Achieving "surround sound" with no rear speakers

[bunta 10+ year member]

I was playing around with my phase tonight and started wondering if i can actually achieve surround sound just as if i had rear speakers..

I am a total noob at this...so bare with me. I switched the front driver tweeter polarity because they sounded too "near". It actually worked. The driver tweet sounded less potent.

Then i switched it back to in phase(the tweets). Then i went ahead and switched the driver woofer and my sound stage improved dramatically. EVeryhting was dead center. However, i lost something..i dont know what, but that made the entire system lack quality or something...

Now, i am wondering if i can actually play with the phasing and achieve surround sound?

Just out of curiousity..is there a rule to when we are playing with phasing? like for instance, if i switched the passenger tweeter, i have to leave the woofer in phase or vise versa?

Click to read more...

 

[flakko 5,000+ posts]

ask that here:

http://www.diymobileaudio.com

 

[bunta 10+ year member]

ask that here:
http://www.diymobileaudio.com

Ah come on man, why cant you just answer me here..

 

[flakko 5,000+ posts]

because a lot of people here dont really care about their sound stage, and i dont know thte answer. but seeing as neil is looking at this thread he'll probably help you out

 

[Paul73 10+ year member]

Seriously, listen to Flakko....there are some sq heads over there that are into this shit like nerds at a semiconductor expo.

 

[req 5,000+ posts]

listen dude. sraight awnser = wtf are you talking about.

there is no such thing as surround sound when listening to a song recorded with two channels. aka a STEREO. you have a left channel, and a right channel. what you are describing in the latter part of your post is called a sound stage, and stereo seperation.

now consider this. you sit in the drivers seat. you have one midbass\range near your knee\shin that is 3 feet from your ears and its counterpart in the opposite door is 5 feet from your head. now imagine if you put yourself in a pool at ear level. drop one marble in the pond to your left 3 feet away, and the other on your right from 5 feet away. if you watch in slow motion, the 'waves' would most likely reach your head at different times. this is what you are questioning.

first thing you can do is reverse the phase of each speaker individually and play a track from the national IASCA CD (i believe its track 3?) where the ladys voice will be in phase for the first sentence, and she will repeat with it recorded out of phase. if you dont have the IASCA CD, then try and play something (off a store bought cd) that has mostly voices and flip the phase while listening if possible. you should be able to point out where the voice is, it should be articulate and realisitic. when its out of phase, it will sound hollow, be uneasy to locate on the stage, and might loose low frequency response.

now that part is out of the way, this brings me to time correction. back to the ears in the pool anology, what if one marble was 3', and the other was 6'? shouldnt they reach your head right on time but only be out of phase?? quite possibly! and hopefully this is the situation you will encounter. if they are in fact a little off - you can get time correction to 'delay' the speakers output by a few milisonds - aka move the pebble to an even disance - and flip the phase of the woofer so that it all matches up //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

i hope that made sense. forget this 'surround sound' idea that you were trying to describe. that makes no sense //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif

hope that helped mang.

 

[bunta 10+ year member]

listen dude. sraight awnser = wtf are you talking about.

there is no such thing as surround sound when listening to a song recorded with two channels. aka a STEREO. you have a left channel, and a right channel. what you are describing in the latter part of your post is called a sound stage, and stereo seperation.

now consider this. you sit in the drivers seat. you have one midbass\range near your knee\shin that is 3 feet from your ears and its counterpart in the opposite door is 5 feet from your head. now imagine if you put yourself in a pool at ear level. drop one marble in the pond to your left 3 feet away, and the other on your right from 5 feet away. if you watch in slow motion, the 'waves' would most likely reach your head at different times. this is what you are questioning.

first thing you can do is reverse the phase of each speaker individually and play a track from the national IASCA CD (i believe its track 3?) where the ladys voice will be in phase for the first sentence, and she will repeat with it recorded out of phase. if you dont have the IASCA CD, then try and play something (off a store bought cd) that has mostly voices and flip the phase while listening if possible. you should be able to point out where the voice is, it should be articulate and realisitic. when its out of phase, it will sound hollow, be uneasy to locate on the stage, and might loose low frequency response.

now that part is out of the way, this brings me to time correction. back to the ears in the pool anology, what if one marble was 3', and the other was 6'? shouldnt they reach your head right on time but only be out of phase?? quite possibly! and hopefully this is the situation you will encounter. if they are in fact a little off - you can get time correction to 'delay' the speakers output by a few milisonds - aka move the pebble to an even disance - and flip the phase of the woofer so that it all matches up //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

i hope that made sense. forget this 'surround sound' idea that you were trying to describe. that makes no sense //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif

hope that helped mang.

