The '3D Sound' marketing hoax

[Tubetec]

I see more and more products trying to associate themselves with this 3D Sound idea , even mono devices purport to possess this magical quality , yet each and every one of these manufacturers fails to give any rational explanation as to what exactly it is or how their device achieves it .
If a device used some sort of time domain processing to add depth and breadth to a mono source they might have a legitimate claim to calling it 3D ,but other than that its just people latching onto a viral misnomer for the sake of marketing or to mislead non technical clients with pseudo science. It reminds me of the 'Digital' badge Sony and other manufacturers applied to headphones back in the day , an utterly baseless claim , I think the majority will agree .

[flyboy71]

When I was in broadcasting we had a Mod Sciences Stereomaxx MYB-2 in our airchain. It had delay in the L-R path to widen the image and some controls to do this automatically. The engineer was adjusting it once on air and set it to full width and it sounded like each channel was in the next room. It definitely widened the image which works well in broadcasting especially in cars where the width isn't audibly wide to begin with. Where it didn't work well was on mono content. Of course in the early 90s most stations had all of their media on magnetic tape carts so when anything mono was played the widener exaggerated anything out of phase and shifted it off center which was really annoying on the on-air monitors. Couple that with the automatic width control and it attempted to keep widening low level L-R until it reached the setpoint. I cant think any of the 3D sound today would fare much better; the fundamentals are the same.

[Tubetec]

I cant say Ive much experience in the broadcasting sector , however the owner/manager/chief engineer at the studio I learned my trade at always impressed upon me the need for good mono compatibillity .
DI'd mono sources tend to lack any kind of dimensionality and can benefit from this kind of psycho accoustic processing , a mix of direct mono and dual Boss chorus pedals adds an interesting flavour to otherwise bland ,hole in the head mono .

The other thing is the average listeners speaker nowadays probably is stereo , albeit very closely spaced ,with miniscule drive units , thats a pretty important factor that has changed over the years.
Some of the Beatles early stereo mixes totally collapse when mono'd ,another good example is "their satanic majesties request' by the Stones , available in both mono and stereo versions , for me the mono pressings sound way superiour with loads more low end Ummmph!

Its really the misuse of the term 3D sound I wanted to address here , but of course any and all contributions are appreciated ,
Cheers FB .

[mediatechnology]

Some of the Beatles early stereo mixes totally collapse when mono'd ,another good example is "their satanic majesties request' by the Stones , available in both mono and stereo versions , for me the mono pressings sound way superiour with loads more low end Ummmph!

One of the reasons I made the Quadrature Summing Filter and EEQ for ummmmph.

On of the problems with super-width in FM is that it shifts energy to the 38 kHz DSB suppressed-carrier which has lower dynamic range than basedband L+R.
The 38 kHz subcarrier carrier is also subject to more synchronous AM noise.
The same problem you have in vinyl where the vertical channel (L-R) has a lot less DR than lateral L+R.

If you want nice stereo width keep those Texars in flyboy's pic un-coupled for stereo - it provides a nice dynamic width.

I've never enjoyed the 3D effects.
Getting a pair of monitors to properly image mono is tough enough.

[AnalogJoe]

Thoughts on Dolby Atmos? I've heard a lot of buzz about it.

To be honest, I've never liked anything surround, I don't like it when I start hearing stuff coming from the back of my head. Also, I profoundly dislike movies with loud surround sound. Seriously, there is nothing more distasteful for me than to have to listen to gunshots at 11 with a healthy dose of LFE to stir your gut. If I am watching a movie, I want to relax, I do not want to feel like I am trapped in freaking Jumanji. [/rant]

[mediatechnology]

Not sure I buy into the 3D sound thing either.

One experiment I did do was Mid/Side monitoring to create an ambient field.
There's no localization and the entire room becomes the "sweet spot."
It was very interesting.

A Mid Side Speaker Array for A Big Ambient Sweet Spot
viewtopic.php?t=742

I've had one customer that used this in a large atrium work-out facility.

[Tubetec]

Agreed 100% on movies with heavy synthetic sound effects processing , I find it distracting and needlessly stressfull ,
I think the last movie I saw in the cinema was saving private ryan , I walked out of the theatre with my nerves jangling .
I dont watch movies any more these days , its just not worth sitting through the utter garbage visuals with undertones of propaganda and very bland 'woke' dialogue/scripts , when maybe 1 in 20 movies has any redeeming qualities whatsoever .
Glengarry Glenross , now theres a good movie if you havent seen it , visually its more like a play ,but OMG the script , especially the bit where Al Pacinos(Roma) character rips Kevin Spaceys persona(Williamson) a new asshole

Something like a live music gig reproduced over domestic surround speakers ,with just audience and room reverb in the rear channels might work , but again I dont want to hear sound sources flying all around the room as its just distracting .

I used work in a hifi shop at one point way back , one day a buddy and his wife came in looking for a 'surround sound' package , they bought a system which I installed . Within a matter of days his wifes nerves were shattered , she threatened to leave him unless the speaker system went ,so it ended up packed up in a box and put away .

