[bfreedma]

My room is about 20 by 20 with a 20 foot high peaked roof and a 10 by 10 foot L off the rear on the right. It's a spit in the wind guesstimate, but I would bet the room mode frequency in my room is down below 30Hz based on my attempts to find the resonant frequency. A half octave at the very bottom isn't enough for me to really worry about, so I just tame it through EQ and furniture placement to lessen reflections and I don't worry about eliminating it through more extreme means. I do try to make sure that the sub has a clear shot at all the listening positions and I put it as close to the center of the front wall as I can, but not exactly in the center. (I find that symmetry sometimes causes problems.) It works for me.

Is there a way to estimate the resonant frequency based on room dimensions? I'm lousy at math, but I'd be interested to see if my guesstimate is in the proper ballpark.

Since I know you like Ethan's work.... http://realtraps.com/modecalc.htm

There are some online options as well - google "room mode calculator"

 

[71 dB]

My room is about 20 by 20 with a 20 foot high peaked roof and a 10 by 10 foot L off the rear on the right. It's a spit in the wind guesstimate, but I would bet the room mode frequency in my room is down below 30Hz based on my attempts to find the resonant frequency. A half octave at the very bottom isn't enough for me to really worry about, so I just tame it through EQ and furniture placement to lessen reflections and I don't worry about eliminating it through more extreme means. I do try to make sure that the sub has a clear shot at all the listening positions and I put it as close to the center of the front wall as I can, but not exactly in the center. (I find that symmetry sometimes causes problems.) It works for me.

Is there a way to estimate the resonant frequency based on room dimensions? I'm lousy at math, but I'd be interested to see if my guesstimate is in the proper ballpark.

Here c = 345 m/s (at typical room temperature), W = L = 20*0.30 m = 6 m. Peaked roof and "L" complicates things a bit. 30 foot is 9 m = W*

For nW = 1, nL = 0 and nH = 0, we have 345*SQRT(1/36)/2 Hz = 345/(6*2) Hz = 29 Hz.
For nW* = 1, nL = 0, and nH = 0, we have 345*SQRT(1/81)/2 Hz = 345/(9*2) Hz = 19 Hz.
For nW = 1, nL = 1 and nH = 0, we have 345*SQRT(1/36 + 1/36)/2 Hz = 345/(6*SQRT(2)) Hz = 41 Hz.
For nW* = 1, nL = 1 and nH = 0, we have 345*SQRT(1/81 + 1/36)/2 Hz = 35 Hz.

The L-shape makes the calculations difficult, but you should find the lowest room modes at about 20, 30, 35 Hz and 40 Hz depending on where you measure them in the room.

 

[71 dB]

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion, actually the reverse is true. As room size increases, the fundamental room mode frequencies and levels get lower as the distance between the main reflective surfaces increases. In large rooms, most cinemas for example, the lowest room modes are below 20Hz and therefore of no real concern. If small rooms were better, we'd all be mixing in them because it'd be cheaper. Generally, the smaller the room, the worse the acoustic issues and the more difficult they are to effectively treat.

G

Small rooms are "problem free" only at lowest bass below the lowest room modes, but you reproduce whole audio band in small rooms too. At 150 Hz you have problems! It's just not the sub doing those frequencies (say your cut off frequency is 60 Hz). Your problems at 150 Hz are related to the main speakers, their placement and of course acoustics at 150 Hz. If you work in a room so small that the lowest room mode is at 60 Hz, you can place your sub with 60 Hz cut off practically anywhere! That's about a 10' x 10' x 10' box at most.

In a large room with lowest room mode at 20 Hz doesn't save you from problems. You have modes at 40, 60, 80, 100, … Hz too + many others.
Studios are designed and engineered to have good acoustics. Shape, damping, diffractors etc. Comparing your living room to a studio is like comparing your car to a F1 car.

