Audiophiles are like children at a circus – they play their recordings waiting for an illusion – to listen to something that equates in their minds the real thing.
We know that this an impossible task with stereo – no system with two single sources can produce the tridimensional acoustic image that is needed to perform this trick. This task would be completely impossible without the help of our brain processing and memory capabilities. We need extra information to fill the incomplete picture, reaching a level where we can reconstruct an illusion to a point we can immerse in it. Happily here we have the help of many magicians – the recording and mastering engineers, the electronics and loudspeakers designers, and the acoustic engineers. All of them just have a common objective – fool us! For this, they supply us with extra clues that they get either during the recording process and add a later phase. They can do it because they expect us to use the stereo system having some known characteristics, but our diversity can be an obstacle to their trick.
Most of this people really work like magicians – they combine a fantastic empirical knowledge of the whole process of recording reproduction, mostly based on observation and experience, with some basic science and technology needed for development.
To get this illusion, every part of the process must be perfectly carried – otherwise we see how the trick is being done and the magic disappears.
As, even today, in the proper environment, I like to see when the magician produces a rabbit out of a hat that seemed to be completely empty, I would like to open this tread to the discussion of the magic of stereo – excluding surround sound, as they do not need so much magic.
We know that this an impossible task with stereo – no system with two single sources can produce the tridimensional acoustic image that is needed to perform this trick. This task would be completely impossible without the help of our brain processing and memory capabilities. We need extra information to fill the incomplete picture, reaching a level where we can reconstruct an illusion to a point we can immerse in it. Happily here we have the help of many magicians – the recording and mastering engineers, the electronics and loudspeakers designers, and the acoustic engineers. All of them just have a common objective – fool us! For this, they supply us with extra clues that they get either during the recording process and add a later phase. They can do it because they expect us to use the stereo system having some known characteristics, but our diversity can be an obstacle to their trick.
Most of this people really work like magicians – they combine a fantastic empirical knowledge of the whole process of recording reproduction, mostly based on observation and experience, with some basic science and technology needed for development.
To get this illusion, every part of the process must be perfectly carried – otherwise we see how the trick is being done and the magic disappears.
As, even today, in the proper environment, I like to see when the magician produces a rabbit out of a hat that seemed to be completely empty, I would like to open this tread to the discussion of the magic of stereo – excluding surround sound, as they do not need so much magic.
