advice needed

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nicole_Rose
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boogieman481 said:
psychoacoustic thats the word... thanx mshilarious
It all has to do with making you THINK the sound is moving around you... your ears dont pick up certain frequecies as well when the sound is above you... and different ones when the sound is behind you.... so you boost and cut those frequencies as needed... i have heard a program make a bee "fly" around my head in circles.. and then above me... and then below me...

yup....i hear ya loud and clear now. low frequencies vs. higher frequencies "project" differntly than the other...........

i see where your going with this now.........


good job! for a minute there, i thought i was back in my old college "philosophy" class agian.................i was way to deep in thought on what your trying to say, and do. and over looking the key point.

this is going to be an interesting thread...............
 
you wanna get really confused... read a book on psychoacoustics... it makes philosophy seem easy.... takes you all the way back to the "if a tree falls in the woods..." saying
 
Nicole_Rose said:
you get it.

how far are we along in that? what are we capable of?
Carver Electronics was doing this over 20 years ago in their "Sonic Holography" audiophile preamps, and with fairly neat results...at least in their demonstration rooms. The technology is not new in that regard.

The basic problem with audio 3D from stereo sources is that the 3D image is not very robust. Because sound waves reflect and disperse so easily, the image is very dependant upon and vulnerable to the size and the acoustics of the room itself. And even in a properly set-up room, the 3D image only properly appears within a narrowly-defined sweet spot near the center of the room.

What's more, is creating such an image would require 3D phase encoding of the stereo mix, which is difficult to do, requires very expensive gear, and also means you'll have a mix which will sound horrible on playback systems like home stereos with more than two active speakers, iPods, headphones, car stereos, boom boxes, etc. that are not designed to even consider 3D spacial playback.

The better way to try and create a 3D soundfield is thorugh the use of a 5.1 or better surround system. Many of the acoustic and location drawbacks of the phase holography system above apply here too, but by specifically mixing for 5.1 surround you are mixing for a specific playback environment and don't have the translation issues you have with phased stereo.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Carver Electronics was doing this over 20 years ago in their "Sonic Holography" audiophile preamps, and with fairly neat results...at least in their demonstration rooms. The technology is not new in that regard.

The basic problem with audio 3D from stereo sources is that the 3D image is not very robust. Because sound waves reflect and disperse so easily, the image is very dependant upon and vulnerable to the size and the acoustics of the room itself. And even in a properly set-up room, the 3D image only properly appears within a narrowly-defined sweet spot near the center of the room.

What's more, is creating such an image would require 3D phase encoding of the stereo mix, which is difficult to do, requires very expensive gear, and also means you'll have a mix which will sound horrible on playback systems like home stereos with more than two active speakers, iPods, headphones, car stereos, boom boxes, etc. that are not designed to even consider 3D spacial playback.

The better way to try and create a 3D soundfield is thorugh the use of a 5.1 or better surround system. Many of the acoustic and location drawbacks of the phase holography system above apply here too, but by specifically mixing for 5.1 surround you are mixing for a specific playback environment and don't have the translation issues you have with phased stereo.

G.

yup....i knew someone whould swoop in here and drop a "REALITY" bomb on us...........

i belive glens answer is the answer we were all looking for...................straight to the point, and all truth!
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
you'll have a mix which will sound horrible on playback systems like home stereos with more than two active speakers, iPods, headphones, car stereos, boom boxes, etc. that are not designed to even consider 3D spacial playback

I will have to disagree with you Glen as like I said, I have heard one on headphones that sounded amazing...
 
boogieman481 said:
I will have to disagree with you Glen as like I said, I have heard one on headphones that sounded amazing...
It depends on what environment the mix was created for. A 3D mix created to sound best in a physical space requires different encoding than a mix designed to sound best in headphones, because the physical acoustical laws are different. You'll still get LSD-ish effects in the headphones which can sound "amazing", but the actual spatial image will be different, if even coherant at all.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
LSD-ish effects in the headphones

lol can't say I have a "controled experience" to compare tha one too....

