No, our brain will try to make sense of whatever it's given! Whether or not the "sense" it ends up creating is likeable/preferable, depends on the individual.
1. No, binaural is not good at creating a real world feel, it's only good at capturing and reproducing the real world of the sound which enters your ears!
2. No, that's only one of the problems with binaural.
3. It's a course simulation of a simulation, so pretty much it doesn't "work" for anybody! That doesn't mean to say it can't be preferred by some though.
4. It's not a particular challenge but that's irrelevant anyway because almost no one is trying to create a "real world" sound recording or reproduction because in the real world no one perceives the actual sound entering their ears!
You just have to keep coming back to referencing the "real world", a real world which usually does not exist and even when it does, that's not what we're trying to record or reproduce anyway!
Absolutely it does! It wouldn't make a difference if your hugely oversimplified concept of how "spatial hearing works" were correct but as it's incorrect, processing absolutely can and does change our spatial perception!
1. Potentially either, depending.
1a. Well, that depends. A Decca Tree would produce fairly large ITD values, which *might* be incompatible with our spatial hearing if it were just a two mic stereo pattern but it's not, it's a 3 mic array!! So, what ITDs of 5ms are you talking about? Firstly, a Decca Tree is never placed on the same horizontal plane as the instruments so at most we're talking about around 4ms timing difference between mics B and C but if we take the violins as an example, between mics A and B the difference would be variable. Some of the violins might have a timing difference up to about 4ms between mic A and B, other violins would have 0ms and most anywhere between 0 and about 3ms. Mic A is panned to the centre of the stereo image, in this example acting effectively as a crossfeed. Being a triangle, we've always got this type of crossfeed interaction between all the mics! Additionally, the mics are not just recording the instruments but also the reflections of those instruments from all the surfaces in the recording venue. So we've now got a bunch of signals, all over the place with varying timing differentials from 0ms up to about 2 secs or so. And furthermore, we've generally got a relatively small ILD difference between A, B and C, although that varies with frequency with a Decca Tree. But heck, let's just crossfeed it anyway!
1b. Yes, although according to your "simplified to the point of nonsense" it would have to be an elephant with 3 ears sitting 10 feet above the conductor!
1c. Yes, agreed. It can produce a rather dry and narrow/overly focused image, which is why we almost never use a Decca Tree on it's own, even quite early on it was commonly paired with outrigger mics. But oh no, now our elephant is going to need 5 ears and two of them would need to be about 50 feet apart! Then there's room mics and spot mics and an elephant with up to around 40 ears placed in the most ridiculous positions! Questions: A. How do you know when you're listening to a recording which used only a Decca Tree? B. If the vast majority of the recordings you're listening to have a Decca Tree in combination with various other mics, how do you isolate the Decca Tree mics from all the others to conclude that you're not a fan of Decca Tree?
2. Already explained! We have a complex interaction of level differences, reflections and timing differences, plus frequency factors such as masking, absorption, cancellations and summing and you're reducing all of that down to a simplistic crossfeed with 250ms delay.
3. And how much is "enough" modification? Regardless of the amount of modification, you are damaging or destroying it with crossfeed. Effectively then, it's just your subjective preference for improving some aspects of spatial positioning while damaging/destroying others!
1. A. There are no "allowed" or disallowed levels, only levels we might or might not find subjectively more pleasing. B. Despite being told numerous times, you ignore the obvious fact that "acoustic crossfeed" has the word "acoustic" in it and therefore includes acoustics! You then repeatedly ask "how it's different", because obviously if you're going to ignore acoustics, the interaction and perception of acoustics, then there is no difference!
2. Things can go somewhat wrong, other things can go somewhat wrong caused by crossfeed. Which wrong things do you prefer? You've made clear your preference but that's not a preference shared by all and we don't have to be idiots or delusional not to share your preference!!
3. Again, your judgement and preference. Maybe I would think that producer was an idiot too, maybe the producer really is an idiot but maybe I've just missed the point. Almost all musical developments throughout the history of music (and it's production) have been negatively received by some/many. Regardless, I want to hear what the producer/artists intended, even if they were all idiots!
That's obviously not true, although maybe it is to you because you're ignoring room acoustics but then if you're going to ignore room acoustics how come you're making statements about it?
Make up your mind, which is it, are we too puristic or spatially ignorant? We can't be both! In actual fact we are neither. You are fixated on some "real world" which does not exist and which we're not trying to recreate anyway and therefore effectively talking about eliminating spatial distortion from recordings which are deliberately massively spatially distorted! But many of your assertions to support your preference are simply not true and/or based on incorrect conclusions/assumptions. I'm not even going to get into your 1kHz crossfeed crossover, which would sometimes result in some really bizarre artefacts but if you like it that way, that's your choice.
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