[bigshot]

I'm talking about science as it applies to making our home stereos sound good... not crossing every T and dotting every I. Not using information as a wedge to win arguments on internet forums on technicalities and irrelevant exceptions, but instead to actually help people. That is in short supply around here. If you don't see that, then look a little closer and consider the position of the people making the comments on the other side of the screen. Just a friendly suggestion.

I had a very interesting conversation with my home theater tech. He was telling me about the wide range of systems he consults on. He said he makes a conscious effort not to tell people what they want. If they want a sound bar, he points them towards getting the most out of a sound bar. If they want a 50 grand system, he tries to help them get the most for their money. The way he put it is to say "I listen to them and don't argue with them. I make them happy and I try to get them the most for their money and effort as I can." That's the right attitude.

Good sound isn't complicated and it doesn't require a doctorate. It's just application of simple principles.

 

[pinnahertz]

1. I'm talking about science as it applies to making our home stereos sound good... not crossing every T and dotting every I. 2. Not using information as a wedge to win arguments on internet forums on technicalities and irrelevant exceptions, but instead to actually help people. That is in short supply around here. If you don't see that, then look a little closer and consider the position of the people making the comments on the other side of the screen. Just a friendly suggestion.

3. I had a very interesting conversation with my home theater tech. He was telling me about the wide range of systems he consults on. He said he makes a conscious effort not to tell people what they want. If they want a sound bar, he points them towards getting the most out of a sound bar. If they want a 50 grand system, he tries to help them get the most for their money. The way he put it is to say "I listen to them and don't argue with them. I make them happy and I try to get them the most for their money and effort as I can." That's the right attitude.

4. Good sound isn't complicated and it doesn't require a doctorate. It's just application of simple principles.

1. So am I, but being detailed gets you better sound. Understanding the details, even better.
2. If you haven't noticed, I'm all about truth in audio. I think disseminating true, correct, and complete information is one of the best services one can provide to help others, especially when there's a flood of miss/dissinformation and mythology abounds.
3. The difference is he wants to keep you as a customer and keep selling you stuff. It clearly doesn't matter to him what he sells you so long as you're happy. Here we're having a theoretical and technical discussion. I don't need to sell you anything, and I don't need to make you happy, though I would thing accurate technical information would be useful to anyone. Your tech (sales person) says, ""I listen to them and don't argue with them. I make them happy and I try to get them the most for their money and effort as I can." That's the right attitude if you want to keep a customer and no educate him. So if you said, "Hey, Tech, I need some better speaker cables, I believe they will lift the veil and help me achieve audio nirvana. I want the best that I can buy for $100/foot." What would he do to make you happy? I'd guess he'd sell you $100/ft speaker cables and let you know you've made a great choice.

I'm not going to do that here, or for any of my clients either. But they will get great speaker cables from me.

4. But great sound is more complicated, and elusive. It goes beyond the simple principles.

 

[bigshot]

Attention to detail without maintaining a realistic perspective is what gets audiophiles to waste money and time chasing down inaudible jitter and frequencies they can't hear. It's the same thing as the mind numbing info dumps from the science side. The goal is to get the point across that this is a very complicated thing. The stereo store salesman and the armchair scientist both say the same thing... leave it to me because I know all this not terribly relevant stuff that you don't know about. If you take the time to sit down and read all the stuff, you find out that almost none of it applies to you and your situation.

Clarity and focus is a virtue. Heaping on details and covering every rare exception just obfuscates the real point. Absolutism doesn't help anyone get better sound out of their stereo system. The principles are pretty basic, and most problems have the same three or four causes at the root. I think internet forums tend to encourage muddled communtication because so many people speak for their own benefit without actually addressing the real question being asked. It's the domain of the one eyed kings.

By the way, this isn't just about this forum. I find it's common in lots of internet forums.

 

[abm0]

Last I looked this forum was "Sound Science", though I do get the impression that sometimes it's...well...not.

Nah, the forum is fine, it's just a few people - here and in other sub-forums - who on occasion and depending on the topic prove to be far more interested in "winning", in imposing their personal preferences or experiences as "the best", than in keeping it relevant for the thread topic or the sub-forum theme. One just learns where to cut one's interactions short with them so as not to fuel their ad nauseam insistence on such unhelpful things (like highly personalized solutions that can't be generalized).

