el`Ol wrote:

What they all can´t do: Give an instrument/vocalist exactly the same size, focus and "substance", no matter where in the stereo panorama it/he/she is located. I do not even speak about total realism of these aspects, just about their independence from position.

Herman, good post, but I think you are knocking into a wrong door. Let take it step by step.

noviygera wrote:

The answer is dynamic balance.  It's objectively easy to prove too. Let's say you are in a room behind a closed door. In the other room is a musician playing an instrument. Even an easier example -- a person talking in the other room. You know that it's for real.

This is a classic “the second floor piano example”: you walk down a street and hear a piano playing on the second floor with a window opened. You do recognize immediately that the piano is real or a recording.  The question is how do you know? You suggest that it is by dynamic balance. I am not sure.

noviygera wrote:

Let's see: behind a closed door, a live instrument, a live sound, a live voice. Let's not SEE, let's HEAR We hear definition, attack and decay, we hear timbre, and most importantly we hear a CONTINUOUS EVENNESS in definition, attack and decay, and timbre over the entire freq. range of the sound. Of the voice, of the instrument and music.  That's what makes it real. An EVEN definition from top to bottom. But to state it bluntly I called it dynamic balance.

Here is where I am not sure that I agree. I would agree that “definition, attack and decay, and timbre” is in live music and in the recordings is different over the entire frequency range but I am not sure that if shall be CONTINUOUS EVENNESS and identical for all frequencies and for all dynamic ranges. I have written about it many times including the AMI article

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=12186

I do feel that there is a pattern how harmonics need to be changed with respect to frequency range and volume but I would more attribute to amplification not to the acoustic systems. BTW, the AMI conception is trying to deal with it inclusively….

noviygera wrote:

Today’s high-end audio loudspeakers, yesterdays loudspeakers have had this inferiority to REAL sound. The "sharpness", the attack and decay, the "dynamics" are varying with respect to frequency. "Mids are smooth, highs are transparent" what a bunch of BS. It's the evenness of each attack and decay with respect to the attack and decay of every other frequency that the speaker system can reproduce. Another way to put it "transient response" cannot vary with respect to frequency.

Herman, how methodologically, subjectively of objectively, you recognize that it is necessary the evenness? I think it would be a good idea to know HOW it shall be. Live sound is not a constant and it’s “definition, attack and decay, and timbre” wary upon many different conditions, so I am not sure that it need to be CONTINUOUS EVENNESS, I think there is more to it than just the “continuous evenness”.

Anyhow, what you describe is probably a single worst thing in playback generally but it is not specifically relates to acoustic systems.