 

[71 dB]

I don't know why you think you need to say that, maybe because some of us realise/understand that crossfeeding does NOT fix things related to excessive stereo image! When we listen to speakers yes, we have the direct dry sound which in the case of a sound panned right is heard first in the right ear and then in the left ear at a lower level. With HPs we would only hear the sound in the right ear and therefore crossfeeding some of it may seem like a good solution and obviously some people feel (strongly apparently) that it does. However, there are a number of reasons why it doesn't:
1. There is not the expected time delay between left and right ears or the expected masking effect of the skull.
2. It's extremely rare for there to be only a direct dry sound on a recording. Sure, in the early days of stereo there was relatively little which could be done about this but even in the 60's ways around that were being commonly/ubiquitously employed; echo chambers, plates and other sympathetic resonators and even reverb units (acoustic/analogue devices such as the EMT units). Recording and playback technology was improving and therefore recordings didn't need to be as dry as previously. The ping/pong effect never really died completely, it just became less obvious over time, using technology such as stereo delays and reverbs for example. Reverb units been stereo for many years, in fact the EMT had a stereo return unit in the early 60's, so just crossfeeding a mix is going to damage, in some cases quite severely, the often delicate timing of left/right reflections.
3. Reverb again but this time it's the reverb of the listening environment, both of them. There was a period in the late '70's and part way through the '80's when control room design fashion was for quite dead/dry acoustics, quite dry multi-track recordings and then add a bunch of reverb and delays artificially. It was fairly quickly realised that did not result in good translation to the consumer and so, for around the last 30 years or so music studios have erred far more towards diffusion than absorption. The concept of mixes being created in relatively dead/dry controls rooms is pretty much an audiophile myth. Most decent music control/mixing rooms have RTs (reverb times) broadly similar to average to the average sitting room. The application of reverb and delay effects is therefore based on the interaction of those effects with the hopefully neutral reverb of the control room. Obviously, consumers don't typically have appropriate diffusers in their listening environments and don't have neutral room reflections/reverb but nevertheless, what they do have is still an important interaction with the reflections/reverb on the recording. Hopefully it's obvious that crossfeeding does not accomplish this same feat, if anything, it can again just make matters worse.

Direct dry sound from speakers: The sound at your left ear is hardly a decibel weaker than at right ear at bass and not much at higher below 1 kHz. You sense the direction of sound below 1 kHz based on ITD.

1. All crossfeeders I have been playing with do have "expected" (about 250 µs) time delay between left and right ears and the masking effect of the skull is simulated, not on HRTF-accuracy, but simulated nevertheless. Ipsilateral signal is treblebossted with a shelf-filter and contralateral signal is low-pass filtered.

2. That's why we don't crossfeed at level 0 dB, but at lower level depending on the recording (proper crossfeed)

3. How does not using crossfeed accomplish anything? You don't have a room with headphones!

 

[71 dB]

Yesterday, as a sanity check (readers will understand my need for this!) I listened to an early 1970s album all the way through using cross-feed. Initially I was surprised because the first track heard with cross-feed presented a guitar moved out of it's normal pan position into one elevated up about 45 degrees. Interesting, but not right. I listened to the entire album, and within a song or two, the cross-feed version no longer sounded "wrong", in fact, it seemed like the band was less in my head, more in front of me. Then, I listened again to the entire album without cross-feed. Wow! I was drawn into the music, the ambience surrounded me, I heard mix details missed before, and the music touched me far more deeply. I enjoyed the entire experience more.

The album was "Who's Next" by The Who.

Now all of that is just my opinion, and I don't expect anyone to share it or agree with it. It's just my preference. But at least I gave it a shot, I opened the possibility that cross-feed might improve the experience. I felt it didn't in that case. However, I'm not done either. I'll be listening to more and varied recordings with cross-feed. Please know, this is not something new I'm doing now. I've experimented with cross-feed for decades, various forms. I keep giving it a chance. I know it has merit, and I'll see if I can find where that is. And, where possible, I ask others opinions (not yours...I have yours pretty much in hand).

I welcome others to do the same kind of comparison. And I'll let you know when I find a track that cross-feed improves.

Do you hear these "mix details missed before" when you listen to speakers? Spatial distortion emphasizes channel difference so what you hear is not real detail, but overblown detail out of it's proportion. That's "detail scale distortion" (Yes, one more of my own terms!) The same details are at the crossfed sound, but at lower level, at correct level in fact if you use proper crossfeed. At correct level they don't "mask" monophonic detail. L+R and L-R details are balanced. One thing people might not realize is that you need volume correction with crossfeed. Our hearing is sensitive to channel difference and crossfeed reduces that so perceived loudness drops. A few decibels is needed to raise crossfed sound on the same perceived loudness level. That's one reason why crossfeed seems to make music less involving. Another reason is that spatial distortion functions as "special effects" and kind of masks the emptyness of the music itself. Does the music have artistic value or is it all just hard panned spatial tricks, smoke and mirrors?

I appreciate your open mind pinnahertz. I'm not familiar of The Who's music, but I'm listening to the album on Spotify while writing this (Deluxe Edition). The album contains typical 70's spatial distortion and imo needs crossfeed at level about -1 dB. Music itself is quite nice!

 

[pinnahertz]

Do you hear these "mix details missed before" when you listen to speakers?

Yes. The basic mix and balance matches speakers better without cross-feed.

Spatial distortion emphasizes channel difference so what you hear is not real detail, but overblown detail out of it's proportion.

No, the non-cross-feed version matches the speaker mix quite well. Instruments are in wider positions and the sense of ambience is more immersive in headphones, otherwise the two are in reasonable parity. Cross-feed throws the mix off.

That's "detail scale distortion" (Yes, one more of my own terms!)

O M G.

The same details are at the crossfed sound, but at lower level, at correct level in fact if you use proper crossfeed. At correct level they don't "mask" monophonic detail. L+R and L-R details are balanced.

Not my impression at all, sorry.

One thing people might not realize is that you need volume correction with crossfeed. Our hearing is sensitive to channel difference and crossfeed reduces that so perceived loudness drops. A few decibels is needed to raise crossfed sound on the same perceived loudness level. That's one reason why crossfeed seems to make music less involving.

The cross-feeder I used already takes the level adjustment into account. There's no perceived loudness difference. What changes is the sense of 3D space. Cross-feed kills that almost completely, and moves the mix slightly forward out of mid-head. But it's then a 2D mix, very flat.

Another reason is that spatial distortion functions as "special effects" and kind of masks the emptyness of the music itself. Does the music have artistic value or is it all just hard panned spatial tricks, smoke and mirrors?

I'm not sure what you're saying. I've already explained what I heard.

I appreciate your open mind pinnahertz. I'm not familiar of The Who's music, but I'm listening to the album on Spotify while writing this (Deluxe Edition). The album contains typical 70's spatial distortion and imo needs crossfeed at level about -1 dB. Music itself is quite nice!

Well, it's not an unusual mix even for today. A bunch of mono sources panned using ILD, with "space" added.

If you think about that last bit in your above post...I think you might actually land on a reason some of us may not appreciate cross-feed. That record is one I knew from its release. And yes, we had headphones back then! They ran on coal fired steam, but we had them. So much of what you hear as "wrong" I hear as "normal", because I've heard it that way for most of my life. That makes it "normal" for me.

Now, by extension, consider how much listening is done today on headphones, earphones. I think your statistics are way, way off, but even if it's 50%, and those listeners have never heard anything else but non-cross-fed stereo in headphones, aren't you even a little afraid they will also feel that perspective is their "normal" and not like the flattened narrow perspective of cross-feed? How long have they listened to music that way? If I were you, that's where my concern and research would be. Find out how people actually react to it in a bias controlled test. Which, by the way, probably means you can't administer the test yourself (bias control, you know).

As to the open mind...heck If I don't learn something new in a given day I must be asleep or dead. And learning new stuff about audio has been pretty much my entire life. And its self-serving too, if I learn something that makes my listening experience better, I'm going to do it. And that's the only reason I'm still messing with cross-feed after like almost 40 years. So far, and I'm still open to other possibilities, I find its benefit isn't zero, it's just another tweak, a tool that should be used when appropriate. For me, "appropriate" is relatively rare. I would suggest you set your preconceptions aside and put your work into determining what "appropriate" means to the unwashed listening masses.

