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Human vs speaker tests, conducted in same location?

whazzup

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Yes I understand it's been frowned upon to imply that audio quality is 'only' about human vocals, but still, I'm curious whether has there been any recent tests conducted to compare an actual human singer, to a speaker reproducing the vocals of the same human, in a controlled environment? Can audiences be fooled? Or, is it possible that a recording of said human can be played through an audio system and somehow be tweaked to match the singer's live performance in that same room?

I remembered watching a video of one here, but don't remember it having any clear conclusion, and the singer and speaker system were in different locations. And couldn't remember which thread that was. Were there others?
 
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Blumlein 88

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Such has been done a few times. I've read of some of them. I think AR the speaker company did some in the 1960's is covered in the above link.

I've done some similar myself. Recording a vocalist or a mandolin player in a dampened voice recording chamber or outdoors. You play that back in a room where you've just had the player perform and it is somewhat uncanny how right it sounds. You would think the directivity differences in a singer and speaker would be apparent. But you don't notice much difference.

I recorded 5 acoustic musicians in a dampened room up close and played it back in my large listening room with speakers positioned where the players could play. It was one of the more realistic things I've heard. Definitely a they are here reproduction and not an I am there reproduction. Having just one player per speaker and having it be a real as opposed to a phantom image goes a long way toward reality.

Alas other than an interesting experiment it isn't practical. Having 5 speakers you move around and no more than 5 musicians is quite a constraint.
 

Wes

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recent tests... how recent?

I've seen a couple on youtube
 
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whazzup

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Such has been done a few times. I've read of some of them. I think AR the speaker company did some in the 1960's is covered in the above link.

I've done some similar myself. Recording a vocalist or a mandolin player in a dampened voice recording chamber or outdoors. You play that back in a room where you've just had the player perform and it is somewhat uncanny how right it sounds. You would think the directivity differences in a singer and speaker would be apparent. But you don't notice much difference.

I recorded 5 acoustic musicians in a dampened room up close and played it back in my large listening room with speakers positioned where the players could play. It was one of the more realistic things I've heard. Definitely a they are here reproduction and not an I am there reproduction. Having just one player per speaker and having it be a real as opposed to a phantom image goes a long way toward reality.

Alas other than an interesting experiment it isn't practical. Having 5 speakers you move around and no more than 5 musicians is quite a constraint.

Cool, so that sounds like, as long as the speaker can reproduce the vocal range (not hard) at a certain SPL, and assuming the recording hardware is of sufficient quality, mimicking the singer is possible.

For cases with more sound sources, then the difficulty is in reproducing the larger soundfield with possibly less speakers.
 
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whazzup

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recent tests... how recent?

I've seen a couple on youtube

Last 20 years? No real limit to the timeline really, just curious whether real tests were done, as opposed to casual or marketing ones.
 

Ron Texas

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Are we testing humans or speakers?
 
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whazzup

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Are we testing humans or speakers?

Speakers. But after typing this post, I was actually thinking whether there's any value in using the klippel system to measure a human singer.... Obviously getting him or her to utter test tones is impossible but still, maybe can capture the different reflections :D

Or maybe it's already been done before.
 
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