As Ive made reference to in the other thread a guitar reproduced through an amp with stereo springs reproduced over studio monitors can be an incredibly immersive experience for both the player and the audience .
I do take issue with this '3D sound' tag which people tend to add to their sound gear without any basis for ,thats bullshit plain and simple .

[AnalogJoe]

Agreed 100% on movies with heavy synthetic sound effects processing , I find it distracting and needlessly stressfull ,
I think the last movie I saw in the cinema was saving private ryan , I walked out of the theatre with my nerves jangling .
I dont watch movies any more these days , its just not worth sitting through the utter garbage visuals with undertones of propaganda and very bland 'woke' dialogue/scripts , when maybe 1 in 20 movies has any redeeming qualities whatsoever .

Agreed, plus I don't know what is the deal with Irish cinemas, but in many places around the world you have to watch around 30 minutes of ads before the movie starts. It is really disrespectful. Even many streaming services today do this. I find it amazing that, today, even if you are paying for a streaming service, what you are now getting is what some years ago was considered the free version with ads, and if you do not want the ads, you have to pay much more, sometimes double the amount! No wonder piracy is on the rise again after years of steady decline. Music streaming is ok, but TV and movie streaming services have gone to shit. Most of the content used to be available in a single platform, now you have to pay for like 4 streaming services in order to watch what you want. I believe that even some TV series are split between platforms!!! And you still get to watch at least 2 minutes of ads before the show starts, and, in worse cases, you get constant ad interruptions throughout the program.

To be honest, these days I mostly watch (or listen to) YouTube podcasts and recommended stuff by the algorithm based on my preferences. I do pay for Premium to get the ad-free experience, and it also comes bundled with YouTube Music, which I think is great; I do not have Spotify or any other music streaming service aside from YouTube Music. I rarely watch movies or TV series anymore. I also pay for Audible. I find it very productive and rewarding to listen to audio books during my daily commute, especially if I am stuck in traffic. Rumble is ok, but there is a lot less content available. I guess that all of what I just said simply indicates that I am a middle-age man...

P.S. Something that I like about YouTube Music is that the algorithm won't tweak the levels of songs that are below -7 LUFS. I believe that you can turn the 'normalize' feature off in Spotify, otherwise, anything above -14 LUFS will get "treatment".

I used work in a hifi shop at one point way back , one day a buddy and his wife came in looking for a 'surround sound' package , they bought a system which I installed . Within a matter of days his wifes nerves were shattered , she threatened to leave him unless the speaker system went ,so it ended up packed up in a box and put away .

I don't blame her, but it sounds to me that she was just looking for a reason Are they still together? Probably not. Thank God I am single.

I do take issue with this '3D sound' tag which people tend to add to their sound gear without any basis for ,thats bullshit plain and simple .

Even though I was still a boy during the late 80s and early 90s, I still could easily figure out that the "3D sound" button on cheap boomboxes back then was pure BS. I believe that the only thing it did was to activate a secondary set of small speakers by feeding them signals with opposite polarities. It also sounded like crap.

[Tubetec]

I got rid of the tv years ago from my main room , although I did keep a very small 22 inch unit for catching up with local news for a bunch of years after that . During covid I started listening to RTE radio 1 in the evenings ,theres very little pop music on at that time of the day , I also strictly limited my news intake and the adds get muted .

I used have an add-on for the browser which auto skipped youtube adds , instead it blanks out video and audio until the skip becomes available , that stopped working fairly recently ,so Ive been on the look out for other gadgets which do the same ,with mixed results , it seems eventually Youtube catch onto it and put in a spoiler and it tends to stop working , its a running battle .

My buddy split with his wife eventually , but I remained friends with both of them , he remarried a few years later ,she got her own place but sadly died not long after , the full story is beyond the scope of this discussion ,but suffice to say she was very heavily medicated for many years which led to massive weight gain , and all the health complication that come with it . She became very difficult to deal with and isolated from family and friends , shed been trying to come to terms with difficult issues going back to childhood ,just trying to get recognition mainly from family ,but to no avail , an aneurism caused by stress took her in the end , a mercifull release in some ways ,but tragic none the less .

I just checked and saving private Ryan was 1998 , that was the last time I set foot in a cinema
Ive no idea what its like nowadays ,but with the advent of home theatre ,from what people tell me cinemas now are half empty a lot of the time .

[mediatechnology]

I bought and restored the Texas Audio Prisms just for TV sound.
There is no dialog normalization on most streams.

I avoid theaters.
The last movie I went to IIRC was "Man In The Iron Mask" in 1998.

We stream old episodic TV shows and I also buy DVDs of them and then rip them to disk.
It's been years since I've mounted a DVD or Blu-Ray into a drive to do anything other than rip it.

When my wife used to travel to see her Mom or go on business there would be days I would never turn on the TV.