I would strongly suggest digging into Ken Kantor's work. He specifically looked for inter-channel acoustic crosstalk minimization, starting with the MGCs. I can personally testify that it works.
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Can't we all just get along?
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markus
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Define "it works". 2 speaker stereo is not a binaural reproduction technique. At least it's not generally used that way. Even Blumlein noted that fact in his "stereo patent" nearly 100 years ago – stereo works because of interaural crosstalk. The question is what we want it to be. Currently it's like driving on roads without any basic rules like right-hand or left-hand traffic. I don't care if it's left or right, as long as the driver can know which one it actually is.
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ASW is not a stereo effect, it’s a recording depended effect depending how the sound source is recorded and the despersion characteristics of the speakers.
Everything that need two speakers to be heard are stereo effects, like the width that separates the recorded sound sources as an example.
And no, it's you who doesn't seem to know the difference between a stereo effect that can only be heard with at least two speakers in the system, and the spatial effects that can be heard from a single speaker playing in mono.
I hope you understand the difference.
I agree and would like to add some more explanation, why the video is so problematic and divisive. Here is the transcript of what Danny says at the very beginning (automatic transcript by Youtube; emphasis by me):
"and i want to talk specifically about um let's let's call them divided camps in the audio industry
there's there's guys on one side that they love music they love talking about it they try anything to make their system sound better and they talk about differences in cables and speaker cables power cables connectors and what differences they make and how much they enjoyed this over that and it's very subjective
there's another camp out there that's complete opposite that's completely objective that don't listen at all they rely on measurements if they don't measure a difference it can't be a difference"
So he contrasts the "music lovers" camp with the "non-listeners" camp here. When you hear that, it's clear that you want to assign yourself to the "music lovers" camp. It would be downright absurd to feel like you belong to the other camp. This characterization is the problem because it distracts from the real point of contention. From my point of view, such a portrayal is just plain destructive and divisive and therefore inexcusable.
With this in mind, I would clearly answer the initial question of the thread for me: No, we don't get along on such a basis.
One basis for getting along with each other would be for me:
If a person knows the measurements and objective facts, for example, that there is no measurable difference between cables, or that differences between most DACs are so small that they cannot be perceptible according to the state of the art in science
- and if the person also knows that there are psychological factors that influence one's perception
- and if the person still thinks that they hear differences and that's why they choose DAC XY and cable XY and spend a lot of money on them,
then I can accept that well and just discuss other topics with the person, e.g. headphones, room acoustics, music, politics, religion or pineapple pizza.
But what is not a basis for getting along:
- If the person without good (scientific) justification questions the state of science or objective facts and creating an alternative or "magic" reality
- When someone (media, Youtuber, dealer) tells exciting stories about magical objects because they sell better, and at the same time present them as if they have a serious background.
- When manufacturers use misleading claims to pull money out of the pockets of people who don't know any better (I'm not accusing anyone in particular here)
- If the publication of measurements is fought because it irritates the "subjective truth" and this is perceived as unpleasant
and, to name a different perspective,
- If someone overestimates the state of science and ignores uncertainties (e.g. concerning the validity of measurements of headphones or the numerous uncertainties about what good room treatment should look like) (ASR/Amir is clearly not meant here)
- when one does not let go of trying to convince certain individuals, even if they know all the arguments but have come to different conclusions for themselves (for whatever reason).
markus
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I'm not interested in a pissing contest and therefore will stop the conversation with you at this point. Just one last remark, rest assured that I have done my homework and read through most of the psychoacoustic studies that have been done in the last few decades. In case you're also interested in learning then I suggest to read Jens Blauert "Spatial hearing" and follow the many references you'll find in there.
beagleman
Major Contributor
I think Danny at least seems to be a nice guy...........
With that being said, he uses measurements and science to develop speakers and crossover upgrades that mostly seem fairly good to me.
Where my issue starts, is that he then poopaws that exact same science and measuring to go off on the "Silly cables" and "Tube connectors" and expensive botique caps and that type of stuff.....
Very confusing. So what is he:
A nice guy just trying to help?
A guy that just says what he thinks people want to hear?
