[jvlgato]

I never understood that argument. Doesn't EVERY sound in nature/real life hit both ears, and each with a slight time delay? To me, this makes speaker listening MORE accurate and natural, when it comes to localization and spatial accuracy.

 

[mulveling]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jvlgato /img/forum/go_quote.gif I never understood that argument. Doesn't EVERY sound in nature/real life hit both ears, and each with a slight time delay? To me, this makes speaker listening MORE accurate and natural, when it comes to localization and spatial accuracy.

It IS more natural and accurate - most studio recordings are carefully mastered for good stereo speaker playback (or at least they used to be carefully mastered). The exceptions are special binaural recordings, specifically optimized for playback on headphones - of which there are virtually none available

 

[edstrelow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by n3rdling /img/forum/go_quote.gif You are very confused about this sir

This is not an original observation of mine, just basic psychoacoustics. Headphones keep the left and right channels separate in playback, speakers don't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jvlgato /img/forum/go_quote.gif I never understood that argument. Doesn't EVERY sound in nature/real life hit both ears, and each with a slight time delay? To me, this makes speaker listening MORE accurate and natural, when it comes to localization and spatial accuracy.

Sure. Interarural time delays and intensity differences are the basic cues to direction of sounds in real life situations, with speakers or with headphones. These differences between the channels are the result of the positioning of the 2 (or more) microphones) and aren't the issue here.

Consider"binaural" recordings where 2 mics are placed using a real or artificial head at the ear position and then played back with phones at the ear positions. The point of this techniques is to try to give the ears more or less what they would get if you had been at the recording venue.

But you get something quite different when this or any other 2 channel recording is played back through speakers.

To simplify this assume the recording is in fact from 2 microphones in a concert hall (as opposed to a multimike set-up) . The mics take the place of the ears, recording 2 signals differing somewhat in intensities and with time delays which relate to the different left right locations of the sound sources.

The problem now is that with speakers you are playing back from each channel to both ears (recall you don't do this with binaural recordings or normal headphones). The right channel for example is now coming to the left ear with a time delay due to the extra length of the signal path getting to the far side of the ear.

The left and right signals are getting to the left and right ears at the same time, but the phantoms are getting to the opposite ears (i.e. left to right) with a time delay, causing cancellation and addition of portions of the ongoing soundwaves, which has no relationship to what was recorded or what would have been heard had you been present at the recording session and is basically distortion.

The fact that your brain makes sense of this mess of sound from loudspeakers is quite remarkable. But it certainly doesn't make loudspeaker listening any sort of ideal for stereophony.

 

[edstrelow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mulveling /img/forum/go_quote.gif It IS more natural and accurate - most studio recordings are carefully mastered for good stereo speaker playback (or at least they used to be carefully mastered). The exceptions are special binaural recordings, specifically optimized for playback on headphones - of which there are virtually none available

This does not change the basic difference between speaker and headphones listening that speakers artifactually mix the 2 channels. You are getting stereo from speakers in spite of the limited ability of speakers to reproduce 2 channels accurately.

But there 's some whopping big assumptions here!

You or I have have almost no idea about the intent with which any recording was made. Whether the intent was good stereo through speakers, headphones, boom boxes or whatever. I have an old Beach Boys recording which states that it was monitored to sound good through monaural car radios.

As regards the "carefully mastered" issue, given the crappy sound of much rock/pop recordings I woud have to assume they were monitored with string attached to tin cans.

And why do you assume that the monitoring wasn't done with headphones? You don't think they are used in recording studios?

 

[Omega17TheTrue]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mulveling /img/forum/go_quote.gif * Ear fatigue and potential damage - once I turn up either headphones or speakers to my typical preferred listening levels - I can often listen to the speakers for hours without a hint of ear fatigue. Not so with headphones, not even close. I'm really starting to believe headphones are far more damaging to hearing, on average. Fortunately I never used headphones for hours daily - you've got to be REALLY careful if you do that. .

x2

It is also the main reason why i almost no longer listen to headphones although they bring a different and interesting presentation of music it shouldn't being used as the primary listening device or for more than 2 hours.

