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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Audio vs. Musical pitch

Post Subject: Audio sciencePosted by steverino on: 4/28/2013

This is a very interesting issue you raised. I would say that before audio designers could proceed in such a textbook manner they would have to be able to recreate original sounds in any given environment. (I'm limiting the discussion here to acoustic instruments and unamplified voices to avoid more complications.) The original sound event would be re-generated within the audio system so that what comes out of the speakers would be identical to the original sounds at some "ideal" listening spot before they hit the mics. The problem with audio is that the acoustical sounds are altered when they go through the mic and a regular audio system could never surpass the mic feed. A perfect audio system would be transparent to the mic feed and would also know how to correct the changes that occurred to the sound when it passed through the mic. To do that it would obviously need advanced AI functionality and be able to recreate the sounds in some component which would then be amplified and passed to the speakers. The speakers would have to be able to project all the direct and ambient information. To be practical the system would also have to be able to translate the soundfield of the original music event for any given listening room. Currently all that audio designers can do is make all kinds of compromises and hope that the resulting sound is pleasing to enough people that they can sell the component regardless of its lack of fidelity to the original sound. Compromises are necessarily an art form not a science.

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