A guy, just looking out for his bottom line, and does not see the conflict he creates by trying to talk out of both sides of his mouth?? (Science matters/Only subjective matters)
He, himself uses measurements to show his crossover tweaks work, but then talks down a site devoted TO doing measurements. So which way is it Danny??
With that being said, he uses measurements and science to develop speakers and crossover upgrades that mostly seem fairly good to me.
Where my issue starts, is that he then poopaws that exact same science and measuring to go off on the "Silly cables" and "Tube connectors" and expensive botique caps and that type of stuff.....
Very confusing. So what is he:
A nice guy just trying to help?
A guy that just says what he thinks people want to hear?
A guy, just looking out for his bottom line, and does not see the conflict he creates by trying to talk out of both sides of his mouth?? (Science matters/Only subjective matters)
He, himself uses measurements to show his crossover tweaks work, but then talks down a site devoted TO doing measurements. So which way is it Danny??
For me this is not some sort of pissing contest, it's a normal conversation on a forum for discussions about these things, and I think you are starting to realize what I'm talking about but instead of saying that you bail out...
I'm recording music in my spare time and have done so for many years. I mix these sounds we are talking about almost daily and create panning stereo effects, room sounds, and mono sounds. Therefore, it's not hard for me to distinguish what a stereo effect is and what a spatial mono effect is.
I tell you this just to let you know there are many ways you can learn things, and by recording stuff, you also get some practical knowledge of how things work.
The question is problematic, couse its about opinions.
My opinion is not so nice, thats why i not tell.
So for me its easy, he has to proof in a abx that his statements regarding caps, speaker cabels , ac cabels, tube connectors are true. If not i see him as a person that tells he can kick a football over 1 mile. Maybe? But no proof no believe. Easy.
markus
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I actually started my professional career as a recording and mixing engineer and sat behind faders for more than a decade...
Good, then you should know the difference between a stereo effect and spatial recorded effect.
How a stereo effect will be received by the listeners, from a specific pair of speakers, will be highly dependent on how these two sound sources play “together“. Some speakers will have a wider sound field, some will have a narrow sound field, some other speakers will have a deeper soundstage and some the opposite. Forward sounding, laid back sounding, good layering, better separation... Some of those things can be heard with an error speaker, but not all of them.
I think I’m done debating this particular thing, it will not lead to anything and I will get this information in reviews elsewhere. Erin does it and other reviewers do.
markus
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Having stereo speakers "play together" introduces additional variables (manufacturing tolerances, room, placement, recording) that make it hard to determine what is cause and effect. Sound stage width and depth is (also) a function of ASW which can already be assessed in single speaker listening. Having said that I do see value in blind A/B stereo listening test protocols but we first must learn to walk before we can run. Over and out.Good, then you should know the difference between a stereo effect and spatial recorded effect.
How a stereo effect will be received by the listeners, from a specific pair of speakers, will be highly dependent on how these two sound sources play “together“. Some speakers will have a wider sound field, some will have a narrow sound field, some other speakers will have a deeper soundstage and some the opposite. Forward sounding, laid back sounding, good layering, better separation... Some of those things can be heard with an error speaker, but not all of them.
I think I’m done debating this particular thing, it will not lead to anything and I will get this information in reviews elsewhere. Erin does it and other reviewers do.
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DanielT
Major Contributor
Ironically. On GR-Research's website, the forum section. Can you find any threads about music? Tips on music groups ,, songs? Nop.
While here at ASR, very popular:
Music Reviews and Discussions
audiosciencereview.com
Personal attacks, like this one?
Gotta' wonder if there is any point to continued discussion when the parties are so far apart and dismissive.
I was likewise unimpressed with the Polks. Kantor's speakers on the other hand excelled at both the imaging and how space was conveyed. Set up properly and with the listener at the right position, the effect is uncanny. The later NHT stuff that didn't use his scheme (which was passive and based on angled baffles) were excellent, but didn't convey the same stereo effects. A few moments of thought and it's evident that they can't even be positioned in such a way as to achieve good mono from a single speaker.
The other aspect is that speakers like the 3.3 must be placed in a specific manner to make the bass work correctly; this is not compatible with the shuffler and center position used by Harman.