So what youre saying in a nutshell is not use the phrase "surround sound" but rather "sound stage"...? Am i correct?

 

[bunta 10+ year member]

listen dude. sraight awnser = wtf are you talking about.

there is no such thing as surround sound when listening to a song recorded with two channels. aka a STEREO. you have a left channel, and a right channel. what you are describing in the latter part of your post is called a sound stage, and stereo seperation.

now consider this. you sit in the drivers seat. you have one midbass\range near your knee\shin that is 3 feet from your ears and its counterpart in the opposite door is 5 feet from your head. now imagine if you put yourself in a pool at ear level. drop one marble in the pond to your left 3 feet away, and the other on your right from 5 feet away. if you watch in slow motion, the 'waves' would most likely reach your head at different times. this is what you are questioning.

first thing you can do is reverse the phase of each speaker individually and play a track from the national IASCA CD (i believe its track 3?) where the ladys voice will be in phase for the first sentence, and she will repeat with it recorded out of phase. if you dont have the IASCA CD, then try and play something (off a store bought cd) that has mostly voices and flip the phase while listening if possible. you should be able to point out where the voice is, it should be articulate and realisitic. when its out of phase, it will sound hollow, be uneasy to locate on the stage, and might loose low frequency response.

now that part is out of the way, this brings me to time correction. back to the ears in the pool anology, what if one marble was 3', and the other was 6'? shouldnt they reach your head right on time but only be out of phase?? quite possibly! and hopefully this is the situation you will encounter. if they are in fact a little off - you can get time correction to 'delay' the speakers output by a few milisonds - aka move the pebble to an even disance - and flip the phase of the woofer so that it all matches up //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

i hope that made sense. forget this 'surround sound' idea that you were trying to describe. that makes no sense //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif

hope that helped mang.

So what youre saying in a nutshell is not use the phrase "surround sound" but rather "sound stage"...? Am i correct?

 

[req 5,000+ posts]

what im saying is try and make it sound good by flopping phase and if you have it, applying time correction...

and yes. sound stage = "height" of music ie: close your eyes, where is the musics level? near your knees = bad, between dash and rearview = good.

stereo seperation = is there a good center focus on most music? if music is played with lots of pan effects (left\right by themselves) is it obvious?

you should really get that IASCA cd.

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

no you cannot achieve a 'surround sound' messing w/ the phase. If the speakers are in front of you, then the sound will be coming from the front of you, out of phase or not.

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

you should really get that IASCA cd.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[req 5,000+ posts]

lawl.

i love you james.

 

[flakko 5,000+ posts]

no you cannot achieve a 'surround sound' messing w/ the phase. If the speakers are in front of you, then the sound will be coming from the front of you, out of phase or not.

or you can do some crazy reflections off your windows. might work //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif

 

[bunta 10+ year member]

listen dude. sraight awnser = wtf are you talking about.

there is no such thing as surround sound when listening to a song recorded with two channels. aka a STEREO. you have a left channel, and a right channel. what you are describing in the latter part of your post is called a sound stage, and stereo seperation.

now consider this. you sit in the drivers seat. you have one midbass\range near your knee\shin that is 3 feet from your ears and its counterpart in the opposite door is 5 feet from your head. now imagine if you put yourself in a pool at ear level. drop one marble in the pond to your left 3 feet away, and the other on your right from 5 feet away. if you watch in slow motion, the 'waves' would most likely reach your head at different times. this is what you are questioning.

first thing you can do is reverse the phase of each speaker individually and play a track from the national IASCA CD (i believe its track 3?) where the ladys voice will be in phase for the first sentence, and she will repeat with it recorded out of phase. if you dont have the IASCA CD, then try and play something (off a store bought cd) that has mostly voices and flip the phase while listening if possible. you should be able to point out where the voice is, it should be articulate and realisitic. when its out of phase, it will sound hollow, be uneasy to locate on the stage, and might loose low frequency response.

now that part is out of the way, this brings me to time correction. back to the ears in the pool anology, what if one marble was 3', and the other was 6'? shouldnt they reach your head right on time but only be out of phase?? quite possibly! and hopefully this is the situation you will encounter. if they are in fact a little off - you can get time correction to 'delay' the speakers output by a few milisonds - aka move the pebble to an even disance - and flip the phase of the woofer so that it all matches up //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

i hope that made sense. forget this 'surround sound' idea that you were trying to describe. that makes no sense //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif

hope that helped mang.

So what youre saying in a nutshell is not use the phrase "surround sound" but rather "sound stage"...? Am i correct?

 

[James Bang 5,000+ posts]

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif