Fons Adriaensen <[email protected]> a écrit : > As to material produced for conventional speaker playback, some > of it produces a 'nice' sound, with a clear spatial effect, as > long as you are not trying to focus your attention on individual > sources or instruments. Which is something I can't avoid doing > being a trained sound engineer, but also something any musician > or critical listener will do at some time.
I find it easier to focus on details with XTC. But it depends a lot on the recordings. Some are horrible, others are wonderful. With conventional stereo, I find that everything is equally smeared, like a kind of glorified mono with a larger stage. I'm waiting for a pair of very directional speakers that should (hopefully) help me enjoy conventional stereo. > What almost certainly *fails in major ways* will be e.g. > > - opera (or other forms of stage drama) recordings meant for > stereo listening (i.e. not the DVD productions which have all > the singers at the center to match the video), I have one recording of a Scarlatti opera that sounds very nice (and detailed) with XTC. But usually I prefer mono for operas (listening on the radio). > - anything that has off-center bass (from ancient music > with double bass flutes to reggea), Why? I have no problem with off-center bass; I use 2 small speakers with XTC and 2 subs with normal stereo. > - many organ recordings, which when XTC-ed produce an organ > that seems to be wandering all around, making me seasick. True! I prefer mono or stereo for organ, or the real thing (in my city there's a lot of good organs and a yearly festival) XTC can do very strange things to bad stereo recordings, and there's a fair amount of those in circulation. The worst I heard are recent piano and harpsichord recordings that are considered masterworks by critics. They were made to sound "glorious". XTC can reveal a lot of bad tricks, and can destroy many mediocre recordings. Pop and jazz gigs are a lot of fun with XTC. Anything with artificial reverb from the 80's is a catastrophe (what a terrible decade). Conventional stereo and mono, on the other hand, are very forgiving. >> I understand your clinical point of view, but I don't consider the >> act of listening to reproduced music as a scientific activity. > > Agreed 100%. But the act of analysing and discussing the merits > of technical systems to reproduce sound or music surely is a > scientific activity, or at least something that should be done > using a scientific mindset and avoiding marketing language and > suggestive terminology. Such as presenting the way stereo works > (by delivering both speaker signals to both ears) as a 'defect' > which has to be 'cancelled'. Ambisonics enthusiasts are also using strong words; to them, anything not ambisonics (or "blumleinish") is flawed, and simple questions are often received as direct attacks. I use XTC to improve some of my listening skills, not to replace all other listening methods. I have nothing to sell, and I sometimes use a home-made physical barrier because it's still the best XTC method. Presenting ambisonics as a scientific tool, a sound engineering secret, or a surround system for museums or stadiums, are not very good ways to promote it to home listeners, especially considering the quasi-absence of ambisonics material in circulation. If you could help me understand spherical harmonics, I'd be a "MAG fanboy" in no time. The best didactic resource I found is a very strange article titled "Notes on Basic Ideas of Spherical Harmonics". It's so good that I barely understand 10% of it. -- Marc _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
