Depth in a recording ?

If
(1) The depth information exists in the recording and
(2) The system is able to reproduce the depth information and
(3) The loudspeakers are correctly and precisely positioned in the room

Then you should be able to hear 'depth'

Thank you Jeremy,

Any suggested recordings (where depth is REALLY obvious) ?

Philippe

Hi P.Bonte,

I'm interested in this too. My personal experiences are mixed. Even for the same recording, I find my perception can vary greatly from day to day.

All I know is that in contrast to the 2-dimensionality of the stereo-image, the extent to which one can perceive depth seems relies even more on tricking the brain properl - or at least depends more on how one interprets what one hears.

I also agree with Jeremy Marchant in that, a meticously setup system seems to be crusial.

Added: The only example that comes to my mind as a relatively safe bet, are recordings of Eiji Oue directing the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra. I would also say that I in general notice depth more in classical recordings than other genres (that I listen to).

Since I have never heard "depth" in a live performance, I've never worried about hearing it on a recording.

The critical faculties are more profitably engaged in hearing melody, harmony and rhythm :-)

quote:

Originally posted by P.Bonte:
Any suggested recordings (where depth is REALLY obvious) ?

Goldfrapp: "Hairy Trees", from her second album, "Black Cherry". It becomes obvious as soon as she starts singing with some electronic stuff in the background.

So,

{Ods}, I will have a try with Goldfrapp.
mikeeschman, not worrying, just curious

For all other purposes, I think my system is rather well set up (within reason, not really obsessive).

Philippe

Philippe, dont' worry if it doesn't seem to work! I've been using the same speakers for the last 15 years and although the system went through various hardware upgrades and room changes, I've only started experiencing depth in the music for the last 3 months! This happended after I spent a few days repositionning me and the speakers in the room. I can safely say this is the cheapest and most significant "upgrade" I've had in years!!!

The effect on music was quite obvious. "Before changes", the music seemed like it was spread all over the rear wall (which is 6 meters wide); "After changes", the music seemed like it was filling a volume between me and the rear wall. Very interesing indeed! And quite enjoyalbe, too!

Regarding Goldfrapp, the voice and the electro stuff now clearly appear in different layers and are precisely postionned in space. While this is obviously not essential when it comes to enjoying music, this is certainly a funny experience when it comes to enjoying hifi


Christian

Auditory Illusions

This is from New Scientist magazine.

Listen to the Barbershop Illusion (through 'phones) for a graphic example of how stereo reproduction can create a "3D" soundstage.

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:
The critical faculties are more profitably engaged in hearing melody, harmony and rhythm :-)

I tend to agree with this. In my 1. post I may have given the impression that I can decode things such as

quote:

Originally posted by P.Bonte:
The singer standing 1.25 meters in front of the band, backing vocals 2 meters behind the wall, etc...

I can't.

quote:

Originally posted by P.Bonte:
Problem, I never really heard this phenomenon ?! Is something wrong with my system, my setup, my ears ?

My take is, that I can perceive 3-dimensionality, the width of which being somewhat precise, while depth is more of a cloud too me. I actually have a pseudo-explanation for this Anyway, because I know the relative placement of performers in various live-scenarious, the brain is perhaps susceptible to being tricked into placing one in front of the other. Similar for distance. Without these clues, it wouldn't make a convincing case for me. Its not something I notice as a physical thing.

Or so I think...

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:
Since I have never heard "depth" in a live performance, I've never worried about hearing it on a recording.

The critical faculties are more profitably engaged in hearing melody, harmony and rhythm :-)

Absolutely. I agree with Mike, and if depth is actually perceived in a recording then it is being exaggerated by the recording and production. It should be so slight as to be possible to ignore if the recording is adequate.

Essentially only faulty recordings have an obvious depth of perspective - front to back - to them. One of the advantages of using headphone is that it is much more rarely exaggerated.

EDIT: This is with respect to classical and natural Jazz recordings. For other genres, then accuracy of recording style has never been priority number one.

ATB from George

quote:

Absolutely. I agree with Mike, and if depth is actually perceived in a recording then it is being exaggerated by the recording and production. It should be so slight as to be possible to ignore if the recording is adequate.

Essentially only faulty recordings have an obvious depth of perspective - front to back - to them. One of the advantages of using headphone is that it is much more rarely exaggerated.

