What is Stereophonic Sound Reproduction To You?

[Bruce Swedien]

Have you ever seen a really good definition of what stereo music reproduction actually is. If we attempt to precisely define the word

[coyote-1]

You nailed it in saying it exists only in your imagination. No two speakers or four or eight can ever truly reproduce the positions and dynamics of a live concert hall. So you either

a) do the best you can, and live with the results

or

b) create a new audioscape as defined by your imagination.

 

I like it either way as long as the source material has merit.

[AudioMaverick]

Bruce, I am seeing two definitions in your explaination... Stereophonic repeoduction & Sonic Imagery In Sound.

 

I think *Stereophonic Audio Reproduction* is the art of capturing audible experience and reproducing it in such a way that in listening through replay equipment, the experience replicates or approximates the original experience.

 

That being said, giving someone a *Sonic Fantasy*listening experience would fall into a *Sonic Imagery* alteration of the original experience. Not bad, just different.

[Ani]

Bruce,

 

To me, stereophonic implies a distinct separation of tones during playback while giving each musical instrument its' own identy. The difference between monaural and stereo, IMO, is like viewing a piece of art in 3-D as opposed to a flat figure painting. Stereo allows each separate tone to be defined with it very own character and allows it to stand out in its' own way. When sculptured by a master of sound; the tones blend together and create a masterpiece. You hear each individual quality, yet you hear the entire composition as one.

[boosh]

To me the ultimate experience would be:

 

Able to choose which position I want to be in.

 

Do I want to hear what the drummer heared when the Track was recorded??

 

Or do I want to be on the rythmguitarist's position.

 

Sometimes I feel like playing bass and sometimes I pick up a guitar,...

 

Would be ool if I had that choice with listening to music also.

 

 

Wouldn't it be cool to listen to your favorite CD and being able to mix all the tracks to your liking??

 

I know people at home love to fiddle with their EQ settings.

 

Wouldn't they love to have faders also??

 

So they can remix their favorite band,....

 

That would be the ultimate listening experience.......

[Bruce Swedien]

Lee Knight sez------->

[Bruce Swedien]

Ani sez-------->To me, stereophonic implies a distinct separation of tones during playback while giving each musical instrument its' own identy. The difference between monaural and stereo, IMO, is like viewing a piece of art in 3-D as opposed to a flat figure painting. Stereo allows each separate tone to be defined with it very own character and allows it to stand out in its' own way. When sculptured by a master of sound; the tones blend together and create a masterpiece. You hear each individual quality, yet you hear the entire composition as one.

 

Brucie sez------->Thats's pretty close. To me, Monaural has always reminded me of listening to music through a large "Hole In The Wall"...

 

Ani, I do think the important issue is that Stereo music reproduction gives the sound-field an illusion of having direction, position and depth in the area between the loudspeakers.

[fantasticsound]

 

Originally posted by Lee Knight

[Bruce Swedien]

boosh-wooshi sez------->To me the ultimate experience would be:

 

Able to choose which position I want to be in.

 

Do I want to hear what the drummer heared when the Track was recorded??

 

Or do I want to be on the rythmguitarist's position.

 

Sometimes I feel like playing bass and sometimes I pick up a guitar,...

 

Would be ool if I had that choice with listening to music also.

 

 

Wouldn't it be cool to listen to your favorite CD and being able to mix all the tracks to your liking??

 

I know people at home love to fiddle with their EQ settings.

 

Wouldn't they love to have faders also??

 

So they can remix their favorite band,....

 

That would be the ultimate listening experience.......

 

Brucie sez-----Booshi, I can tell you're a REAL musician!! You are a TRUE Gasser to the first water!!!

 

What a great bunch we have here!!!

[Bruce Swedien]

AudioMaverick sez-------->Bruce, I am seeing two definitions in your explaination... Stereophonic repeoduction & Sonic Imagery In Sound.

 

I think *Stereophonic Audio Reproduction* is the art of capturing audible experience and reproducing it in such a way that in listening through replay equipment, the experience replicates or approximates the original experience.

 

That being said, giving someone a *Sonic Fantasy*listening experience would fall into a *Sonic Imagery* alteration of the original experience. Not bad, just different.

 

Brucie sez------>Yes!!! Yes!!! Yes!!!

