Walking on water
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsA magician can easily walk on water. All one needs is a few inches of the wet stuff and some Plexiglas shoe-lifts. Amazing. Magical.
Knowing how the trick is performed ruins the illusion and that’s the last thing we want to do.
Better to be amazed than to think too hard about how it was done.
Our stereo systems are magical devices. They create a three-dimensional holographic image right before our ears.
We can turn low the lights and press play. Magically, the illusion of real musicians appears in that treasured space between our two loudspeakers.
It’s alright to share the magician’s secrets when it comes to helping others build their own magic machine.
Here’s to day two of a magical new year.
Welcome 2021.
No doubt that the magician’s secrets will be shared in ‘The Audiophile’s Guide’…
if we don’t shuffle off this mortal coil first 🙂
Retro Album of today: McCartney’s – ‘Band On The Run’ (2018 remaster)
Band on the Run is classic!
But — given Paul’s post, why not choose retro SONG of the day?
Scroll up
That’s an invitation
Scroll up for the Mystery Tour
Scroll up
To join the conversation
Scroll up for the Mystery Tour
This Magical Mystery Tour
Is hoping to take all your pay
For shiny new separates to play
Scroll up today!
This is a DJ Bob remix – my apologies to the Beatles!
😉
All you need is cash…
😉
Thank you FR!
I spent a lot of time on re-writing those lyrics to the right syllables and meter, lol! No-one else noticed or got it. hmmmmm???
Maybe I have “too much time on my hands” (STYX)!
“All you need is cash, cash.
Cash is all you need”
Apologies to Paul (& Ringo)
😉
Too much time on your hands during the holidays??
Surely you jest sir.
I noticed djBOB. Yesterday it was my first smile of the day. I relate to phrases when they remind you of a song eg. Styx. Paul’s post on January 1st was titled “Here we are”. I immediately thought of Gloria Estefan. Did anyone else? Was it intentional on Paul’s part? The conspiracies are building already 🙂
I had to google for that Gloria song. Did not remember it by name but recognized the melody immediately. She’s great. Her voice is even better when singing in Spanish – even though I no comprende!
200 years ago, in 1821, Michael Faraday showed how to turn an electrical charge into rotational motion using wire and magnets. It’s not magic, it’s the use of a natural phenomenon called electromagnetism. A phono cartridge does the exact opposite, converting movement via electromagnetism with magnets and coils into an electrical signal. Faraday would instantly have understood what a phono cartridge does. In those days claiming to be able to perform magic could get you in a load of trouble.
Magic is the illusion of performing something that is supernatural, something that humans should not be able to do. So walking on water, flying, being cut in half (and living), mindreading etc. Then there is the class of illusions that are not supernatural. Humans can perceive sound and light. Audio and TV do so artificially in a way to create an illusion. There is no one inside my TV telling me the news, after all it is far too thin.
There is nothing magic about audio. It’s a process of recording sound with a transducer, a microphone, whereby sound waves are converted to an electrical pulse that is then recorded on some medium like magnetic tape or digitally. That recording can be distributed and the process repeated in reverse, whereby the recording is turned into an electrical pulse and then by a transducer into sound. We spend some part of our lives trying to understand how best to do that process.
The idea that it is magic is a presumption of ignorance. There are people that believe when you take their photograph you are stealing part of their soul, rather than recording reflected light on a film covered in photosensitive chemicals. It is an honestly held view based on ignorance. Science is a process of understanding and explaining the natural world, so referring to anything as magic is profoundly unscientific.
Of course it is not magic but I’d venture to guess 99% of humans are not audiophiles. Therefore they are not interested or invested in how stereos work. They just enjoy music. While I understand the basics of how each component works electronically and physically, there are still aspects that defy my understanding – especially when the chain of sound reproduction leaves the speaker and becomes invisible and intangible. Then I am lost!!!
In the summer, I often sit on my front porch in the evening with a nightcap while my stereo plays inside. To this day I still cannot wrap my brain around sound waves traveling through closed windows and doors, insulation, wood and brick walls! I can hear the song, instruments, and vocals pretty clearly. At least clear enough to tap my foot and sing along. With all the talk of room acoustics, reflections, absorptions, standing waves— my ignorant mind would expect all the waves are busy doing their dance inside – how is it so audible outside?
