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Sound, the Way the Brain Prefers to Hear It - NYTimes

post #1 of 7
9/6/11 at 6:05pm
Thread Starter 

 

Sound, the Way the Brain Prefers to Hear It

By GUY GUGLIOTTA
Published: September 5, 2011

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/science/06sound.html?_r=1&ref=science

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post #2 of 7
9/6/11 at 6:49pm
Thanks - very interesting! I would very much like to hear a demo of MultEQ, I especially am interested in how it uses elevated speakers to recreate height.

Also interesting is that the processing unit is $1,000-$2,000. Just when I thought I could wrap up the projects and be done with audio there's this. $2,000 is reasonable. 11 good quality DIY speakers and two subs could be brought in for $15k. Add a few thousand more for decent commercial solid state amps... well, not cheap, but in the realm of buying an average new car. Maybe. smily_headphones1.gif
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post #3 of 7
9/6/11 at 8:44pm

They didn't say what speakers they were using, dynamic, ESL, or planars? Speakers can be tall relative to your seating position.

 

They also mention delay. When I had ribbon speakers, they have a dipole radiation. The back radiation can be bounced of the back wall to create a delay.

This delay provides a depth perception. That distance has to be adjusted by ear. The 55 degrees is again also adjusted by ear.

This is maybe like toeing in the speakers.

 

Its very interesting that these set-up were the things I used to do to adjust my ribbon speakers in my listening room when I had them.


Edited by wuwhere - 9/6/11 at 8:45pm
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post #4 of 7
9/6/11 at 9:11pm
Thanks, interesting how it's the digitization of sound that makes this possible.
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post #5 of 7
9/6/11 at 9:26pm

I didn't see and looked at the picture before I made my comment earlier. So all speakers are dynamic.

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post #6 of 7
9/6/11 at 11:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wuwhere View Post

I didn't see and looked at the picture before I made my comment earlier. So all speakers are dynamic.


From the looks of them, they are from the Genelel monitor series (or possibly the JBL one), both have built quite a reputation in the pro world.

On the other hand, I have no doubt the the room where the journalist felt like it was a concert hall was already acoustically extremely good, with the diffusive and absorbant panels where they need to be, that the radiative pattern of each speaker is perfectly known (and thus you know how to deal with the reflections acoustically). And that's event before the psychoacoustic electronic correction.

With all that calculating the appropriate correction for the room become a lot easier and I have no doubt that superlative results can be achieved. What the commercial version of this amounts to is a very pale shadow of that listening room.

To get superlative performance, welcome to the world of $15k speakers (remember that there are 11 of them), $1k of software and $5k of acoustical expertise and another $15k for building the room (all figures ballparked).
Edited by khaos974 - 9/6/11 at 11:39pm
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post #7 of 7
9/16/11 at 9:26pm

Interesting article Melomaniac! 

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