Using wide front speakers

[wettou]

I have a question have any of you have experience with using wide front speakers and if so, how did it work?

http://www.audyssey.com/audio-technology/audyssey-dsx

Experiments have shown that human localization is better in front than to the sides or behind. This means that for front-weighted content such as movies and most music, good engineering dictates that we employ more channels in the front hemisphere than the back. Imaging is also better horizontally than vertically and so good engineering also dictates that channels must first be added in the same plane as our ears before going to higher elevations.

Perception is not the only factor. The physics of room acoustics for music have been well studied, and their correlation with subjective impression increasingly understood over the last 30 years. This research has shown that we have strong built-in preferences for the direction, frequency response, and time of arrival of reflected sound. Additional channels and surround sound processing are needed to properly render these components.

[madmac]

Fascinating!!. I used to have this interesting idea whereby you would have many speakers in a room that would be tailored to do just one thing. ie....One speaker would do the bass guitar only and the other speaker would do the guitar....one for the drums and so on. There would be some sort of processor to arrange what instrument would get sent to what speaker. I believe this concept could create a very real band in the room sound effect.

[PewterTA]

I think this basically covers the fact that more speakers gives you a more seemless front sound stage. Which is valid way of thinking. Think of it as a TV... more pixels, higher resolution, better image quality...except this is with sound.

However, the problem lies in the fact that all Audyssey is doing is manipulating the sound to create thos fields... those have not been specifically used by the recording engineer. So your depending on their processing and calculations to make the sound those speakers are producing. It's really no different the any other DSP done to the signal and where I prefer a more true representation of the what the audio recording engineer wants me to hear.

It also is trying to make up for the fact that sooo many speakers don't image well when most people buy the low end speakers that all sound comes directly from the speaker. If you have a good speaker that can image like crazy...well then do you reall need the extra speakers and processing?!

Just my opinion and what I've heard from the Audyssey and Yamaha's front wide speaker processing they've had for years... It just didn't do much for me.

Now I did hear a theatre that used the Bowers & Wilkins CT series of home theater speakes... Hands down the best movie exterience of my life! Those speakers are UNBELIEVEABLE for theatre reproduction... If I was rich, I'd have them for my theatre room, no question! You don't extra speakers with the way those imaged and sounded!

[madmac]

I think this basically covers the fact that more speakers gives you a more seemless front sound stage. Which is valid way of thinking. Think of it as a TV... more pixels, higher resolution, better image quality...except this is with sound.

However, the problem lies in the fact that all Audyssey is doing is manipulating the sound to create thos fields... those have not been specifically used by the recording engineer. So your depending on their processing and calculations to make the sound those speakers are producing. It's really no different the any other DSP done to the signal and where I prefer a more true representation of the what the audio recording engineer wants me to hear.

It also is trying to make up for the fact that sooo many speakers don't image well when most people buy the low end speakers that all sound comes directly from the speaker. If you have a good speaker that can image like crazy...well then do you reall need the extra speakers and processing?!

Just my opinion and what I've heard from the Audyssey and Yamaha's front wide speaker processing they've had for years... It just didn't do much for me.

Now I did hear a theatre that used the Bowers & Wilkins CT series of home theater speakes... Hands down the best movie exterience of my life! Those speakers are UNBELIEVEABLE for theatre reproduction... If I was rich, I'd have them for my theatre room, no question! You don't extra speakers with the way those imaged and sounded!

I actually am talking about audio engineering. Kinda' like dvd audio multi channel but simply more channels. The discs would be mastered to reproduce all the instruments into individual channels and sent to their respective speakers. If you like rock, then there would be about 5-6 speakers needed. If you like classical, you would need many more. The speakers of course would be tailored to the instrument that they represent. Very expensive concept but it could yield great results (to very wealthy people of course!!!).

[PewterTA]

I wasn't talking about what you said Madmac... I understand what you were going for. The only downside for what you at saying is the fact then that every speaker has to be able to produce every sound perfectly. Otherwise the violin is ALWAYS in one location where that speaker is best at reproducing it. And then...how do you know you have that speaker in the correct location in the first place?

Only way you could do what you are thinking of is to have Horizontal Line arrays so that the sound could be produced by "rows" of speakers to be anywhere in the front sound stage. But then you're limited to how much height you can fit these lines of speakers into.

It's funny about 15 years ago I was at the same thinking as you are right now.

I had read an article back a few years ago (maybe even up to almost 10 years) that they were building/trying to get Hollywood to upgrade the "theatre" standard. Where behind the screen there were about a few hundred little speakers (maybe 2 or 4" ones) so you could create a completely seemless front sound stage and then it wrapped all the way around you with maybe 10 rows of the same speakers. They also put lines of speakers in the ceiling to really completely cover you (sort of like any good iMAX globed theatre). Through the use of a computer it could direct a sound to any of the (my guess) 400 - 500 some speakers...which gave you near pinpoint accuracy. It was to be the "next big thing" in theaters. I wish I could find the video or article or whatever it was I saw on it.

I thought it was a pretty brilliant idea until I heard the cost was something like 8x the cost of your normal theatre. Right then, I knew no one would go for it (in the theatre business) as they have always stated they hardly make enough as it is.

Was a shame, for movies it would've rocked I think. Music... possibly, live recordings might have benefitted from it... maybe. Who knows.

[wkhanna]

Multi-Speaker Suround Becoming Obsolete

Link to Article on Binaural Recording

I have this HiRes file thanks to Dan (PewterTA).
It truly is amazing.