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Is stereo the limiting factor?

norriemal

norriemal

Hertz and Minds
Sorry my mother in law is visiting and my mind is wandering to keep me out of the way.

With multi channel amps now commonplace can I suggest it's time for a re think.

Forget surround sound lets have a 7 channel wall fed by 7 channel digital high bit rate FLac files. Storage and bandwidth are no longer a constraint.

2 x guitar
1 x base guitar
1 x keyboards
1 x drums
1 x lead vocals
1 x backing vocals

Similar approach could be taken for an orchestra, choir etc.

Each amp and speaker (active speakers?) could be optimised for the characteristics of their defined channel.

Forget soundstage - you would have a virtual live band. Imaging would be spot on and if you had the room you could create physical depth. You could even feed guitar amps and speakers for added realism.

If a recording engineer reads this please have a go and maybe set up a dem at a show. That would be a paradigm shift - remember you heard it here first.

7 channel dacs here we come!
 
Better still a set of robots to play actual instruments for you in your room - a bit like those yamaha pianos that can be set to replay actual performances :D
 
I've thought about this too, but always come back to the same questions...

What if there are only 3 or 4 musicians, like Nirvana or Metallica? Are the rest of the speakers wasted?
What if there are more musicians than speakers? Who shares what speaker?
What if a singer plays guitar? Do they get 1 speaker or 2?
What if someone moves?
What about special effects? Maybe the keyboad speaker.
What about live recordings? Which speaker is for the crowd?

If the idiot production team can't figure out 2 speakers, will they be able to do better with 5? 7?
 
The other 5 speakers could reproduce the echoed silence. My design requires one in the ceiling and maybe floor so that would mean 9 speakers and DACS with 7 of them handling the ambience
 
Great idea Ian r

In a 9 speaker set up 2 of the speakers could be set up for noise cancellation similar to balanced inter connects. Subtract the noise that's not there and add it to the noise that is!
 
Im looking at my stock folio to check my investements in speaker and interconnect firms along with planar speaker manufacturers - clearly you are way ahead of the pack - the recording engineers and studio managers may be resistant - have you a strategy?
Breathless
 
Don't want to jump the gun but my patent application for 7.1 flat sound should be granted soon and you'll need to watch Dragons Den.

My other idea is based on flat panel speakers and paint technology. If you think how a speaker cone vibrates to reproduce the complex sound patterns that we call music I'm getting in early with the idea ov vibrating paint films. The whole wall then becomes a speaker with zones to simulate my 7.1 flatpanel recordings.

To get surround sound you just have to paint all 4 walls.

As I said the mother in law is here.
 
On a serious note though when you think of a cone vibrating to produce the illusion of someone sitting behind the wall playing drums. It is pretty damned amazing.

With all the technology now how hard would it be to reduce the complexity that a speaker cone has to reproduce. One instrument may require the cone to vibrate a particular way and another may have a different set of vibrations. What the cone does will be the sum of the 2 signals. If you had two speakers each reproducing less complex vibrations our ears would hear frequencies produced by both instruments rather than the sum they produce. Must have an impact on sound quality.
 
4 walls you say ........ could be difficult

BUT

not if I include the ceiling.

However you may not be able to hear your esteemed mother in law with all those speakers even with your feigned interest in sympathetic vibrations

I think I see where the noise cancellation idea comes from now
 
it is the way the different sounds shake the air that creates the amazing feel of a live orchestral performance. However yet more amazing to me is that our single pair of ears can unravel (or at least decode) this so well
 
Robn

I supose that is why stereo works so well. It is how we hear and the illusion created by headphones bears this out.
 
ian r

If you are struggling with the walls you may be interested in another idea I have for a hybrid design for a floor coating containign piezo crystals which has the benefit of non slip function and if the volume is turned up can be used for underfloor heating.

The only problem I see with this is in a flat where the person below has one of my sub woofers on their ceiling.
 
I've just googled him and it says he has an interest in multi channel audio. Maybe technology is catching up with him.
 
that would probably sound like shite. talk about incoherency. give me a one mic unidirectional recording!
 
Or you could arrange them like this:

orchestra_layout_small.jpg
 
Yahama do make a 11.2 channel amp....there you are....all the discrete amp channels -come true!
 
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