And this is why Toole's mono-is-better is correct for most speakers but very much not correct for designs outside of the tested paradigm.
Much can be said about the accuracy of measuring loudspeakers. But one thing is often overlooked. If two loudspeakers in stereo are not identical, it will change the spatial experience and the sound will be worse.
Passive massproduced loudspeakers with crossovers that might have +-10 percent variation in crossover component tolerances will differ more than +-2 dB in the midrange - the result in stereolistening will then be less good.
This is why I use active dsp monitors that differs less than +- 0,5 dB between different loudspeakers and use GLM with individual roomcorrection for the left and right loudspeaker . The stereo perspective are now rocksolid and IF I would ever go back to passive loudspeakers, I would measure every drive unit and crossover and match them for +- 1 dB tolerance between left and right loudspeaker, just like Peter Snell did at Snell Acoustics .
Maybe this passive loudspeaker issue with different tolerances in freq response would be something for Amirm to investigate further ?
Passive massproduced loudspeakers with crossovers that might have +-10 percent variation in crossover component tolerances will differ more than +-2 dB in the midrange - the result in stereolistening will then be less good.
This is why I use active dsp monitors that differs less than +- 0,5 dB between different loudspeakers and use GLM with individual roomcorrection for the left and right loudspeaker . The stereo perspective are now rocksolid and IF I would ever go back to passive loudspeakers, I would measure every drive unit and crossover and match them for +- 1 dB tolerance between left and right loudspeaker, just like Peter Snell did at Snell Acoustics .
Maybe this passive loudspeaker issue with different tolerances in freq response would be something for Amirm to investigate further ?
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Phrenzy
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Irony punctuation - Wikipedia
I was wrong to start my reply to Doodski with "I disagree with that". If you read the rest of the text following that sentence you see that I actually agreed with what he said, that some aspects of the "base sound" of the speakers could be easier to hear with a single speaker.
The thing I wanted to point out is a simple fact, you can never hear any stereo effects using just one single speaker in mono, and all speakers will have their own "stereo characteristics" that will follow them no matter which room you set them up in. Some will sound wider, some narrower, some deeper, and some will have a little bit of everything, a big soundstage in every direction.
Can you hear if a certain speaker has a wider soundstage or image better than another speaker just by listening to them in mono, how do they do when it comes to stereo separation? Maybe you can go over some of the reviews of the speakers here on ASR, and just by looking at the measurements and reading Amir's listening test tell me if they have a wide or narrow stereo field?
I want to know, and according to yourself, you know these things way better than I do.
If I seemed pretentiously "authoritative", then I apologize. I am not the authority.
However, as a student, I am open to the research described in the Toole book linked earlier and the later research shown in Amir's video. It interested me because I experimented with ambience, delay, diffusion and reflection in a much more seat of the pants way in the 80's and 90's. and this info puts it into perspective. And here, I'm not the authority, just the parrot.
The first thing I infer from the work of others is that "stereo image" is unlikely to be a reportable phenomenon in a uniform way. It's a mental or psychoacoustic image that is highly variable, and depends on speaker directivity, room size, room dimensions, recording technique, playback volume, musical instruments/FR spectrum, and absorption/reflection. (Read the Toole book; it's an eye-opener.) There's not a uniform way to describe it or measure it for any given speaker. It would be a trap for the unwary to depend primarily on anecdotal, subjective accounts. (That said, I still completely understand the natural impulse to want to hear it for myself, or at least to get the report from someone else.)
Second, the overall spatial quality and the physical directivity characteristics of a speaker go hand in hand. Two sides, same coin. High fidelity speakers with good directivity have good spatial and stereo characteristics when measured in controlled research settings. The heavy emphasis on directivity and room treatment in the work done by ASR or other test experts inherently connects measurable phenomena to what listeners prefer and to the capability of stereo speakers to have subjectively good imaging and spatial qualities.
