The secret to good imaging

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hi I'm Paul and this is ask Paul I'm would asked me what kind of condition I'm in today Terry's got me doing this yoga which is actually pretty cool I am a total novice at it I mean the downward dog and the you know all this stuff it does help limber me up but it also makes me pretty sore so I'm glad I'm doing it but I'm little sore today but I am glad I'm doing it okay not for that Richard in Ventura California Oh Ventura if you don't know where Ventura California is it's right along the 101 coastal road that goes up California if you were to start in Southern California LA and you drove up highway 101 you'd go right through Ventura which is the first time that you actually sort of hit the the beach towns Camarillo in those areas and I used to do that a lot when I would go down to visit vendors and things in LA I would then continue up to our plant in Santa Maria or the other way so venture is nice place what's the secret of achieving good imaging huh boy that's all you got an hour how do we do this in five minutes or less the secret of good imaging most of the time that well first let me say that really good imaging is a combination of a whole bunch of things the entire system good power good cables good electronics good speakers good room goods you know but that's just too general of an answer to really be of any value to anyone I think the worst imaging that I see on a continual basis is caused by poor speakers setup and this can be because of circumstances or a lack of knowledge and I think that the probably the single best or the single biggest reason that people don't get good imaging as they have their speakers too close to the front wall and manned by front wall I mean the wall that you are looking at that is behind the loudspeakers it's really convenient in your living room of your home to shove the speakers up against the wall or away from but just a little bit in order to get it but when you do that you don't give the system any room to breathe and systems depend on that harry Pearson published his famous rule of thirds where the speaker should be one-third the way from the front wall and you the listener should be 1/3 away from the back wall some of the best imaging speakers I've ever heard are in big rooms when you go to arnie noodles house the founder of infinity and the man that is designing our upcoming line of loudspeakers yeah go arnie his room is very tall open ceilings the speakers are pulled out from the rear wall and he has a soundstage that images in a way that few I have ever heard in the 40 years that I've done this can even compare with I mean it's it is spectacular it's just there's you when the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and those great Mahler recording starts playing I mean you close your eyes and you literally can hear the entire Orchestra in a perfect soundstage and you can't get that if you don't have some room for the loudspeakers to breathe and and that's the way that I kind of look at this so how do you tell if they're far enough out in the room too far out in the room one way to do that is to think about an analogy that I have used often with people and and please for those of you that are literalists don't take this too literally because I'm trying to make a picture to help people understand what I'm talking about that said imagine that you have a small group a trio a singer a bass player and how ukulele so you got three people that are in your room and you're gonna set them up and you know take them out from the front wall a little bit and they're they're gonna stand and play right and now you want to record those people so what do you do okay so you know if you if you look at this you're yours you're sitting here and the musicians are here and you're here and then the the back of the wall is over here right so you're gonna place two microphones pointing at the musicians between you and the musicians right can you picture that so it's you the microphones and the musicians and the microphones are pointed at the musicians now they start to play and they sing and they do whatever and you're capturing this sound on the microphones now it's time to send them home and now you want to play it back so imagine now that those two microphones magically turn into loudspeakers so they flip around and instead of two microphones pointing at musicians now there are two loudspeakers pointing at you what would you expect to hear would you expect the sound to come now from the front of the loudspeakers I would hope not because that's not where it occurred when those microphones are pointing at the musicians and you play it back as speakers the musicians should appear about the same size and height and the same place that you recorded them which is why I have always said a gives speakers enough breathing room behind them to form an image and to the image should always come from behind the loudspeakers never in front if that makes sense so there are some tips on creating a good image once you have the speaker's pulled away as much as you're allowed to or you're capable of and you get a pretty good image now you have to focus on the other things that are really important electronics I can if you take a BHK preamp and you put that in the system relative to oh you know I don't know pick something $100 preamp from some other manufacturer the sound stage for the lower-cost preamplifier is very likely to collapse and become yeah it's there but it's not expansive it doesn't have what a BHK would have and I'm not just trying to sell you BHK I'm just using that as an example where great electronics enhance the soundstage but if you don't have the speaker's set right in the first place then it doesn't matter what the electronics are hope that helps great question and thank you for asking talk to you later [Music] you [Music]

Channel: PS Audio

Views: 179,947

Keywords: Ask Paul 1

Id: OI7DA886-9o

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2017