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Car Audio Discussion
General Car Audio
Sound All Around vs Upfront staging
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<blockquote data-quote="bbeljefe" data-source="post: 8160783" data-attributes="member: 655960"><p>This is obviously a matter of preference but let's look at why staging in the front is the accepted norm. For one thing, most people aren't vocalists and thus, don't know what live music sounds like from the vocalist's perspective. Second, most music is not live and is listened to with a pair of loudspeakers in front of you... as when we are kids in our bedrooms listening, most of us long before we have our own vehicles to drive. And when it is live, most of us hear it in front of us because we're not on the stage, we're in the audience.</p><p></p><p>So for setting up a proper sound stage, front imaging is the most realistic for a plurality of listeners and that's why front staging is the accepted norm. That's not to say your idea is necessarily wrong, because it's all a matter of perspective. So anyone who tells you you're wrong might as well also say that having chocolate as your favorite ice cream is wrong.</p><p></p><p>With that caveat mentioned, I'll share my subjective opinion on the matter. What you're proposing has already been done in the home audio world with an amazing amount of success. Mostly, I think, because of the flock mentality people tend to have but, that's another discussion.</p><p></p><p>What I mean is that Amar Bose became a gazillionaire by telling people music should be artificially delayed and bounced off every wall in the house before it reached their ears. It all started (I think) with the 901 and it's 8 rear facing full range drivers and one front facing full range driver. While his intention was honorable and his knowledge of acoustics admirable, I think he made a critical error in that he attempted to create the feel of a symphony hall in spaces that aren't symphony halls.</p><p></p><p>The error is this... when you are sitting in a symphony hall listening to music, the different instruments' sound waves hit your ears at different times. Part of the sounds go directly to your ears while some of them reflect off the side and back walls and arrive at your ears slightly delayed. And to be sure, the distance from one instrument to the next on stage has less of an impact on those delays than the listening position you have in the audience. After all, if you're stage center, fifteen rows back and the hall has 60 rows, the distance between instruments on stage is minimal compared to the distance the sound travels to the back of the hall and then back to your ears. For sure, you'll get some left right imaging but that's minimal, relative to echoic delays.</p><p></p><p>Now consider this.... A properly arranged high quality stereo mic setup used to record a symphony is placed stage center in the audience and thus, hears the same diffractions and delays that your ears do. So when you take that recording and play it on your home hi fi loudspeakers or, on your headphones, the imaging is reproduced pretty accurately, since the delays are recorded in the media and the left/right arrangement of the mics (and your ears) in the symphony hall is mimicked by your loudspeakers. If, that is, your loudspeakers are properly set up in your listening room. i.e... usually about 8 feet apart in an average room at ear level to the listening position and equidistant from the listener. This arrangement is called the "sweet spot" for that reason.... because it best reproduces the sound as experienced live.</p><p></p><p>Thus, what Bose does with his "bounce sound off every wall in the house before it reaches the listener's ears" approach to music reproduction is create a bunch of artificial delays and refractions to media that already has those delays and diffractions accurately recorded as they were heard in the concert hall. And I posit that what you're proposing is the same thing. And again, that's no insult, it's just preference.</p><p></p><p>He gets away with this (and with using cheap, full range drivers) because most people have no benchmark by which to judge sound quality. Given that I spent some years selling and installing hi end home audio, I've had the opportunity to attend the CES show in Las Vegas and audition a good many such benchmark audio systems in near anechoic listening rooms and I can say without hesitation that nothing Bose makes has any appreciable sound quality. Now... I don't argue that people can only achieve good sound quality with a $50,000.00 two channel setup but I will say that after having listened to that sort of set up, Boses' approach is fundamentally flawed from the perspective of trying to accurately achieve what we hear in the concert hall. And, I'm far from alone in that opinion.</p><p></p><p>You should also consider that what you're proposing is not unlike what Dolby did with the creation of surround sound. The original surround sound technologies essentially just took the recorded media, summed it to mono and then time delayed it to a rear channel so it would be heard after the front stage. To be sure, it makes movies more realistic but to critical listeners (me, at least), music does not sound good when played through surround processing equipment. In my home theater setup, if I plan to listen to music, surround mode gets turned off and I go right back to good old two channel, front imaged mode.</p><p></p><p>And speaking of processing equipment, that's why we purists spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on car audio processors... so that we can bring the sound stage up to our ears and to the front. We use time delays so that the farther away right speaker sounds in the car reach the driver at the same time the closer, left speaker sounds do. Because again, the delays we hear in the concert hall are already recorded in the media and adding to them does not increase the realism of the music.</p><p></p><p>In the end, I'm not telling you you're doing something wrong with your setup. I'm just saying you're not accurately reproducing what is heard by the mics that record the music... whether they be in a hall during a live performance or in a studio. But if that's what sounds best to you, then by all means go for it!