Presence speakers - What do you think?

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

You're the one who started all this. You couldn't stand to respect anyone else's opinion. It had to be your way or you would begin the name calling. A decent human being, if they felt the other person was wrong, would politely inform them of what they believed to be correct and then let it drop. Not you, you go on harping, over and over and over. As I said, you don't listen to what the other person has said and so you end up in left field arguing about assumptions that are not true. You're an "A: type personality, and as such you self proclaimed yourself the resident expert on this forum. I heard no such claim from anyone else, only you.

More online psychology, and a generous dose of hot air. You are right, I don't listen to nonsense PERIOD. I am certainly not going to listen to you, you don't know a damn thing about audio except how to sit in your chair and listening to it. Anyone can do that, it does not require any special skills.

As for not wanting to show your work, I take that to mean that you have nothing to show. However, you're right that you owe me nothing, but when you put your foot in your mouth, you should have the decency to back up your claims. It's a weakness on your part.

What have you shown to back up your assertions? A three speaker center channel produced by PLII decoding? Not much of an example is it...Now about foot in mouth, how about your assertions that we Hollywood sound engineers have it wrong. Based on that comment alone, you are fully diagnosed with foot in mouth disease, you don't have any background to make that determination. You know so little about home theater, and you don't have a system that could properly playback my mixes, there is no point in telling you what they are. How would you know whether it was accurate to the original mix? You wouldn't, so I would be left with your subjective opinion which is useless without any understanding of film sound.

The audio field is vast in that it has many aspects. You have your little niche in it that you feel makes you knowledgeable, but that's all you know and I have doubts about your level of expertise. I freely admit that my knowledge is limited, as is everyone else's, and the more I learn, the more I realize that I don't know. You, on the other hand, claim to know all things audio and that makes you the smartest guy on the planet. Good for you!

I don't think I made that claim, but you did make that assumption. The underlined part should make you talk less, and learn more. You however got this completely backwards. Soundtrack mixing is no niche, but you don't know any better, and I forgive your for that.

As for my arrogance, there isn't any profession that cannot be improved. There isn't any profession that isn't in a state of constant learning. To claim perfection is your forte and the arrogance is yours.

I don't believe I said anything about perfection. Assuming again? Definitely. So you think you know how to improve audio? With no mixing experience, no recording experience, no formal audio education, no nothing? Your listening experience? No thank you, everyone is a arm chair quarterback.

My profession has improved tremendously. However your knowledge of that improvement is severely lacking. Once again, how does a person who has never mixed anything, never mastered anything, and never recorded anything tell a person who has done all of this that it needs improving? Just what educational background and experience(aside from your admitted limited experience) do you have to make these assertions. Wait...I can answer that.....NONE...ZERO...NIL..not jack shyte.

I grew up at a time when TV's were just becoming commercially available, when stereo didn't exist in any home, when transistors had just been invented, when space vehicles didn't exist, before the first commercial computer was invented, and when much of what we take for granted today was more in the realm of science fiction. I was there to witness all of this and that is worth more than a few semesters at some college. Many people on the forum can say the same thing.

I watched different record formats come and go, 78 - 45 - 33 rpm records, reel to reel tape, cassettes, 8-tracks, CD's, DVD's, HDCD, DVD-a, SACD, MP3, and others. I've watched home audio go from mono to stereo to quad to surround to biaural, and it hasn't stopped changing during all those years and won't stop changing for a great deal longer.

So the hell what!! The only thing this tells me is that you are an old dog who has seen some new tricks. Nothing more

Even after all these years and all these advancements, almost all stereos and "all" surround systems still sound artificial compared to the real thing. We still have a long way to go before home audio, in any format approaches reality or approaches the limits of our hearing capabilities. For you to sit there and imply that what you do approaches anything close to real, is beyond belief. The best technology is years away from even getting close to perfection. To be fair, you're limited by the level of technology available and the limits of what we know about audio. Audio is still a heavily researched discipline and there is still a great deal to learn. THX, like all other agreed upon standards is going to be a foot note in the history of audio.

Blah blah blah more air sandwiches. You sure do love to see your words on a computer.

As far as I am concerned, you might just as well be arguing about the superiority of the gramophone. I see what you do as working with an inferior technology that is destined to change. All the standards and all the techniques used in the audio field are going to change because they are flawed. For now, we have to live with it, but to declare it a science neglects the fact that science doesn't stand still. Comparing what you consider science is like comparing Newton's theory of gravity to Einstein's theory of space curvature.

Everything improves over time, but to say it is flawed......there is nothing in your background that makes that truth. You really are full of yourself, and that's really a problem for you since you are education and experience bankrupt in the audio field.

Now go back to your mixing board and mix to your hearts content knowing that everything you do and know is relegated to obsolescence. Have fun in what you do, but realize that, in the future, your expertise is going to be considered the horse and buggy of the audio industry.

If you want respect, you have to give respect. These "old" guys here probably have been listening and judging audio, longer than you've been alive. We may all have different opinions, but that's because, we have different tastes and because the standard of "Live" has not been achieved.

You have the whole concept of audio recording and mixing totally wrong. We don't strive for things that are impossible, we strive for things that are. We are not trying to make things sound exactly like real life, we are looking for accuracy during recording and playback. Trying to chase after that "live" you state is like chasing your own tail....you never really get it. Accuracy faithful to what the microphones capture is our goal. There is no way to achieve a realistic "live" presences without hundreds of discrete microphones for capture, and hundreds of discrete speakers for playback. We would have to record every discrete reflection in the hall, all of the reverberation in the hall, and you would have to have speakers that could playback these hundreds of discrete reflections on your end. You would need media capable of transmitting and storing hundreds of channels of information Not financially feasible for anyone.

Your goal is not feasible or realistic. 9.1 is having a difficult time getting traction in the consumer market. 100.2 is not going to happen at all, and there goes your concept of "live" sound.

My suggestion to you is to find someone like minded (like yourself) and tell them about this creaton that is on the audio board and spill your guts about how stupid and uninformed he is. It will make you feel better about yourself. Maybe that will put you in a better mood. I really don't mind.

You see, that person would be far smarter than you, far more realistic than you are, and a lot less ignorant than you are. Let's see, There is Randy Thom, Ralph Murch, Dennis Sands, everyone apart of the MPSE group, and just about everyone mixing soundtracks in Hollywood. That's great company, and I already know many of them.