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Posted by Romy the Cat on
07-11-2023
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Posted by Bill on
07-28-2023
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I would bet that Romy prefers to sit from mid hall to the back of the hall, as I do, and our penchant for for large orchestral music. Thus, while sitting up front gives the orchestra stage maybe 120 degrees wide, with little hall sound, it tends to be strident and too up front. At an outdoor concert, the sound is also only direct, even though one sits far away from the orchestra, so one loses the warmth of a great concert hall.
At Mid to back hall, the stridency is removed and anywhere from 50 to 90% of the sound is reverberation from the hall reflections. Thus, the reverberations from the hall add tremendously to the warmth and glory of a full orchestra, with the best halls producing the best feelings in the listener. Thus Romy's feeling he has listening only to the Hall effect speakers. Why do you think that it costs more to sit back there than up front in most concert halls.
Where I differ from Romy is how he obtains that “hall effect”. Yes, Yamaha and other companies do a great job using the artificial reverberation fields they obtained from various venues, but they are still artificial. Also I feel that while you don't need $30,000 speakers for the field, you do need speakers and amplifiers that will be able to handle the fff's without distorting. Even in Romy's room his surrounds would distort on loud passages.
Second, in order to obtain a true Hall effect, one needs at least front and rear height stereo speakers and stereo surrounds. A concert hall has four walls a ceiling and floor all producing hall reverberations. Adding a central channel, LIke RCA did with their early stereo recordings, also can improve some early stereo recordings with all left or right staging.
Third, I prefer to use a preamp processor such as my trinnov altitude using AURO 3D processing, not Dolby
or DTS, to either recover the Hall effect sounds from the front main speakers and direct them to the surrounds, or produce them through processing. If one is worried about affecting the sound of the main channels, One does not need to run them through the processor, but use the second amplifier outputs from the preamp to power the Hall effect processor, like Romy does with his setup. That does have the I’ll effect of leaving the Hall effect sounds still coming through the main channels, which is a distortion.
But I do use the trinnov as my main processor as it allows me to do room and speaker correction, and active crossovers of the front speakers eliminating power robbing passive crossovers, time aligning the drivers, and removing much of my rooms fast reverberation times that distort the sound field. There will also be a future update which is supposedly able, with the use of added subwoofers out of phase with the main woofers and subs, to remove bass standing waves that give the peaks and valleys to the bass in home listening rooms.
While I haven't been able to come close to what he has obtained with Macondo, and if I were 30 again, would emulate what he has, cost be damned, I do feel that up to a point, with correct processing, the more good quality Hall effect speakers one has, the more lifelike and stimulating listening can be..
Bill
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Posted by Paul S on
07-28-2023
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Bill, it sounds like you have made a significant investment (time and resources) into (re)producing reverberation with your entire system, also setting time alignments of various drivers, across the board, and I assume you would not have gotten this far down that road unless you liked how it sounds. On this board, I have not been able to determine from what you've said if you think the things you get from the DSP outweigh Romy's net from his "direct transmission" amp/speakers and "admittedly mediocre", limited "DSP/delay injection"? Based on my own (limited) experience, I have supposed from the start that DSP itself imposes its own "sonic toll". So far, for me, the rationale behind the DSP has not panned out in the overall sound I've heard. I realize this proves nothing about DSP, per se, and I am very interested to hear about successful implementations. People have swooned about the DSP (reinforcement) in a nearby concert hall, and it's always left me flat. I came very close to adding a center channel, but backed down at the last minute, for reasons I've gone into in other GSC posts, basically fear of effects from the processing. Do you often use vinyl sources?
Best regards,
Paul S
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Posted by Bill on
08-19-2023
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I had a Walker Proscenium turntable with various cartridges. About twenty years ago I converted all my vinyl to 24/96 files and have never looked back. As far as dsp processing, the Trinnov altitude does a superb job of either recreating the hall sounds from two channel or surround from sacd recordings, especially using Auro 3 D decoding. The Trinnov Altitude processor does anything from first to sixth order crossovers, wit driver volume and distance correction , room and speaker correction, appropriate speaker placement for each channel, phase adjustment of each driver, and the ability to do frequency volume correction, all in the digital domain. As far as quality of sound, Romy definitely has me beat with the pureness he attains, especially in the bass. Since he let me borrow two of his Vitavox s3 drivers for my mid horns, I have come closer but not matched him with two channel sound. But his major advantage is his CD transport, which in some way enriches the bass frequencies, and his Vitavox 15 inch drivers and his 21 inch attic based speakers which come as close as I’ve heard to true concert hall bass.He does not come close with the room reverberation, but he is using only four small decent sounding speakers which do not have the effect that my system does in recreating the hall sound. But, I would trade in a second that hall effect for what he obtains with his two main channels. I have never heard anything that comes close to what he has accomplished in recreating an orchestral sound.
