Holographic imaging

Newbee,

The "holography" you describe is consistent with speaker configuration parameters that I found worked best with Carver sonic holography. It works better with more directional box designs, particularly when approximating a point source.

It worked best with my Dynaudio and Triangle monitors. It also worked well with Maggies I owned for many years but these were trickier to get set up right for best effect. I could never get it to work well at all with larger B&W floor standers I owned.

It does nothing useful for the Ohms which are pseudo-omni directional as you describe.

These are totally transparent and with well produced recordings, the musicians are located precisely and in various locations within the huge soundstage and with considerable variation in depth of location as well.

I don't understand how the dispersion patterns of omnis is a problem in this regard. Doesn't the principle of triangulation come into play with sound? Doesn't sound reaching your ears from multiple directions inherently make it easier to determine location in 3 dinensions?

3d glasses used to view images in 3-d use this principle to work.

How can sound reaching your ears from 2 speakers produce any information on their own regarding depth?

Also , how does it work that you can locate a guy in a room playing violin say? The sound eminates in a largely omnidirectional manner and reaches your ears more like the way it does with omnis. Its not beaming directly at you alone like most speakers.

I think omnis have a unique type of 3 dimensionality. Holography is probably technically a different thing but similar in effect.

I'm still not sure holography is the same thing as transparency, which can be achieved with a variety of speaker designs as well, but I think the effects and benefits are similar as well.

Here's one of the more interesting accounts of how depth and image in sound reproduction works that I've read.

http://www.morrisonaudio.com/morrison_donsview.htmth

Sorry, here's the working url:

http://www.morrisonaudio.com/morrison_donsview.htm

In a nut shell, point source speakers are replicating what is on the recording, including, if the resolution of your speakers and electronics are up to it, all of the spatial information created by the environment in which the recording was made. It is this subtle spatial information that can create a holographic experience. And that is exactly why I feel that resolution is the key to obtaining holography. And I'm not talking about equipment with an uptilted FR which will appear, initially at least, to the inexperienced, as having a high degree of resolution.

Omni's, electrostats and panels, as well as dynamic speakers with rear firing drivers, are creating their own environmental sounds by bouncing signals off a bunch of surfaces, and all of these reverberant signals are laid over all of the reverberant signals on the recordings. So if you happen to have a recording which was made in a good acoustic and a simple mik'ing system was used, and it had the potential to creat a holographic image, you would never hear that potential realized with Omni's as its own reverberant field would obsure the subtle acoustic information in the recording.

You might ask "If the recording was a 'studio' recording, multi miked, and made in a dead acoustic, wouldn't it sound better with my Omni's? And I would respond "Yes, I believe it would". But you are just putting lipstick on a pig. Sorry, I couldn't resist using that very popular expression. :-)

In fact, probably the majority of recordings are made in studios with dead acoustics, multi-miked, dynamically compressed to be heard over boom boxes, and these are exactly the type of recordings will sound best over Omni's, etc.

You may love your Omni's but IMHO they can't do everything. And holographic imaging is one of the things they don't do. But, until you have actually heard really holographic imaging you won't appreciate the difference.

But then that is just my POV reflective of my personal experience. I'm sure many others will agree with your POV.

BTW, I had one of those Carver's when it first came out. Very interesting affect. The first thing I noticed playing an LP of a live performance with audience applause, was that it made you feel that you were sitting amoungst the customers who were clapping. Very interesting devise, that thin little box, but ultimately more distracting and unpredictible than sonically enhancing. Maybe I didn't have many suitible recordings, I don't really know. The holography demo I referred to, took place only a few years later, and that was both impressive and not distracting. Go figure.FWIW

"Bloom" is a term that can be good or bad, depending on degree. Just as "bass" can be overdone, so can "bloom". I think of bloom as the overtones and air around an instrument or voice. As someone said, it's 3-D rather than a one-dimensional cardboard cutout.

Bloom is generally pleasing and, just as with bass, some systems add too much. Ideally, a great system can extract and present the bloom in a recording without adding more than is really there. It's hard to judge what's right. ARC, Lamm and most other high end tube designs don't add bloom, but I do hear it in some of the lesser tube designs. Some users prefer that sound and it tends to be euphonic.

Dave