[bigshot]

It isn't a small soundstage because a small soundstage produced by near field speakers still has some distance. Headphones have no distance at all. Perhaps it's best described as sitting on the stage itself with the band to your left and right. Linear stage.

But feel free to make up your own terms for things. It's a tradition in audiophile circles!

Multichannel speaker systems DEFINITELY produce more sophisticated distance cues. A good sound field can sound as big or as contained as you want. That is the beauty of multichannel audio. Once you have an immersive sound field, you can modify the acoustics to make it anything from a cathedral to a tiny closet. Stereo is always the same plane of sound in front of you. You can add secondary distance cues, just like you can with mono, but not immersive ones.

 

[71 dB]

Distance cues are a LOT more than just frequency response. It involves time and reflections, head tracking and HRTF. To pull all of that off, you need a computer like the Smyth Realiser. And that technology is still new. I'm sure it will be better in the future.

Apple's spatial audio has rudimentary head tracking, response and timing, but no HRTF. And I think HRTF is the big deal breaker. That is why binaural recordings have never taken off commercially.

I think it is useless to even try speaker-like soundstage on headphones. Remove the HRTF-part and use an average approximation instead. HRTF is such a pain in the ass. I have had mine measured in anechoic chamber, but I don't have those myself. They are the intellectual property on Nokia corporation who financed the measurements. Normal people who don't work in acoustics labs don't have the opportunity to have their HRTFs measured.

 

[bigshot]

Castle says that the Smyth Realiser works pretty well. I can see Apple creating a combination of 3D scanning and tutorials tuning the sound you hear to make it possible. Both of those things are possible on my iPhone. They just need to apply the technology. I expect that DSPs that modify the spatial characteristics of recordings will be as big a revelation in sound recording as stereo was to mono and multichannel was to stereo. I remember when sound systems were turntables and hissy amps. We've come a long way. There is nowhere further to go in fidelity. The only thing left is dimensionality.

 

[71 dB]

It isn't a small soundstage because a small soundstage produced by near field speakers still has some distance. Headphones have no distance at all. Perhaps it's best described as sitting on the stage itself with the band to your left and right. Linear stage.

But feel free to make up your own terms for things. It's a tradition in audiophile circles!

Multichannel speaker systems DEFINITELY produce more sophisticated distance cues. A good sound field can sound as big or as contained as you want. That is the beauty of multichannel audio. Once you have an immersive sound field, you can modify the acoustics to make it anything from a cathedral to a tiny closet. Stereo is always the same plane of sound in front of you. You can add secondary distance cues, just like you can with mono, but not immersive ones.

We have talked this before. Our ears do not know the distance directly !! The distance is figured out based on spatial cues. That's why our spatial hearing can be fooled. Even traditional stereo speakers are about fooling spatial hearing, making us hear sounds coming from between the speakers, in front of the speakers, behind the speakers etc. It is about doing the fooling well enough. With headphones all of this is just much much more difficult.

Bad multichannel system in bad acoustics may not surpass good stereo system in good acoustics.

 

[bigshot]

I agree that it is difficult with headphones, but I never would have dreamed when I was a kid all the things that people take for granted now. iPhones would be like Dick Tracy wrist radios; computers were brainiac robots, not things that allowed you to do your job; high def TV, cars that drive themselves... the list goes on and on. The only thing I'm missing is the flying car, dammit!

Dimensional sound in the home will happen. I think that TV sets won't be in a picture frame any more either. They will be walls of an entire room creating an immersive space. Write it down so when I'm dead you can call me a visionary!

 

[71 dB]

If you want to expand a bit further, then you could try to explain how channel separation would apply in headphones.

Since we're dealing with two different types of transducers and listening spaces though, I'm not sure we can use precisely the same definitions for both.

Typically music is mixed for speakers and recordings have proper amount of channel separation* for speakers. Audio chain such as audio players and amps should not change this and generally they don't. The problem is, headphones need different amount of channel separation than speakers, because the way room changes the channel separation is missing.

* channel separation means here the amount of correlation between channels relevant to spatial hearing.

 

[71 dB]

I agree that it is difficult with headphones, but I never would have dreamed when I was a kid all the things that people take for granted now. iPhones would be like Dick Tracy wrist radios; computers were brainiac robots, not things that allowed you to do your job; high def TV, cars that drive themselves... the list goes on and on. The only thing I'm missing is the flying car, dammit!