 

[Whazzzup]

 

[pinnahertz]

Here c = 345 m/s (at typical room temperature), W = L = 20*0.30 m = 6 m. Peaked roof and "L" complicates things a bit. 30 foot is 9 m = W*

For nW = 1, nL = 0 and nH = 0, we have 345*SQRT(1/36)/2 Hz = 345/(6*2) Hz = 29 Hz.
For nW* = 1, nL = 0, and nH = 0, we have 345*SQRT(1/81)/2 Hz = 345/(9*2) Hz = 19 Hz.
For nW = 1, nL = 1 and nH = 0, we have 345*SQRT(1/36 + 1/36)/2 Hz = 345/(6*SQRT(2)) Hz = 41 Hz.
For nW* = 1, nL = 1 and nH = 0, we have 345*SQRT(1/81 + 1/36)/2 Hz = 35 Hz.

The L-shape makes the calculations difficult, but you should find the lowest room modes at about 20, 30, 35 Hz and 40 Hz depending on where you measure them in the room.

This is a pretty fine example of theory and calculation falling more than a little short of reality. The equations above assume the boundaries are absolutely rigid and 100% reflective, which they aren't. Every wall is partially permeable, and to make matters worse, it varies with frequency. At lower frequencies residential partitions become diaphragmatic, and partially absorptive. The only boundary types that come close to those assumed by the calculations are very thick reinforced concrete walls, ceilings and floors, and even those can be shown to be partially permeable. Ceilings and floors are also not equally reflective at all frequencies. Modal analysis must also take into account the position of the exciter (s), and the listener (or mic), and non-parallel surfaces, and the L shape will just confound prediction. Then you throw stuff in the room, and it's different again. I can promise you that the analysis above will have little relation to reality.

Only a couple of decades ago people used to do this with elaborate spread-sheets, charts, and graphs. They'd work out the best modal distribution and build that room. But none of it actually worked out that way once the room is built! Even the so-called "golden ratio" turned out to be a bit mythological because it didn't take the actual characteristics of walls into account. The best you can do is avoid multiple modes on 3 axis from landing on the same frequency....sort of. You take your best shot, measure the effects in situ, react to the data if possible, and measure many, many positions. It turns out that modal analysis is pretty much just a math exercise only.

 

[pinnahertz]

Small rooms are "problem free" only at lowest bass below the lowest room modes, but you reproduce whole audio band in small rooms too. At 150 Hz you have problems! It's just not the sub doing those frequencies (say your cut off frequency is 60 Hz). Your problems at 150 Hz are related to the main speakers, their placement and of course acoustics at 150 Hz. If you work in a room so small that the lowest room mode is at 60 Hz, you can place your sub with 60 Hz cut off practically anywhere! That's about a 10' x 10' x 10' box at most.

In a large room with lowest room mode at 20 Hz doesn't save you from problems. You have modes at 40, 60, 80, 100, … Hz too + many others.
Studios are designed and engineered to have good acoustics. Shape, damping, diffractors etc. Comparing your living room to a studio is like comparing your car to a F1 car.

The reality is, ti doesn't work exactly as expected. As posted earlier, the calculations you base your assumptions upon do not consider real rooms, real walls, and real construction materials.

You may find your assumptions about studios vs home listening rooms to be a bit wrong, too. Yes, when we design studios we pay attention to a lot of acoustic issues that home designs ignore, but there exists a lot of granularity in both design and implementation.

For a picture of home listening rooms, see the AES paper, "First Results from a Large-Scale Measurement Program for Home Theaters" by Tomlinson Holman and Ryan Green (November 2010). The raw data set for the analysis in the paper came from measurements taken of 1000 rooms, using the Audyssey MultEQ (the Pro calibration version) where measurements of multiple positions both before and after correction could optionally be uploaded to a server. There are some surprising results, such as that the assumption that homes are noisier environments than studios is probably wrong.

 

[gregorio]

[1] In a large room with lowest room mode at 20 Hz doesn't save you from problems. You have modes at 40, 60, 80, 100, … Hz too + many others.
[2] Studios are designed and engineered to have good acoustics. Shape, damping, diffractors etc. Comparing your living room to a studio is like comparing your car to a F1 car.

1. That all depends on how you define a large room. In the given example of a cinema, where the minimum typical length of the room would be about 70', the fundamental axial mode would be around 8Hz, the first harmonic at 16Hz, neither of which are an audible problem and even the second harmonic at about 24Hz is not much of a problem.
2. There are comparisons between my car and an F1 car, both have 4 wheels for example, unlike a comparison between say a bicycle and an F1 car.