 

"Not bad, just different." You underestimate yourself!!!

" Not bad, just Fantastic!" Is more like what it is!

 

Brucie the Viking!!!

[Bruce Swedien]

coyote-1 sez-------->You nailed it in saying it exists only in your imagination. No two speakers or four or eight can ever truly reproduce the positions and dynamics of a live concert hall. So you either

a) do the best you can, and live with the results

or

b) create a new audioscape as defined by your imagination.

 

I like it either way as long as the source material has merit.

 

Brucie sez------>Very true. I've been very lucky in that early on in this business I hooked up with the best the industry has to offer musically. And then I had the smarts to do something about it! It hasn't always been easy. But I wouldn't have it any other way!

 

Brucie the Viking!!!

[MorePaul]

 

Originally posted by AudioMaverick Bruce, I am seeing two definitions in your explaination... Stereophonic repeoduction & Sonic Imagery In Sound. I think *Stereophonic Audio Reproduction* is the art of capturing audible experience and reproducing it in such a way that in listening through replay equipment, the experience replicates or approximates the original experience. That being said, giving someone a *Sonic Fantasy*listening experience would fall into a *Sonic Imagery* alteration of the original experience. Not bad, just different.

 

 

This sesms reasonable

 

and I think it adresses the "real" and "imaginary" ... the "real" v "imagined " is covered in reproduction v production/imaging

 

"sterophonic" just covers the representation of a "solid" environment....

I probably would say we don't even want to restrict the technology by saying it requires a certain type on coding (using multiple channels or mulitiple pickups...perhaps there will be recording/encoding schemes that do not even have discrete channels and I suppose we already have very rudimentary "stereo image" synthesizers)

Just like patents...don't limit your scope by over-spec'ing..if all stereophonic means is to have a "solid" representation of an acoustic event...that's all we should spec

 

[MorePaul]

so how do you guys feel about binaural?

 

I'm a big fan myself

[Mr. Botch]

I don't know. With the (temporary) advent of quadrophonic sound, and especially with the advent of 5.1 and 6.1 Surround Sound, I would think most people would consider the definition "stereophonic" to default to "music coming out of two speakers, mixed to create the illusion of spread and depth"; regardless of the original latin root definitions.

[Bruce Swedien]

MorePaul asks------->so how do you guys feel about binaural?

 

I'm a big fan myself

 

Brucie sez------->I did a series of Master Classes at The University of Wisconsin in Madison many years ago. It was all about Binaural Sound reproduction. It was very interesting, informative and alot of fun!

 

I still have all my notes and class material somewhere. I have a binaural head. Someone made it for me and ingraved "The Acusonic Recording Process" on it!!! Cute!!!

 

Brucie the Viking!!!

[MorePaul]

to paraphrase John Malkovitch

 

"yes, but what I asked was how (do you feel about it)"

 

I mean in terms of your overall use/listening

 

Like it

hate it

 

gets you seasick

 

Love it, but find the listening config too restricting

 

find that the personal player rebirth is making it practical listening

 

 

Do you find the holophonic subcarrier to be anything more than "fancy binaural"

 

"Oh, I'll listen but over directional monitors"

 

How do you find the concept of trying to strike a balance between external soundstage production and strict binaural in a "dual use" mix?

 

these sort of things

[fantasticsound]

I love binaural sound. Finest kind, when auditioned on fine headphones.

 

What gets me, Bruce, is that most timbres we've grown to love are incumbent on techniques that, regardless of what we want to believe, are designed to capture sound in ways humans almost never hear in the real world.

 

Take, for example, voice.

 

How many people listen to singers without a microphone? How many listen to a great singer from 1/2" in front of their mouth? That's the approximation you get when you listen to a close mic'd performer or instrument.

 

When was the last time anyone put their head directly in front of a kick drum for a listen? How about inside a kick drum? Do you put your ears up to a hi-hat or a guitar cabinet blaring?

 

How many have heard an uncompressed recording?

 

My point is almost everything we hear on recordings these days falls squarely in the imaginary sonic field. Yet some would say the imaginary field is a cop out for being unable to recreate reality. I disagree.

 

We can get close to reality. But like you, I find far more inspiration in becoming a part of the creative process as I mix.

