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Stereo: a conspiracy?

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radiotubes

radiotubes

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I think there's a conspiracy happening and no one is the wiser. Why do most people think that they have to have a STEREO system for their sound reproduction? I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and noticed that in real life, his voice came from a single source. I attended a party in a mansion where the sound from the chamber quartet playing in the parlor came as a single source. Is the idea of Hi-Fi the accurate true-to-life reproduction of music and speech? I'm not convinced that a STEREO system accomplishes this. In fact I believe stereo is a gimmick that tends more to color the sound than to enhance accurate reproduction.

Is it a conspiracy? ... On the part of the manufacturers to make handsome profits by leading their consumers to believe that they need two of everything?? Is stereo anything more than a auditory effect like a reverb unit? In real life, does anyone hear stereo in a normal (live) speech or music listening circumstance? When the "golden ears" speak of imaging and depth, are these terms relevant to a point source such as a single street musician playing on the sidewalk?
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Discuss :)
 
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radiotubes said:
I attended a party in a mansion where the sound from the chamber quartet playing in the parlor came as a single source
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So, by "chamber quartet" you mean all four of the musicians were inside a "chamber" with a small aperture, let's say the size of a small bookshelf speaker, through which the sound was allowed to escape as a point source?

An interesting mental picture, but otherwise your post is hogwash.

My gut was yelling "troll" but I couldn't resist...
 
Personally, I prefer multi channel sound, but to do it with the same quality as a good two channel system is very expensive, and there are only a few good recordings that I have found.

Either way, you need a minimum of two sources to accurately recreate performances, especially inside a small room/house.

If you go to a symphony, you will notice a stereo effect. Most musicians are in a centralized location, but there are ambient effects, too. The idea, IMO, is that the stereo effectively removes the manifestation of the speakers themselves. With a good, well calibrated system, correctly using two or more channels, you should be able to close your eyes and not notice where the speakers are. You should "be there." If that means a single vocalist, then you should hear said vocalist's voice originating from a single location, and the stereo effect should recreate the environment that it was recorded in, or designed to sound like it was recorded in.
 
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99.999% of stereos aren't set up correctly, so they don't do the whole "sound stage" thing at all. Heck, my girlfriend's mother thought that "stereo" meant one speaker in the living room and the other speaker in the kitchen. So yeah...lots of people might get better sound quality from a good mono setup.

But a properly set-up stereo really does provide a realistic, three-dimensional picture of the recording space, as the microphones "saw" it. Yes - standing on the other side of the room, a chamber orchestra is a point source. Stand right in front of it, and the picture changes.

Proper stereo makes it easier for the listener to figure out which instrumentalists are doing what. I think that is musically important.

Granted, there are a lot of issues with getting proper 3-d sound staging, such as narrow sweet spot, difficulty integrating the speakers into existing room furnishings, etc.... but those don't mean the idea of stereo itself is invalid.
 
radiotubes said:
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and noticed that in real life, his voice came from a single source.
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True.

I attended a party in a mansion where the sound from the chamber quartet playing in the parlor came as a single source.
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False. If you are close to the source then it is most certainly not coming from a single point. That is why at least 2 channels is necessary for music reproduction with spatial imaging. If you are far from the source then it will appear to come from a single point. Same with a stereo signal. If you are far from the speakers then it will sound like a point source.

Is stereo anything more than a auditory effect like a reverb unit? In real life, does anyone hear stereo in a normal (live) speech or music listening circumstance?
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Yes, you do hear in "stereo". Meaning that your ears pick up signals with time delays between them and use the information to form a 3 dimensional image of where the sound is coming from. For that reason anything that is actually more than a point source (single voice, etc) will need at least 2 channels to give the illusion of that spatial image.
 
If you really wanted to get accurate sound reproduction I am going to suggest you would need as many 'channels' as there are sound sources - and as many speakers too.

We have come to a compromise which achieves a most acceptable result - it's called 'Stereo' - that means 2 channels.
 
radiotubes said:
I think there's a conspiracy happening and no one is the wiser. Why do most people think that they have to have a STEREO system for their sound reproduction? I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and noticed that in real life, his voice came from a single source.
Click to expand...

Some politicians talk out of both sides of their mouths, but that's not important now.

I attended a party in a mansion where the sound from the chamber quartet playing in the parlor came as a single source. Is the idea of Hi-Fi the accurate true-to-life reproduction of music and speech? I'm not convinced that a STEREO system accomplishes this. In fact I believe stereo is a gimmick that tends more to color the sound than to enhance accurate reproduction.

