Jimbos Audio ramblings

[Jimbo]

I have just been reading an article about Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 reality audio and Apple spatial audio and interestingly there was a nugget of information how the technology works and how I think this may apply to what I am experiencing with my room / speaker and listening position evaluation.

Apparently the spatial audio works by adjusting the audio frequencies so each ear experiences variation in the position of the sound. This can pinpoint sounds and precise placement of audio effects in a 360 degrees arrangement. This got me thinking that in effect what I am doing with speaker toe-in, acoustic treatment, speaker position and seating position is to basically alter the frequencies I receive by moving various aspects of the sound. Obviously this alters the timing those frequencies hit my ear but also affect the actual frequency that reaches me.

Messing about with the frequencies results in me hearing a different perspective of the sound and therefore everything contained in it. Spatial awareness ie soundstage ambience and imaging are therefore manipulated to sound quite different as is the information that is contained in the frequency hitting my ear. It is a complex thing as every part of the sound is generated not only by the speaker and its position but also by everything else it interacts with in the room and ultimately where you are sitting. Now I know some of this may sound obvious but its implications are big as quite radical changes can be made to what and how you hear your system just by moving things around and applying room treatment, soft furnishings or simply moving your listening position as this determines the position of the frequencies hitting you ear.


But the trick is to get all those parts that influence the sound to work in the best way to achieve or get the best out of your system. I am still surprised as to the degree of change I have achieved over the last week or so and it has meant running through a long list of recordings I know well in order to discover what these effects have done to the recording. In many cases information in the recordings especially ambience around performers and instruments has been revealed to a much greater degree and tonal frequencies have become more complex and much richer.

I am genuinely excited by this as it has allowed me to upgrade my system at no extra cost. What I don't know however is if this is very specific to the room and equipment I have or if I insert another piece of equipment it would mean starting all over again?