[MorePaul]

Those are good points -- There was (I suppose still is) that "traditionalist" movement in orchestral recording where you just record 2 channels from an optimized listening position

 

those really into production could probably name the engineering proponent from the hip...anyone?

[alfonso]

When I was a kid and started listening to music as something better to do than many other things, I was looking for experiences of new places, new faces, new dimensions, to be more precise I tried to expand my world through the sounds.

 

Stereophony, for me has kept this task, it's the way to bring the listener in a particular place, that by extension becomes also a particular time, different from the real ones.

 

Naturally this is not necessarily a weird space/time experience, bringing a reproduction more or less faithful of the power and the dimension of an orchestra in a living room or in a car is a miracle itself.

 

But for different genres of music I like to perceive different realities. With a small Jazz combo I'd love to hear the woods of the stage, I imagine very soft but randomized reflections, that mix of perceptional concentration and a slight and delicate mess all around, sensuality, lights changing, people moving...

 

For electronic music, as a listener, I want to fly, the change of the filter resonances and a slow cutoff descending must be like diving through galaxies, the movement must be totally relative, my sofa must travel....

 

This is stereophony for me. Going somewhere else.

 

I'm not totally sure, it might be the quality of surround mixes I've heard, but I find surround somehow limitative, it fixes you on your seat, after you recognized the trick it lacks surprise.

Stereophony and surround, they are a bit like the book and the film from it, 90% of the times you have a trip with the first and you watch a touristic catalog with the second....just an impression.

[Deny]

If you want an opinion from a home-studio self-taught musician/producer/engineer, I find myself somewhat neglecting stereophonic experience on most of my recording work. But what I usually do and like to hear is give the listener the same perspective I get, which is as if he/she was playing with the band instead of listening to a show. I guess ultimately it all comes down to personal taste and whether people like what they hear or not. Fortunately I've been lucky with that so far

[russrags]

I've had the pleasure of being able to listen to a pretty large quantity of 5.1 CDs. All the great ones like Steely Dan, Queen stuff I know really well all left me a little disappointed. Dean Parks GTR solo's on the regular Stereo versions of the Steely Dan stuff just send me into Euphoria, where the surround versions don't take me there at all in fact I do find it hard to figure out where "I'M supposed to be."

 

I've got more thought's on Stereo as it exists in our Imagination, but it'll have to wait until later ... I've got to get back to work. There's some real neat MJ/Jennifer Lopez/Quincy things I'd like to talk about

 

Russ

[doug osborne]

 

Originally posted by Mr. Botch ...most people would consider the definition "stereophonic" to default to "music coming out of two speakers, mixed to create the illusion of spread and depth";

 

 

But that would be wrong, or at least terribly limiting. Surround is stereo.

 

I think Brucie's definition is limiting, but at least in the right way - he doesn't exclude more than two presentation channels, even if he doesn't embrace that type of delivery. I believe also that he is implying that multiple-mono sources are not true stereo (or at least that true-stereo-acquired sources are better stereo), and I would agree with that up to a point.

 

That point is where the realistic ends and the fantastic begins, and I think there is room for both.

[doug osborne]

 

Originally posted by MorePaul Those are good points -- There was (I suppose still is) that "traditionalist" movement in orchestral recording where you just record 2 channels from an optimized listening position those really into production could probably name the engineering proponent from the hip...anyone?

 

 

Tons of proponents...

 

I would wager that the vast majority of simply-recorded orchestral releases are done with some variation of a Decca Tree, which involves three microphones to deliver via two speakers to two ears.

[Counterpoint]

Stereophonic sound reproduction, to me, means arrangement of sounds around a horizontal plane at my ear level so as to (a) give the impression of musicians sitting at different positions on a stage (as in an orchestral performance) or, (b) to provide a more intriguing listening experience, as in Beatles and Floyd records.

[MorePaul]

 

Originally posted by doug osborne Tons of proponents... I would wager that the vast majority of simply-recorded orchestral releases are done with some variation of a Decca Tree, which involves three microphones to deliver via two speakers to two ears.

 

 

Sorry there -- left off the "s"

 

Perhaps you can refresh me on some of the engineers so maybe I can dig through the old collection for liner notes...I seem to remember a few of the purists going 2 mic placements with albsolute minimum component count in the path (as ultra purists in whatever are wont to do)

 

and, of course, my fav...the binarual recordings