"They are here" vs. "You are there"

Hi guys - I think, after reading the latest posts, that Cbw is probably correct when he says "about the ambience cues in the recording. The primary signal in the music is generally going to dominate, and the cues are softer, lower SNR, and more diffuse. So, if you succeed in taming the distortions I mentioned for the primary, you also greatly diminish the omnidirectional nature of the cues -- probably completely out of existence. If you don’t succeed in taming the primary reflections, then they’re likely to overwhelm the reflected cues. But this is an argument from theory, and there may be some middle ground where it could work." I don't think you would diminish the omnidirectional nature of the cues out of existence entirely, and there may be some middle ground there.

I also agree with him that you would be obscuring info on the recording by creating ambient cues with the room. He is right in saying I wouldn't prefer too live a room, however I wouldn't want one too dead, either. I personally think the most important quality of the room is it's size, that it is not too small. Of course, this has more to do with my preference for horns (and the more directional nature of the horn speakers does help focus the soundfield for sure) and the type of music I listen to - acoustic music seems to require much more space in the listening room than electronic music, even if it is a very small group of musicians on the recording. I would certainly not call myself a purist in any kind of audiophile sense, though. There are definitely many different ways to achieve good sound, and many different types of rooms that it can be achieved in.

I have not had time to read through the posts. I have achieve the 'you are there' experience for the majority of my recordings. This is achieved by lowering the 'noise' and removing electronic artifacts. I put noise in quotes because there is also noise and distortion you cannot hear. I believe it also takes a highly resolving source (i.e. DAC). I do not think the recording is a limitation. The spatial cues are there, they are masked by most equipment.

Interesting, as I saw this thread today, and realized the same experience last week.

My point was mostly about the difficulty of getting the cues on the recording to be omnidirectional. If you achieve it, I think you also get a whole bunch of extra stuff from your room that you probably don’t want and would likely swamp the recorded cues.

Cbw – I think this is a possible outcome, but, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I am somewhat more optimistic about the possibility of constructing a listening space whose acoustics allow for omnidirectional ambient cues at the listening position that are reasonably accurate relative to those on the recording.

If I understand you correctly, I think you are saying that one can, effectively, simulate ambience cues that approximate the cues on the recording, but are not sourced from the cues on the recording.

Actually, that’s not what I was trying to say, though that’s a reasonable interpretation of what I wrote. Looking back, I can see that what I wrote was ambiguous. I was trying to talk about the ambient cues that ARE, as you put it, “sourced from the recording.” So what I meant was that…

I am more optimistic about the possibility of constructing a listening space whose acoustics allow for reasonably accurate omnidirectional ambient cues, sourced from the recording and audible at the listening position.

Having said that, as I discussed from my post on 9/11, the ambient cues during playback will always be a COMBINATION of the ambient cues of the recording and the ambient cues of the listening room, assuming that the recording contains them and that the listening space is at least somewhat reactive. With that in mind...

Strictly speaking, ANY ambient cue (omnidirectional or not) added by the listening room constitutes an inaccuracy, in the sense that it adds, subtracts, or alters information about the music as it is represented on the recording. But listening to a recording in a completely unreactive listening room (in effect, an anechoic chamber) would not be a rewarding musical experience, by any conceivable standard. Hence, it seems to me that virtually all audiophiles, myself included, are willing to tolerate a certain amount of inaccuracy for the sake of a more rewarding musical experience. The question then becomes: What are acoustical characteristics of those inaccuracies? In other words, some listening room inaccuracies are more musical than others, which seems to me to be a rather uncontroversial thing to say. I guess the point I am wandering around in search of is:

The goal of creating omnidirectional ambient cues at the listening position does, as you point out, result in inaccuracies. But ALL listening rooms result in inaccuracies. So we might as well try to design a room whose inaccuracies enhance the experience of listening to music, and for many audiophiles, that means enhancing the illusion that “you are there.”

Neither: "They Are There"

In the course of this thread, I have suggested at least three possible approaches to constructing a listening room, each with distinct consequences for creating the illusion that "you are there." A listening room may be constructed so that it…

(1)…acoustically emulates a recording space.
(2)…accurately reproduces what is on the recording.
(3)…sounds interesting, as judged by the individual listener.

RE: Approach (1). A lot of the discussion has focused on the benefits and liabilities of approach (1) – constructing a listening space that acoustically emulates the recording space. I have acknowledged that, although it may be an effective way to create the illusion that “you are there,” it is not a practical approach to constructing a listening room. Its impracticality results from the fact that, to the extent that your listening room emulates a particular recording space, it will fail to emulate acoustically dissimilar recording spaces. Hence approach (1) makes your listening room “recording-specific,” which, for most audiophiles, is an unacceptable drawback of this approach.