Magic to me – but I’m okay with that. Saves me the expense of buying outdoor speakers! So in this case, I’ll continue active study of gear in my lane of interest — types, brands, features, benefits, performance, etc. When it comes to the details of engineering and electronic, I’m absorbing some of that magic passively along the way – thanks to posts like yours 😉
You won’t learn a lot from me, but I can tell you how sound gets through windows because I’ve just bought new windows for the front of my house and it was explained to me. What I can tell you is it’s not magic, it’s acoustics.
Buying speakers with the wife, she chose, and considers the audio system to be about as magical as an oven or tumble drier. It’s a domestic appliance that someone designed to do a job, just as the tumble drier was designed to dry clothes.
She chose your speakers??!!!
Steven we really need to know all about this.
As explained before, she expressed misgivings (to put it politely) about the incumbent speakers since they arrived 5 years ago. So I got some on a home demo I thought she might like and she hated them, and I did not like the sound. So we sat on the sofa and gave her options, we went to my dealer and within an hour we’d bought some speakers and were having lunch. sound, colour and styling were all good. According to my dealer, this is really quite often the case.
He is one of a few high-end dealers who have told me that very few of their customers are audiophiles. All this magic stuff is baloney, all they want is good sounds that suit their homes.
I’ve been there to demos with plenty of couples, neither of whom knows anything about audio, they just want an audio system and make a joint decision.
So “plenty good enough” audio.
I never thought I’d see that among the audiophile community. It could be world changing event, a concept of “enoughness.”
Wilson speakers are plenty good enough for me. She particularly liked the colour.
Whatever compromise you make is worth it for keeping a happy wife.
I thought her idea of compromise was no speakers at all, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Magic is when you “see”something that is not there.
Magic fooled Penn and Teller when Garrett Thomas did exactly that.
Is that a spoiler? No, an explanation
No, as I’ve never heard of Garrett Thomas.
I have heard of Penn & Teller and have the Souvenir Booklet from their Las Vegas show. Teller concludes:
“There is no real magic in the Magic Room. No anti-gravity paste. No invisibility paint. There are no secret laws of physics you don’t know about. Everything in the Magic Room is made out of things you’d find in a home or a Home Depot or a Wal-Mart. We just use them in counterintuitive ways; so how we do tricks isn’t pretty. Therefore – for your own good – I won’t show you the stuff in the magic room. My job is to leave you with a beautiful question, not an ugly answer.”
That’s a brilliant explanation by a brilliant illusionist – starting with the fact that they don’t do magic. It was also one of the best evenings of entertainment we’ve ever enjoyed.
There is no doubt that someone with not so much experience in listening to sound systems by which spatial characteristics can be distinguished, which today’s post describes as three-dimensional, may be pleasantly impressed.
But most of us, who have spent many decades trying to improve the sound response of our systems, are more interested in whether they are capable of giving us a better response in the instrumental timbre and an adequate tonal balance, qualities that ultimately make the sonic illusion obtained at home, try to resemble a bit the experience of a live presentation, not amplified.
If the characteristics described above are obtained, fine, but the most IMPORTANT thing is that our systems, whatever they may be, are capable of providing us with full SATISFACTION, regardless not only of the complexity they may have, but what is more important, of its price, since still, systems that sell up to millions, fail to reproduce the “real thing”.
Of course, the latter also depends on the recordings, but fortunately there are those that gracefully meet these parameters, it should be our job to find them.
It is a rarity that a medium like the one in the following link has recordings that comply acceptably well with what has been said here, and only as an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3smZkpqXYHs&list=PLcGtHXR1wwSKnjF40BEAi2TytbAyW41z7&index=825
Magic is fun and we could all use some more of both right now, in fact anytime. Can we ever have too much fun?
Whatever endeavours we choose to undertake nobody ever said you can’t have fun while doing it.
It’s that little bit of magic, those magical moments or once in a while magical experiences that can so enrich our lives.
