Unraveling Toe-In's Impact on Sound & Imaging
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- Опубликовано: 28 июн 2024
- Question:
"Why do toe-in affect imaging and sound staging? Is it the ratio of reflected sound to the sum of direct sound at the listening position? Should we look for a balance between image "sharpness", image cohesiveness, and width the front stage?
I find that changing toe-in by small amounts noticeably changes the balance between my ability to pinpoint the location of sounds across the sound stage, how smoothly sounds travel across the soundstage, and the width/depth of the soundstage."
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Appreciate all that you do for the community!
My pleasure!
Great vid thanks for the work and insights!
Really well explained. Big horns, planar and open baffle speakers provide for even more fun with room interactions and results. Measurements only get us so far. Thanks for the test track.
Wow, beautiful explanation taking into account many important factors. The knowledge you pass on makes the hobby more fun. Great job !
Well thank you. Very kind words.
Thanks for taking the time to thoroughly explain a complicated topic. Choosing a toe-in angle is one of the most basic setup steps, yet it's taken me decades to pay attention to what it's doing and why it matters. I found very little discussion (none?) in books or articles about choosing an angle beyond "change it until it sounds good." Yours is the best explanation of toe-in that currently exists on the web, IMO, because you explain how it affects several factors at once. As you said, it's a system.
Your point that a real-world image is never as sharp as what we can achieve artificially stopped me in my tracks and made me reevaluate my priorities. I keep trying to get as pinpoint an image as I can, believing I'm maximizing my system's performance. But at some point, it gets so sharp it sounds...fake? Like looking into the glass eyes of a robot. I start hearing and thinking about the mixing engineer's choices (especially panning and reverb choices) instead of the music. That is not what I want.
A follow-up observation: Running Dirac changes the balance of sharpness to width, a balance I worked hard to achieve by optimizing toe-in. But it's hard to predict how Dirac will change the balance, so compensating for that change by altering toe-in ahead of time isn't working. I started curtaining Dirac past 400 Hz to reduce that issue, but then I got FR issues. Moreover, the bass sounded like it came from a smaller "space" than the mid and upper ranges, which was strange.
Any thoughts on maintaining a good balance of sharpness, width, and cohesiveness when using room correction?
Dirac is changing the phase. That will change the perceived image and spaciousness. And sometimes the phase errors give a sense of depth and width that is lost in a linear phase system. So the answer is probably, don’t use Dirac.
@@PoesAcoustics Got it. Does that mean FR issues should be handled with passive absorption/diffusion?
Hey Mathew , could you possibly explain how to phase and time align subwoofers and mains. Cheers
Interesting topic, how would mixing a narrow dispersion front stage with wide dispersion surrounds in a multi channel theatre room? Would this give a good balance of pin pointing imaging and ambiance?
Not really. It would cause the image pans to be discontinuous. You want similar directivity across all speakers.
Do you ever set up 2 channel stereo systems to take advantage of time intensity trading?
Absolutely. I think it’s a good approach for 2 channel and surround alike.
So WAY outside the box approach ... try this: Toe-OUT! Turn the speakers 45 degrees AWAY from the MLP. Aim them at 45 degrees to the (highly reflective) side wall, such that you are looking at the side of the speaker from the MLP. Sounds crazy. I tried it. Mind blowing imaging and soundstage. Okay, I did it with Magnepan 3.7 ... but should work with any speaker.
How far are your speakers from the wall? A difference of about 5ms or less and your brain can not seperate a reflection from the direct sound.
That will have a bad off axis problem. Sitting toward the right side, the whole soundstage will collapse to the right.
What am i reading.
I’ve heard others suggest this and I’ll be honest, it’s not an approach that makes sense. If you read articles on time intensity trading, this would reverse that. Make the problem worse, not problem. As you move to the side the speaker closest gets louder and so does the sidewalk reflection.
The only thing I can think of is that this would probably increase spaciousness and envelopment for a single seat. Is that your goal?
@@PoesAcoustics doesnt even do that. Diffrent influences on so many things. U just dont get anything out of it compared to a good normal setup.
many 2 channel systems ive heard over my decades of listen of music - i have heard depth, width (beyond the speakers), height and even at time behind my listening position. So imo 2 channel system are not 2 dimensions. especially when setup correctly.
Sure and that’s your opinion. But the fact remains they are 2 dimensional in format. The 3D effect is a function of your room. Meaning the room is artificially resting a sense of depth. With multichannel, it’s actually reproducing depth as intended by the creatives. These are two different things.
@@PoesAcoustics they are two different things but still 2 channel is not 2 dimensional. also needs to be in the recording. Many people can contest to this and the room does play into the effect like you have indicated. So does multi channel.