 

[gregorio]

I don't get this thread or the argument. There's nothing I can see in what pinnahertz has stated which isn't basic, accepted sound science. Furthermore, if we're talking about setups with subs, what he's talking about isn't some sort of irrelevant minutia but important fundamentals which make a VERY significant difference to the performance of a system. Bigshot, you seem to be belittling what pinnahertz is saying just because you either don't know, understand or appreciate it's importance, which appears rather paradoxical as you so admirably take a strong stance against audiophiles who exhibit exactly that attitude in other areas of audio?!

More directly on topic, you talk about stumbling across something (a setup) that works really well. On the face of it, what you describe should work quite poorly! Maybe it works well relative to your personal tastes or maybe it works better than what you tried before but it's extremely unlikely that your room acoustics just happen to match your rather bizarre speaker setup and actually provides good fidelity. Horn based speakers are rarely used in music studios (I can't remember ever having seen them). On the other hand horn based speakers are used almost exclusively in film mixing. The extremely high directionality of the mid and high freqs of horn based systems makes them unsuitable for small room use, while that same high directionality makes them ideal for film, due to the large size of cinemas and the distance of the audience from the speakers. The basic rule though, is that all the front (3) speakers match. This rule is routinely broken in home setups because a full sized speaker cannot be placed in the centre position without obscuring the screen or being obscured by the screen, so a smaller, horizontal speaker is usually placed below the screen. In a cinema of course, all the front speakers are place behind an acoustically transparent projection screen and are matched. Also, in a home 5.1 setup the surrounds are two specific speakers but in a cinema they are a whole bunch of diffuser speakers placed all along the side and rear walls. Films are obviously mixed for this setup and cannot be accurately reproduced by a home system with just 5 speakers. However, many film mixes are "re-versioned" for consumer release (on Bluray or DVD) and a more typical home 5.1 bass managed system but this isn't the case for all films. 5.1 music mixes are typically mixed for consumer systems, with 5 matching satellite bass managed speakers but that is not always the case either, smaller speakers are sometimes used for the two surround channels. A horn speaker as your centre speaking may give you a sound presentation you like but it's hard to imagine it's has any particular fidelity.

I also don't get your towers "bridging the gap between the mains". What gap? You've got 3 front mains not two and they're 8ft apart not 16ft. Furthermore, the panning law between the left/right speakers is typically different in a surround system to a stereo system, which helps account for the wide spacing between L and R fronts in the case of a phantom centre being used (which is relatively rare). In particularly large cinemas we can run into an issue regarding the large distance between the centre and left/right speakers, which is why the SDDS format was developed but I can't see how that would/should ever apply in a home setup and SDDS was never released as a consumer 7.1 format for this reason.

G

 

[bigshot]

I just added a clarification to the bottom of my post. I'm not specifically talking about any one person. This is a trend I see in just about all internet forums and in many posters. People seem more interested in speaking for their own benefit rather than to help others. It doesn't matter what the topic is really. I guess it's something to do with competitiveness, the anonymity of the internet and people's need to justify. I don't know.

 

[pinnahertz]

I just added a clarification to the bottom of my post. I'm not specifically talking about any one person. This is a trend I see in just about all internet forums and in many posters. People seem more interested in speaking for their own benefit rather than to help others. It doesn't matter what the topic is really. I guess it's something to do with competitiveness, the anonymity of the internet and people's need to justify. I don't know.

 

[bigshot]

I can hear the music that goes with that scene in my head!

 

[bigshot]

More directly on topic, you talk about stumbling across something (a setup) that works really well. On the face of it, what you describe should work quite poorly! Maybe it works well relative to your personal tastes or maybe it works better than what you tried before but it's extremely unlikely that your room acoustics just happen to match your rather bizarre speaker setup and actually provides good fidelity.

I'd be happy to explain my thinking and let you know what function my various speakers serve if you're really interested. Just ask about things you have questions about and I'll answer. I can assure you that even though you don't understand the theory behind what I'm doing, these ideas work spectacularly in practice. Plenty of my friends who work in the sound and film business with me have commented that my system sounds excellent. So perhaps it's operating on principles you haven't considered before. Maybe you can experiment with some of my ideas when you get around to setting up your own home surround system again. That might help you understand better. There are enough variables in room acoustics, equipment and calibration that it isn't really possible to predict how a system sounds just by looking at a photo of it. If you ever get to Los Angeles, I'd be happy to demo my setup for you. I'm sure you'll be surprised and impressed. There's more than one way to skin a cat, you know!