People tend to see technological progress in the future as linear when it tends to be exponential. That's why people tend to overestimate technological progress in short term and underestimate it in long term. The point where exponential progress surpasses linear progress in people's heads is about 30 years. Of course the amount of progress is not the only thing we estimate poorly, also the direction of progress is hard to predict. We didn't get flying cars, but we did get large high def TVs.

Unfortunately technology is one of the only things progressing. Otherwise mankind is even regressing back to the dark ages, becoming dumber and less enlightened each day. We are already witnessing the signs of idiocracy, 500 years before the (really funny) movie predicted.

Dimensional sound in the home will happen. I think that TV sets won't be in a picture frame any more either. They will be walls of an entire room creating an immersive space. Write it down so when I'm dead you can call me a visionary!

Well, we have to see about the wealth inequity in the future first. If Bezos family has all the money and power in the world, nobody else can afford what technonology has to offer. People will be just slaves for Bezos dynasty. Of course by that point all progress, even technological will stagnate for good and mankind is done for. That's no my prediction. It is my warning to people to wise up before it is too late.

 

[Paul Mohr]

"It's the job of the reader (or viewer) to parse who is a good source of information, and who isn't."

I want to be very clear I am NOT a "good" source of information lol. These are simply my opinions. I do not have a background in audio engineering nor do I have a degree in any of the sciences be it electrical or anything else. I am just some old fart who has played around a little.


"Mr. G's take on soundstage and HPs."

The title of that video is kind of click bait since he never actually compares stereo speakers to a 5.1 or above system. Which I am glad he didn't. I'm not his biggest fan but I thought he did a good job on that video. While a good 2 channel speaker set up can do a fine job of creating a large 3d ish sound field it isn't the same as an actual discrete surround set up. Sure a 2 channel set up can push sounds around the room, open the sound field, lock a voice to the center and even put things behind you if done right. However it normally never actually sounds realistic. Especially if the engineer was trying to push the limits. And stereo systems are very dependent on speaker position and seating position. Move your head a foot or so to the left or the right and the "magic" can vanish. Or lord forbid someone bumps your speaker and knocks it out of position!

Multi channel surround systems can do a much better job of placing certain sounds in a specific spot and create a more realistic representation of space. And more so it can do it over a larger seating area. If not set up correctly they can sound pretty goofy though. However a properly set up system can be pretty impressive with the right sound track. And I don't consider commercial theaters to actually sound that well. They kind of do it but for the most part these days they are just loud. Most smaller home based system sound far better. And now we have Dolby Atmos and DTS's version of it. And holy crap can these be realistic. I wasn't expecting a big difference when I upgraded but I was pleasantly surprised. Things are real to the point it is freaky. Where I live these are some of the things I hear on a daily basis. Traffic out side, especially freaking motorcycles. I swear my house is next to a drag strip! Sirens, because I live between a fire station and a hospital. Gun fire because I live near a shooting range and a gun store that does testing. And aircraft because I live near a small airport and again a hospital. So it isn't uncommon for me to hear airplanes and helicopters fly over. With dolby atmos it is really hard for me tell if gunfire in the distance, traffic, aircraft, foot steps or voices are part of the movie or actually going on around me. One time a phone rang in a movie and I swear to god I got up to answer my phone. Another time I was annoyed with traffic outside, got upset and paused the movie. Guess what, it was in the movie lol.

Trust me, no two channel set up I have ever heard can do this. Oddly enough though I still prefer music on a two channel set up vs a surround sound system though. Maybe just because I am used to hearing it that way. I have listened to dolby atmos music, Tidal has a fair amount of it now. Its ok for the most part but nothing mind blowing. And that might just be down to who mixed it. I felt the same way when they were doing 5.1 music. I really wasn't that wowed by it. I bet Pink Floyd could do something amazing with dolby atmos though if they wanted to.

Again this all just my stupid opinions and nothing more.

 

[Paul Mohr]

"The only thing I'm missing is the flying car, dammit!

I only want a flying car if I am the only one who has one. Most people can barely handle driving a car well on one plane with marked roads, rules and signs to follow. Can you imagine the nightmare it would be if these idiots were flying cars. There is a reason its harder to get a pilots license than a driving license lol.