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="bbeljefe, post: 8160783, member: 655960"] This is obviously a matter of preference but let's look at why staging in the front is the accepted norm. For one thing, most people aren't vocalists and thus, don't know what live music sounds like from the vocalist's perspective. Second, most music is not live and is listened to with a pair of loudspeakers in front of you... as when we are kids in our bedrooms listening, most of us long before we have our own vehicles to drive. And when it is live, most of us hear it in front of us because we're not on the stage, we're in the audience. So for setting up a proper sound stage, front imaging is the most realistic for a plurality of listeners and that's why front staging is the accepted norm. That's not to say your idea is necessarily wrong, because it's all a matter of perspective. So anyone who tells you you're wrong might as well also say that having chocolate as your favorite ice cream is wrong. With that caveat mentioned, I'll share my subjective opinion on the matter. What you're proposing has already been done in the home audio world with an amazing amount of success. Mostly, I think, because of the flock mentality people tend to have but, that's another discussion. What I mean is that Amar Bose became a gazillionaire by telling people music should be artificially delayed and bounced off every wall in the house before it reached their ears. It all started (I think) with the 901 and it's 8 rear facing full range drivers and one front facing full range driver. While his intention was honorable and his knowledge of acoustics admirable, I think he made a critical error in that he attempted to create the feel of a symphony hall in spaces that aren't symphony halls. The error is this... when you are sitting in a symphony hall listening to music, the different instruments' sound waves hit your ears at different times. Part of the sounds go directly to your ears while some of them reflect off the side and back walls and arrive at your ears slightly delayed. And to be sure, the distance from one instrument to the next on stage has less of an impact on those delays than the listening position you have in the audience. After all, if you're stage center, fifteen rows back and the hall has 60 rows, the distance between instruments on stage is minimal compared to the distance the sound travels to the back of the hall and then back to your ears. For sure, you'll get some left right imaging but that's minimal, relative to echoic delays. Now consider this.... A properly arranged high quality stereo mic setup used to record a symphony is placed stage center in the audience and thus, hears the same diffractions and delays that your ears do. So when you take that recording and play it on your home hi fi loudspeakers or, on your headphones, the imaging is reproduced pretty accurately, since the delays are recorded in the media and the left/right arrangement of the mics (and your ears) in the symphony hall is mimicked by your loudspeakers. If, that is, your loudspeakers are properly set up in your listening room. i.e... usually about 8 feet apart in an average room at ear level to the listening position and equidistant from the listener. This arrangement is called the "sweet spot" for that reason.... because it best reproduces the sound as experienced live. Thus, what Bose does with his "bounce sound off every wall in the house before it reaches the listener's ears" approach to music reproduction is create a bunch of artificial delays and refractions to media that already has those delays and diffractions accurately recorded as they were heard in the concert hall. And I posit that what you're proposing is the same thing. And again, that's no insult, it's just preference. He gets away with this (and with using cheap, full range drivers) because most people have no benchmark by which to judge sound quality. Given that I spent some years selling and installing hi end home audio, I've had the opportunity to attend the CES show in Las Vegas and audition a good many such benchmark audio systems in near anechoic listening rooms and I can say without hesitation that nothing Bose makes has any appreciable sound quality. Now... I don't argue that people can only achieve good sound quality with a $50,000.00 two channel setup but I will say that after having listened to that sort of set up, Boses' approach is fundamentally flawed from the perspective of trying to accurately achieve what we hear in the concert hall. And, I'm far from alone in that opinion. You should also consider that what you're proposing is not unlike what Dolby did with the creation of surround sound. The original surround sound technologies essentially just took the recorded media, summed it to mono and then time delayed it to a rear channel so it would be heard after the front stage. To be sure, it makes movies more realistic but to critical listeners (me, at least), music does not sound good when played through surround processing equipment. In my home theater setup, if I plan to listen to music, surround mode gets turned off and I go right back to good old two channel, front imaged mode. And speaking of processing equipment, that's why we purists spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on car audio processors... so that we can bring the sound stage up to our ears and to the front. We use time delays so that the farther away right speaker sounds in the car reach the driver at the same time the closer, left speaker sounds do. Because again, the delays we hear in the concert hall are already recorded in the media and adding to them does not increase the realism of the music. In the end, I'm not telling you you're doing something wrong with your setup. I'm just saying you're not accurately reproducing what is heard by the mics that record the music... whether they be in a hall during a live performance or in a studio. But if that's what sounds best to you, then by all means go for it! [/QUOTE]
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