Amazing ONE Speaker 5.1 Audio for G5s!

[davecuse]

Mattv is getting shot down for posting a "Product Recommendation" in the "Product Recommendation" forum. I don't get it. If you are skeptical, don't buy it.. Nothing is forced here

Honestly, the guy is just trying to help everyone out. Looks like he was just excited about a recent purchase, I think we've all been there. Cut him some slack.

I don't have an avatar, but I'm no troll...

 

[FuzzyBallz]

Integrated audio = crap audio. Period.

 

[cal6n]

Until I read through this thread I'd forgotten about a visit I'd made to London's Science Museum a few years ago. On display was a computer monitor with a couple of simple controls for controlling the flight path of a bee around a person's head in the centre of the screen. As I controlled the "virtual bee", from a single speaker grill in front of me, I could hear the bee flying around me and place it spatially by the sound alone. We are talking direction and distance in three dimensions (ie. including height!) and it was very, very impressive. The technical details were, as I recall, that the shape of one's ears and head affected or distorted the sound waves before they reached the eardrum and the brain then decodes this distortion to position the sound. If this distortion is artificially mapped onto a sound then the brain can be fooled into placing the sound where it is required.

My memory of this demonstration is remarkably similar to the "Head Related Transfer Function" mentioned in New Scientist here:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994373&lpos=related_article1

So Mattv, thanks for the heads-up on this one! Since downsizing my living space and having to store my beloved Linn/Naim Hifi, (including one of Niro Nakamichi's beautiful 3 head cassette decks) I've been missing out on good sounds. I KNOW this technology works, I trust the man behind it and I'm looking forward to using it!

To the moaners out there, you're probably the same type of people who "proved" that stereo could never sound as good as mono! Accept that there can be new tech which is far superior to the mainstream and that a forum like this is the ideal place to discuss it. It shouldn't be that hard. We all use Macs after all!

 

[Champale]

Hey Matt

As a fellow 'newbie' who hasn't made a gazillions posts yet, thanks for the tip.

Personally, I've been curious about the Niro's ever since I read about 'em on cnet.com.

I may have to check them out now.



Hmm. Just yesterday I was a newbie. I guess I must've just been upgraded! Hehe.

 

[solvs]

Got any more?

See, that's the spirit.

If you would have left, we would have labeled you a spammer. If you stay and fight and prove yourself... well, we still may make fun of you. The best advice I can give is fight back. We are a skeptical lot, just to warn you.

 

[mattv123]

See, that's the spirit.

If you would have left, we would have labeled you a spammer. If you stay and fight and prove yourself... well, we still may make fun of you. The best advice I can give is fight back. We are a skeptical lot, just to warn you.

Hahaha, perfect. This would not be a good discussion board if people wern't skeptics. And if I were to fall by being made fun of, and not be able to hit right back, that would not be a good way to gain respect as a "newbie".

Take care and goodnight.

 

[iJon]

I browse quite a few forums. the ones that have gotten the worse are the ones where almost every thread has a response like "troll" or something along those lines.

I might be the only one who doesn't care whether its an ad or not. he showed us some product we can use with out macs. to me it sounds like a stupid setup, but others it might be perfect. i guess i just don't get worked like other people do

iJon

 

[jared_kipe]

Ok, to address the issue of the "5.1" experiance. Sound is a wave, it diffuses and spreads out around corners. It does this much better than light, for instance have a buddy stand in one cubicle and you in another and see if you can't hear him muttering on about TPS reports. Now have the same buddy shine a flashlight at the top of the partition. Chances are that you won't directly see the flashlight due to diffusion, but you might see a reflection. So the sound from all the speakers will diffuse.

What do we perceive as directional audio? In honesty, it doesn't really matter where something is coming from, if it comes from the right side we hear it just as loud in the left ear, the difference is the ever so slight time delay it takes for it to get to the other ear. We can't hear the time delay, but our brain is very good at making heads and tails out of the sounds from that tiger creeping up from the right. So what have we learned? Doesn't matter where it comes from, just how long it takes to get to the ear.

Now then exibit A. my crudely drawn diagram.

 

[jared_kipe]

What you are seeing is a wave front from 4 speakers (but I only had room enough to continue 2 speaker wavefronts). The dashed lines are where the wave crests line up, this is where the maximum constructive interference lines up. What this means is that the sounds will be loudest on these lines. They appear whenever the path difference (linear distance from speaker to where the wavefront meets another wave) is in phase. Meaning that the path difference is ? L (wave length, if anybody knows lambda, please share). The center line is 0?, the next one is ? then 2? and so on. Now this won't matter AT ALL because sound frequency (and thus wavelength) is constantly changing. But it does matter for the center line, the path difference will always be zero on the center line, for every frequency. BAM center channel. (not sure if you can perceive it being as your ears are not on the center line)

Now then, what about the other 4 channels. Well obviously 2 of those will be worked out, because if you count lines from one speaker on any of the other dashed lines you will realize they are out of phase by multiples of ?, and thus they have an ever so slight time lag. That time lag tells us that they are in different places. So here is the kicker, what if we made that time delay even more severe by making the back speakers one more wave crest behind the front two? As in we simply start counting waves from the back speakers after we already counted one of the front ones. Well then, with a little calculations and testing, it might be very possible to fool your ears into thinking those speakers were beside, or even behind, you.

Now then, this is all theory, and of course we must worry about reflection too, but reflection would only help matters out, because the reflected sounds would have to reflect off of the walls around you, so it could only make the sound come from closer around you. Remember sound moves fast, your living room would have to be quite big for there to be such a time delay that you might notice. Of course where I am, it is late and I am tired, so this might not make sense in the morning.

 

[pianojoe]

5.1 material opposed to stereo

I have honestly not used my Niro system too much for 5.1 sound, since I don't watch many movies on my mac. However, I listen to a hell of a lot of music on my mac.

I was wondering like everybody else if a system like that could provide true 5.1. Those phase things sound plausible to me, I'm running a recording studio, and I know there are psychoacoustic effects to make you believe the sound source is behind you even on a 2.1 system.

However, mattv123 is listening to 2-channel audio, and that makes all the difference. I definitely believe that this system will add some nice 3D FX to the sound, but that doesn't make it a fully-fledged 5.1 system.

I'd like to listen to that baby though.