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Posted by Paul S on
08-19-2023
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Bill, of course I supposed the DSP-free sound would sound better than processed to me, based on my experience. I just wanted to know how you felt about it, when it was put like that. I went to big SS amps despite I prefer the sound of small SET amps, because I found that the only way to make SET work with "acceptable" speakers was more turned horns via DSET, and I was not going going to do that at this point in my life. In the end, with the actual Sound/Music from my speakers, the big SS amps trumped the SETs I had before. On the other hand, I did not follow through on a center channel, because I was convinced that the signal relegation would obliviate any Sonic gains from the center channel, in terms of Sound. I do like sound effects, but I care more about the Sound, and without Music I couldn't care less.
Best regards,
Paul S
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
08-20-2023
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This whole subject of acoustical reconstruction of performing whole by using reverberation channels is very complicated to discuss on audio forums. If visin many aspects of sound reproduction, better or worse, but we have constructed some common denominators of understanding and by using them we can somehow to communicate but in reverberation reconstruction there is absolutely no language mutual understood. The only criteria might be a practice of giving individual and the results that he achieved and his result cannot be conveyed to another person, there is just no mutual understanding.
About Bill's and my result from a prospective of reverberation injection. I use Yamaha DSP algorithm. It is very intelligent algorithm made by the company which has immense advancement in the area. However, it is mass market implementation even in thier high-end units. Just think about it they take analog signal converted to digital, do processing, and then convert to analog again. Considering that they put this feature in on receivers which cost couple hundred bucks it is very reasonable to presume that cost of entire yamaka reverberation injection is probably a few dollars. I am not familiar of high-end implementation of the feature, and it is despite of the fact that I own cheapest and the most expensive processors, they all sounds the same from reverberation standpoint.
Bill, went other way at frankly speaking after many conversations with him I still do not know what he's doing. In my view he does not inject reverberation but rather using multiple speakers and delays he expand the size of the listening room. Him and me have slightly different results from reverberation injection. I would say that his results is much cleaner and has less negative acoustic feedback to the main speakers. It would be very interesting to combine my man's speakers with his reverberation paradigm. Elso, I feel that we listen slightly different things. It is not literally but sort of obstructive... Bill is listening that concert hall with instruments in them, browser I listening instruments in concert hall. Of course it has nothing to do with music and I am talking only about strictly audio listening preferences. I am not convincingly convinced which approach is more advantageous his or mine and this division of approaches is not like black and white, but rather slight tendencies...
Again, it is very very difficult to talk about the subject as people generally have no frame of references what the conversation is all about. Even when Bill and I talked about it I think we have a lot of confusion because we are comparing results of two different systems. Neither I or him have experience to examine absolutely the same play back with his architecture of reverberation injection versus mine. Not to mention that he's and my architecture both supposed to be properly implemented. Bill this he's mysterious digital device probably as close as possible to properly implemented his architecture. I am with my cheap Yamaha implementation very far away from claims that it is how it should be. To the best of my knowledge no one company with high-end objective or at least professional objective do it. I am planning sometimes in the future to try pro audio convolution processors which should be way more superior of any algorithmic processors but I have feelings that quality of ag and ga in those units not going to be good. Well there was one outrageously expensive Sony unit years back when you load a CD with acoustic environment of specific listening call and Sony unit date application or necessary acoustical algorithm to processor. I never seen this unit and I do not know how seriously it was implemented.