Near-field speakers are also a good alternative to headphones.

 

[markmaxx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by edstrelow /img/forum/go_quote.gif The left and right signals are getting to the left and right ears at the same time, but the phantoms are getting to the opposite ears (i.e. left to right) with a time delay, causing cancellation and addition of portions of the ongoing soundwaves, which has no relationship to what was recorded or what would have been heard had you been present at the recording session and is basically distortion.

Questions: the speaker V headphone natural presentation, argument..

I would have to ask isn't the point of stereo to help with imaging/sound-staging?

You hear, for example from headphones and speakers more volume from lets say a guitar, on the right speaker then the vocalist "same volume from both speaker" then on the left we might have most of the volume coming from a violin from the left speaker.

When we listen from headphones or speakers we assume the guitar is on the right of the vocalist and he or she is center stage and on the left of the vocalist is the violin. No?

To take that further the vocalist may walk from the right side of the stage to the left side so the volume of the singers voice from the right speaker is higher (sure some bleeds to the left but thats only natural right) then the sound of the vocals is transfered by volume ie. higher and higher volume levels appear from the left speaker and less and less volume levels of the vocalist from the right speaker. Our brain then interprets this and we get the impression that the vocalist has just walked across the stage yes?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Omega17TheTrue /img/forum/go_quote.gif x2 It is also the main reason why i almost no longer listen to headphones although they bring a different and interesting presentation of music it shouldn't being used as the primary listening device or for more than 2 hours. Near-field speakers are also a good alternative to headphones.

This is why I was thinking of trying the K 1000 ear speakers.

 

[sachu]

IMHO, headphones have their place but can never replace the joy of speaker listening for me personally. They are two completely different experiences.
I would overwhelmingly choose speakers over headphones even though I know achieving the same fidelity levels with speakers is a lot more involved, time wise, money wise and is even then is still very tricky.

 

[edstrelow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by markmaxx /img/forum/go_quote.gif Questions: the speaker V headphone natural presentation, argument.. I would have to ask isn't the point of stereo to help with imaging/sound-staging? You hear, for example from headphones and speakers more volume from lets say a guitar, on the right speaker then the vocalist "same volume from both speaker" then on the left we might have most of the volume coming from a violin from the left speaker. When we listen from headphones or speakers we assume the guitar is on the right of the vocalist and he or she is center stage and on the left of the vocalist is the violin. No? To take that further the vocalist may walk from the right side of the stage to the left side so the volume of the singers voice from the right speaker is higher (sure some bleeds to the left but thats only natural right) then the sound of the vocals is transfered by volume ie. higher and higher volume levels appear from the left speaker and less and less volume levels of the vocalist from the right speaker. Our brain then interprets this and we get the impression that the vocalist has just walked across the stage yes? This is why I was thinking of trying the K 1000 ear speakers.

This seems like a basically correct analysis of directionality to me. The K1000's or the Stax Sigmas for that matter don't do anything different in regard to the lateral localizing of sounds. What they do is help get the sound away from the head and in this sense they are more speaker-like.

However the amplitude differences between the ears are not the whole story. There are profound differences between the directional cues used in most commercial stereophony and those in normal hearing, with recorded stereo often relying more on amplitude differences to create images while normal directional hearing is based on time differences.

Amplitude differences between the ears are probably less important than time differences in a real life listening situation. This is in part because the head needs to "shadow" the sound before you get much amplitude difference between the ears. There are not going to be large amplitude differences for most sounds coming from the areas ahead or behind the head. Only sound sources well-off to the side are going to show much shadowing.

As well, there is less shadowing at longer wavelengths. This is one of reasons why it is often said that bass sounds are non-directional and is the basis of the claim you sometimes see about placing a subwoofer anywhere in a room.