But yeah that makes complete sense. It was probably mixed strickly for headphones
 
boogieman481 said:
lol can't say I have a "controled experience" to compare tha one too....
Oh, man, I just had the wildest "headphone flashback"! :D

G.
 
bennychico11 said:
http://wavearts.com/Panorama5.html

Hugo Zuccarelli studied holophonic sound. I think this has been done on some Pink Floyd albums or similar artists. Do a search on holophonic sound and you'll find some audio examples. It's actually rather creepy/cool. There's a sample of someone lighting matches and walking around that's my favorite.

Then of course there is binaural recording which is similar.

http://www.sound-ideas.com/holophonic.html

good lord! i just listend to some of the 'helicopter sound clips"...........

thats cool!

i have a few plug ins, that look to be the same or simlilar layout ( mapping grid with a "head" in the center of the field to position instruments).......i wonder if it has these cababilities to do such things.,........ive never tried it out yet.
 
Just to reenforce what's already been said, I just took a look at the site Benny referenced. Note that it says:

"Demos labeled “headphones” should be listened to over headphones; demos labels “speakers” should be listened to over stereo loudspeakers."

He creates two different mixes, depending upon the playback mechanism, because the "rules" are different for each.

G.
 
chessrock said:
What you're probably looking for is called "Holophonic" sound.

You can get more info on it here: http://www.holophonic.ch/splash.php

You can also hear a sample of it here:




Pretty cool stuff.

yep, that's what I was talking about above ;)

"The first audio experimentations with this new microphone have been realized recording Pink Floyd for their album Final Cut."

There ya go...Pink Floyd...so it's been around for awhile.
Here's the link to the rest of the files on that site. Including a mono/stereo/holophonic comparison....pretty trippy stuff http://www.holophonic.ch/archivio/testaudio/
 
this thread is becoming interesting.

although most examples are in "motion".......how would this affect muisc production? i mean....most of the time....instruments are stationary.

do you guys think it would be benificial to use Holophonic to pan an instrument in a stationary spot, rather than using the traditional panning found on a mixing console?

i wonder if it would sound differnt.................
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
The better way to try and create a 3D soundfield is thorugh the use of a 5.1 or better surround system. Many of the acoustic and location drawbacks of the phase holography system above apply here too, but by specifically mixing for 5.1 surround you are mixing for a specific playback environment and don't have the translation issues you have with phased stereo.

G.

Thanks Glen. Within the confines of 5.1 surround what are we capable of? could a given instrument be placed anywhere within relative position of the center of the 3 dimensional soundstage? can the instrument's location be moved around?
 
bryank said:
this thread is becoming interesting.

although most examples are in "motion".......how would this affect muisc production? i mean....most of the time....instruments are stationary.

do you guys think it would be benificial to use Holophonic to pan an instrument in a stationary spot, rather than using the traditional panning found on a mixing console?

i wonder if it would sound differnt.................


The problem is holophonic sound, like binaural, loses most spatial reproduction when played through normal speakers. Although, Zuccarelli designed some sort of special speaker system that allows everyone in a crowd to hear the same holophonic recording. But anyone listening in a car, or in the kitchen with a stereo in the other room...would never hear what the engineer intended and in fact standing out of the stereo field could make the mix sound worse because of the phase relationships.

That and there's a lot of work that is involved when doing holophonic sound. It's based on the same principle as projected holograms (you remember those little devices where you could place a paper clip in them and they would project the paperclip on the outside of the device?). Much like how holograms use a reference beam Hugo believes the ear and brain uses it's own reference beam.
External sounds are recorded with a type of binaural head, but it reportedly records the interference pattern formed by mixing the sound with an inaudible, digitally superimposed reference signal. The brain/ear provides the second reference beam when listening back to it...effectively decoding the original signal and reproducing all the original ambient conditions. There's speculations on what the second reference beam is (high pitched freq. or pink noise)

Anyway, this is probably some of the same reasons why we don't see TV shows or movies created in hologram form. Too much is involved.
 
chessrock said:
What you're probably looking for is called "Holophonic" sound.