Is it a conspiracy? ... On the part of the manufacturers to make handsome profits by leading their consumers to believe that they need two of everything?? Is stereo anything more than a auditory effect like a reverb unit? In real life, does anyone hear stereo in a normal (live) speech or music listening circumstance? When the "golden ears" speak of imaging and depth, are these terms relevant to a point source such as a single street musician playing on the sidewalk?
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Discuss :)
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When I see someone, they are also only one person, one object. Yet I see with two eyes (as do most of us). The purpose of the two eyes is to fix the stereoscopic vision so that additional information can be provided to our brains besides just the person we are looking at. Things like distance, for example.

Two ears allows us to hear more than just the sound of a person talking or playing an instrument or singing. It allows us to establish other attributes in space as well, such as direction. It is a form of imaging just like vision.

Early research on binaural or stereo sound:

http://books.google.com/books?id=tj...=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=stereophonic&f=false

5. Bell's experiments upon binaural audition were instituted to determine whether the stereophonic phenomena of binaural audition might be produced artificially with the telephone, in the same manner as the peculiarities of binocular vision are produced with the stereoscope. As the final result of the experiments, it was found that the observer could determine with tolerable accuracy the latitude of a sound made near a given point, but that he had no idea whatever of its longitude. A series of experiments was next instituted to determine whether the telephone might afford a means of ascertaining to what degree the human ear normally had the power of appreciating the direction of sound. From these experiments it was seen that perception of the direction of a source of sound was less perfect by a single ear than by both ears. The direction of sound is more accurately defined, the more it approximates to the axial line of the ears.
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http://books.google.com/books?id=K5...Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=binaural audition&f=false

There are many more scientific works from the same era - the 1870's and later. They established the purpose of WHY we have 2 ears - it's not just one and a spare, binaural hearing has a distinct advantage over monaural, just as binocular vision does over monocular vision.

It was not until much, much, later, that stereophonic music reproduction became possible, but the theory and known advantages had been known for decades before that.

A scam? No, not hardly. An advantage.
 
Radiotubes: Why aren't you complaining about home theater and all it's phony directionality? Stereo sound has more than proven it's validity. Home theatre applied to music is a joke, just a way to get the gullible to buy all new gear, to revitalize a stagnant industry.
 
Ideally, a "stereo" system would be made up of numerous speakers through out the listening area, processed to provide one seamless room of sound, like real life where you don't hear from one or even two, or even just 10 particular sources.
 
Conspiracy? Conspiracy?

Let us first investigate the largest conspiracy on earth, which according to a covert dog operative I know, is the Giant Cat/Squirrel Conspiacy! Even Alex Jones is afraid to talk about it!
 
2chanman said:
Radiotubes: Why aren't you complaining about home theater and all it's phony directionality? Stereo sound has more than proven it's validity. Home theatre applied to music is a joke, just a way to get the gullible to buy all new gear, to revitalize a stagnant industry.
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I disagree, 5.1 or more, is far superior to 2 channel if set up and process correctly.
 
89grand said:
I disagree, 5.1 or more, is far superior to 2 channel if set up and process correctly.
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I agree, but I have only heard maybe 3 recordings that do it right. And to match the quality of a good stereo system, full frequency speakers are needed at all locations, with equally powered amps - not what you see in most HT set ups...
 
dspear99ca said:
So, by "chamber quartet" you mean all four of the musicians were inside a "chamber" with a small aperture, let's say the size of a small bookshelf speaker, through which the sound was allowed to escape as a point source?

An interesting mental picture, but otherwise your post is hogwash.

My gut was yelling "troll" but I couldn't resist...
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+1 It's going around, this exact topic was started on another forum and most people agreed with it, because they believe what they read on the web.
 
Stereo sound is just as artificial as 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 8.2 or whatever the hell we're up to now.

A mixer has taken the individual sounds from a given performance (or series of sound inputs) and chosen, based on his or her experience or the desired sound end-product to place these sounds discretely or divided amongst two channels.

As such, stereo is no more (or less) false than more modern multi-channel recordings and productions. But it is...... manufactured.

But we like it.
 
sparky1116 said:
Stereo sound is just as artificial as 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 8.2 or whatever the hell we're up to now.

A mixer has taken the individual sounds from a given performance (or series of sound inputs) and chosen, based on his or her experience or the desired sound end-product to place these sounds discretely or divided amongst two channels.

As such, stereo is no more (or less) false than more modern multi-channel recordings and productions. But it is...... manufactured.

But we like it.
Click to expand...

I want 150+ channels!!!!! muwhahahahaaahaaa Sound Engineers' wet dream....or worst nightmare???? :scratch2:
 
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