I don't know the exact frequencies where bass directionality is lost but I have a fond memory of having this phenomenon explained on a larger scale by my old boss, who was a sonar engineer, from his balcony overlooking the ocean. Waves could be seen washing uninterrupted over the smaller rocks and miniature islands, but for the larger islands the waves were blocked and there was a "shadow" behind the island.

HOWEVER, recordings often rely more of amplitude differences than time differences to create a sense of spatial location because you can manipulate it more easily than time delays. Thus if you have one mic on one instrument you can increase its volume more on one channel than another and move it in apparent space by using a simple slider on your control panel. I am sure that with modern digital recording you can also manipulate time delays to modify stereo imaging, but I have not heard of anyone doing this.

There may still be interchannel time delays in stereo recordings especially those using minimalist miking techniques, but when you use an array of mikes these delays may either be messed up because you have several sets of different delays for the same sounds, or if you do multichannel recording with essentially monaural recordings of individual voices or instruments, the time delays would be non-existent. So you fall back on amplitude differences between the channels to create the auditory spatial image.

I have also seen some stereo microphone positionings where the mics are virtually in the same position but facing different directions, thus minimizing time delays as an effective cue but still allowing amplitude differences to be recorded.

Of course there you have another interesting comparison of headphones vs speakers. Speaker reproduction will not allow good localization of low frequencies because of the lack of head shadowing. However headphones, because they isolate the sound in the two ears, will give an amplitude difference even at low frequencies.

Stereo recording is a psycho-acoustic mish-mash but it works because the brain is able to make some sense of incomplete or even contradictory information. You need only think of the various proprietary sound enhancing techniques often used on boom boxes and the like to expand the spatial image. Anything which creates a timing, phase or amplitude difference between two channels may end up sounding like a spatial dimension.

I regard headphone listening as a more purist/minimalist way of hearing the spatial information in a two-channel recording. Loudspeakers compromise this because of the phantom channels discussed above and the lack of low frequency directionality.

Of course speakers do get the sound out of your head and you get to hear the sound in your own room with its own acoustics. That can be nice although sometimes in conflict with the acoustics in the recording.

 

[autonomous]

Well this ones got it all. The facial that the guy from Scotchland served up was brutal, but not really wrong except for that calling a spade a spade remark (tongue in cheek I suspect)! Bottom line is it's a public forum that OP xiaobao0707 posted (per this thread, any surprise the French think we're are wacko!) about speakers so to state that it is off topic or untrue to the website is what gets you the kind of response Clarkmc got. But he seems to be handling it pretty well!

Regarding the visceral experience of a full range audiophile speaker system compared to audiophile headphones is basic acoustic physics. Sound is air being moved. When you are trying to reproduce the sound a symphonic orchestra makes, any headphone will come up short in moving the amount of air the big floor standers move. If you note that the OP was particularly impressed by the 5th & 9th of LVB, conducted by Herbert Von Karajan, probably the BPO, you should not be surprised that he was so impressed by the impact of the Martin Logan Vista's.

The audio retailers select this type of music to demonstrate this visceral impact; it sells speakers. To make for a more level playing field for the headphones choose some music that requires detail resolving like a string quartet, flute or acoustic guitar. Better yet try both with a binaural recording and you will probably leave the shop with the Stax 02. I have gone the route with a dedicated listening room, electrostatic loudspeakers with OTL amps and a vinyl front end and it was very, very, good. But taking up an entire room to listen to music was impractical and no longer my desire.

I have sufficient hardware on hand to assemble a pretty strong speaker driven system and a headphone system.Today I prefer the music to compliment my living space, not dominate it. Since I spend a lot of time on my computer I am on a headphone kick that I am enjoying very much. So OP, listen carefully, choose wisely based on your musical taste, and don’t be fooled by audio salesman tricks. And do tell us what you decided and why.