George,
Perhaps I am not understanding this illusion of depth, but if say a solo trumpet plays during an orchestral piece, are you saying that (my) impression of where that instrument is being played on the soundstage and in relation to the position of the other instruments that were previously there (i.e. before the solo) is inherently false?
regards
Charlie

Live, the trumpet will have almost no sense of directionality to it unless it plays very loud and gets a brassy edge to it, which might pin-point it. For the same reason it is often quite easy to pin-point percusson. The bright edge to the sound is actually more directional even in a large hall. Even so, if the recording is natually made, then no other instrument will sound as if it is exactly where the trumpet is. Very close by maybe, but that is a reflection of reality as well! Any brassiness will show through in the recording with a greater sense of left to right placement - same for percussion, and this will not be anomalous if the recording is well made.

In a good naturally made [stereo] recording you should will get a similar sense of vague direction and place, but certainly not a sense of pin-point placement, left to right or front to back, of the instruments of the band.

Some recordings do simulate the sense of it being pin-pointed in the space of the stage. These recordings are departing from the reality of real musicians playing in ensemble, and are therefore may reasonably seen as less fine than those that do not.

Remember that the seating of musicians is always designed to minimise the space between them given the practicality of the stage, and this because fine and accurate ensemble is managed by the players all listening to each other. By definition the further apart they are, the looser will become the ensemble and sense of rhythmic cohesion that results. Some concert halls are a nightmare for this even so. For a recording to give a big sense of distance between players where this is the opposite of the practical aim in real life is misguided.

Look at the Vienna Philharmonic on stage in the Musikverein, which is arguably a candidate for being the best concert hall. If they did not co-ordinate their bowing they are so close together that they would tangle violin bows!

Also consider the distance from front to back of the band/orchestra, and then consider the distance from you to the front of the band if you are sitting in a good seat in the middle of the hall. Clearly the depth from front to back of the band is insignificant compared to the distance to the good seats in the house, one third to two thirds of the way back.

From these same seats consider the arc of vision to the extreme left ad right of the band ... say 15 degrees is a typical figure. Clearly some3 stereo is very exaggerated once you work this thought through!

Now of course if you sit in the front row you will get a much less bound together sound, but you will also get a faulty balance. The instruments at the front edge of the stage [typically violins] will be much louder than those 10 or 15 feet back [typically the winds]!

To simulate a huge depth, by definition the engineers and producers must actually diminish the quality of balance of the performance damping down the instruments at the back, however important their contributions are from time to time.

This is achieved by manipulation of anything up the outputs of perhaps 48 very close microphones, and balancing for a false sense of depth. Not only that but the timbres of the instruments need space to blend and sound correctly, so that you get the true sounds of the instruments as intended at the audience members ear in the body of the hall, and not the clacking of the metal keys of wind instruments or the sniffs and intakes of breath!

These close microphone sounds that are a by-product of a faulty and misguided style of recording can be avoided altogether with a proper placing [at a natural distance from the band to capture a fine musical balance between all the instruments] of a minimal stereo microphone arrangement.

In a good hall or studio the effect can be very detailed. In a poor hall such a simple approach can get quite muddled results, so engineers sometimes try to fix a poor - perhaps boomy or over reflective - hall with many close microphones, and so the problems begin. Once engineers got recording sets that could remix the channels to give the false sense of depth and left and right separation then the producers could not help themselves and recordings became worse.

Fortunately the older style of simpler more natural and well balanced recording technique is making a come back!

ATB fom George

quote:

Since I have never heard "depth" in a live performance, I've never worried about hearing it on a recording.

Mike, I think this phenomenon naturally occurs. It exists in every other possible event where sound is created so why not then for music. I cannot actually understand why a term used to describe a 3-dimensional reality is viewed as evil? You may not normally focus on this aspect but that certainly doesn't mean it no longer exists.

Putting all postulation aside (about what is intended or not) let's look at an extreme example. If you place five people on a stage (2 in the front @ left & right side and 2 in the back @ left & right and one right in the middle) and ask any one to speak or sing or play their instrument I would suspect that most people could hear the difference in perception in relation to the others (with their eyes closed). And depending on where one was in the hall I'm positive you could still figure this out no matter how small the difference. If your ears are working (ie. no disability) our brain is intelligent enough to sort this out (based on distance and the speed of sound) and relay even the tiniest difference. Physics proves this.