Third, listeners prefer good spatial qualities for the reproduction of music, which also means more reflections, inter-aural crosstalk, multiple signal arrival times and even tonality changes. We prefer the spatial cues so much that we accept corollary changes in the audio signal that, taken separately, would be considered decreases in audio fidelity. Stereo or multi-channel is preferred but also conceals or de-focuses other aspects of fidelity. Still, finding good-fidelity speakers is the best way to predict total appeal, inclusive of both technical fidelity and spatial/stereo performance, and the best way to do this with live listening is monophonically (to avoid the stereo or muti-channel concealment). This was the unexpected finding of using live listeners in carefully controlled, blind listening sessions that attempted to bridge the gap between subjective experience and objective measurements over decades. As Floyd Toole summarizes, "A loudspeaker that sounds good in a monophonic comparison is likely to sound good in a stereo comparison, but the reverse is not necessarily true."
I think the bottom line is that the quality of a stereo image is a subjective variable that can't be uniformly described, but that it is most likely to happen with good speakers using criteria that we already have in hand, that are paradoxically easier to hear and measure monophonically. Believe it or no; but read the research first, I guess.
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"But for me, I also want to know the speaker's "stereo characteristics" that can only be heard by actually listening to them in stereo, and that part is much more important to me than the 5 % Amir thinks that is worth. It can "make or brake" the whole experience for me and will be an important factor if I like the speakers or not".
Goat in the above quote you are making a "common sense" assumption that is not true with scientific scrutiny. In paraphrasing, I think that you are extrapolating that to, I need to hear a reviewers opinions, as it tells me all about the sound stage, depth, forward or laid back presentation and if it has other stereo characteristics for me.. The problem is that is true FOR THAT ROOM, with the speakers in that location. So listening to a reviewer tell you all about the speakers stereo effects (whatever ones you want to hear about) is worthless. Like all YouTube reviewers including Amir, he can only tell you what something sounds like in his room and his set up. No one online can tell you how the speakers are going to sound in your room with your room acoustics and your speaker set up. You can't take what an online reviewer says and apply it to your situation at all. Well, except for very large issues. If you notice Amir usually sticks to fairly large criticisms of the speakers such as, "Very little bass, really needs a subwoofer to work", or "Very bright speaker, I had to EQ the top end down a lot". Other than those statements, it really doesn't mean much. His measurements though are pure gold and that is what he relies on to show the speaker performance. As you stay on this sight you will learn Amir personally likes speakers that can play hefty bass without falling apart and distorting like crazy. I personally like even more bass than Amir, but I get that with a subwoofer. So. I factor that into reading his reviews.
Goat in the above quote you are making a "common sense" assumption that is not true with scientific scrutiny. In paraphrasing, I think that you are extrapolating that to, I need to hear a reviewers opinions, as it tells me all about the sound stage, depth, forward or laid back presentation and if it has other stereo characteristics for me.. The problem is that is true FOR THAT ROOM, with the speakers in that location. So listening to a reviewer tell you all about the speakers stereo effects (whatever ones you want to hear about) is worthless. Like all YouTube reviewers including Amir, he can only tell you what something sounds like in his room and his set up. No one online can tell you how the speakers are going to sound in your room with your room acoustics and your speaker set up. You can't take what an online reviewer says and apply it to your situation at all. Well, except for very large issues. If you notice Amir usually sticks to fairly large criticisms of the speakers such as, "Very little bass, really needs a subwoofer to work", or "Very bright speaker, I had to EQ the top end down a lot". Other than those statements, it really doesn't mean much. His measurements though are pure gold and that is what he relies on to show the speaker performance. As you stay on this sight you will learn Amir personally likes speakers that can play hefty bass without falling apart and distorting like crazy. I personally like even more bass than Amir, but I get that with a subwoofer. So. I factor that into reading his reviews.
DanielT
Major Contributor
But what happened to 77SunsetStrip? I can not read Da...excus 77s post.
Don't forget The Cowboy Junkies. Or Tracy Chapman. Or Eva Cassidy...or of course Dire Straits
WOOOHOOO! RAWK OUT!
Am I forgetting some other oh so finely recorded but kinda....er, *mellow*...audio demo favorites?
(Then again, I gotta LOL just as loud when I see Loveless included among 25 of the Best Vinyl Records for Audiophiles)
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