But….just thought of something…
When moving closer, the sound level increases from the reduced distance. Just did it several more times back and forth on listening distance,
focusing intently on clarity of one instrument in the mix. I’m not so sure this is change in clarity as much perception from music being louder, or maybe a combination of both? I stayed at my far listening position and adjusted volume up and down to mimic the SPL changes of moving closer and seemed to have a similar effect. Does this make any sense? I know it’s absolutely critical to match sound levels when doing an A/B—the louder sound sounds different and almost always better.
Hi,
Yeah direct sound gets louder close enough speakers, but not sure if the transition happens there, certainly it eventually would. It's not just clarity but localization, and also envelopment that seems to happen.
The sound of room is kind of level anywhere in the room, and swamps direct sound everywhere in the room except some perimeter around speakers, where direct sound is loud enough to swamp the room sound. This is the actual technical and measurable critical distance, and also detectable by ear. I think the transition in my place extends beyond this, listened to it at some point and should do again and also measure where the critical distance is about.
The trasition in perception might still be from crotical distance, if ear is sensitive at some particular bandwidth whose critical distance is further out in the room. As speaker directivity increases towards highs, usually absorption in room rises towards highs and also processing time for brain to handle direct sound before first reflections arrive increases towards highs, and this all is due to wavelength getting shorter. I would guess important bandwidth for perceptual transition is roughly the human voice, the midrange, especially higher part above fundamental, which contains most harmonics as it's the harmonics that are important according to Griesinger.
You are right that at any given moment multiple things are going on at the same time, and it is highly likely there is no some particular thing that makes a perception, but combination of basically everything. Level of direct sound would have some effect at least, be it from more power or by getting closer, except getting closer changes D/R. And not just D/R, but with stereo triangle all angles change, early reflections delay get longer and attenuated in relation to direct sound, and so on, a lot of things change.
Some key and insightful points here. At the end of the day, it’s what “sound” one prefers. The only conclusion I’ve tentatively come to is conventional forward firing box speakers lack the spatial image soundstage spaciousness qualities that the Omni and dipole provide. The addition of reflective sound from multidirectional radiation is additive (to me) if tuned properly in delay timing and level by optimal speaker positioning. The added reverberant sound creates an illusion of presence of live musicians. My testing will focus on what other aspects of good sound like clarity, timbre, and may be sacrificed in the process.
Yeah absolutely, if I remember correctly spaciousness, or feeling of space, was very high in list that affects preference score of speakers, I believe it was in Toole's or Olive's research. Feeling of space can be had with the clarity, and then it's called envelopment as Duke quoted few posts back, this happens with stream separation. You could also have spaciousness from your own room, without envelopment and without clarity, and this is when there is no stream separation.
You could also have stream separation with clarity, but with rather poor envelopment. Now that you mentioned the feeling of space I think this is one aspect that plagues domestic room acoustics, certainly my living room, and perhaps one important reason why many people would choose to arrange system so that it does not make stream separation, but instead provides the hazy spacious sound of local room.
Feeling of space that way happens without any effort basically, and requires no special knowledge on things, just put speakers anywhere they fit, and it's highly likely the sound is spacious but without stream separation. Conversely, if almost by accident the setup is so that there is stream separation, I think it's highly likely one would have no spacious feel to sound if envelopment needs work, and would play around with positioning until there is, right, which took very likely back to no stream separation and spacious sound it is, thanks. Be not mistaken, Griesinger says this is not envelopment though, and it has no clarity, no accurate localization, no engagement and so on, which only happen with stream separation. I think it's quite a task to arrange nice envelopment at home due to short reverberation time, and walls close by (modes, bass has importance with envelopment), but more over a lot of people do not even know or think about this, that our own auditory system caters the whole plate, and provides the easy solution for free. Gradient descent to a wrong valley.
See, finding the transition, knowing if you have stream separation or not, is crucial. When you get over the transition closer to speakers you are now able to listen envelopment and do something about it, you know stream separation happens and you should have clarity and you should have envelopment. You could nowfurther adjust positioning, toe-in, speaker directivity, room acoustics and know exactly how to listen the envelopment, find the transition, go over and listen as long as needed to understand how your room sounds and what you need to do about it. Move back and forth at the transition to AB how your envelopment compares to spaciousness! Finding and utilizing the transition is key to be able to tune the system to your liking, but it takes some effort.
Since your wishlist of sound includes clarity and feeling of space, you must have MLP closer than the transition to get clarity, and if the feeling of space is not good enough now you can now listen to it and improve on it, always referring your perception to the transition. Your logic rooted to your perception, key to be able to pull it through I think.
In the vein of topic, listening the envelopment for some time tweaking with positioning and thinking about it all one gets an idea what kind off directivity could help, what kind of room acoustics adjustments could help, and so on. And as mentioned many times earlier, power is eventually just the knowledge, ability to listen at any position that feels good to you, go over transition at will if you feel like it. If the system is optimized you don't have only one good sound available, but two!