Quote Originally Posted by Mash
I think the night vision analogy is not good. Assuming the eyes are healthy and normal, their pupils must simply open to admit more light when the individual leaves the lighted room for the moonless forest. This is a well known response of the eye(s) to a change in ambient lighting.
No...it is not that simple. The pupils take time to open up..it can take many minutes, even hours, for the eye to fully adapt to the night..

In fact, it is also an age related thing. For example, 4 women, same family, ranging from mother to youngest daughter. My Kodak 6 megapixel camera has red eye reduction...it pre-flashes to fool the pupils to contract (reducing red-eye), then main flash goes off.. The oldest woman, through many group photo's, had no red eye..the youngest, always had it..the amount of redeye correlated exactly with the age of the woman...youngest having more..because her pupils dialated the fastest, opening up a lot before the second, main flash. BTW, it is a Kodak DX7630...excellent, user friendly...I recommend it..

Quote Originally Posted by Mash
The Stereopile Test CD (#3, I believe) has JA walking from the back of a church up toward a pair of stereo mikes located at the front pews as he hits a cow bell. The intended listener is "midway in the pews". If I play this cow bell test over a stereo pair of coned speakers, JA only becomes louder as he "supposedly walks", but he never seems to move toward me. If I play this cow bell test over my (stereo pair) of Futterman-driven Tympani, JA seems to move toward me as he becomes louder. Of course, if JA were to continue walking past the mikes at the front pews and toward the front of the church, I would probably perceive him as turning around and walking back to the far rear of the church. Now mind you, I use RS Gold I/C and 12 Ga zip speaker wires. Since I hear the spatial effect as JA apparently intended, it would seem that I have no need to buy exotic (read: expensive) wires. But I only get the spatial effect with the Tympani and not with the coned speakers I tried. I will have to try it with the Magnepans now in my bedroom, even tho they are powered with a Class A SS amp.
Interesting that he used a cow bell..that is exactly what I was thinking of using as a test stimulus..it is harmonic rich and very transient rich.
This certainly means that if your music has cow bells in it.......forget it, I'll resist....:-)

What you listened to is the interplay of IID, ITD, and the secondary reflections..and, my guess is that your cones aren't as solid in transient response as your F-T's.

If JA had done the test, but this time, moving to the side, and stating distance from center, that would be a better test of localization..

Three possibilities come to mind...your F-T's are phase coherent/simple loads to your amp, rendering them insensitive to wires....your cones are wildly reactive, and don't play nice with amp wire combo's, or it's just the quality of the speakers and it doesn't have a darned thing to do with wire mumbo jumbo..

Does he have any side to side stuff on that CD?

Cheers John..