Okay Genez, today’s topic is your chance… 🙂
There was a guy who said the coronavirus would disappear like magic. That worked out. It’s taken some science and a lot of clinical trials to make some progress. People near me put their faith in the almighty to perform a magic trick and make it disappear, which hasn’t worked out either.
To me ballet can be truly magical, in the sense that it pierces the soul, but I’m well aware it only happens because of a lifetime’s sheer bloody (literally) hard work.
Steven,
“There ‘was’ a guy…”
Past tense?
Unfortunately he still ‘is’
I don’t know about piercing the soul.
Presumably one has to have a soul for it to be pierced.
However, I am in awe of the way the human body can ‘bend & sway’…’twist & turn’…’leap & flip’ (I don’t want to use too many verbs) because of a lifetime’s sheer bloody (in the shoes) hard work.
For me a big part of that awe comes from just knowing & respecting the blood, sweat & tears that these performers willingly endure to create their magic.
For me, pairs Ice Figure Skating is also jaw-droppingly awesome & highly inspirational.
“What a piece of work is (wo)man!”
Search “Guillem Two Maliphant” and you will fins a 7:54 video. One woman, one light, about 4sqm and a minimalist soundtrack by Andy Cowton. It’s not magic, but it’s pure genius.
You have to be the greatest dancer of your generation to be able to do something so pure. So why is audio made so complicated?
Steven,
Thanks for the ‘tip’
I don’t know that it is “so complicated”
Again, it’s subjective.
I would suggest that it’s only as complicated as you want it to be.
I consider one CD player, one integrated amplifier, a pair of loudspeakers & six metres of copper wire to be fairly uncomplicated…each to their own 😉
I had such systems for 25 years.
Steven,
Maybe it’s because my (non-fussed) wife doesn’t pay any attention to my audio rig nor has she ever mentioned any displeasure as to how much real estate it occupies in our living room, that has kept me from investigating an all-in-one-box alternative.
Change, if seen as unnecessary, comes slowly to some of us.
What does the near future hold for the high end audio industry? Are there any breakthroughs in sight? From what I can tell the answer is no, it is just doubling down on what it already does. For some these are wondrous machines that transport them in time and space convincingly. For others like me, well let’s just say I’m not at all convinced. One thing though I think we can all agree on is that prices continue to rise. All except for the new KEF LS 50 Meta which is “infinitely better” than the LS 50 at the same price. Somehow $1500 for this tiny tyke speaker is not in my price/value or price/performance range.
So here are two examples of what I mean. The Wilson Chronosonic XVX is one of those items where audiophiles just run out of words to describe it. It only costs $329,000 a pair. Better get two pairs. BTW Audio Excellence in Toronto Canada is a PS Audio dealer too so if you buy a pair from them you can buy a compliment of PS audio electronics to go with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV7zRcOBa2k
Now here is a man for whom money seems to be a lesser issue. He wants to try everything. I think he changes equipment more frequently than I change my underwear. If he had a larger house I think he’d have far more equipment at any one time. A lot of the equipment he has are from companies I never heard of. Gryphon Mephisto and Boulder are two examples. Okay Paul, this is your insanely priced competition. At least some of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9gzgkY7fu4
He has complaints about all of them but he reserves the most scathing diatribe for Magico because of the way it treats its customers when it comes to service even for its $900,000 M speakers
We have all seen the same trick done by many different magicians. But from my POV, even when I do know how the trick was accomplished, it is the performance that matters, how did the performer make the trick is own. The same with audio devices.
Enjoy.
It is instructive to know how a magician accomplishes some of his magic acts. One important technique audiophiles and high end audio equipment manufacturers can learn from is created by a visual field illusion. From the perspective of the audience the visual field created for them in one way appears to be the same visual field created another way that logic tells us is impossible. The goal of high fidelity is, should be, and once was to duplicate sound fields from a recording that would be experienced live. The problem with the current approach as I see it is that the manufacturers should be studying these fields first before they even begin to contemplate designing systems to duplicate them. There is still much to be learned about them even by people who do, acousticians and acoustic architects. Instead they consider them last if at all and then only superficially. To duplicate a sound field all variables must be taken into account, especially the acoustics of the room the field will be created in. Use the room effectively as part of the system and it is your best friend. Fight it, try to eliminate it, try to kill it, and it is your worst enemy. The second strategy, the one this industry uses virtually guarantees failure every time. So why do their products sell as well as they do? Because most of their market is ignorant of what is trying to be duplicated. They don’t know how poor the results really are. But they must sense something is wrong or they wouldn’t keep shopping, swapping, and looking for something better.
