What's wrong with stereo?

Gregadd

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Apr 20, 2010
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Tom I can't help but wonder whether your problem results from listening near field. A tinkerer like must have tried many listening positions before settling on near field.

IME center image is easily obtainable and often spooky real. It's depth that gives me a problem. If I'm dreaming don't wake 'til the music stops.
 

NorthStar

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Since I don't have a separate 2ch room, its HT/2ch but its possible a number of you may have experienced this too! Friends, colleagues drop by for a listen. At some point they say, fine sound, but really impressed by the center chan. Ask them to stand up from the sweet spot and walk towards the center speaker, the expression on their face as they realize its not on is priceless

I bet Ron; from inexperienced music listeners. :b
 

treitz3

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Well, it can also be from experienced listeners as well Bob. I was at Polk headquarters a couple of years back and we had a panel of listeners that were making observations of a system and some experienced listeners were asking what surround speakers were on. None of them were on, just the soundbar and a sub. If it's set up and executed correctly, it can happen. Yes, it's a different scenario but my point is that it can happen.
 

NorthStar

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Ok Tom, you got a good point there.

...Or they aren't 'true' experienced music listeners.
Or they are simply normal human beings who fell accidentally, and incidentally. :b
...Influenced by the power of their brain on sound's perception, and direction.
...Manipulation; internal (in the recordings themselves via 'phase' manipulation),
or external (room's acoustics including reverberations and reflections).
 

Ronm1

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Isn't that the point. Room, treatments, positioning all play a part. Getting the most out of what one has. Quite a mix really of listeners, just a few not dabbling in the hobby. Some with much better h/w than I have. I've carefully edged it, tweaked it to the 2ch side. Plus the sources are quite good, IMHO, of course. They are old, but mods have helped me hang in there, it would cost way to much to get better. I've been quite pleased for awhile now with my current config. As colleagues, when they used to drop by would say ' My cd's have never sounded better', well that did not happen by accident.
 

Soundproof

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Gentlemen, I present you with stereo properly realized. Frank Sinatra at home, with his 3-channel system behind him.Time to start pondering what got lost down the road.

Ampex 350 3-track master recorder used for most spectacular playback. From Sinatra's Palm Springs home, 1965.

(NorthStar's heads-up sent me hunting for the image.)



McIntosh C22 PreAmp and a Fisher R200 tuner on the right of the center channel. Note the three amplifiers below these, one for each channel.

Sinatra's turntable was in the back of the room. He wasn't fooling.



I'm guessing it's his 1/2" 3-channel R2R tapes we're seeing in the shelves to the right of his vinyl and turntable.
 
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FrantzM

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Well, it can also be from experienced listeners as well Bob. I was at Polk headquarters a couple of years back and we had a panel of listeners that were making observations of a system and some experienced listeners were asking what surround speakers were on. None of them were on, just the soundbar and a sub. If it's set up and executed correctly, it can happen. Yes, it's a different scenario but my point is that it can happen.

Not a god example.. Many "Soundbars" and I guess the Polk one, perform some digital or otherwise signal manipulation to simulate surround, I believe Polk uses SDA and that is not straight 2-ch .. it also comes with its share of problems none of them add to the reproduction in other words very artificial .. distortion abounds .. The effect may be acceptable for movies but hardly for serious music listening or rather for serious audiophiles however lenient they may be. Some soundbars are pretty surprising the for example the Yamaha YSP-xxx in the appropriate room on HT.

2-ch is clearly lacking when compared to a multi-channel system. For the record my only MC system/experience was a decent HT system based on Krell processor, MC amplifier and Dynaudio Speakers... My 2-ch was as high end as they get (Burmester Top Line Electronics DAC, and Transport, etc) ... yet on some recordings the MC presented a more realistic reproduction than the 2-ch ... I never went further in my MC experiences.. I am presently mostly a 2-CH audiophile .. That where most of the music is and I care foremost about the music so ...
 

treitz3

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NorthStar

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Gentlemen, I present you with stereo properly realized. Frank Sinatra at home, with his 3-channel system behind him.Time to start pondering what got lost down the road.

Ampex 350 3-track master recorder used for most spectacular playback. From Sinatra's Palm Springs home, 1965.

(NorthStar's heads-up sent me hunting for the image.)



McIntosh C22 PreAmp and a Fisher R200 tuner on the right of the center channel. Note the three amplifiers below these, one for each channel.

Sinatra's turntable was in the back of the room. He wasn't fooling.



I'm guessing it's his 1/2" 3-channel R2R tapes we're seeing in the shelves to the right of his vinyl and turntable.

That is Frankie's room alright! ...Cool Soundproof. :cool:
 

Soundproof

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The 2L recording I mentioned earlier, "Souvenir," is inspired by early stereo 3-channel methods. As bass is usually cut in mono on vinyl, Lindberg of 2L decided to move the Double Bass and Celli to the center of the image, and to have the other voices of the string orchestra sit mixed, i.e. not in sections but next to other voices, in symmetrical arrangement.

This aids in the weighting of the stereo image on the record, as the bass is not off to one side (usually the right in a string orchestra). As 2L had already decided on modern DMM cutting, with a deep enough groove for precise bass rendition (a weakness with early DMM), they could focus on getting an accurately represented bass in the center, and then expand the sound stage with the L/R information.

That is an approximation to what we can see in this photo from Sinatra's listening room in Palm Springs, where the center channel is used to add weight (imagine timpanni that are usually in the back and center of a symphony orchestra coming from that speaker, instead of being summed by L/R).



While a 2-channel home system lacks the center channel, the two-step process adopted by Lindberg still helps.

In the mix, priority is given to the information registered by the center channel microphone, and the L/R microphones were used to expand the image and add detail. He described the image he was after as a "tree", where the center channel information is the trunk, the front L/R microphones provide the branches and the back L/R microphones add foliage.

Because of the symmetrical placing of the orchestra members, the simile of a tree makes perfect sense. There is still a lot of point-source stereo information, but the overall blending, plus the centered weighting, gives a realism that is rarely experienced from traditional 2-channel recordings, in spite of this being 2-channel vinyl.

Here's a diagram showing how they set up for the recording session.
The 4041 microphone directed towards the double bass and two of the celli is the center channel microphone. The 4003AP mics were used as described above, to register the "branches" (front mic's) and "foliage." (Back mic's)
Note the mixed voices seating, which had orchestra members playing away from their sections: Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Violincelli. Because of their long time together, the orchestra members quickly adapted to the unconventional seating, actually preferring being closer to what the other sections were doing.

(When I asked, Lindberg explained that the microphone close to the double bass is only used to record LFE for the 7.1 release, and that the information from this microphone is not used on the vinyl.)

 
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Soundproof

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Thanks. An interesting bit of trivia:
Lindberg wasn't going to make a vinyl version originally. The production was intended for high-res distribution in various formats. But one of the young members of the orchestra asked if the work would be released on vinyl, because she and her friends liked the format so much. She was quite insistent.
That spurred Lindberg on to do the necessary research and planning for a literally cutting edge release.
This is also the first 2L production that will not be distributed as a CD.

And it was the decision to also go vinyl that inspired the seating arrangement shown above.

(No, I have no business or formal connection with 2L. I just love their work.)
 
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Ronm1

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^ I agree, I have a couple of 2L's. No ?, they make good stuff.
 

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