Future progress in reproduced sound

[microstrip]

I asked about impediments to realism and you in fact brought up the issue of convenience here in post #7.

And you answered to my post and I replied. As you are not a WBF moderator I suggest you refrain from considering what others can post on not.
If you have nothing to add on convenience simply ignore the subject. Convenience is surely linked to how people address realism.

 

[microstrip]

(...) I think the biggest impediment to realism is the size of our listening rooms. I have always said the room is the most important component.
(...)

Interesting. in the spirit of WBF best, what is the size of the ideal room for realism in your opinion?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Interesting. in the spirit of WBF best, what is the size of the ideal room for realism in your opinion?

room size primarily speaker dependent and related to amplification and low frequency extension too as far as the bass hooking up and the room pressurizing. the music rides this venue feeling and escapes from the sense of reproduction and any speaker driver. actual degree of extension less critical for realism than top to bottom balance and coherence.

different driver types can require different ideal room sizes and shapes. small 2 ways can have excellent realism with the right room.

large rooms (over 18 wide, 25 long, 9 feet tall) need much more attention to reach realism and the low frequency performance and cohesion much more challenging.

 

[microstrip]

room size primarily speaker dependent and related to amplification and low frequency extension too as far as the bass hooking up and the room pressurizing. the music rides this venue feeling and escapes from the sense of reproduction and any speaker driver. actual degree of extension less critical for realism than top to bottom balance and coherence.

different driver types can require different ideal room sizes and shapes. small 2 ways can have excellent realism with the right room.

large rooms (over 18 wide, 25 long, 9 feet tall) need much more attention to reach realism and the low frequency performance and cohesion much more challenging.

It was theoretical question for the rich and knowledgeable audiophiles. Ignoring such constrains what is the ideal size?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

It was theoretical question for the rich and knowledgeable audiophiles. Ignoring such constrains what is the ideal size?

i'm just obsessive, not rich or knowledgeable.

well, if i was building another room for a large dynamic driver speaker it would be the same as i have; 21' x 29' x 11'.....oval shaped. but there are many many other sizes that would be fine. i just know what to do in my own room and not sure my level of technical skills scales to other sizes. small room acoustics is a mystery to me mostly. i just have my narrow experience.

 

[PeterA]

large rooms (over 18 wide, 25 long, 9 feet tall) need much more attention to reach realism and the low frequency performance and cohesion much more challenging.

That is interesting Mike. I would’ve thought the opposite. The larger the room the easier it is to integrate the speakers because if listening distance to the speakers remains roughly the same, the listener will hear the direct sound Mor removed from the reflected sound. This would suggest to me that the reflected sound becomes less important.

I agree with you that speaker and room matching is important.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

That is interesting Mike. I would’ve thought the opposite. The larger the room the easier it is to integrate the speakers because if listening distance to the speakers remains roughly the same, the listener will hear the direct sound Mor removed from the reflected sound. This would suggest to me that the reflected sound becomes less important.

just more going on, it takes more to pressurize, larger speakers can get more wrong, precision in the bass much harder, but then the upside is higher too.

in my small nicely shaped den (12' x 18' x 10.5') i was in prior i had superb sound pretty much right off (until big music over-drove it) once i got just a little bit of experience. then it took me 7-8 years to find that intimacy realism again in my larger room, and a full 11 years to get it right, balanced and the bass even and agile to my ears and the soundstage cohesive and without holes.....where it could be completely satisfying with all types of music. big learning curve. i had high expectations.

reflected sound is not that significant a problem in a dedicated room where you have freedom to make choices, or maybe you have a speaker which is less room dependent. modern dynamic speakers are more room reflection sensitive. lack of gear synergy can be critical too. if you need to 'fix' signal path issues with acoustics or tweaks.

I agree with you that speaker and room matching is important.

it all starts or ends right there as far as how far you can go. i'm not talking about decent or good sound, i'm talking about something special. the highest ceiling starts there.

sins of omission are always the preferable way to go. our ears and senses are distracted by extra wrong stuff especially if it localizes drivers. realism fails right there.

 

[Lee]

What a great question, Peter!

I know that I cannot agree with Lee on this particular topic, because low noise floor is just not a thing for me. (More technically it is not one of my sonic cues.)

I think the biggest impediment to realism is the size of our listening rooms. I have always said the room is the most important component.