 

[pinnahertz]

q. I'd be happy to explain my thinking and let you know what function my various speakers serve if you're really interested. Just ask about things you have questions about and I'll answer. 2. I can assure you that even though you don't understand the theory behind what I'm doing, these ideas work spectacularly in practice. 3. Plenty of my friends who work in the sound and film business with me have commented that my system sounds excellent. 4. So perhaps it's operating on principles you haven't considered before. Maybe you can experiment with some of my ideas when you get around to setting up your own home surround system again. That might help you understand better. 5. There are enough variables in room acoustics, equipment and calibration that it isn't really possible to predict how a system sounds just by looking at a photo of it. 6. If you ever get to Los Angeles, I'd be happy to demo my setup for you. I'm sure you'll be surprised and impressed. There's more than one way to skin a cat, you know!

1. You already have.

2. I'm actually offended and feel the same way for gregorio. How incredibly insulting and presumptuous.

3. Good friends should always be complimentary of something you've clearly put a lot of effort into out of kindness. I can usually find something to compliment in any system, no matter how dreadful.

4. The secret "principles" you've already outlined fly in the face of industry standards and practices as codified by those that developed and refined the entire 5.1 surround concept, as well as many scholarly reference texts. And you love your system. That's all there is to understand here. I'm not saying your system isn't fantastic. I'm saying you can't expect to apply the "vast wisdom" accumulated by building one system in one room to every system everywhere, as if you've discovered the hidden secrets of good sound.

5. Of course not! How rediculous to even imply such a thing. But pictures can show obvious problems clearly. And there clearly are some.

6. Nobody's going to journey 10,000 miles, or even 2000 miles, accept your kind offer, then insult you with a negative opinion. At least, I hope not.

 

[castleofargh]

did you know 5.1 isn't about using 5 plus 1/10th of a speaker?

 

[pinnahertz]

did you know 5.1 isn't about using 5 plus 1/10th of a speaker?

Yes, it was about channel bandwidth, and the LFE is actually much less than .1 of a full bandwidth channel (.006, IIR). It was creative rounding for marketing. Nobody would understand "5.006 surround".

 

[bigshot]

My friends are honest with me, and I tend to trust people who are professionals in the business who have actually heard my system, rather than dogmatic armchair experts on internet forums who judge how something sounds by looking at a photo. I wouldn't consider a person like that to be expert in anything.

I'm going to continue to share my experiences. I think they're valuable to people who want to efficiently put together great sounding speaker systems in their homes. You can feel free to continue to do what you do the best.

 

[pinnahertz]

I'm going to continue to share my experiences. I think they're valuable to people who want to efficiently put together great sounding speaker systems in their homes. You can feel free to continue to do what you do the best.

Looks like we''ll be reading a lot of each other.

 

[bigshot]

To get back to the topic of this thread... Thursday night I did a little more fine tuning to my levels and EQ. There's a bit of variability to how multichannel music is mixed, so there really isn't a "one size fits all" solution. After I get it to a basic calibration, it takes a couple of weeks of small tweaks here and there parallel parking to strike a happy medium where everything is in the ballpark. I'm down to adjustments of just 1dB, so I think I'm ready to lock it and let it go. I might do one last pass at the sub to make sure it doesn't get too hot with movies with that huge bass rumble. But other than that, I think I'm good.

There are three recordings that I can't get into range. There's a multichannel Mancini SACD that has an LFE channel that is so low, my AVR can't boost it enough to make it audible. I suspect that they intended to make it a 5.0 recording and let bass management handle the low frequencies, but they included an almost silent LFE track which bypasses bass management in my AVR. That effectively chops off everything below 80Hz. I can set my speakers to large and fix it, but it isn't worth the hassle. There's also an SACD by Dave Grusin where channels are out of phase to other channels. I can't believe something like that would get by their quality control, but it did. Nothing I can do to fix that without rewiring my speakers every time I play it. The third one is the new Beatles Sgt Pepper blu-ray that has the rear channels attenuated by -6dB. That I can fix by just going into my AVR settings and boosting. For the Beatles, I'll go to that trouble.

The quality of engineering on multichannel recordings seems to be about 25% absolutely fantastic, 25% abysmal and 50% sorta good. I find that CDs are a lot more consistent. That might have something to do with the limited audience for multichannel music. I don't know. But it sure does make me reluctant to spend a lot of money on any single record. I've been burned in the past, kind of like the zonk on Let's Make A Deal. I'm not eager for more zonks.

I'm going through a bunch of old quad recordings right now and comparing them to modern 5.1 mixes. There is definitely a different mixing philosophy between the two. When I've had a chance to think about it a bit, I'll post my thoughts here.