Date:         Tue, 4 Jul 2006 22:39:36 -0400
Reply-To:     Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
              <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
              <[log in to unmask]>
From:         David Lennick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: More than stereo--was: VHS and Beta (was Re: [ARSCLIST]
              Longevity)
Comments: To: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

phillip holmes wrote:

> You can say the same about listening environments as recording.  There's a
> "just right" with a listening room.  I've heard just as many that were too
> dead as too live.  I wish I had studied acoustics in college.  It seems that
> diffusion is the key to good sound.  Kind of like that beautiful sound in an
> old growth forest where the sound echoes off the trees.

Can't resist asking..if there's nobody there to hear it, do the sounds just go
"Ah nuts, nobody's listening?"

> And there's
> something spooky about those places too.  Must be the "there's a Barr, I
> mean a bear, in there somewhere" part of our brains being on guard.
> Phillip

You were right the first time.

dl (who, it must be admitted, hasn't been in Barr's current abode but fondly
remembers an earlier one with floor-to-ceiling records)

>
>
> > The odd thing is that no one ever seemed to discover that a much more
> > realitic-sounding recording could have been made if they had only used
> > acoustically "live" spaces instead of relentlessly eliminating any
> > trace of echo/reverberation! Listen to Waring's "Freshie"...which was
> > cut in an acoustically live setting (probably much to Victor's dismay!)
> > and as a result sounds very much like stereo. Our brains expect echoes
> > and are set up to extract a lot of information therefrom...in all
> > probability, our ancestors who could figure out which tree the bear
> > was hiding behind survived to evolve, while those that couldn't didn't...
> >
> > Steven C. Barr
> >
> >