I strongly doubt today that the goal of high fidelity ever was to duplicate live experience with the help of a pair of loudspeakers. It was rather a clever claim of promoters of stereo equipment manufacturers promising holographic imaging/ the illusion of soundstage by creating phantom images (aural illusion). In fact „stereo“ started with the concept of creating two channel audio via earphones (telephone earphones) from live (!) concerts/operas. No box loudspeakers at all! The first stereo recordings were of poorer quality than the mono recordings of those days and the omnipresent ping-pong effect required a third center channel for filling the sound hole in the middle! Could it be that the focus was rather better sound quality for cinema sound than for non existing home stereo? However, if there would have been the serious (!) goal of creating holographic live sound recording engineers and designers of loudspeakers would have studied psycho-acoustics and focused on the behavior of their designs in real world listening rooms. Quadrophonia could be sold only to those who hadn’t understood stereo and believed that a stereo recording would contain only the direct sound coming from the orchestra. Just add two rear speakers and you get the applause from behind. 🙂 An idea for simple minds! And high fidelity was only focused on accuracy meaning flat frequency response and 100% identical performance data for both channels, lowest distortion and noise, lowest crosstalk, great slew rates etc.. Serious attempts for holographic sound based on findings of psych-acoustics can be sound today only from Prof. Edgar Choueri (Princeton) designer of BACCH2 or designers of ambiophonic headphone system s with algorithms for individual HRTF and crossfeed.
This goes much further back than stereo. I goes all the way back to Thomas Edison. Here’s a collection of old ads.
An ad for the Webcor Ravina from 1954
https://backstage.ravinia.org/posts/2015/10/6/vintage-stereo-ads-claim-to-recreate-that-ravinia-sound.html
1965 ad RCA Victor stereo… realism that rivals the concert hall.
Yes that was the claim and the goal way back when. But they no longer seem to make those claims anymore. Why? Well one reason IMO is that the problem has beaten the best people in the industry to a pulp. Since they can’t solve it they claim it can’t be done. So what is their goal then besides making money? I don’t know anymore. Don’t tell me people are only too happy to pay tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear Nora Jones or Diana Krall recordings like they were live in their living rooms.
They were forced to argue the “they are here” concept because if they had to tell the truth that the recording also captured the reflected sound of the studio or concert hall they would have been able to offere a solution how to remove the listening room’s room acoustic! 🙂 And the quadrophonia story wouldn’t have been logical at all!
I have used the word magic to describe recordings, electronics, and speakers that are unusually musical – but that is a metaphor for the feeling of witnessing the impossible. In reality the audio arts are more like the opposite of magical praxis, creating a funhouse version of Plato’s Cave full of wavy mirrors and veiling smoke.
Magic is creating a visual image of something that is familiar, and then disrupting it by a contrasting image of something that can’t physically follow from the first impression. It usually depends on the 3D assumptions of two dimensional vision and optical devices like the cliche’ smoke, mirrors and false bottoms. The better term is ‘illusionist’.
Two channel audio, OTOH, depends on ‘breaking in’ your brain to an un-natural 1.1 dimensional sonic projection so you conjure a three dimensional image in your mind. This is a learned delusion, turning something that makes no sense into a familiar scene. The first time one encounters a “stereo” system, no such “pin-point imaging” exists, neither for pets, children, Mennonites nor aboriginals who have not cognitively trained to this strange and foreign technology. Even the first stereo experiment by Blumlein engaged Decca engineers and staff who were acclimated to mono audio systems of radios and electronic phonographs, and worked in an industrialized soundscape of noise pollution. If they had used an audience of musicians to measure the reaction, perhaps we would not have all spent double the money for new recordings, two amplifiers, and two speakers.