1. All crossfeeders I have been playing with do have "expected" (about 250 µs) time delay between left and right ears and the masking effect of the skull is simulated, not on HRTF-accuracy, but simulated nevertheless.
2. That's why we don't crossfeed at level 0 dB, but at lower level depending on the recording (proper crossfeed)
3. How does not using crossfeed accomplish anything? You don't have a room with headphones!

1. "Expected" by whom? Even "HRTF-accuracy" is based on mean values unless you're going to have a personalised HRTF, which is potentially better but achieving that potential is not straight forward.
2. And how would you judge what the proper level would be? There is no simple equation because each recording has different types, different combinations of types and different amounts of stereo reverb/delay effects, so that judgement would be entirely subjective by the individual for each recording and that subjective judgement is likely to vary from listening to listening as one focuses on different aspects of the recording. That's hardly a practical solution for the average consumer, even assuming there is an optimal/"proper" crossfeed level for any particular recording, which in many cases I don't believe there is.
3. Huh? That's my point, you don't have a room without crossfeed and you don't have a room with crossfeed either! A. Without crossfeed all you have is the stereo reverb and delay based effects actually applied to the recording without the intended interaction of the room. B. With crossfeed you still don't get that listening room interaction plus you get messed-up timing of the delay based effects actually applied to the recording. In this respect, not only does crossfeed not "fix things related to excessive stereo separation", it potentially just makes matters even worse, depending on the recording. I'd personally rather have A than B and as a bonus, not have to own and fiddle with a crossfeeder!

G

 

[71 dB]

I apologize if I can't respond to every message as this must be the most active online discussion board I have ever seen!

1. That all depends on how you define a large room. In the given example of a cinema, where the minimum typical length of the room would be about 70', the fundamental axial mode would be around 8Hz, the first harmonic at 16Hz, neither of which are an audible problem and even the second harmonic at about 24Hz is not much of a problem.
2. There are comparisons between my car and an F1 car, both have 4 wheels for example, unlike a comparison between say a bicycle and an F1 car.

1. A large room in Finland is propably small in the US, because we have small apartments in Finland (it takes energy to keep them warm at winter so they aren't very large). I agree about the 8, 16 and 24 Hz modes being harmless.
2. I can compare myself to God: We both have a name.

1. "Expected" by whom? Even "HRTF-accuracy" is based on mean values unless you're going to have a personalised HRTF, which is potentially better but achieving that potential is not straight forward.

The fine details of HRTF vary from person to person, but the general shape is the same dictated but our anatomy. If you change the cut-off frequency of a first order low pass filter by 10 %, people will hardly notice anything, but if you change the narrow spikes of HRTF by that amount the result is completely wrong. Crossfeed doesn't even try to simulate the fine details. It scales spatial information as a mapping function from "stereo space" to "human hearing space". In "stereo space" you can have any ILD. In "human hearing space" ILD is limited. So, for example at bass you need to limit "stereo space" ILD of zero to infinity dB to about 0 to 5 dB unless you want to create a soundstage where the kickdrum is hit a few inches of your other ear, something I believe nobody tries to achieve. A crossfeeder at level -5 dB does such mapping: 0 dB remains 0 dB while infinite dB becomes 5 dB. Expected delay is pretty trivial issue, because the size of head doesn't very much between people and if someone has very large or small head, it only translate into angle error which isn't serious. A guitarist playing at angle 40° instead of 30° isn't serious. A person with large head hears all recordings narrower than small head people with headphones, crossfeed or not. That's life. Crossfeed not being able to simulate your HRTF with 100 % accuracy is not a valid reason not to use it. It doesn't eve try to do what it can't do and does what it can do: scale spatial information and doing so fixes the serious problem of spatial distortion. Not using crossfeed doesn't do even that. It fixes nothing letting all problems reach your ears.

2. And how would you judge what the proper level would be? There is no simple equation because each recording has different types, different combinations of types and different amounts of stereo reverb/delay effects, so that judgement would be entirely subjective by the individual for each recording and that subjective judgement is likely to vary from listening to listening as one focuses on different aspects of the recording. That's hardly a practical solution for the average consumer, even assuming there is an optimal/"proper" crossfeed level for any particular recording, which in many cases I don't believe there is.

