Home Propeller Head Plaza

Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

  Register / Login

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Propeller Head Plaza ]
[ Alert Moderator ]

Any seat...in any hall

We simply do not have the technology to record and reproduce the acoustical effect of a concert hall...or opera house...or church, or even a highschool auditorium. It is beyond our current ability, even beyond our understanding in anything but general terms. And its contribution to the total sound field constitutes 90% or more of what we hear at a live performance in a large venue in most seats. If the goal of a high fidelity sound system is the experience of "you are there" then no matter how much money you spend or what you buy, if you have normal hearing, are even slightly critical, and expect convincing results, you are bound to be disappointed. That is part of what the TAS article was about. The closest you can come to this sound is "binaural" reproduction but it is flawed consisting of two scalar fields rather than a vector field. The consequence is that it makes sound appear to be coming from inside your head. There are few if any avialable recordings made this way at least that I am aware of.

But even if your goal is much more modest and you only expect "they are here" meaning the musicians are in the room with you, a goal only suitable for reproducing the sound of one musician or a small group for obvious reasons, you are still likely to be usually disappointed. The reason is that while the electronics chain is excellent, loudspeakers do not propogate sound in anything even remotely resembling the way actual acoustic musical instruments do. It's small wonder then that they don't subjectively sound like them. And when you talk about why to audiophiles and hi fi speaker designers alike, they come up with endless bogus pet reasons why speakers designed or modified in ways to do the job couldn't be any good while they ply you with their own hairbrained design theories and their latest silver bullet to kill of some arcane minutae they ascribe to why other designs are no good. So...at the moment at least...it's fairly hopeless. Enjoy what you have or experiment on your own, the marketplace is fairly frozen out of good new ideas. It's perfectly happy with profits from endlessly reworking its old ones.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Kimber Kable  

Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • Any seat...in any hall - Soundmind 03:12:16 05/31/06 (0)
You can not post to an archived thread.

[ Top Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]