The narrative myth is the analogy between microphones and ears, between cilia and tuning forks. We do not work at all like a machine. Those funny shaped protrusions on the side of your head are highly sophisticated directional phase encoders, turning complex 3 Dimensional pressure gradients into a 2D wave that proceeds down the canal, through two membranes and three bones which have complex 3D movements, and project the encoded gradient map onto the surface of the Basilar Membrane in a 2D pattern, exciting thousands of active nerve endings each with dynamic variable Q reception and echoic sound generation.
Further, the basic neural transduction is transmitting a pulse at the time that the pressure peaks – so we sense in the time domain, not the frequency domain. This enables 3D spatial mapping by sensing the time and direction of arrival of transient pf individual waveform echoes. Any audio transmission that shifts phase scrambles the waveform coherence necessary for this cognitive discrimination. This includes every knob in a recording studio, mixing, feedback or feed forward, coupling caps, dielectric absorbtion, wire reactances, slewing limits, dynamic drivers, crossovers, driver interactions, cabinet edges and other diffractions, etc. (Cepstral response is more important than spectral response for a temporal sensing modality, so where are the cepstral graphs in the Stereophile side bars?)
Since the hearing system is physically non-resonant, there is no energy storage over 90 degrees; and with a cognitive time resolution of 3 micro-seconds, this temporal triggering means that in some sense we can hear pulse width and waveform information content encoded at 300KHz, even though the pathway from the outer to inner ears rolls off at 5KHz!
There are three components to hearing acoustic space: IALD, IATD and HRTF, but microphones can only capture the lesser two at best, and pan pots are the least of all, well under 1% (Inter-Aural Level Difference). We have made ear molds, put microphones inside them and then used In-Ear Monitors to get a little closer, but it is still a fraction of the spatial information; and further, everyone has different ears. If we used three or more microphones per custom ear mold, and a matching number of tracks and drivers on the IEMs (there are already 3 and 4 driver earbuds), you could hear something more akin to real imaging – but since your ear molds have to be physically represented at the musical event, this is for people who can afford tickets for their personal recording to be made.
In that context, a destination audio system where every performer is represented by a dedicated track and speaker is more practical, affordable and egalitarian.
Hey Paul,
This notion of “magic” is what I had foremost in mind when I changed speakers in my audio room a few months ago, from rather imposing Quad 2905s (which I owned for 10 years and had little reason to criticize) to much smaller Raidho td 1.2s that permit an unobstructed view through the large bow window and, by virtue of their remarkable performance, create quite some dissonance between what one hears and what one sees. It’s a fun illusion, and a gratifying one. I’m no longer determined to replicate the audio experience of the lovely concert hall in Davis CA, but more interested in being pleasantly surprised at how great things CAN sound in my own home. Your electronics are supplying some mighty fine current, I might add.
May you have a fun and rewarding year!
Michael
I think too much is made out of soundstaging and not enough about musical substance. Not enough about low effortless distortion. Not enough about how well they sound when you step out of the sweet spot.
There are speaker’s that image well while retaining the uncompressed essence of the music. The signal fed from the amplifier is not messed with by the speaker crossover.
Vintage EPI speaker’s with their inverted dome air spring tweeter and no crossover except for a simple high pass capacitor are perfect examples at a reasonable cost.
There are complex crossover designs that get it right and sound like no crossover at all and some complex designs that mess it up. To go with a simple capacitor the woofer and tweeters need to be well matched so their natural slopes provide the perfect crossover.
Everyone should experience the EPI sound. In my opinion they were the best speaker’s of their day and a benchmark to what all speaker’s should sound like. Everyone should own a pair of EPI 100 with well rebuit foam surrounds or the Human speaker remanufactured equivalent just as a reference. A simple but well made get out of the way of the music design that has withstood the test of time. You really understand the word linear when listening to them. They are linear in every aspect not just frequency. Llinear in a sense that the amplifier isn’t working hard and sees the speaker as a simple impedance or ohm. They rub the senses in a way few speaker’s do. An extraordinary lack of coloration to the sound. A sense of realism and energy. No sense the amplifier is straining. A warmness at all frequencies that allows long listening sessions without developing listeners fatique. Seamless transition of frequency and depth. Dynamic impact you can hear even at low volume levels. When I listen to moden speaker’s regardless of price they must have that EPI signature to them not just image well or I won’t consider them. Few have it regardless of size or price which is why they have a cult like following.