It's pretty easy when you learn to distinguish spatial distortion from music. I simply use the weakest crossfeed level that makes spatial distortion disappear or leaves very very little of it. It's as simple as using a crossfeed level that makes the recording sound best in respect of spatial information. It's that simple! Sure, it takes some hours of listening and testing for a person to learn how spatial distortion diminishes as crossfeed gets stronger, but it is not difficult. Comments like this are a bit frustrating because I feel people don't have a clue about these spatial things and how crossfeed addresses them. Don't think about what effects are used in music. Our hearing doesn't detect reverb plugins. It detects ILD/ITD + spectral cues in time. Only care about what kind of ILD/ITD -information reaches your ears. Is it within "human hearing space" or not?

3. Huh? That's my point, you don't have a room without crossfeed and you don't have a room with crossfeed either! A. Without crossfeed all you have is the stereo reverb and delay based effects actually applied to the recording without the intended interaction of the room. B. With crossfeed you still don't get that listening room interaction plus you get messed-up timing of the delay based effects actually applied to the recording. In this respect, not only does crossfeed not "fix things related to excessive stereo separation", it potentially just makes matters even worse, depending on the recording. I'd personally rather have A than B and as a bonus, not have to own and fiddle with a crossfeeder!

So, in respect of having a room no crossfeed and crossfeed are on the same line, except crossfeed creates spatial cues of sound sources at about 30° angles, perhaps in a room? That's the problem of not using crossfeed. Your recording can contain any kind od "spatial" information in "stereo space" which is the representation of real life sounds as 2 x N matrixes if in digital form. "stereo space" spatial information in imcompatible with our hearing and must be mapped to "human hearing space" where we don't have wild 100 dB ILDs, but ILDs are limited to about 0-5 dB at bass and about 0-30 dB at high frequencies. When we listen to speakers, this all happens "automatically" with acoustic crossfeed. With headphones we need crossfeed to make it happen. Our everyday sound world is more monophonic than people realise, closer to mono than ping pong stereo. All you need to do is analyse binaural recordings to see this yourself. When a bee flies to your ear you experience large ILDs, but you don't like it, do you?

What a crossfeeder does to sound is what our hearing expects sounds coming to our ear having. That's why the "messing-up" is beneficial. That's why people don't say the stereo image with speakers is messed up because your left ear hears right speaker and vice versa. Spatial information in "stereo space" MUST BE messed with to map it into "human hearing space". You can live your life without a crossfeeder, but that makes you spatially ignorant. I was such a person up until 2012. I managed, but I get so much more out of music now that I am spatially aware. Purism can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. Considering crossfeed as "messing up" timing is bad kind of purism. How can you claim that crossfeed doesn't fix excessive stereo separation? It undeniably reduces stereo separation so it makes excessive stereo separation less excessive, hence fixes the problem.

 

[71 dB]

This is a pretty fine example of theory and calculation falling more than a little short of reality. The equations above assume the boundaries are absolutely rigid and 100% reflective, which they aren't. Every wall is partially permeable, and to make matters worse, it varies with frequency. At lower frequencies residential partitions become diaphragmatic, and partially absorptive. The only boundary types that come close to those assumed by the calculations are very thick reinforced concrete walls, ceilings and floors, and even those can be shown to be partially permeable. Ceilings and floors are also not equally reflective at all frequencies. Modal analysis must also take into account the position of the exciter (s), and the listener (or mic), and non-parallel surfaces, and the L shape will just confound prediction. Then you throw stuff in the room, and it's different again. I can promise you that the analysis above will have little relation to reality.

Only a couple of decades ago people used to do this with elaborate spread-sheets, charts, and graphs. They'd work out the best modal distribution and build that room. But none of it actually worked out that way once the room is built! Even the so-called "golden ratio" turned out to be a bit mythological because it didn't take the actual characteristics of walls into account. The best you can do is avoid multiple modes on 3 axis from landing on the same frequency....sort of. You take your best shot, measure the effects in situ, react to the data if possible, and measure many, many positions. It turns out that modal analysis is pretty much just a math exercise only.

True. The real frequencies might be anything, but not knowing anything about the house, this is what can be calculated. Sorry, if I let you think this is an exact calculation. More like a demonstration of how "stupid" it is to ask online the mode frequencies of your living room telling some approximative measures here and there. I regret even using my time on that post.