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Posted by Paul S on
08-20-2023
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So
far, the “better” my reproduction gets, the more variable recordings get. I
mean, they are all over the place. Considering this alone, who knows how a
given recording needs to be manipulated in order to “correct” it? Plenty of
problems I hear seem to be beyond fixing, apart from “smoothing out” ones
reproduction. My experience with pro sound is that they mostly believe they can
correct any problem by manipulating the sound, including allocations, even
allocations in concert halls. I have yet
to hear better Sound or Music from full processing, and I for sure want to hear
it before committing time and money to implement it. Of course, while my notion
of “good sound” includes “appropriate” ambience, I do not put this ahead of
pitch, timbre, texture, pace, any number of other “variables”. As I close I am
thinking about the giant MBL installations I have heard at shows and a couple
of stores.
Best regards,
Paul S.
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Posted by Bill on
08-21-2023
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Paul, wish you were on the East rather than west coast. Then you could hear what Romy and I have with our two systems with concert hall reproduction and judge for yourself what it adds to concert realism. Of course, half of what I have in reproduction quality is due to Romy and his help in setting up and adjusting my system. While I was already into multichannel Edgar horn systems for about 20 years, varying over the years from solid state to tube and back to solid state over and over again, it is he that got me on to the path of using Yamaha b2 and b3 amps with their vfet output transistors, which have the sonic benefits of both. Then he lent me two of his Vitavox s3 drivers and use of the tannoy reds' tweeters for the high end. Finally he convinced me to use the s3's in as wide a frequency range as possible, now from 400 to 12,000 hZ. Yesterday he came over for a listen as I was concerned about trying to obtain what he has for bass sound. Over many hours of trial and error, all I could do was muddy the bass to try to get his magic sound. Wouldn't you know it, in about an hour he had unmuddied it and gave me a bass clarity never heard before in my room. Unhappily not what he gets in his, but much better than what I had before. I'll let him describe how he accomplished this if he wishes. Of course if you are on the right coast, would be happy to have you for a visit, as I’m sure Romy would be too.
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Posted by Paul S on
08-21-2023
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Bill, I am happy that you've improved your bass. As Romy mentioned in an earlier post about Bruckner, RTA is just one tool, and we have to listen and hear results with Music we know and love. When you told of the disappearing S2s, I was going to mention JBL 375s, but I see now you have that range covered. Are you using heavy turned horns? It sounds like Romy would like to experiment with "better" reverb processing, but I suppose he means along with the very direct presentation of his main, stereo channels, so the reverb would still be very much in the backseat rather than the featured aspect of his sound. Also, I suppose it is important not to create a sound that is "ever present", as we have been saying lately. As far as ultimate LF, I think IB vintage North Creek Aurasound ULF is probably not in the cards for most of us. Wish I were mobile enough for a fall visit to NE. I've only been east of the Mississippi once since college!
Best regards,
Paul S.
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Posted by Paul S on
08-22-2023
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I was thinking, Bill, that you now have S3s running down to 400 Hz. If you ever said what you are using below the S3s now, I don't remember. I have only heard the 15" Vitavox a couple of times, many years ago, but I did once own Altec Lansing 515Bs, and it seemed to me at the time that they were fine to 500 Hz, albeit, as far as I know, neither of these drivers will go very low it you want musical pitch/tone/timbre from them; rather I think they might well compliment your S3s, and you might want to put something under these 15" drivers.
Best regards,
Paul S
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Posted by Edgar= on
09-06-2023
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Romy, I have not visited here since i made my splash on the forum back taalking about Dannoy. I wondered last week where things might be at for you and i chuckled to myself when I viewed your broadcast today.
 Romy the Cat wrote: | | there is absolutely no language mutual understood. The only criteria might be a practice of giving individual and the results that he achieved and his result cannot be conveyed to another person, there is just no mutual understanding. |
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I bring good news, there is hope, there is mutual understanding. My statment to N-Set nearly a year ago is my evidence -
| Edgar= wrote: |
If you are confidant your tannoys are working OK then i boldly request please stop everything else you do in audio right now and organise yourself reverb injection. |
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with all respect, is this statement so idiotic now? If not obvious, it was made that ridiculous for a reason, to make a bold point. Reverb Injection is a VERY powerful tool.
Regarding the language, what bill is doing is not reverb injection, bill is doing DSP. Reverb injection is not DSP. Although how Romy conceived doing it does use DSP.
I look forward to discussing it more.
