Crosstalk: digital more like Vinyl?

jkeny

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Not wishing to gt into analogue Vs digital debate so please don't take this as such - I'm simply using this to make a point. The idea of more relaxed listening has often been associated with analogue playback in comparison to digital playback. The direction of this development has been towards more accuracy rather than better adherence to psychoacoustic principles (or what's known of them). Perhaps accuracy had to come first & it's shortcomings before the divergence from psychoacoustics was realised? It's not such a bad thing as the psychoacoustic principles can be incorporated after the event, if it is now recognised.

One of the processes we are engaged in when perceiving sound is a constant evaluation of our hearing space acoustics. Anything which gives us a quicker/more accurate handle on this will tend to result in more relaxed listening, I feel.

When listening to stereo playback (two point sources) which has natural or studio created venue acoustics in the recording & playing this back in our own room acoustic, we need all the help we can get to recreate & maintain "the illusion". Sorting out one acoustic from the other can be a processing chore & the more acoustic cues & help we get, the more relaxation is achieved & possibly the more a sense of envelopment & intelligibility results.

All of this IMO, of course
 

rbbert

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The only way of having a definitive answer would be listening to the mastertapes. From what I have read and listened to, master tapes are closer top vinyl than redbook iconcerning listener envelopment and spaciousness.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is some crosstalk on master tapes as well, in particular a 2-track master. Of course much of that should be preserved in a transfer to digital, and many listeners do prefer the sound of an analog master transferred to digital compared to a pure digital capture.
 

Bruce B

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I wouldn't be surprised if there is some crosstalk on master tapes as well, in particular a 2-track master. Of course much of that should be preserved in a transfer to digital, and many listeners do prefer the sound of an analog master transferred to digital compared to a pure digital capture.

Of course there's crosstalk on master tapes, especially if you use different head configurations.
 

jkeny

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Crosstalk is built into the vinyl chain. I have said this many times, and never heard anyone report back, maybe no one has a real pre-amplifier these days with mono capability? Anyway, play your system mono for a week, then switch back to stereo, and "understand" what this stereo actually sounds like....you will adapt back to the stereo sound in an hour. But those first impressions, of what happens in stereo will educate you why stereo is well, artificial.

Tomelex, have you ever tried doing a comparison between mono digital & mono analogue? Just wondering how they then compare when taking out the crosstalk differences?
 

Uli

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Hi,

dallasjustice has invited me to join.
So I like to explain my point of view.

We have learnt for many years now that crosstalk is bad. But is that really true? Anyway a digital playback chain is perfect regarding crosstalk. Usually we do not expect that some bits will cross between digital channels during transfer. :)

As already mentioned by esklude we can discuss the following situation: we play a modern stereo track created by a mix of pan-potted signals. Let's assume it is a nice track and we love it. A typical example for ILD.
And we play the track perfectly without any crosstalk. Great so far?

It is well known and already described in different papers (Gerzon, Griesinger, Sengpiel ...) that in case of ILD we get a different localization of frequencies played by a constant ILD relationship. So lower frequencies tend to located more close to the center whereas high frequencies get more located closer to the speaker with the higher amplitude.
So how do we recognize a phantom source which creates a mix of frequencies? E.g. we want to locate it at 75% between center (between speakers) and a speaker, thus we apply about 12 dB difference between speaker levels. IMO the answer is that we do not get a pin-point localization. The phantom source is received widened.

So we may think about a panpot law that follows some psychoacoustic principles. So we may e.g. apply a level difference of 16 db (arbitrary number) for low frequencies to get them to the desired position. And a level difference of 8 dB to get high frequencies to the desired position. 12 dB then will fit for e.g. frequencies around 1 kHz.
Indeed this means, that we introduce a frequency dependent crosstalk to ILD panpot. The target is clear, we like to compensate the undesired image widening. A better focusing will relieve the brain in its decoding job. The sound is more relaxed, the brain gets more capacity and thus it is capable to recognize more subtleties in the sound.

All this is not really new. But thinking about the (frequency dependent) crosstalk of turntable pickups I got hit. IMHO by accidence the pickup is more or less creating the required crosstalk. It would explain, why analog playback is often preferred and why a digital playback is often considered nasty or nervous.

Ok, it is of course possible to try a crosstalk solution on the digital side. The basic task then is to find a suitable panpot law. That's what's behind AcourateFlow. It's name is created by users who described the music to be more flowing.

Stereo playback has its weaknesses as it creates an illusion of phantom sound sources. One weakness is the frequency dependent localization in combination with ILD. A procedure like AcurateFLOW helps. Of course it is not a perfect solution. In case of ITD recordings or combined ITD/ILD recordings we cannot expect perfectness. But anytime when the listening result is more relaxing the playback is simply better or closer to the intended truth :)

- Uli
 

FrantzM

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Uli

Welcome to the forum. Excellent, illuminating post. Is the degree of crosstalk adjustable in AcurateFlow?
 

jkeny

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Excellent Uli & welcome to the forum
Great explanation.
Hopefully this could be adopted at the engineering stage which would probably be a better point of correction.
What do you think about the splash speakers which seem to work on the principle of forcing delayed reflections & giving a fuller sound - it seems orthogonal to what you are doing? Again, something specialised in by Greisinger in his envelopment & intelligibility focus.
 

Uli

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Thanks for the welcome.

There are two functions in AcourateFlow. The first one allows to create wav tracks with band-limited pink noise 200-400 Hz and 3000-6000 Hz in comparison to pink noise around 1 kHz. You can listen to the tracks and find a parameter where the localization is the same. The second one allows to check this directly by playing the noise with a connected Asio soundcard.
I'm still not happy with the test signals, some playback environments create weird results.
Anyway it helps find some parameters for the crosstalk adjustment by AcourateFlow. As an example you can play the track www.audiovero.de/freedownload/HighChirp_0.flac. It has the same ILD for the two test tones. Typically you will recognize a different location.

