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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: I don't disagree... posted by hexenboden on May 9, 2006 at 13:11:43:
Vertical and horizontal polar response at various frequencies would be useful and instructive. Most speakers are relatively omnidirectional at very low frequencies becoming increaingly directional at higher frequencies. Of all unamplified musical instruments, the human voice is fairly unique in in being a highly directional point source. Most musical instruments are closer to omnidirectional raidators. Even instruments which would initially seem fairly directional such as reeds and brass are normally played pointed downward or away from the audience making most of their sound arrive at the listener's ears as reflections. The spectrally dependent variability of loudspeaker directional propagation combined with the interaction of the listening room means that the energy transfer between the amplifier and the listener is far from flat. IMO this in large part explains why few if any speakers can produce sound subjectively comparable to musical instruments. It also shows why LEDEs, moving speakers away from nearby walls, and bipolar panel speakers offer some measure of improvement. Many insturments when heard close up such as pianos are not point source radiators either but emit sound over a fairly large area whereas most loudspeakers (excluding panel types and large arrays) are nearly point source radiators. And then there is the problem of the stereophonic effect trying to emulate at times many musicians each having a distinct audibly identifiable location with two or at best three point sources. We don't have a method for measuring that either.And then there is the problem of acoustics of venue which is responsible for 90% or more of what is heard at a live performace and whose huge effect on perceived sound we can barely measure and hardly accurately characterize. We certainly don't have the means to record or reprodcue these effects precisely let alone measure the shortcomings of reproducing them.
Yes there is a very long way to go before we understand why recodings can't sound like live music given our current state of the art and how to measure where and how the current designs fall short of what is required.
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Follow Ups
- Re: I don't disagree... - Soundmind 05/10/0602:48:04 05/10/06 (1)
- You can add microphone placement to the confusion (nt) - hexenboden 03:48:59 05/10/06 (0)
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