Im a fan of using the highest quality parts in as simple a design as possible. The least amount of circuitry in the path that achieves decent test bench numbers the better. More time spent on testing, tweaking, and quality control. The simpler the design less can go wrong when it comes to quality control and failure. Less in the way of the music.
Joe,
Robin Marshall, designer of British EPOS loudspeakers, also designed the Mordaunt-Short – ‘M3.10’ back in the late 1980’s with just a cap as the Xover.
It too had a cult following as a great sounding, five-star ‘cheapy’.
Another example of quality parts with a simple design.
The best crossover is no crossover. Drivers designed and built by the speaker manufacturer so their natural slopes are so closely matched that all that is needed is a high pass capacitor to remove low frequencies to the tweeter. I’m not saying a complex crossover cannot sound good too but there’s nothing better than the drivers doing their thing without the need of a crossover. The crossover might be simple in the design but matching the drivers to work with a simple capacitor takes work. Most speaker manufacturers prefer to buy or make quality drivers and tame the slopes with a complex crossover rather than trying to match the drivers so a crossover isn’t needed which is harder to do.
Joe,
Yes, I agree & that’s exactly what designers like Robin Marshall aim for.
If it doesn’t need to be complex, why make it so.
Denis Morecroft from ‘DNM Design’ is another Brit who goes for ‘simple but good’ design.
Yep you might fix one problem while creating another one in which you have to fix that problem and before you know it say goodbye to transparency and detail. Say goodbye to musicality. Hello to phase shift problems that Paul frequently talks about.
I’m also talking about amplifier, preamplifier and other electronic components, not just speaker design. I prefer simple to complex. Naim designs their components that way and people love the sound. My Creek integrated is designed that way. Less is better.
I always wanted to hear those EPOS speakers Fat Rat. Have you heard them? They looked like the famous British Celestion SL-6 with a 8 inch instead of 6 inch woofer without the Celestion complex crossover. Were the EPOS ported or sealed?
I prefer sealed acoustic suspension speakers because I have heard poorly designed ported speakers that farted at me. I have also heard good sounding ported systems with two ports or transmission designs. Those seem to work better than the classic one port design. I’m sure there are good one port designs too that don’t fart.
Joe,
Yep if you’re gonna drive ported standmount two ways HARD then there’s agood chance that they will fart.
However, I had a pair of Klipsch – ‘RP160-M’ standmounts (I hate the term ‘bookshelves’) for 8 months back in 2018/19 & because of the way that Klipsch designed the curves at both ends of their plastic rectangular ports, they would not/could not fart, no matter how hard I drove them.
I’ve gone back to ported 3-way floorstanders (2x bass drivers per ‘box’) as they seem to do more justice to Rock music than standmounters can do.
These have 3.5″ diameter ports that are massively rounded (internally & externally) at their ends…completely ‘fart-proof’…so far…
Upper bass notes seem to be tighter and more defined on a sealed system. There’s no doubt well designed ported exceptions to that rule.
I agree, however loud, amplified Rock ‘n Roll isn’t so ‘fussed’ about that sort of ‘upper bass note’ accuracy…especially in my current financial audio budget region.
If I was mostly into unamplified female/male vocals, jazz, blues, chamber, voice & guitar, etc. I’d probably own a pair of ATC – ‘SMC 40s’ by now.
You should hear the 4 way NHT 2.9 or 3.3 speakers. Only 87 db efficiency rating and sealed but they do well on all music. I have the 2.9 and someday I want to buy the 3.3. The 3.3 made it into Stereophiles class A components which is no easy thing to do with a 6000.00 speaker. No subwoofer needed.
Stereophiles full range class A components that is. Important because they also have a restricted low frequency class A rating for speakers. Getting into full range class A isn’t easy for 5 to 6 g depending on it’s finish. Hats off to NHT’s Ken Kantor.
ES-11 had a 165mm main driver & a 25mm aluminium dome tweeter & the ES-14 had the same drivers but in a bigger enclosure.
