durwood

Stage width will be less when you don't have proper crosstalk parameters, this is the same reason if doing a typical car stereo layout where the speakers are not at +/-30deg and aimed correctly, the width stops at or around the boundaries of the car and you end up with panned mono instead. Ambiance and envelopement will diminish as noted by wungun.

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hithere

My guess is that this, in the absence of the acoustic barrier outlined in the first post (i.e., an effect you would use in a car) , is simply using a time delayed and inverted version of the opposite speaker to cancel crosstalk from said speaker at the "near" listener's ear, relying on left/right bias between the ears to separate the cancellation wave from the desireable (left speaker at the left ear, right speaker at the right ear) wave...In any case, is there a mechanism for dealing with comb filtering/secondary crosstalk created by the action of the plugin itself? It seems to me that the fundamental difficulty with stereo is still present...i.e., any out-of-phase/time delayed information you create to cancel crosstalk from the opposite speaker, in itself creates anomalies (comb filtering, etc...) at the same time that it works on the crosstalk. It is beyond my ken how to make this fully effective using processing alone, sans physical barrier separating the speakers, without serious compromises to whatever tonal balance you had before you began, and to anomalous effect overall. I guess it would come down to whether such effect was pleasing overall, but you end up, no matter how much you tweak it, painting with a very broad brush using this type of processing in a car stereo environment.

It seems that no matter where you turn with stereo in a car, you have to deal with such broad "throw it at the wall and see if it sticks" techniques to recover depth information and room acoustics (this stuff, time delayed and band-limited rear fill, etc.)

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durwood

Excellent post.

R.A.C.E. algorithm attempts to create the re-occuring cancelation hence the "Recurrsive" part of the name. When overdone it tends to sound too colored and un-natural. If you don't take into account how the brain filters/splits and interrprets the timing of sound in space, this could be the reason behind the coloring. Even if using a dummy head to capture an impulse, there still needs to be some post alteration that mimics the brain function. Complex right? Gets even more complex with music as steady state sounds are handled differently than quick bursts via brain function.

Others think a basic approach is good enough and gets us pretty close and a few seem to prefer the absorbtion barrier over the electronic method. Even the physical barrier does not absorb all freqs. You have to be careful when calling it a barrier as absorbers and blockers are two different things.

My thought is that the simple method works similar to the physical absorber because lower frequencies are not cancelled and people like bass. Usually when systems lack bass, people complain.

Also think a bit about where the speakers are placed in the room and how the room interacts differently than a spaced setup. Even a compromised setup can perform quite well when compared to the compromsied typical alternative. This last part may come off too opinionated but there is plenty of evidence to back this up.

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