Also technology doesn't always progress for the better. It progresses based on what people want, find convenient and can be marketed. Look at music. In the mainstream market it didn't get better, it got more convenient. Rather than making music that sounded better and systems that could reproduce it better it ended up getting more compressed in file size so we could have a ton of music on a little device would carry around with us or stream and listen to it on tiny speakers that were easy to put in your pocket. And it also got compressed from a sound perspective when mixing to equalize or increase loudness. If you would have told me 30 years ago I could have just about every song made available to me for 10 bucks or so a month on a device I could carry in my pocket I would have told you that you were crazy.

And look at tv's. For a long time large or flat screen tvs were cool but they didn't look as good. LCD screens just never looked as good as a CRT. I remember my first big screen rear projection tv. It was big, which was cool but it certainly didn't look as good as a 32 inch sony trinitron crt tv. Big screen tvs are getting better though if you want one. I really like my LG C9 oled. But to be honest most of the world now a days is consuming content on their freaking phone. Audiophile and videophiles are a very small market in the scheme of things. Same thing with computers, gaming and home pc users are a small slice in that industry. You think intel and other chip makers care that much about us? Not that much I assure you. They are for more concerned with corporate, military and industry markets. That is where their money is.

 

[bigshot]

Well, we have to see about the wealth inequity in the future first.

That hasn't stopped anything in the past.

 

[ADUHF]

I don't click on videos unless I am sure they have something to offer. I'm a busy person and I have other things I can be doing with my time. If you provide a summary and outline the points being made, I might click. But just throwing it out on the table with a comment like "here's this." doesn't inspire me to commit my time to it.

FYI, I was somewhat curious to hear your take on the approach illustrated in this video. Maybe this is already a commonly known thing though.

 

[bigshot]

What is the subject that you’d like me to hear? I don’t click without knowing why.

 

[ADUHF]

What is the subject that you’d like me to hear? I don’t click without knowing why.

His approach to positioning speakers by gradually moving them forward from the listening position until the speakers disappear, and then the room disappears (he claims).

It seemed somewhat novel. And I was curious to hear if you thought such an approach could have any merit.

 

[bigshot]

Well, I suppose that is one way to do it, but you might end up with your speakers standing all alone in the middle of your living room rug. Distance from the walls matter too.

The distance between the speakers can be changed though to allow you to have the speakers closer or further away. The standard way to arrange stereo speakers is to measure out an equilateral triangle with the left and right speakers at two points and the listening position at the third. If you want the listening position to be closer, you just move the speakers closer together and the listening position will move with the smaller triangle.

Placing the speakers is easy. The tricky part is how they react with the room and furniture. That requires some experimentation and every room is different. And depending on the dispersion pattern of your particular speakers, you may have to toe them in to create a balanced phantom center.

It’s pretty simple. Hi-fi nuts have been doing it since the 50s. This site does a good job of explaining the basics.

https://www.ecoustics.com/articles/stereo-speaker-placement-optimum-sound/

 

[ADUHF]

Well, I suppose that is one way to do it, but you might end up with your speakers standing all alone in the middle of your living room rug. Distance from the walls matter too.

The distance between the speakers can be changed though to allow you to have the speakers closer or further away. The standard way to arrange stereo speakers is to measure out an equilateral triangle with the left and right speakers at two points and the listening position at the third. If you want the listening position to be closer, you just move the speakers closer together and the listening position will move with the smaller triangle.

Placing the speakers is easy. The tricky part is how they react with the room and furniture. That requires some experimentation and every room is different. And depending on the dispersion pattern of your particular speakers, you may have to toe them in to create a balanced phantom center.

It’s pretty simple. Hi-fi nuts have been doing it since the 50s. This site does a good job of explaining the basics.

https://www.ecoustics.com/articles/stereo-speaker-placement-optimum-sound/

Very interesting! Thanks for the link.

Another technique I've heard is the "rule of thirds", which probably looks something like this?

Room divided in three. Speaker drivers are 1/3 back from front wall. Listener is 2/3 back. Distance between speaker drivers is defined by equilateral triangle with listener. (Speakers probably also need to be toed in some. But I didn't have an easy way to draw that.)

I think the golden ratio approach in your link above is probably better and a bit more flexible though. Because it would not requre the speakers to be placed as far from the front wall in deeper rooms as the rule of thirds. I think the rule of thirds was only intended as a rough starting point.