 

[71 dB]

Yes. The basic mix and balance matches speakers better without cross-feed.

Really? Then you must have very strange headphones or speakers. Or maybe you're in denial that crossfeed actually works and have strange placebo effect due to that attitude. How can you be honest and tell me your speakers with acoustic crossfeed sound closer to headphones without cross-feed? Don't you see how insane such a claim is? What kind of ultra-directive magic speakers could produce ILDs over 10 dB at bass to your ears even in an anechoic chamber let alone in your room?

No, the non-cross-feed version matches the speaker mix quite well. Instruments are in wider positions and the sense of ambience is more immersive in headphones, otherwise the two are in reasonable parity. Cross-feed throws the mix off.

I give up. Do what you want. We simple disagree so much there is no hope for agreements. To me speaker sound if narrower than heaphone sound. Crossfeed makes the sound narrower and closer to speakers. I don't know why people want "wide". Usually the music is in front of you! Crossfeed gives sensation of that to same sense, depents on the recording. It seems you don't understand anything I tell you about what crossfeed does. You remain clueless. Waste of time. I stop now and start doing other things I need to do in my life instead of wasting time with boneheads[/QUOTE]

 

[pinnahertz]

Really? Then you must have very strange headphones or speakers. Or maybe you're in denial that crossfeed actually works and have strange placebo effect due to that attitude.

There it is again: "I hear it, you don't, so you must be dear/defective/stupid...etc., etc." I found this interesting too: "2. I can compare myself to God: We both have a name."

How can you be honest and tell me your speakers with acoustic crossfeed sound closer to headphones without cross-feed?

I can't. I didn't. Read more carefully.

Don't you see how insane such a claim is? What kind of ultra-directive magic speakers could produce ILDs over 10 dB at bass to your ears even in an anechoic chamber let alone in your room?

Yes, that would be insane. I'm not sure what you call lack of reading comprehension, probably not "insane", though. Read my stuff again.

I give up. Do what you want. We simple disagree so much there is no hope for agreements. To me speaker sound if narrower than heaphone sound. Crossfeed makes the sound narrower and closer to speakers. I don't know why people want "wide". Usually the music is in front of you! Crossfeed gives sensation of that to same sense, depents on the recording.

Speaker sound could be narrower than cross-feed headphone sound, or it could be wider. It depends on the placement of the speakers, the LP, directivity and room acoustics. I did not say, or mean to imply that cross-feed made the perspective narrower than speakers, but it is less dimensional, flatter, less involving than may be possible on speakers. Yes, with speakers the sound is mostly in front of you, and with cross-feed you get a sense of that. But I don't find that "better". I like speakers, and I like non-cross-feed headphones, with a few exceptions.

It seems you don't understand anything I tell you about what crossfeed does. You remain clueless. Waste of time. I stop now and start doing other things I need to do in my life instead of wasting time with boneheads

You've confused lack of understanding with a difference of preference. I don't think YOU are clueless! I think we have a difference in preference! You are projecting your preference on everyone else as fact, and if not accepted, then they are clueless boneheads. And now you're lobbing insults. Do you think reducing this to juvenile name-calling will change my mind or the mind of any other reader? I'm afraid you haven't improved your credibility.

 

[71 dB]

If you think about that last bit in your above post...I think you might actually land on a reason some of us may not appreciate cross-feed. That record is one I knew from its release. And yes, we had headphones back then! They ran on coal fired steam, but we had them. So much of what you hear as "wrong" I hear as "normal", because I've heard it that way for most of my life. That makes it "normal" for me.

So, my crossfeeding is wrong because of your nostalgia for hard panned stereo sound some half a century ago? You can't tell nostalgia apart from real fidelity? Nothing wrong with nostalgia, I feel it too, but admit the irrationality of it. Crossfeed allows you to hear your old favorite albums more like they should have always been and perhaps even discover some artistically rich music that doesn't rely on excessive spatial effects but on real musicality and creativity. Anyway, Who's Next album was a nice experience for me not familiar with their music previously and I liked it with crossfeed. However, crossfeed off it sounds pretty horrible imo, spatial distortion is over 75 % it seems. Typical for the genre and era.