You can get more info on it here: http://www.holophonic.ch/splash.php

You can also hear a sample of it here:




Pretty cool stuff.

I don't know if that was intended for speakers or headphones (i'm using headphones). I heard left/right, up/down, and it was always behind me. I never heard anything in front of me. It was pretty cool though.
 
Yeah the helicopter one always sounded behind you... I will try to get a clip of the "bee" I was talking about and send it to anyone that wants to hear it.
 
Nicole_Rose said:
Thanks Glen. Within the confines of 5.1 surround what are we capable of? could a given instrument be placed anywhere within relative position of the center of the 3 dimensional soundstage? can the instrument's location be moved around?
bryank said:
although most examples are in "motion".......how would this affect muisc production? i mean....most of the time....instruments are stationary.

do you guys think it would be benificial to use Holophonic to pan an instrument in a stationary spot, rather than using the traditional panning found on a mixing console?
With either holophony/sonic holography or with surround sound, the mix can be static or in motion, it matters not; though the effects are more noticable when they're moving, of course.

And with both, the coherancy of the placement depands greatly on many other factors such as tracking quality and frequency response, converter/clock quality, playback environment, etc.

Nicole: I can't get inside your head to determine exactly what your needs and expectations are regarding the resolution of the 3D image, but if you're expecting a true sonic holograph where source A is 3 feet away from the listener at an azimuth of 70° (about 2 o'clock) and source B is about 5 feet directly behind the listener, that will only work as well as the quality of your tracking, the amount of channel crosstalk in your analg mixer and devices, and the quality of your digital clockling and converters. Muddy frequency response, noisy channel crosstalk and digital jitter all can and will smear the "image". This happens in regular stereo mixing as well. The addition of another dimension adds yet another degree of criticality to the need for sharpness or focus of image.

Also, remember that when played through loudspeakers, the 3D image will hold up (depending upon the size and shape of the room, the acoustic properties of the room's surfaces, etc.) only in a narrow area in the center of the room. Once the listener moves out from this position, the 3D image collapses. If you're expecting to place an artist in a certain part of the room and to have it sound like she is standing there doing her thing while the listener walks a circle around her or something like that, it doesn't really work that way.

bryank: Using a 3D Pan plug is entirely different from using standard "3D mixing technique" that incorporates a standard pan control for the L/R aspect of the image, and uses conventional compression, EQ, reverb and delay to create a 3D mix.

There are other esoteric differences, but the main one is that standard stereo "3D" mixing basically places the listener in the same room as the performers, and puts the performers in a psychoacoustically 3D soundsatge, but that soundstage pretty much remains in front of the listener, with the front of the stage being even with the loudspeakers (yes there are some tricks to fudge that a bit, but let's skip those for now.) Stereo-based 3D holophony, OTOH, is capable of extending the soundstage out into the room; i.e. putting the listener in the midde of the performance.

As cool as it sounds to put the listener in the middle (and it IS cool :), it's not always appropriate. Anybody who has played in the middle of an orrchestra or has drummed on stage with a rock combo band can tell you just how awful things can actually sound when you're really in the middle of the mix :). Surround or holographic sound needs to be designed and mixed with a specific 3D image in mind. This image does not and often should not necessarily match the image one wishes to create when building a "conventional" stereo soundstage. The results and the purposes are different for each.

So would a 3D pan be a good *replacement* for standard console pan? I'd say no. They are different tools ofr different purposes, and should not replace each oither any more than a Phillips screwdriver should replace a flat blade screwdriver.

All FWIW ETC...

G.
 
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