- Uli
 

esldude

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Welcome to the forum Uli.

Very interesting. Using three bands of noise is exactly what I came up with to evaluate stereo microphone pairs for recording. I would play the noise from a single speaker and rotate the mic pair. I mapped it this way every 15 degrees. Then I would play back the three bands of noise and see if they imaged to the same location. Then further if the imaged location was reasonably close to reality. It seems to compare well with actual recordings made with different mic setups. I found those weird results were often either strange radiation patterns of speakers or very bad reflections. Or sometimes I just couldn't figure out why. It is also instructive doing the evaluation of the recorded result over headphones vs speakers.

BTW, I use a Tact for room correction. Acourate is one of the things I have been considering for eventually replacing the Tact. Good to see your participation here.
 

Atmasphere

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The only way of having a definitive answer would be listening to the mastertapes. From what I have read and listened to, master tapes are closer to vinyl than redbook concerning listener envelopment and spaciousness.

Tape has a lot lower crosstalk too. So is the next step using DSP to do the crosstalk of tape? :)
 

jkeny

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Tape has a lot lower crosstalk too. So is the next step using DSP to do the crosstalk of tape? :)

You ask what is the next step? Well, just to expand the topic somewhat, J_J has said this (on another forum) in the past about LP playback
But LP can sound like it has more dynamic range, because of the distortion/loudness growth issues. Likewise, it can have a wider, more complex soundstage for the same reasons. Many LP playback systems do enhancement of the L-R part of the stereo signal due to both stylus beam pivot issues as well as cartridge design issues.

And this:
More specifically, people hear it as additional positions in the soundstage being introduced at high levels. Not width, which is has also been evaluated, and which of course changes with changes in M/S balance.

The tests were master tape vs. vinyl. Before CD ever existed.

And, the entire LP cutting/pressing/playback process was what as in the middle.

Which is where these distortions come from.
 

Atmasphere

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Distortion in the LP mastering process is a lot lower than J_J seems to imply. This is an often misunderstood aspect about the mastering process- it really is very low distortion on account of how much dynamic range the system actually has, and how little is asked of it do cut most LPs.
 

microstrip

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You ask what is the next step? Well, just to expand the topic somewhat, J_J has said this (on another forum) in the past about LP playback

And this:

Unfortunately the points you refer only explain a few problems of average and low quality vinyl playback. Top playback systems just try to minimize some of them. But the main qualities of outstanding vinyl, such as natural gradation of microdetail, natural soundstaging, fluidity and exposition of low level detail of the recording IMHO can not be explained by such points.
 

jkeny

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Don't get me wrong, I'm just gathering information & attempting to make sense of it - I'm not knocking vinyl, nothing like it - I still find it the reference standard that we have (when done well) - mind you I haven't critically compared R2R tape which many say is even better than vinyl.

I don't much care if the reason vinyl appeals is because it has some psychoacoustically pleasing distortions or that it adheres to psychoacoustic requirements better - to me they are both the same thing. To call these distortions is misplaced & just depends on your point of reference - if it's a measuring instrument that is your reference then it may be correct; if it's your ears that are the reference then it's incorrect to call them distortions if they are heard as a more realistic presentation. We are dealing with illusion here, so anything that helps the illusion could be considered a non-distortion, no?

It's only by openly & honestly investigating all the possibilities that we might come to some understanding of where to go next?
 

jkeny

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Distortion in the LP mastering process is a lot lower than J_J seems to imply. This is an often misunderstood aspect about the mastering process- it really is very low distortion on account of how much dynamic range the system actually has, and how little is asked of it do cut most LPs.

I also think that the vinyl playback system was part of the process he mentions as it was before CD?
So maybe more on the playback side than mastering side?
 

jkeny

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Unfortunately the points you refer only explain a few problems of average and low quality vinyl playback. Top playback systems just try to minimize some of them.
I don't know? I don't have a measure of this.
But the main qualities of outstanding vinyl, such as natural gradation of microdetail, natural soundstaging, fluidity and exposition of low level detail of the recording IMHO can not be explained by such points.
Well, again, I'm not sure - can they be explained by these factors? I'm just asking the question, not challenging anyone, as I don't know.
 

dallasjustice

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The phantom source problem described by Uli should vary from system to system. In my case, it's still unclear to me how the added crosstalk helps. When I do the test signals, the closest to the 1khz is with the settings at 0 for both HF and LF. Maybe this explains why the "flow" setting isn't that helpful with some music. I will play with it a little more. But I wouldn't say it's not a huge difference one way or the other in my system. I am sure this varies from system to system.

Maybe long term listening would be different.
 
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puroagave

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You ask what is the next step? Well, just to expand the topic somewhat, J_J has said this (on another forum) in the past about LP playback

And this:

More specifically, people hear it as additional positions in the soundstage being introduced at high levels. Not width, which is has also been evaluated, and which of course changes with changes in M/S balance.

The tests were master tape vs. vinyl. Before CD ever existed.

And, the entire LP cutting/pressing/playback process was what as in the middle.

Which is where these distortions come from.

did they compare a direct-to-disc mastered LP, to the tape copy and then to the RBCD mastered from the same tape as well as an LP? Sheffield Lab has offered some titles this way, and a child could hear the superiority of D2D (ask Doug Sax what he prefers). imo, the limitations of the LP cutting/pressing/playback process are overstated and D2D mastered LP may well be the highest resolution format of any kind in existence today.
 

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