Whether I hear a piano concerto or an organ concerto or an orchestra with a choir and soloist up front etc. I can hear this. If you do not hear depth either you have an ear plug in one ear or you are choosing to call what you are hearing by some other term.

Our brains/ ear work together for us to hear sound in a three-dimensional context. What you are suggesting is that you only hear one or maybe two dimensions?

quote:

Now of course if you sit in the front row you will get a much less bound together sound, but you will also get a faulty balance.

George, it seems then that the performers and especially the conductor actually has the worst seat (position) in the house?

Also, composers for a long time have played around with specific placement of singers or players for various effects. I think of Mozart's Magic Flute and before that Polyphonic choral works?

I'm suggesting this because I'm still trying to understand why a unidimensional soundscape is "always" preferable. I'm suggesting what sounds natural in a concert hall should be the goal of a recording engineer. Recordings will always be a flawed attempt in comparison to the real thing but I always hear space around the sounds/notes I hear. Could I be dreaming about this?

Best Regards,
Doug

Try Mozart Notturno for Four Orchestras with Peter Maag on Decca/London (forgive me if I did not get the name exactly right). You can hear the four orchestras in different places front to back.

George, it seems then that the performers and especially the conductor actually has the worst seat (position) in the house?

Dear Doug,

Certainly the conductor is placed such that no one in the audience [even the front row] has a worse perception of the balance of musical sounds. He or she has probably got the best place within the orchestra ...

There is much more to add about depth and imaging and of course there are antiphonal pieces of music. So antiphonal that they would never work on a normal stereo replay either at least as intended! But they are special occasional pieces as a rule, and not designed for regular performances, and certainly rare.

If the placing of the players within the orchestra were really significant, then there would be great debates about it. There aren't, beyond the occasional notice taken of the antiphonal first and second violins, or otherwise. I have yet to see anyone concerned about the placing of the double basses for example, and yet in different orchestral plans they are just about the most mobile section of all!

I remember once being told that my channels were reversed, because the bas always comes out of the right! Nonsense of course, but the arrangement of the basses right behind the first violins is indeed fairly rare these days.

Of course depth exists in a tiny degree, and it is countered at every opportunity in performance as it inevitably distorts musical balances, and also cohesive ensemble. Sometimes, especially in a narrow church, it is difficult to get the choir close enough to the orchestra. This causes problems for both balance and ensemble. It is not something to emulate in recordings, as the result must necessarily be unmusical in every respect.

EMI used to record large choral works in the large deconsecrated church called the Kingsway Hall in London. This hall had the advantage of having a massive balcony that was large enough for a big choir, and meant that the choir could be largly above the orchestra, and not just behind it, which led to splendid ensemble and easy balances! Though it meant the conductor had to look up at the choir!

On the issue of the conductor being badly placed to assess balance, I have never been in or at a rehearsal where the performers were unfamiliar with the hall, where the conductor did not start the music and step off the podium and walk all the way to the back to ensure the balance was effective in the body of the hall.

Of course experience counts for a lot here as well, and certain conductors, Otto Klemperer is a fine example, had such an ear for balance that live [and recorded live] or in the studio he could obtain the most exquisite balances of musical lines. Everything lucid, and nothing drowned - time after time.

But the larger the orchestra the harder this task becomes. In the luminous spare orchestration of Mozart it is much less easy to loose vital lines such as the flute low in its compass or the violas as a section, than in the massive orchestration of some late romantic music from the early years of the twentieth century.

It is all fascinating stuff, and you mention the thought that perhaps what is heard in the concert hall should not necessarily be the model for the aims in recording. I agree entirely. Most commonly used halls are dreadful, and one of the very worst is the Royal Albert Hall, but it is in these halls that most people attend concerts. Usually the problem is that they are simply too large, but there are good large halls.

The real aim of the recording team should be to present the music in a most lucid and well balanced manner, emulating the sense you would get in one of the great halls of the world, such as the Musikverein, where everything can be heard by audience and orchestral players alike!

One thing to remember about directionality of sound is that typically in a good seat in a good large concert hall 90 per cent of the sound reaching the ear is already once or even [some of it] twice reflected, so not even faintly directional in any meanful sense. Only the very bright partials of the edgy forte brass sounds or percussion really come through clearly with a hint of pin-point. It is always easy to hear where a snare drum is! But the woodwinds [usually in the middle of the orchestra] are not easy to place relative to each other at all. They just sound like they're in the middle somewhere! It gets a lovely blending effect that we associate with the best wind playing. Blended, not separated!