 

[Clarkmc2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by autonomous /img/forum/go_quote.gif Regarding the visceral experience of a full range audiophile speaker system compared to audiophile headphones is basic acoustic physics. Sound is air being moved. When you are trying to reproduce the sound a symphonic orchestra makes, any headphone will come up short in moving the amount of air the big floor standers move

Quite true, and this illustrates the divide between chest thumping bass and the rest of listening to music. For all but the chest thumping experience, it is the sound in the ear channel that matters, and the closer the source the less power is required to produce the same air movement there. Cut the distance to the source by several orders of magnitude - about 83 feet vs one inch is one thousand to one - and the required driver movement and area becomes very small to achieve the same effect on the eardrum. (83 feet is a nice distance to be from a symphony orchestra.) Headphones provide everything except the chest thump, and either that is important to you or it is not. If it is, go speakers. If it is not, call a Stax dealer.

For the record, my JBL 4345s move (much) more air to a very high fidelity than any other speaker I have ever heard. MLs sound pretty flat to me in comparison, lacking dynamics and audio realism. I am still wondering why I have been tarred with the speaker hating brush. I love speakers and have invested much effort and treasure on them. I simply don't find the speakers most people think are great to be even adequate, especially in the chest thumping department.

I have not heard them all, of course. I would love to hear a well powered pair of Tannoy Churchills.

Clark

 

[mulveling]

"There's no replacement for displacement"

I should get to hear a friend's pair of Churchill wide-bands, within a month or two. He's also thinking of getting VAC's new 400 Watt mono-blocks (400 Phi?). So either driven by that or his top-dog Sonic Frontiers tube monos.

I started to completely shun headphones once I got my current Kensington SEs. The Churchill setup should be a step above that.

 

[n3rdling]

Quote:

Originally Posted by autonomous /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have gone the route with a dedicated listening room, electrostatic loudspeakers with OTL amps and a vinyl front end and it was very, very, good.

Name names please

 

[autonomous]

Quote:

Originally Posted by n3rdling /img/forum/go_quote.gif Name names please

OK, I’ll start at the back end and work front. The speakers were Accoustat X’s with an Audio Pro powered subwoofer. The amplifiers were purpose built monoblocks OTL tube jobs supplied by Accoustat with the latest available upgrades at the time. A NYAL Moscode Super-IT served as the phono stage with no preamp in the chain.

The turntable was an Oracle Alexandria with a Linn Basik arm and cartridge sitting atop a SOTA mini rack. They used to call this type of set-up straight wire with gain, and it provided me the best sound I ever heard at home. The Nitty Gritty 2.5 that I used then and now allowed the vinyl to reveal really good and clean sound from those LP grooves. It worked really well as a system and did not require a second mortgage.

 

[robm321]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xiaobao0707 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Has anyone here had the same experience like me? What keeps you in the headphone world? Please shine a light on me. Thanks.

I have that experience everyday . Speakers are on a whole other Plataea compared to headphones.

Unless you plan on living in the same place for a long time and have an extra room to dedicate to speakers, AND are willing to sit in a stationary spot for long periods of time, you should also have headphones. You can kick back or lay down with headphones as well and not bother others or your neighbors if you are in an apartment.

 

[Icenine2]

I do prefer speakers. However............trying to get a speaker high-end rig to sound as good as a pair of HD800's, T1's etc paired w/a great amp is going to be serious dollars. You could spend say $6,000 on a totally killer system: T1's ($1,000) + Amp, you pick ($2,000), Ayre QB-9 ($2,500), add $500 for interconnects and a cool headphone stand. It would take say at least a multiple of two (I'd go NAD M2-$6,000 integrated w/DAC-new paradigm says Stereophile), Speakers-you choose ($8,000), interconnects $2,000. You still don't have a stand and er..........a dedicated room!

Reality time is headphones for me. Your mileage may vary. Wife (hates the stereo big rig w/floating speakers in the room), kids (if they are little there is danger lurking for them and you...take your pick of pancakes in transports, speakers toppled-happened to me more than once, etc., neighbors (unless you live on a farm these are always an issue unless you're in some sort of subterranean man-cave that never sees the light of day. Headphones worst case is someone taps me on the shoulder and scares the bejesus out me.

K