On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:19:11 -0000, "Ian Iveson"
wrote:

Don Pearce wrote:

Well, listening is different to recording, and the
requirements of the
room are not the same. When I listen, I do actually want
my room to
get involved to a reasonable extent - depending on what
I'm listening
to, of course. And when I'm listening I can tune out the
room errors
psychologically. This doesn't happen in recording, so a
recording room
needs to be a load better than a listening room.

As a rule, if you want to record, you should probably
spend 95% of
your money and effort on the room. The gear comes a very
distant
second - but it is only the gear people ever seem to talk
about. If
you are just listening, the figure probably drops to 90%

I was surprised when Stewart admitted that he liked
colourful speakers. A recent discussion here about
headphones reminded me that other champions of the
reproductionist school share his taste for paradox.

Seems to me that you've teased out the contradiction quite
well here, and because I believe that it's a key issue, I
would welcome some discussion.

Why do you want your room to get involved?

Room involvement ranges from anechoic as a minimum to a tiled bathroom
at the other end of the scale. If you have ever spent any time in an
anechoic chamber, you know that it is not somewhere you want to
linger, even listening to music. Likewise trying to listen in that
bathroom is just a cacophony. The best environment is one in which the
room is just live enough to give a sense of space and immersion, but
not so live that you are consciously aware of its contribution.

Why does this preference depend on what you're listening to?

If the material contains a huge acoustic of its own - a live symphony
orchestra, say - then you need less from the room to make it good. On
the other hand, a close miked jazz quartet sounds great in a live
room. The difference is on the one hand being transported to the
venue, and on the other having the instruments play in your space.

Why do you at the same time note that you're ears can tune
out the room errors?

It is just what they (or rather they plus the brain) do. You can test
this by stopping one ear, sot he normal brain function is impaired.
Instantly you will hear all of the room problems you couldn't before.
Acousticians do this all the time. It is the standard way of deciding
where to place a microphone.

Why do you consider them to be errors?

Because they make the sound depart from what was intended on the
recording.

Does it follow that you have a preference for some errors?

No, I have a preference for no errors, but some errors are easier to
tune out than others. A huge slap echo is pretty near impossible, and
has to be attended to.

To me, an error would be a departure from fidelity, rather
than from reproduction. I like to think I'm staging a live
performance.

Is that first sentence what you meant to type? I can't make sense of
it. The second sentence would be my second scenario in my first reply
paragraph.


A neat hypothesis occurs to me, that a performance requires
a single time and place, and that must be your room. It
follows that the source medium should be timeless and
spaceless. The band's playing for me, now, not for a studio,
some time ago.


Wouldn't that be nice? If your living room could be adjusted at will
to the size of the Albert Hall, or Ronnie Scott's that would be
possible. Unfortunately we have to make the best of what we have, and
that means finding a compromise in our listening acoustic that works
best for what we listen to most.

That's why 'live' recordings...of a band playing for some
other audience at a different time and place...are so
compromised. The idea of 'being there' simply doesn't make
sense because I know I'm here sat in my chair.

While I'm at it, why don't hi-fi headphones have gyroscopes?

Because you would be forced to listen sitting on top of a little model
of the Eiffel Tower.

d