Ed
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
09-06-2023
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| Edgar= wrote: | | Regarding
the language, what bill is doing is not reverb injection, bill is doing DSP.
Reverb injection is not DSP. Although how Romy conceived doing it does use
DSP. |
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It is not language confused but the actions are
a bit confusing. We constantly have arguments with Bill as he calls his reverberation
channels Surround channels and I absolutely hate the word Surround. Surrounds implies location of the sound and I
do care less about the location of the sources in what I do. I case about
imitation of reverberation or certainly comes with location and delay, but the location
is not the key ingredient. This is what I never used the word Surrounds channels
but only Reverberation Injection channels. The fast that it is DSP or not is irrelevant.
There are analog Reverberation processors and there are number of different types
of DSP Reverberation algorithms, warn not the implementations but types. Some of them are better and some of them worse
for my specific application. The best general Reverberation processors that
inject Reverberation processors in main sound (widely used in prod audio) are
not necessary the best in my application as I never touch the main signal with
my Reverberation Injection, and everything is happening only on a dedicated complementary
acoustic system that acts as an injector.
Now, here is where it becomes tricky. I
know what I do and can very much explain it technically and psychoacousticly but
I am not sure what Bill is doing. I might understand it is intellectually, but
I do not have the feeling about it as I never played myself with his system.
You see, I need to have 2 clean channels and then introduce the reverberation difference
to feel the benefits and contra-benefits. In bill case it is all integrated and
to me is harder to understand what is going on. He certainly played to me his 2
channels and then added his “Surrounds” but it is so much more different from
what I accustom that I sometime get confused. The result is certainly better, but
I do not get good feelings what are actionable ingredients in that result. I
have quite good listening experience and I typically could with quite high resolution
figure out what comes from what. I Bill’s case I understand what is going on when
he his 2 Ch running but what he turns his Surrounds I get confused and with my self-accused
“target listening audio intelligence”.
It would be worth to not that Bill is playing
with Surround, Reverberation and the rest of it much longer than me. I played with
LF delay channels back in 2000-2002 and the result was very good, but I had at
that time different objectives, primary to address the small size of my room
and to extend RT-60. Also, it looks like Bill and me have slightly different preferences.
He appreciates more to hear the space vs me who more appreciate to hear the events
complimented by space. None of the approaches are wrong. I feel that I have a
more interesting direct sound. I feel that Bill has more interesting Surround, Reverberation
or whatever we call it. His sound of space is in a way transformational, and it
was something that made me to look into the reverberations again 3 years back. Ironically
what he does is not the reverberation injection… Go figure…
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Posted by Edgar= on
09-06-2023
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| Romy the Cat wrote: | | I never touch the main signal with my Reverberation Injection, and everything is happening only on a dedicated complementary acoustic system that acts as an injector. |
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Yes, this is the distinction I was attempting to point to between what you are doing vs Bill as I understand it. I have never liked any digital processing in my system, it's just never improved things for me (and when i say system, it has always been 2 channels as i never heard a "surround sound" system that seriously engaged me so I never pursued it). However this is different. With RI through stereo rear speakers, the quality of my sound which is defined by my front stereo channels remains complety unaffected however the sense of acoustic space which is now defined by the RI is utterly transformed.
I don't intend my comments to diminish anything Bill is doing, all due respect there. I think what Bill seeks in audio is right for him and he sounds very capable at achieving it. Also, I admit that I have not heard anything as advanced or contemporary as what it sounds like he is doing with surround sound so I'm in no position to criticise.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
09-06-2023
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First of all, let to address the elephant in the room: whatever additional
DSP take place for reverberation or surrounds is applicable ONLY for reverberation
and has no connection of any kind to the main channels. This is the key and we
do not even discuss it. And then we immediately dive into a completely unknown swamp
as we have absolutely no hierarchy of quality term of reverberation injection.
We get this or that reverb unit, get out of it 5-6 reverberation parameters and
we use it as it. What does it mean “better” reverb of the main signal does not
flow over it? The sound we get out of reverb channel are mostly sound effect,
so who know what it means “better”. You
can buy a very high-end pro audio mastering reverb and properly set all necessary
for you parameter but I am not sure that it will act as better solution in case
of acoustic reverberation injection. Yes, we all know that non-algorithmic
convoluted revers are better as they have no perms acoustic harmonic. But no
one claims that they produce better results in my RI configuration. This is all
very murky water, and no one knows anything, including me. I know RI woks very magically
psychoacousticly but how to make it to work the optimum any given topology is a
big question and I do not know the answer.
