Recording technique is the prime determinant of spatial impressions in sound reproduction

Evidence

The directivity of the loudspeakers is a factor, as is the reflectivity of the surfaces involved in the first lateral reflections, especially in recordings incorporating left or right hard-panned sounds. If simplistic “mono” hard-pans had been ameliorated by the addition of spatial cues in the recordings themselves, perhaps the Quad would have received higher ratings. It is interesting to contemplate if the tendency for recording control rooms to be acoustically dead, reflection free, motivates the engineers to incorporate left-right delayed or uncorrelated components of the center image into the mixes. It would be an advantage for all, whatever loudspeaker/room combination is used. — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 740

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader theme of how production choices shape the listening artifact, echoing the dead-room/engineer-psychology insight. — connects to: Recorded spatial content, not loudspeakers, dominates stereo perception; Spatial audio systems create illusions of direction and space rather than reproducing them exactly; Timbral quality dominates perceived sound quality over spatial reproduction — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2375 (+2 more)

Related

• Recorded spatial content, not loudspeakers, dominates stereo perception (similarity 0.95)
• Recording methods and cues for stereo are chosen independently of the listening arrangement. (similarity 0.88)
• Stereo reproduction injects room and speaker location cues unrelated to the recording (similarity 0.86)
• Only sound quality and spatial effects can be physically controlled in recordings (similarity 0.85)
• Room reflection effects are masked by spatial information already in recordings (similarity 0.85)
• Multichannel and immersive audio reduce the perceptual importance of small-room reflections. (similarity 0.83)
• Larger recorded spaces perceptually dominate smaller playback spaces (similarity 0.82)
• Listeners perceive the larger of two superimposed spaces in sound reproduction. (similarity 0.82)
• Early recording technology stripped music of all sense of space (similarity 0.82)
• Spaciousness comes from natural room reflections, recorded multichannel reflections, or both. (similarity 0.82)
• Stereo playback masks differences between loudspeakers with room reflections (similarity 0.82)
• Multichannel recording content masks room acoustics and loudspeaker resonances (similarity 0.82)
• Spatial envelopment requires uncorrelated ear signals, not a diffuse sound field (similarity 0.81)
• Timbral quality dominates perceived sound quality over spatial reproduction (similarity 0.81)
• Listening rooms impose their own acoustics on top of recorded sound (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Stereo reproduction injects room and speaker location cues unrelated to the recording #expands (0.80)
• Timbral quality dominates perceived sound quality over spatial reproduction #contradicts (0.75) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2375
• Spatial audio systems create illusions of direction and space rather than reproducing them exactly #qualifies (0.72)
• Anechoic recordings produce the best spatialized audio when convolved with HRIRs #corroborates (0.70)