RE: Approach (2). Constructing a listening space that accurately reproduces what is on the recording is the prevailing approach in the design of professional recording studios. Accuracy is achieved by making recording studios, to a large extent, acoustically unreactive. However, most audiophiles, myself included, seem to prefer a listening space that is considerably more acoustically reactive than a typical recording studio. The evidence for this belief can be found by looking at the virtual systems here on A’gon.

It could be argued that most audiophiles simply ignore the acoustical treatment of their listening rooms, and so their rooms tend to be acoustically reactive by default. Or that most audiophiles would rather put money into new equipment than a better room. Or that acoustical treatments rank low in WAF, which makes their use less likely. I think there’s a lot of truth to those observations. Nevertheless, I believe that audiophiles also prefer acoustically reactive rooms for more rational reasons (“rational” in the sense of ‘consistent with their goals’). Some of those reasons: Unreactive rooms require a large amount of amplification to reach realistic SPL’s. Unreactive rooms can result in poor speaker performance for many consumer speakers, which are designed to interact with the listened space and “voiced” by manufacturers in a reactive room. Unreactive rooms are often perceived as less “lifelike,” and hence less musically involving. I would add this list that unreactive rooms are less likely to create the illusion that “you are there,” though I recognize that this is a point of controversy. For these and other reasons, I think approach (2), while the conventional approach to recording studio design, is of somewhat limited value to the average audiophile.

RE: Approach (3). Constructing a listening space that sounds interesting, as judged by the individual listener, seems like a natural solution to the shortcomings of approach (2). But it has its own liabilities. To begin with, it potentially suffers from the same problem as approach (1), namely, it may result in a the listening room that is “recording-specific.” In addition, tastes change over time, both as a consequence of age and as a consequence of acquired expertise. In light of that, approach (3) may also suffer from being too “listener-specific.” Finally, approach (3) gives little or nothing in the way of specific guidance to the audiophile other than “do what sounds right.” That advice, while simple to understand, is not simple to implement, since it does not describe any smaller, instrumental goals that would make the advice actionable.

Thus all three approaches above leave a lot to be desired. I believe that there is a fourth approach - to try to construct a listening room that sounds different for each recording. On small recordings, it would sound small. On big recordings, it would sound big. Its characteristics would change as the recordings change. In other words, the approach is to try to construct a listening room that…

(4)…sounds paradoxical.

Yes, I know, I have gone far down the rabbit hole with this one. But if you will follow me a little further, you will see that I have not gone completely mad. What I am trying to express is the idea that the acoustical characteristics of some listening spaces are psychologically ambiguous. That is, some listening spaces sound like they have different physical features under different conditions. With some recordings, the listening space sounds like it has one set of physical features. With other recordings, it sounds like it has another set of physical features. So, from a psychoacoustic standpoint, the listening space is paradoxical. Hence the term ‘paradoxical listening room.’ I have a hypothesis about how a paradoxical listening room is created, namely by the combination of:

(i) neutrality
(ii) complexity

RE: (i). Neutrality. In using the term ‘neutral,’ I am violating my oath not to mention that word on this thread, lest it be perceived as a violation of a cease fire that was arrived at after months of painstaking negotiation. However, it is the right word for the discussion at this point, and so worth the risk.

To say that a listening room is ACOUSTICALLY NEUTRAL is to say that it has a LOW AMOUNT OF CONSTANT INACCURACIES. An inaccuracy is “constant” when it stays more or less the same under varying conditions. An example of a constant inaccuracy is a room mode, the frequency and relative amplitude of which stay more or less the same across different recordings. A constant inaccuracy is another way of saying a "coloration." As colorations are reduced, the listening room becomes more neutral. And as the listening room becomes more neutral, it has the potential to become more paradoxical, provided that it is also sufficiently complex. Which brings me to…

RE: (ii). Complexity. To say that a listening room is ACOUSTICALLY COMPLEX is to say that has a HIGH AMOUNT OF VARIABLE INACCURACIES. An inaccuracy is “variable” when it changes under varying conditions. An example of a variable inaccuracy is a randomly diffused reflection, the frequency and phase of which change significantly across different recordings. As variable inaccuracies are increased, the listening room becomes more acoustically complex. And as the listening room becomes more acoustically complex, it becomes more paradoxical, assuming it is sufficiently neutral.

So, my hypothesis is that, in combination, neutrality and complexity create a listening space that is paradoxical, in the sense that its acoustical characteristics are psychologically ambiguous. A listening space that is ambiguous approximates the benefits of one that acoustically emulates the recording space, without the liabilities of the latter approach, namely making the listening room “recording-specific.” So, for the audiophile who listens to a wide range of recordings with vastly different recording spaces, a paradoxical listening space is the closest he can come to having a different listening room for each type of recording. In light of this, constructing a paradoxical listening room may be the best way to consistently create the illusion that “you are there.”