Please Read and express your feelings and opinions....

I wouldn’t worry about it, it’s just male egos butting horns most of the time. If someone gets too bent over something I say, I just point them to my forum or website.

For example: I obviously disagree with cj outlook as far as thread development. On my forum I tend to let the threads develop on their own steam and momentum. With audio because you have an entire audio chain that starts with the recording and all the way to the listener’s ears and perception, chopping it up into too many bite size nuggets it kind of feels like someone is trying to say the arm doesn’t exist because I want to focus only on a finger. You can easily focus on the finger while referencing and even including the whole body. At the same time I don’t think cj’s view is a bad one, it’s just different from mine.

Now if someone gets heated or disrespectful, that’s another story. It's a very enjoyable hobby and it's weird to me when I see people getting upset or causing a deliberate disturbance in the force (if I can steal that phrase).

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

Hi Guys

I hadn’t looked at this thread in a while, but when I did just now didn’t some of you miss one of Geoff’s points.

" We actually can not (rpt not) measure soundstage height or any other dimension, the sound characteristics of the recording venue, sweetness, warmth, presence, wetness, bass tautness, transparency, glare, things of that nature. As I read your manifesto, the ability to measure anything is pretty much your whole premise."

My question is, why hasn’t any of the measurement guys been able to reply to this, very true BTW, statement?

I make soundstages both in the studio and in playback so I could be a fair referee possibly. What I’m saying is, is it really useful when some of you make statements knowing if a professional in the field reads what you say he or she can easily call you out on it? Wouldn’t you guys rather learn than put yourselves in the position of loosing credibility?

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

Jon, why do you say this?

"are most likely distortions"

This is bugs me about the HEA reviewer, maybe store, maybe designer. Why have you not been taught about the soundstage? Why have HEA at all if you don’t know what a soundstage is, or if you think it is distortion?

After 60 years nobody has taught you guys about soundstages, how they’re made, what size they are and how you can tell if they are distorting or not? See to me that’s malpractice. I’m not trying to get on anyone’s case here, but after all this time in the hobby of stereo you guys don’t know what a soundstage is. That’s like inconceivable to me.

There’s no way I would be in a hobby of soundstages and not grasped what one is. This isn’t about opinions, a soundstage is a real spatial effect. 100’s of thousands of studios, artist and engineers have been creating them since the beginning of stereo itself, even back in the mono days there was an imagine, a very predictable image.

This is one reason HEA ain’t gonna make it. HEA refuses to advance. And if you guys don’t have anybody teaching you this stuff your never going to get past your system "distorting". Sorry that may be tough love, but this hobby is just waiting to grow and I’m afraid a lot of you are going to let it pass you by.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

Guys, regardless of what you think about Geoff, he’s just shown me that he knows more about SoundStaging than you guys have written you know. I’m sorry but in my book you have to give credit where it is due. A soundstage is only distortion if you distort it within the soundstage itself.

Let me add this, and I'm not trying to mean to anyone, but have the folks who are hung up on this distortion thing ever recorded an LP? 

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

Hi Jon

You had me worried for a minute. You’d be surprised how many folks don’t understand what a soundstage is. I always think it’s maybe because they haven’t been start to finish on a recording project. If you do a few it becomes pretty easy to detect how a soundstage works. The word "distortion" did throw me a little because sound stages are really pretty simple things to replay.

Like for example, when recording, if you get use to doing halos in the live room and go listen to it you can see the tri-miking setup (pretty easily). If I do a setup, I will do 3 rooms. One is the live room, one the control room and I also setup a playback room. I don’t like using a lot of the control rooms out there for judgement calls. In recordings what I typically do is the first set of mics are close up, then I back off for the second layer, and then I pickup the whole room. That lets you blend say your piano. So when I playback a piano on a system I can usually tell if the halos are squeezed cause it makes a certain sound within the playback stage. It’s kind of like when the guitarist knows the different guitars playing in any recording you also get use to how patterns sound. If a playback pattern isn’t working right you know right away. It’s very specific. Also, I don’t know if you know this or not, but anytime you start any recording there’s a pressure that you feel behind your head. If you don’t feel that pressure that means your not getting enough of the content.

Anyway there’s just little things you learn from doing it that I’ve notice a lot of folks don’t know, or if the teachers are teaching.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

Well I'm going to bow out on this one, but I do want to say in closing (for me). Jon, yes my clients do listen for all of that and more. In fact that's what they expect me to deliver.

I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I think your robbing the hobby a little short of it's potential by suggesting that the listeners aren't interested in the whole recording. I would say a great deal of hobbyist are thrilled when they hear accurate heights.

But maybe that's me being too picky.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

Just peeking my head in the door.

kosst, it's cool man no biggie bro

I'm sure a lot of us here are studio brats, shoot I practically was born in one. We all have our thing, and yours is as important as anyone else's here. If you feel all is measurable sometime show us (or me) and we'll be happy to take a look, but don't stay up at night man. What my friends or clients feel or do is cool and what yours do is just as cool.

The OP I believe is saying "cool down cats enjoy each other". If you believe different from me it's not that big of deal. People hire me because I do what I do, but I hope it's more than that. I hope they hire me cause I dig what I do and comfortable in my skin to do a good job for them. I can't picture any of my clients sitting there wearing a mic on their head while listening, but if they do that's fine with me. They call me up while listening, tell me what they're hearing, ask me what to do, I tell them, and they go on with their fun.

this is just me, but all's good

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

Hi Kosst

It's not really my place to agree or disagree, I deal with the physical audio variables. I don't look at recording or playback as a "Fixed" entity. I see testing and measuring technologies as an advancing science, even though this science (as with any) is constantly learning and implementing. 10 years ago seems like a lifetime away by todays latest R&D. For example what JA did 10 years ago is somewhat obsolete now. I'm sure he would say the same thing. Bob Hodas would no doubt agree as all the up to date measuring gurus would have to. Testing is always advancing and I would guess by the time your debate is over with Geoff and others we will be looking and listening to hologram sight & sound reproductions. I mean they're really just around the corner, and then all of HEA will be an archive of listening only. So measuring to me is like a building block. Is it human yet? No of course not, and it's not, because of the points Geoff and others are making. Is it going to be? Of course it will, we see this in moving making now.

However here's where the issue comes down for me.

Lets say I make a recording of a hall, or am previewing someone else's. I go into the tunable room and tune it in for me to look at the height and mate it up to the actual recording. After I'm done another listener goes in and says my call is inaccurate for him. He then tunes up the same recording to his ears so he is now hearing the hall as he remembers, or wants to. I do this level of listening on an ongoing basis and have since around 1989. From time to time, since then till now, measuring folks are welcome to come do their thing and see if they can capture what is taking place for each person as an individual and a more in general sense. Where this stands now would more than likely need to be in a tunable room that is both flexible and environmentally adaptable. That's a tall order for this thread to engage in, let alone some of the folks I have worked with or studied their approach.

To test an measure this accurately I can help from a variable physical structure, but I would think that the testing itself would need some pretty special equipment to be able to make a more than snap shot polaroid type of result. It's possible that my room is the most advanced to date in regards to the variables, but that's again at best only half of the equation. I think the two worlds (human & tools) can meet, I just haven't seen it yet. I'm sure though getting closer every day.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

Hi Soundermn

I agree, but I also think that the topic shift has turned into a nice example for the OP. For me anyways, it has certainly shown a few things. It has shown how different sides of a question can be answered and also how people react as their paygrade is established. Over the last couple of days I have thought "what a great thread to show in social studies". It would be interesting to see a class tear this apart and take side. I bet we would fine several different sides and not just two or three.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net