ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Unbelieveable! My BeoSound 2 just arrived a few moments ago! I just unboxed it and plugged it in. With all my other B&O components that need to join my wireless network, configuration was a snap with my MacBook. I don't have time to take a long look at it yet, I am getting ready to go to the movies to see Fantastic Beasts, but I did get to play Kanna Hashimoto's Arigato (a couple of times!) It played it perfectly, and the word bakari was just as loud and stands out just as much as on a stereo system! A little later in the song when the instruments die down and it is just Kanna singing I was taken in for the first time by the instrument. It was just a temporary setup on my kitchen table and I was sitting on the side of it (not directly in front of either of the mid range drivers) and there was no difference in the sound as I walked around it. I will post more on it when I get a chance to really listen under multiple circumstances!
I am very happy with it!
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
Great to hear that you're happy with it!
cheers
-g
It's a Bang & Olufsen so I know mostly what it would sound like! When you know great people are behind a product trust in those products become pretty much automatic. I never had any doubts that BeoSound 1 or BeoSound 2 or BeoPlay A1 sound wonderful, it was just a matter of deciding if a mono or stereo system would be best suited for me... because of one song I have by one creative audio engineer!
I am stunned to think that some engineer at B&O would think to use the two mid range drivers differently than to just pass a mono signal to them. How many cases would this even be noticeable? Genius! Pure genius to me!
Mark-N: I am stunned to think that some engineer at B&O would think to use the two mid range drivers differently than to just pass a mono signal to them. How many cases would this even be noticeable? Genius! Pure genius to me!
This is noticeable not only in that one portion of your song. For example, take a recording with a lot of spacious reverberation in it (for example, look for "Ubi Caritas" recorded by the group "Octarium" - I just checked on Soundcloud.com to see if they had anything there - but the examples are such a lot bitrate that they're unusable. Try Spotify or Tidal if you have it...). Then, sit directly in front of your BeoSound 2 and listen for sources "around" the loudspeaker. You should hear the reverberation as a wide source - certainly extending to an area wider than the loudspeaker. This will be particularly true if you're and the BS2 are positioned in the middle of a room, and you have reflective sidewalls.
What we're actually discussing here is something called the "S" component in a stereo signal. (The "S" might stand for "Side" or "Stereo" - no one seems to agree on this) It's usually paired with the "M" component (for "Mid" or "Mono" - depending on who you ask...). So, instead of thinking of stereo as Left and Right (L & R) you can think of it as M &S (not S&M - that's something else...)
To convert L/R to M/S, you just have to do some math...
L+R = M
L-R = S
You can always get back to where you started by reversing the process
M+S = (L+R) + (L-R) = 2L
M-S = (L+S) - (L-R) = (L+R) + (R-L) = 2R
So, all we've done through these two processes is to make things twice as loud.
FYI: FM stereo is broadcast as "M" and "S" - not as "L" and "R" - which is why, when you get too far away from the transmitter antenna, you lose the "S" component and you're left with FM Mono... (if the "S" is deleted in the above equations, you're left with L=M and R=M - mono!)
Personally, when I'm listening, I'm actually paying attention in M/S - not L/R. This might sound weird - but I actually think that it's normal. I hear the vocals in the centre between the two loudspeakers - not as two identical sources playing the same thing at the same time. This is the "M" component. I also listen for the timbre (or "tone colour") of the "S" component - the phase-y / space-y stuff that sits outside the loudspeakers...
For me, this is almost always true - except when I'm listening to things like early Aretha Franklin recordings which were done with three 1-channel feeds tot the stereo output - one for the left, one for the centre, and one for the right. This is why you'll hear things like Aretha in the middle, but her backup singers in the left loudspeaker and the spring reverb in the right speaker.
Sorry... got a bit geeky there - but sometimes I spin out of control in my explanations...
The point that I was trying to get to was that the "stereo-ness" provided by the two midranges helps in all stereo recordings - you just need to know what to listen for. As I said in a previous posting in this thread - your "bakari" sample just makes it obvious (as a change in level, as well as a change in apparent location of the source).
Cheers
-geoff
Can I personally award this The Best Thread of 2016.
A great read with fantastic insight.
we tend to forget there is more to design than designing.
Good exposition of things that have either been forgotten by many or never known Geoff. I first read about this decades ago with the old Hafler Dynaquad approach, which predated Dolby Pro Logic surround, by decades as a method of ambience extraction. Interesting approach with the BL2 and dual mids.
Makes me wonder what for a mono sum something like the old Roger Waters "Amused To Death" album with Q Sound processing would do since there's alteration of the L and R signal to make up for interaural crosstalk. I would imagine it would just sound a tad more, what? Full mono...maybe some level differences, maybe some frequency response changes? It is bound to be subtle I think.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Jeff: Good exposition of things that have either been forgotten by many or never known Geoff. I first read about this decades ago with the old Hafler Dynaquad approach, which predated Dolby Pro Logic surround, by decades as a method of ambience extraction. Interesting approach with the BL2 and dual mids. Makes me wonder what for a mono sum something like the old Roger Waters "Amused To Death" album with Q Sound processing would do since there's alteration of the L and R signal to make up for interaural crosstalk. I would imagine it would just sound a tad more, what? Full mono...maybe some level differences, maybe some frequency response changes? It is bound to be subtle I think.
Q Sound in mono will either be just a little weird and therefore not so noticeable, or a complete mess. Q Sound was developed using empirical analysis of apparent phantom image position when manipulating phase relationship in different frequency bands. (in other words, someone tweaked the phase of a narrow-band signal, and then asked "where you do hear that?" a bunch of times...) At least, that's the way they explained it back-in-the-day. There were similar competing systems at the him (Roland had a system as well - see this toy).
The advantage of the Q-Sound examples is that the phase is different in different frequency bands. So, in mono, (depending on the intended virtual position of the source) you'll get complete cancellation in some bands, but not in others.
This is also happening on the "bakari" sample in Mark's tune. It's not 100% negatively correlated (or "totally out of phase") because there are some frequency components that are less out of phase than others... But the two channels are similar enough in enough bands to get more than 20 dB of reduction.
This thread makes me think that I should write about M/S analysis and processing in my blog. The problem with M/S is getting over the initial "hump" of getting the concept - but after you get past this, it opens up a whole new way of thinking about and listening to stereo - and there're no going back.
Cheers-geoff
oops... that should read "at the time" - not "at the him"...
I hate not being able to edit these posts...
cheers-g
Interesting, thanks for the further thoughts about Q Sound Geoff. I had never had as much info on how it actually worked as you do, but I recall the frequency banding, but still am unsure how many bands it uses or if they're variable. I did one time have a Carver Amazing Sonic Hologram Generator. When I was able to set the room up right for it, it did an amazing job of expanding the soundfield and in a pretty benign manner, no severe artifacting I could hear. I have no idea how it worked with respect to frequency, the whole white paper and such on it were remarkably full of buzzwords but not technical detail, so I have no idea how it compared in details of execution to Q Sound, but since it was an after the fact, inexpensive consumer product I'd expect the Carver to have had simpler processing.
Might be an interesting thing if someone would listen to Amused To Death in mono, I man have to do that soon. I do remember after setting up the speakers well and listening to that, the opening where the dog barks over your right shoulder was just amazingly realistic and shocking, but with both systems the "sweet spot" was remarkably narrow, you didn't have to move your head much to collapse the effect.