DSP Robotics Support

Robint wrote:AFAIK you needed a special decode box to unscramble a redirect signals to the speakers.

Or a 4-channel amp with the matrix decoder built-in. The 1974-vintage Lafayette I bought sort of worked on some material (Santana's 'Barboletta' and Herbie Hancock's 'Headhunters' IIRC), but it was usually stuff that had been deliberately (and artificially) mixed specifically for added separation.

All things considered, mostly a gimmick to sell more speakers.

Indeed I fully understand and agree. The sound industry has even today a terrible reputation for selling grossly overhyped rubbish eg so called sound bars for Wall TVs. LG's version is ca £1000 just for the amplifier/speakers. Ive got a version for £50 bought for my 29" LG (£150) from Argos. I had to buy it cos the sound o/p was pathetic and barely audible. The cheapo bar does the job so I can hear adequately but its rubbish (claim 50W o/p using a power adapter giving 9V 1A - go figure

This is the level of shite abounds today and a new breed of Modern Media Lying (ie withholding important information - not what the hype say look at what it doesnt say)

I struggled hugely through a mass of tripe concerning Granular Synthesis and thankly came across Spogg's amazing work which gets to the nub of the concept. The industry is 99% full of utter rubbish. When I see flashy vids infomercials on the topic I know my time will be wasted. Just think of the money spent on this artwork alone and coke head presenters in your face pushing product (not information)

Robint wrote:... The industry is 99% full of utter rubbish. When I see flashy vids infomercials on the topic I know my time will be wasted. Just think of the money spent on this artwork alone and coke head presenters in your face pushing product (not information)

I think the BS element creeps in when money gets involved. After all, they want to sell something so it has to be made appealing, and this often involves what you could call pseudoscience (or pseudotech), or downright lying (like your sound bar).

Yes indeed Sprogg.

FWIW your contributions are the opposite of HYPE - refreshingly frank and sincere

We are plagued by Surround Shite

Modern Media Mass Manipulation - its become a huge and malicious tool that has infected all around us.

You have long ceased to be a valued customer - you are a victim to enticed exploited and bled dry like the assassin bug.

Sadly, this aggressive technique wastes a huge amount of time. I estimate >95% of my time browsing Soundscape related topics is lost and unproductive.

For example just look at a simple concept like stretching an audio clip = the pitch changes. A Primary school kid could grasp that concept - yet the Industry convolutes this into some mystery process and wraps it up with contradictions and confusion and mega marketing to convince todays dummy that he needs some special $$$ plugin to handle this phenomenon.

Some of the best 'immersive' sound experiences I've had were with purely passive speaker hookups; variations on 'Hafler Quad': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafler_circuit

and DynaQuad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynaquad

If you have the speakers to do it, it's worth a listen. My own variation looks a lot like the 5.1 setup, but the two front L/R speakers are 110 to 120 degrees apart; these and center speaker all equidistant from the listener, They are connected to the amp as described for Dynaquad. Two rear speakers wired in series to the amp hot terms as described for Hafler (Lr spkr hot to left amp hot; Rr spkr hot to right amp hot). The rears should be a few further away than the front three, and about 60 degrees apart.

Not a gimmick 'faux' surround, as the setup actually produces crosstalk cancellations at the opposite ear. Dark Side of the Moon on this sounds like a high end surround source played on a multichannel system; yet just a stereo CD and two channel amp!

In supreme ignorance of any relevant science, I took a much simpler approach. Shortly after the aforementioned Lafayette quad amp ended its short and unhappy life, I moved into a house with a large family room (20x22ft). I still had the four speakers connected to a new 2-channel amp, but they sounded dreadful in that space. A friend with a side gig installing car audio suggested a trick he used with low-end setups: reverse the rear speaker locations and phasing relative to the front, sort of a cross-fire setup.

Most of the people who heard it thought it sounded great. The one exception was a classical music fan who couldn't get over having sound from specific instruments coming from unexpected directions. So it goes.

deraudrl wrote:...
Most of the people who heard it thought it sounded great. The one exception was a classical music fan who couldn't get over having sound from specific instruments coming from unexpected directions.
...

I can understand that point actually. It depends on the content of the source material, so all attempts to create pseudo-surround will give unpredictable results. Some will be pleasing and some not so much (apart from the novelty factor maybe).

We have a 5.1 theatre system in our lounge, and I love it when the soundscape matches the film’s content. My absolute favourite is the beach landing in Saving Private Ryan which I think is the very best showcase for genuine 5.1 surround. Against that, I listened to a 5.1 remix of a favourite rock album and the engineer had the instruments panned all around the room. I just found that weird and rather distracting from the actual music. I want my rock band in front of me on an imaginary stage. Maybe I could have imagined being in the studio during a recording session, but I didn’t.

For live music I think it’s best to have the players at the front and be surrounded by ambience and crowd noises for best effect. I like that.

Spogg wrote:For live music I think it’s best to have the players at the front and be surrounded by ambience and crowd noises for best effect. I like that.

I recently tried the 'Pulse' live Pink Floyd DVD on the pseudo-5.1 setup on our TV (soundbar/sub/tiny back speakers). It's extremely immersive, but the speakers are just too small to do justice to Gilmour's solos.

As Spogg intimated, the problem isn't that 2-ch stereo to 5.1 doesn't work well, it's that it's often not done well.

Purely for music, the center channel is a problem in the real world because, for it to work well for music (especially Classical) the center speaker should be identical to the L/R; this is rarely the case, especially in systems that do double duty for music and movies - the TV sits where the center speaker should be, so center speakers are most often smaller, inferior ones that can sit under the TV.

And anyway, the center speaker is totally unnessessary for music, the L/R speakers in the 'standard' 5.1 setup are no further apart than that recommended for stereo, so there isn't a hole that needs to be filled. The center spkr was made part of the 5.1 spec purely so that movie dialog will remain centered no matter where one sits in the listening room. Most of the top Classical engineers put nothing in the center channel, and only very low bass in the '.1'; many don't even use that either.

What I've always wanted to see is a unit that allows the listener to route stereo channels to an amp's 5.1 inputs however they choose (anyone know if such a thing exists/ever existed). It would have a circuit for creating a L-R difference signal for the left-rear channel, and a R-L difference signal for the right-rear channel. I've found this almost always sounds best when a small amount of L is mixed with the L-R, and a small amount of R with the R-L. All this would be controls on the box, along with an overall volume for the rear channels, and an adjustable delay. A digital memory for storing different settings would be nice too. Could probably build this with FS, no?