@@genkifd it is 2 dimensional because the system cannot reproduce the cues correctly of the original space. The 3D you hear is your rooms own cues. But those don’t match the original venue cues. The cues recorded into the recording is the sound of the cue. Not the Cue itself.
Watch the videos I did with Edgar Choueiri for a proper explanation. There is no debate amongst experts that stereo is not capable of accurate reproduction of 3D sound.
@@PoesAcoustics dont know about that. if the cues are not in the recording they the artificial space wouldnt be recreated in your room.. its also rather odd to me that the atomos recordings of music reproduction ive herad (hald a dozen or so) never sounds live. even though various artificial space cues are added.
@@genkifd the atmos recordings are more a spatial gimmick. They aren’t trying to make them sound live. I too think that is a mistake. Right now it’s being treated like a tool to paint a creative picture. But it’s meant to be impressionist not realist. If that makes sense. I would like to see some attempts to recreate actual environments.
As for the cues. Read some of the papers from David Griesinger on the role of lateral reflections in environment and spaciousness. That would help you understand what I am referring to. The phase variation in lateral reflections are what give us a sense of space and being enveloped by a room with walls. The sound of that can be recorded. But it can’t give us that impression. Only actual lateral reflections can do that. So in our small rooms, we do have lateral reflections and they do impact our perception of space. Adding diffusers helps switch that perception to a larger space. The cues in the recording have nothing to do with that perception. It’s simply the existence of those reflections with sufficient phase mixing.
An exception to this would be binaural recordings. But the lateral cues would only be correctly reproduced over headphones or with a high degree of crosstalk cancelation. In such a scenario, our own room cues would not be desirable. As I am sure you know, the number of correct binaural recordings is very low.
Beaming not BEEMING.
I am guessing the editor included that as a phrase. He isn’t a native English speaker, nor is my wife, and neither caught it. I never saw the edited video until now. Sorry about that.
Put ur towers in ur boojshelf sideways like we did in the 90s. It will sound horrible.
Why would one do this? It sounds like a bad idea.
"All of those cues" are contained in the recording but they must be presented from similar angles to the live sound fields. This is done by reflection from the walls around by means of radiation pattern and speaker positioning. It is a spatial effect, not frequency response. It cannot be done by direct sound alone. You must understand Image Model Theory.
I think this is true for only specific types of recordings like cinema surround sound. For music there were two competing methods for recording stereo music historicaly. One was to record the performance as it occurred with the microphones positioned farther away and also capturing the acoustical space. The second was in a studio with the instruments closely mic'd and possibly played at sperate times to their own track which would be combined later and artificial reverberation added for the lack of accoustical space captured. The second became the most popular method for a number of reason which you can discover with researching the history and I don't believe your comment is true in this situation. I myself prefer music recordings done with the first method. Any discussion on this topic needs to understand the different methods of how the sound may have been recorded and produced for which expected playback topology.
@@dwaynepiper3261 yes exactly! I n the typical studio recording of essentially monophonic tracks assembled in two dimensions with artificial reverb ... there never was a "there" there. Sometimes you end up - no doubt serendipitously - with some interesting spatial qualities and soundstage. But not by design, and not due to actual ambience in the room.
@@marclombardi5980 There's a lot of interesting things that can be learned by researching the transition from mono to stereo history. For instance there was different opinions about stereo only being two channel vs three minimum. Two won only because at the time it was felt the expense of three would be difficult for mass adoption of the medium. My opinion three channels L-C-R and with the performance recorded as it occurs and microphones placed to capture also the acoustic space is superior to the more common scenario you see today. This way is however highly dependant on the skills of the recording engineer and more prevalent in classical or jazz. Mercury Living Presence, RCA Living Stereo and Philips early stereo recordings were quite special in my opinion when they got it right. The recording is one half of the equation and a great performance is the other half. When those two come together it can be magical. A great performance is much harder to get in a studio recording especially if the musicians are not playing together at the same time.
@@dwaynepiper3261 No, it works for all recordings. You should never want all of the sound to be coming from just the direct field. If it is not a live recording, it will sound like the performers are right in the room with you. Plus any ambience the engineers added for you.
Did you make of this term? I find no reference to image model theory.
The essence of what you say is true. But it’s like taking a 3D image and flattening it, then saying you can pull it all back out from the 2D image. Anything you do to pull out the 3rd dimension would be artificial. But with 2-channel music it’s all we can do. Hence why you need to treat the room to best support these spatial cues.
A far superior approach is to actually encode music in multichannel with these spatial cues.
Keep in mind that it’s also true that it is not true that these cues are in all music. In fact it’s only in some studio recordings and live recordings, and only if they are recorded in the right way. Most multitrack recordings Rosa have no spatial cues in them.