ATB from George

Thanks George for a very nice and informative explanation! I do have a desire to keep learning more about this and related topics about sound and listening aspects.
Regards,
Doug

Thanks George for the time taken to express your point, and for the perfect explanation. Musicians should be heard, once in a while, when talking about audio..

On my part, I can only add that:

- Two very famous Julians (Hirsch, StereoReview, early 80s, and Vereker, whom everyone knows here) repeatedly stated that no such thing as >stereo image< exists in live music. This doesn't apply to a reasonable differentiation between left and right when sitting close to the source, but to the so called >depth<. Sit in the tenth row of an auditorium and try, with your eyes closed, to point to the position of a solo oboe player and you will see. Room acoustics play a huge role in the definition of tempo and harmony in a live concert of instrumental music, but none in the creation of an >audiophile< kind of image.

- What we hear on certain records in a nice gimmick not very different from 3D cinema, and can be greatly enjoyed, but hasn't necessarily to do with the behaviour of sound in live music.

- Perhaps it would be a wise and safe thing not to confuse live and reproduced sounds, even when they seem to portray the same music.

Thanks again George,

Max

Thanks for the explanation George, once again I am sat at the feet of the Master
regards,
Charlie

Philippe, bon après-midi, comment est la Belgique ces jours-ci, j'ai l'habitude de travailler a Bruxelles & Liege & Il me manque les bieres Trapist.

Re depth, I think its quite simple, the sound needs to contain both the music & additional information that tell your brains stereoscopic senses that the sound source is X metres away. This is in your brain, not the stereo system, provided the system is set up correctly. The information has to include relative/comparative sound levels - distance gives sound at a lower & a changed frequency shape - the high Hz is suppressed more than low Hz over distance. But most important is the the low level information such as harmonic changes & echoes that give us clues about distance & room acoustics.
Then your brain needs to blank out the fact that the speakers are where the sound is known to be coming from 2-metres away. Eyes closed or listening away from the sweet spot can sometimes work.

A simple recording that shows this in a subtle but easily demonstrated way is Bob Marley's "Redemption Song"
It starts off with a simple acoustic guitar, very dynamic, finger (nail) picked & includes left hand string noise, its front stage (sitting right in your room)
Then Bob comes in on vocals, you can hear the room acoustic (echo) & hear he is located a way back from the guitar.

But don't get too engrossed in this, music is about enjoyment, not analysis.

Heureux litening

Hi to all of you,

To be honest, I got more information than I hoped for. Nice to know that the "Redemption song" can be used to check.

At least all your remarks help me not worrying. Mike-B, FYI two of my neighbours work at the local Orval Trappist brewery - and French is only me second language (mother tongue Dutch-Flemish).

Thank you all for this very interesting information.

Philippe

Florestan, I still don't think any of the meaning in music is contained in the staging of players you might hear in a recording.

As far as imaging goes, the only concern I have is that whatever image presented is stable, so that instruments do not appear to move around on the stage. I have heard some systems that do this, and find it disconcerting.

Philippe, gelieve excuses te aanvaarden, het België van de klassieke fout & I-net aangenomen als ik besteden vele leuke weekenden in het gebied.

mikeeschman, what drives me nuts are the full stage wide drum kits.
Cymbals left, hihat right, kettle middle, a tom-tom that goes right to left, bass from both sides.
I know some drummers are animals (joke - Muppets - no ?? oh well) but they must have arms as long as a Jules Verne sea monster

quote:

Originally posted by Mike-B:
mikeeschman, what drives me nuts are the full stage wide drum kits.
Cymbals left, hihat right, kettle middle, a tom-tom that goes right to left, bass from both sides.
I know some drummers are animals (joke - Muppets - no ?? oh well) but they must have arms as long as a Jules Verne sea monster

Not mikeeschmann, but this is very interesting. AFAIK drums are often mixed as to appear in the centre of the stereo-image. This works well for bass, toms, and to an extent snare drums. However cymbals and hihat, with their high frequencies will, c.f. GFFJ's posts, inevitably be easy to locate as coming also from the speakers, and everything in between. To me it seems like an inherently contradictory problem. Looking forward to hear views on this.

Full stage wide drum kits are just another recording and mixing artifact. I find it disconcerting.