Marshall moulded the the basket for the main driver as an integral part of the front baffle (a one piece)
I never did get to listen to them because I was offered a pair of ex-demo Harbeth – ‘HL Compacts’ (now C7ES3) from the importer/distributor at the same price as the ES-14’s so I went for them as they had an 8″ main driver & a bigger enclosure…since I was more Rock ‘n Roll than anything else I wanted as much bass response as I could get.
Both the ES-11’s, ES-14’s & HL Compact’s were/are ported (HL’s at the front)
The stereo loudspeaker 3D soundstage illusion is like most magic tricks. It only works from a limited vantage point. Move much off axis vertically or horizontally and you are aware or reminded of the trickery. Most of us already know how the classic magic tricks are performed, but even so, we still enjoy the illusions. The more realistic the execution, the more we enjoy it, even though we know how it works.
Indeed, it’s a learned illusion by having trained the “ears” to get acquainted with near identical sound coming from two different points. But because there is no free lunch, the sound of the stereo image is less transparent and clear/pure than the sound from a single loudspeaker. Simply move from the center seat to one of your speakers and you will hear it immediately!
The first time I heard a stereo system I heard the illusion. Our brains beginning at birth learn to process near identical sounds coming in at two different points — our ears. The differences between the sound captured by each ear influence the brain’s creation of the 3D virtual image in our heads. Each ear corresponds to a stereo channel microphone and loudspeaker. If we move closer to one speaker we are relatively turning down the volume of the other channel, as though we have only one good ear. The single channel may sound clearer and purer but it is typically not as natural, because it loses the sound field wave information contained in the second channel. Perhaps your point is that with stereo loudspeakers, unlike low crosstalk headphones, there is some redundancy of what the two ears hear because the left ear hears part of what only the right ear would hear in real life, and the right ear hears part of what only the left ear would hear in real life. But that is even true of what we hear in real life. Our heads do not fully shield our left ear from hearing part of what the right ear hears, and vice versa. By moving closer to the loudspeakers this mixing of left and right channel sound is lessened, and it becomes more like listening through headphones. Room reflections in the recording venue and in the listener room also cause mixing of left and right channel information and influence the perceived clarity of the 3D image. Obviously the illusion is not perfect in the two channel system recording and playback system. In a real situation our ears are hearing complex wavefronts and wave interactions that cannot be captured by only two channels of microphones and playback speakers.
I am pretty sure that there are audible effects based on learning or training when listening to stereo. I had some friends (non-audiophiles, no stereo aficionados) here listening to my stereo system and they heard sounds coming from behind the listening seat. I didn’t hear this effect. But even my older sister heard a sound source from behind while my younger sister didn’t have this strange perception. Thus I guess acuvox is correct in claiming these effects based on training the ears.
Maybe your friends hear some high frequency sounds reflecting off surfaces behind the listening position that your ears are not as sensitive to. That is probably due to a difference of hearing, not training. I agree that our hearing involves training — training that begins when we are born and our brains begin processing external sounds from the environment. By the time most people hear a stereo system their brains are already able to process two-channel audio input and form the virtual 3D image in their heads. That is why stereo audio works immediately for most people. Some posters believe their hearing is different from, even superior to, others because they are “trained.” They may notice certain audio effects more and better articulate what they are hearing, because they are focusing on those particular effects. I still don’t buy that through training our hearing is somehow superior to that of the untrained.
As I sat back and listened to music for 6hrs straight last night I got put into a magical journey of bliss, excitement and wonder.
I think the term “magic” is maybe putting it lightly. I’m gonna say it is more like a Miracle, especially when we talk or think about some of the incredible technological advancements we as human beings have made over time, especially in Audio.
On the 28th of Dec I implemented a P3 Stellar Powerplant into my sound chain and I could not take my eyes off my system for how all the beautiful pieces of tech come together and create this incredible, vivid sound. Not only that I think my system itself really looks really cool and I’m so grateful to have it.
Anyway. Point being. I can analyze the tech all I want, but for now I’m dimming the lights and venturing into sonic bliss because that is what the P3 is allowing me to do and with ease.
All my equipment has new life with the AC Regenerator and now so do I.