OK, let's try disappearing speakers - have you experienced those?
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Evolution of Speaker / Electronics Ratio
- Thread starter watchnerd
- Start date
Not in stereo.
Definitely not. It's easy to do the experiment of playing a true mono recording, standing mid-centre to the speakers, reasonably close to the line between them. If the system is half decent there should be a very strong "phantom" image directly in front of you - if you move parallel to the speakers, say to the left, at some point the image will suddenly dive into the nearer speaker. With fully disappearing speakers that phantom image will sustain, no matter how far you move to the left; it will never become apparent where the source is.
If one gets this to happen, then only the slightest loss of quality will cause the performance to lapse back to normal speaker behaviour - it's not a robust characteristic. And it's no harder to "pick" than asking yourself, where's the sound coming from?
Do we have a language issue here? "Definitely not" means "no unsighted listening needed" - sighted, unsighted would make no difference - it's the message the hearing mechanism sends to you. I've actually played silly head movement games with my eyes closed, to see if the message changes - but it doesn't.
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watchnerd
Grand Contributor
- Thread Starter
- #65
The weird part about recreational drugs is that I can now listen critically better when sober than before.
Of course there hasn't been any kind of physical change, but I think I learned better how to tune out other conscious thoughts and pay more attention to my senses.
We're obviously talking about different things, because your artifacts are very ephemeral. And the point is that disappearing speakers just happen to be one of the attributes of convincing sound - if it is trivial for someone to identify, using ears alone, that the sound coming from your system is fake, obviously audio playback, then it's not convincing.
I might even believe you if you had a half 'scientific' explanation for this effect. If you could say "For this to work the system has to have a true omnidirectional/constant dispersion/etc. characteristic [pick as appropriate] because our hearing registers direction from the relative timing of impulses reaching each eardrum and also the phase/timing characteristics of the HRTF..." blah blah. You might then be able to draw a plan view showing how the timing of the impulses to the ears maintains the required timing to appear to emanate from the phantom image position even as you move around the room, and how reflections remain perfectly consistent with this. (I'll believe it when I see it).
As it is, you talk about "quality" as though it can be fleetingly (you've never made it stick around permanently) achieved by the application of BlueTack etc. but cannot be explained in 'scientific' terms.
With the right recording, standing in the right place, at the right volume, this would happen lots of times - it has to work with all recordings, everywhere in the room, at any volume up to the reasonable limits of the system.
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I suggest you read up ASA a bit more - relying on older, simpler explanations of the hearing mechanism will never give you anything worthwhile for understanding. The idea that the brain uses the data from the ear in a steampunk fashion, to assemble its understanding of its acoustic environment, is way behind current thinking.
The quality required needs very low levels of electrical noise interfering with the system in operation. That noise can arise from a variety of sources, and can be very hard to diagnose; and is certainly very hard to measure. Only experiments lead one to all the causes, and Blu Tack, etc, happens to be a remarkably cheap and effective tool in one's arsenal. If someone wishes to gain credibility by using exotic and expensive materials, from specialist suppliers, I won't attempt to dissuade them.
What's so special about electrical noise? If I had a musician playing violin in the room and I turned on a detuned FM radio at a very low level, would the whole "scene" collapse? What if I was recording the performance with the FM radio as part of the mono recording?
If I had a very high quality stereo playing a mono recording and placed a small FM radio on top of each speaker, likewise?
From your question I take it your referring to something Frank (fas42) is taking about. He is our resident audio lunatic and for your own mental health I suggest you put him on your ignore list as I have. Little to nothing he expounds is based on anything to do with reality.
You're mean Sal!!!From your question I take it your referring to something Frank (fas42) is taking about. He is our resident audio lunatic and for your own mental health I suggest you put him on your ignore list as I have. Little to nothing he expounds is based on anything to do with reality.
Although I am of the advice ...
ROTFLMAO
Because the noise, which I prefer to call distortion, is correlated with the music being played - when the music goes soft, so do the artifacts; and when it gets loud, the level of "noise" lifts to match that of the signal - it's always in step. So when the music stops, you hear nothing from the speakers.
What appears to happen is that the brain, unconsciously, sees this pattern, and tries to link the noise to the music - which of course can't work. OTOH the FM radio is a constant, in the background, the brain very quickly realises what it is, and discards it - it's not "heard" anymore .
If you attenuate that correlated noise to a certain level, it seems that the brain doesn't have "to fight it" any more - and the mind can just go with the musical message. This produces the "synergy" moments, "magic" sound, natural reproduction, convincing playback - and all the other description of audio systems working at a much better level.
Blu Tack obviously does nothing for electrical noise when used to stabilise speakers cabinets - that's just draining vibrational energy of the carcase away to a much higher mass object, stopping the "rattling" of the box contributing to the sound in the room.
But, if an electrical noise issue is due to some part in the electricals starting to vibrate from the acoustic energy in the room - if deep bass begins to make windows rattle, what's happening inside your amplifier, say? - then adding some damping gunk, like Blu Tack, in the right area, might be a simple fix. At the mechanical level, a friend used heaps of the stuff to stop a cheap turntable platter ringing like a bell - instantly superior sound.
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