have heard the final studio mix in the mastering suite. They often use subwoofers and EQ. So do mixing studios, actually.

Does that mean your opinion is now "mono bass then, it's as simple as that "?
 
No, the artist should have heard the final studio mix in the mastering suite. They often use subwoofers and EQ. So do mixing studios, actually.

Does that mean your opinion is now "mono bass then, it's as simple as that "?
Artists don't buy mastering suite's material, they buy the control room's finished result unless they are involved in the mastering, not many do and if they do is out of idiosyncrasy.
If however, smaller bands at smaller studios use a shared control/mastering room as you describe, then yes, mono.

The thing is that the vast majority of the files I have analyzed and posted at the other thread either contain stereo bass or even at the what described as mono ones, phase varies wildly between channels.
So...
 
An example:

01 Scheherazade, op. 35- The Sea and Sinbad's Ship from 1996 RCA/Victor CD remastered from the 1956-1963 performances of Reiner and CSO

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1750416725154.png

1750416758228.png

Note, that this is a 50's recording.
 
... CD remastered ... Note, that this is a 50's recording.
:) re-"mastered" = not what the artists expected. Sound engineer included. Re-phasing, the point you mentioned, is not that good of an idea, if you want to distribute the load over two little speakers, but it may help with room resonances.

Reiterated, what is the (step by step by step precondition-conclusion pairs) theory behind the statements on "AE"? To say "you can hear it" is just an observation (at best).

I'm only into this, as I personally think that longing for 'immersion' etc is kind of an exaggerated expectation. In the 50's, as you mention it, people were more humble. Men wore hats, mono was the rule, and people understood, that every record playback is in no way the real thing. Only with stereo as a hype selling twice as much gear for double needed fairytales beyond "His Master's Voice" (the dog cannot doubt, I'm not a dog). The grand new thing, virtual reality, don't miss out! Today big science is still pressed into the dilemma to explore a fundamentally flawed technology ... . Please do not fall for it again and again.
 
:) re-"mastered"
If by the "remastered" you mean the use of the era's three-channel recordings then yes.
By definition, to put the analog masters in a CD is remastering.

(I guess someone can measure the famous reels of this recording, if they are genuine as they say)

About falling, I wouldn't if haven't tried it at any imaginable combination.
Call it "preference"? Deal.
And costs nothing if you already have the means, just some time.

Edit: Deltawave is free software thanks to @pkane ,you can measure anything you like and decide yourself about the potential impact down low. you can even listen to the difference after the measurement.
 
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Artists don't buy mastering suite's material, they buy the control room's finished result unless they are involved in the mastering,
It doesn't really matter. The artist is generally not the creator of the recorded product. That's the sound engineer: it's his/her skill that creates the sound and its attributes. On a (very) few occasions, it is the same person. Not general practice.

The feedback I have seen from sound engineers is that the musicians barely even care, as long as the sound engineering is done to "maximise sales volume". Apparently, that is the entirety of the most common instruction on sound quality from musicians to studio.

...not many do and if they do is out of idiosyncrasy.
If however, smaller bands at smaller studios use a shared control/mastering room as you describe, then yes, mono.
Like I said in my post above, mixing rooms are also often using subwoofers. So, shared or not, it's often mono.

The thing is that the vast majority of the files I have analyzed and posted at the other thread either contain stereo bass or even at the what described as mono ones, phase varies wildly between channels.
But it doesn't matter if phase "varies wildly between channels" if the mixing and mastering setups had subwoofers. A home subwoofer setup will more resemble the studio setup than a two-speaker home stereo.

So, that is arguably better to be summed, then, because it is far more likely to be an artefact of multi channel, multi mic recording tracks being mixed with different level, timing, recorded in different rooms, sometimes with leakage across mics from other instruments (especially bass), just causing a wild potpourri of phase madness. The chances of it being some pure capture of something found in the (one and only?) performance space and relayed to the listeners in their homes as 'auditory enhancement', is approaching vanishing point.

cheers
 
If by the "remastered" you mean ...
It should be obvious, that a remastered = manipulated 50s recording cannot stand as an example. But you also don't acknowledge my criticism regarding the so called scientific method.

For the time being I'm not happy to accept scientific standards that are common - and well respected for good reasons - in medicine/pharmacy, to be applied to audio. There is always the mix of empirical knowledge (listening tests, statistics, now even on what people simply prefer) and hard data like the spinorama. There is no comprehensal theory that connects the two by a model of how the auditory system works. It's a full blown mess, actually.

Now 'stereo' again, once that hype it was, today a troublemaker. I would be quite reluctant to derive from a few observations a need for a solution for a problem that isn't understood in its root cause. My best guess is, that the effect is from just a slight decorrelation of bass left/right, not localisation.

But what I'm saying? I'm not an engineer!
 
It doesn't really matter. The artist is generally not the creator of the recorded product. That's the sound engineer: it's his/her skill that creates the sound and its attributes. On a (very) few occasions, it is the same person. Not general practice.

The feedback I have seen from sound engineers is that the musicians barely even care, as long as the sound engineering is done to "maximise sales volume". Apparently, that is the entirety of the most common instruction on sound quality from musicians to studio.


Like I said in my post above, mixing rooms are also often using subwoofers. So, shared or not, it's often mono.


But it doesn't matter if phase "varies wildly between channels" if the mixing and mastering setups had subwoofers. A home subwoofer setup will more resemble the studio setup than a two-speaker home stereo.


So, that is arguably better to be summed, then, because it is far more likely to be an artefact of multi channel, multi mic recording tracks being mixed with different level, timing, recorded in different rooms, sometimes with leakage across mics from other instruments (especially bass), just causing a wild potpourri of phase madness. The chances of it being some pure capture of something found in the (one and only?) performance space and relayed to the listeners in their homes as 'auditory enhancement', is approaching vanishing point.

cheers
Your post comes as I had a look around of what 10 major studios use as control rooms.
Just examples of course but what I see is flush-mounted mains monitors at control rooms and some also have three-way (possibly with subs? crossed at what freq?) apart from the small deck monitors at mastering suites.

If that is representative about major studios? I really don't know.
But I really liked the ones+W371A stereo comb at one of them, it even looked good.
 
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