Vasr
Major Contributor
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2020
- Messages
- 1,409
- Likes
- 1,924
Steinberg, J. C., and Snow, W. B. (1934). Auditory perspective-physical fac- tors. Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 53(1), 12-17. (Behind paywalls), cited, amongst others in https://www.harman.com/documents/HowManyChannels_0.pdf
Yes, that is the same Bell Labs study I mentioned above and my comments hold. It was in the context of establishing a strong central location cue for off-center viewers not to be used as support for necessarily adding a center channel for a central viewer.
To summarize:
If you have multi-channel AV content, a dedicated center channel would be highly recommended for a number of reasons including wider seating arrangement with center localization (as suggested in the Bell Labs study). It could be a central single speaker or a phantom center with dedicated speakers at the edge of the screen which additionally can give greater flexibility of adjusting the screen stage to the virtual audio stage (without adversely affecting L and R imaging).
If you have multi-channel audio-only content, then a well-balanced L and R is sufficient. The potential downside is that the downmix done by the device/player in such a case may not truly reflect the intent of the multi-channel mastering due to down-mixing volume decisions (to avoid clipping). In general, using the number of speakers corresponding to the number of channels in the content would be the best approach.
HRTF based algorithms are more useful in the different situation of maintaining a virtual multi-channel sound stage with synthesized surround from 2-channel or down-mixed multi-channel content when lesser number of speakers are available (for example, into headphones). Not to be confused with the above considerations.