Immersive Audio and How to Achieve It

@kota1 I’m familiar with immersive audio, I guess I should have been more clear, I’m not knocking it, binaural, 5.1 surround or other ways people are trying to change the traditional home audio listening experience.  As an audiophile, I just prefer stereo and all that brings to the table.

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say that 100% of the membership of this group enjoys (quality) music. Live music. Reproduced music in our listening rooms. Showers. In our vehicles during our commutes. On the water. Under the water. In the air. Alone. With friends. Outdoors.

I’d also like to submit that we don’t enjoy live venues where the music is (literally) painful, or the acoustics and/or persons running the sound board present a sound environment where the energy of reflected sound exceeds the energy of the direct sound. Or, bad recordings at home. Or, blown tweeters. Or, when the neighbor’s idea of an "outdoor musical experience" ioverpowers our concept of an "outdoor musical experience" at our home. Or, when someone pulls up next to us at a traffic light and the low bass energy shakes OUR rearview mirror.

"Immersive sound" is a marketing term that begin a few decades ago back when I was a peddler of audio/video gear. It attempted to "sell" the concept that if you bought an <insert brand/model> that the experience would be so up close and personally that it would be literally indistinguishable from being in the hot tub with your all-time favorite recording artist/pinup. I sold lots of "immersive" systems in the day.

When it comes to enjoying music at home, I prefer the phrase "suspension of disbelief", which is to say that for some moment in time, you cease to believe that you listening to arificially created prerecorded material, and are, in fact, IN the music venue WITH the performers. The number of channels required to pull this off is debatable. Some suggest that 2 channels is the "correct" number. Some say more.

In my world, "immersive" translates to:

- at home

- room temperature, volume, sweet spot, music, and number of guests selected by me

- dog at, or near, feet

- beverage (hot or cold) (boring, or otherwise)

- fully resonating with the performance where 99.9% of what’s left of my brain is engaged with what is happening sonically in the space

My wife and I enjoy live music as well. We attended Moondance Jam, a live music festival in Walker, Minnesota a few years ago and camped out in our(small) motorhome. It was a blast. Interacting with people made the event what is was. Expecially "meeting" the attractive young lady who forgot to lock the door on the Port-a-Potty. The sound was generally awful, about 10db over my preferred listening level for live music. We, literally, went back to the motorhome at one point, opened the windows, sit at the dinette table, broke out some wine and listened to the performance there. Joan Jett’s crew managed to get the sound right. Others, not so much.

Okay, it’s time to immerse myself in some oatmeal, and buttered toast. Afterwards, my goal is to suspend the disbelief that I’m an old guy when I take one of my hot rods out for a drive.

I think the premise of this discourse is flawed. Live venues attempt to create balanced & even sound throughout the venue for as many people as possible which is why the line array was developed & generally works pretty well. The digital amps used for these are designed for huge power, low Heat production & durability w/ actual sound quality an after thought at least at he standards most here expect although this is a different subject. Most of these set ups sound, hard, harsh, & very fatiguing in my experience.

A really good, two channel home system can .reproduce a large, deep, detailed soundstage w/ great dynamics & sound better than most live venues at least fior amplified music. Maybe a sub is required to really do the job for some speakers  & systems. 

More speakers & electronics etc is just more, not necessarily better. 
 

Immersive audio is NOT the same as immersive acoustic...

Immersive audio use DSP generally without psycho-acoustic measures of the inner ears and HRTF. ... ( save for example the Smyth realizer)

Immersiveness in PHYSICAL acoustic is created by passive material treatment and active mechanical control of the room...

Immersiveness in psycho-acoustic use measures of the inner ears and also Head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) describe the filtering of the acoustic field produced by a sound source arriving at the listener’s ear. It is used in smyth realizer but at a more sophisticated level by BACCH filters...

Many audiophile are more interested by stereo system able to give a REALISTIC natural timbre instruments experience than interested by DSP as such ...

They will use physical acoustic and psycho-acoustic measures to create acoustic immersiveness not mere audio immersivenes or dsp immersiveness as with many more speakers than two ...

The only DSP preserving the integrity of the timbre natural experience , and the only dedicated audiophile one is Dr. Choueri BACCH filters...

Without the BACCH filters and without psycho-acoustic measures we can create a relative partially convincing immersive stereo experience with passive acoustic treatment and active mechanical control of the room...

But BACCH filters are a DSP perfect control of the room without distorting the timbre , the only one preserving timbre quality from the acoustic original recording conditions...Other DSP can create immersiveness artificially but loosing integrity of the original acoustic timbre recorded experience in various degree ...

Immersiveness from a living show with amplified music as in pop and rock is not the same as immersiveness in a concerrt hall with non amplified instruments as the recording engineer proposed his set of acoustic microphones trade-off ...

Then stereo and home theater DSP are two different experience , in these two we can experience a form of immersiveness... One is digitally driven , the other serve and emerge from mechanical acoustic and/or from a set of specficic psycho-acoustic measures for EACH listener ...

It is my limited understanding... 😊

In digital audio of home theater for music theater the main point is NOT PRESERVING the physical recorded experience of a specific non amplified musical instrument , which reflect the trade-off choices of the recording engineer IN A CLOSED ACOUSTIC SPACE , the main point with home theater music experience  in is rrecreating the general atmosphere of AMPLIFIED instruments ...

A live concert of pop in open air on an outdoor scene  with big speakers is not the recording of an organ concert or a piano concert  in a church or in a small studio ...

@waytoomuchstuff 

Great post, I think "suspension of disbelief" is spot on in terms of what people want from any audio system.