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Posted by Edgar= on
09-07-2023
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| Romy the Cat wrote: | | First of all, let to address the elephant in the room: whatever additional
DSP take place for reverberation or surrounds is applicable ONLY for reverberation
and has no connection of any kind to the main channels. This is the key and we
do not even discuss it. |
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I feel it is obvious by now, or at least should be, if there is any reverberation processing on your main channels, that is not "RI" as defined here. That is an explicit detail. Over the years Romy, I have implemented or at least experimented with many of your findings. "Creating sound in room" being one of the first and fundamental ones. If one wants the result one must closely follow the recipe. At least to begin with. There are many people that do audio and that are truely lost. They have no inner compass to direct their decisions. This thread will make no sense to those people mostly because they will not take the time to PROPERLY implement RI and learn for themselves the powerful psychological effect it can have.
With regards to "better" if one were serious i suppose a reference would help. Theoretically might the best "processor" be, a mechanism in which your source material is transmitted and played through loudspeakers in the concert hall and then recorded and played back (minus the source material, as in just the reverberation) through your rear channels? Would that be an "ideal" processor? Therefore if one processor were capable of recreating the sound of the "ideal" better than another, is it a better processor? Or would better be defined as one processor gives you more potent insight into the phrases of your material than another?
Sticking with the food analogy, For me, RI is like seasoning. It is not the meal itself, but if used well, it will greatly enhance my experience of the meal. Also, I liked how you articulated it when you said "Injected with surgical precision". That is a helpful way of thinking about it if one were to pursue implementing RI.
Ed
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
09-07-2023
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I like the analogy with seasoning
a lot but there is an interesting twist in it. With RI you will not be able to
get a proper bass. You can get a lot atmospheric pressure in any of our small
rooms but that acoustic pressure does not create any psychological benefits for
music listening. It is pretty too much until you get at least 1.5 -2.0 seconds
reverberation time at 60 Hertz you even said ethically cannot produce “interesting”
bass. If you get your lower octaves agreeable with your listening, then your
objective for high frequency completely get reevaluated. If you have properly
harmonically structured (this is key) response at 10-11 kHz then you are
already in the business. So, from one point of view reverberation injection is
a seasoning but from another point of view reverberation injection is rather a canvas
upon which you draw the whole painting of your musical presentation.
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Posted by Edgar= on
09-08-2023
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| Romy the Cat wrote: | | If you have properly
harmonically structured (this is key) response at 10-11 kHz then you are
already in the business. . |
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Tbh, i feel like Dunnoy has properly structured harmonics from 40hz to 16k and with RI to >1000k. Am I delusional?
At some point the drama moves from the speakers to the room and I feel that RI helps to carry the drama waaaaay up after the speakers hand it over to the room.
The pressure it adds at low frequencies is one of my favourite parts but i agree that is not what makes RI potent, it is what it does up high, to the harmonics, that is really impactful.
Ed
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Posted by Paul S on
09-08-2023
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Edgar, what are you using for main, stereo speakers and amps to drive them? Are you using Dunnoys FR in front and Reds for RI behind, or what?
Paul S
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Posted by Edgar= on
09-08-2023
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Howdy Paul,
I mention the Dunnoys only in reference to Romy's comment about properly structured harmonics. What main channels I use is irrelevant to this thread. I'm sorry that comment is so blunt, I don't mean to be unfriendly, but I say it that way to make a point.
I think a better question would be what processor do I use? I use a Yamaha DSP-E492. It cost me $50 from some guy a few miles away. It does a wonderful job and I am very satisfied with it.
If you like the taste of your main channels, add the seasoning...
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Posted by Edgar= on
09-08-2023
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| Romy the Cat wrote: | | If you get your lower octaves agreeable with your listening, then your
objective for high frequency completely get reevaluated.. |
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I have been thinking more about this comment and I can't say I have ever had my lower octaves agreeable with my listening. Not below 40hz....
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