There's no easy way to conduct this experiment but my hypothesis is that if you took a good stereo system like we talk about on WBF and put it in a coat closet, and then gradually relocated it to larger and larger rooms believability would go up. (At some point, of course, like in a concert hall that stereo is not going to do very much.)

My point is that the room in which we listen to our systems matters a lot. Now I appreciate that the room size shouldn't really matter because with a good stereo whatever ambient recording venue cues are encoded on the recording should be reproduced faithfully by the stereo independent of the size of the room in which the stereo is playing. That just is not really my experience. Size matters, unfortunately. A small stereo in a small room which faithfully reproduces the acoustic venue of the recording is great and gets me part of the way there, but the volume of our listening room still is a significant factor in my experience.

So how do we enable our listening rooms to sound larger than they are? Perhaps DSP? I don't wanna go there!

I’m a little confused by this given the context of the OP. It seems to me that if we have a lower noise floor, we are hearing more of the music, ie. more realism. Perhaps it is because of my spending the last three years chasing noise out of the system and getting spectacular results from doing so.

Perhaps we are both right and the lower noise floor is manifasting itself in other sonic cues that you appreciate as well? And maybe Indo as well.

As for room size, I think it depends. Jim Smith, for instance, has told me that some of the better rooms have been 15x20.

 

[Ron Resnick]

It seems to me that if we have a lower noise floor, we are hearing more of the music, ie. more realism.

Hello Lee!

This is a totally fair hypothesis, but it's just not the way I think about things.

Maybe it has to do with divergent objectives of the hobby. I don't subscribe to Jonathan Valin's "accuracy" objective, which is conceptually similar to one of my proposed objectives of "reproduce exactly what is on the master tape or digital file being played."

I think this objective focuses theoretically on hearing what the microphone hears. But that's not how I think. I don't care about hearing what the microphone hears. I care about hearing what somebody sitting fifth row/center in Walt Disney Concert Hall hears. And that is definitely not the location of the microphone.

My objective is either "re-create the sound of an original musical event" or "create a sound that seems live." Neither of these formulations focuses on minimizing noise or maximizing detail or amplifying what the microphone hears.

So minimizing noise to maximize detail is just not how I think about my personal objective of the hobby.

 

[hopkins]

Hello Lee!

This is a totally fair hypothesis, but it's just not the way I think about things.

Maybe it has to do with divergent objectives of the hobby. I don't subscribe to Jonathan Valin's "accuracy" objective, which is conceptually similar to one of my proposed objectives of "reproduce exactly what is on the master tape or digital file being played."

I think this objective focuses theoretically on hearing what the microphone hears. But that's not how I think. I don't care about hearing what the microphone hears. I care about hearing what somebody sitting fifth row/center in Walt Disney Concert Hall hears. And that is definitely not the location of the microphone.

My objective is either "re-create the sound of an original musical event" or "create a sound that seems live." Neither of these formulations focuses on minimizing noise or maximizing detail or amplifying what the microphone hears.

So minimizing noise to maximize detail is just not how I think about my personal objective of the hobby.

You are confusing the objective and the process for getting there.

 

[Gregm]

As for room size, I think it depends. Jim Smith, for instance, has told me that some of the better rooms have been 15x20.

To minimize low-frequency resonances, acousticians (R Bolt specifically) recommend using “ideal” room dimension ratios: 1 (H) × 1.9 × 1.4 or 1 × 1.3 × 1.5 × 2.1.
Additionally, it seems that for better results the room should have a volume of at least 40m³ (1400ft).

 

[Ron Resnick]

You are confusing the objective and the process for getting there.

How so? I am saying that for me personally reducing noise does not necessarily increase believability for my particular objective.

 

[Chop]

I think the limitation vs live music is in the area of dynamics (both macro and micro) and tonality. This could be the same as Peter is saying using different words.
I find listening to a voice or a string quartet live is fundamentally different to whatever I have heard from a stereo system, however that system has been implemented.
I think in terms of how "alive" the sound is from my system. For me "Alive" encompasses micro dynamics & could be the same as Peter referring to "energy".

 

[DasguteOhr]

Davinci golden cut
(W )1 x1,617=(L)
(H )1 × 1,617 = (W)
Not only does it look good, it also sounds good. I have no idea whether that always works