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In the Forum: Didital Things
In the Thread: K-Stereo Ambience Recovery Processor
Post Subject: Digital Domain K-StereoPosted by peter foster on: 10/6/2007
Dear Romy,

I have one of these machines.  It is located between my digital source machines and a Lavry DA-924 dac.  It is a machine designed for use by the mastering industry.  I use it at home as part of my sound system.  The reason that I obtained it was to improve the sound of many Redbook CD recordings that I have.  They benefit from the digital processing of the K-Stereo for a number of reasons.  For example: some CDs were transferred from old master tapes; some CDs were produced with some instruments recorded solely to left channel and the other instruments solely to right channel; some CDs were produced in the days of poor quality adc technology like in the 1970s and 1980s.

The K-Stereo machine has a number of digital processing features that are helpful depending on the circumstances, like dithering, input filters, input shelves, input levels and the ambience recovery algorithm that is selectable in amount and soundstage (wide, wide + deep, small, small + deep).  All these digital processing features work blamelessly.  The feature that I find the most useful is being able to select the soundstage characteristics.  There is a noticeable difference between the various settings that assist with stereo imaging of players / instruments. 

I also use the K-Stereo when recording at home.  In this case, I use a pair of Peluso CEM6 condenser microphones connected to a Lavry 4496 (blue) machine that contains internal clock, 2 channel microphone preamplifier and 2 channel adc, connected to a hard disk recorder (digital source) connected to the K-Stereo.  Here the K-Stereo is part of my monitoring chain and I use the K-Stereo to check microphone placement, i.e., as long as the K-Stereo unit can improve the recording then my microphone placement is not yet good enough.

As I understand it, the ambience recovery mechanism takes an attentuated digital copy of each channel and copies it to the other channel with a slight delay.  This is an application of the science of stereo imaging that recording engineers will be familiar with when experimenting with stereo microphone placement configurations.  Refer to http://www.g-tec.sk/usr_files/katalogy/6/stereo%20recording%20s%20DPA.pdf from page 5 onwards if your are interested in stereo imaging and how recording engineers shape that with the "black art" of microphone selection and placement.

The K-Stereo machine is not inexpensive but it has been very good value for my purposes.  It supplies features that adc and dac machines do not or cannot.

Regards, Peter Foster.

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