10 ms·

It's called a dance floor

176 points by wmeredith 2y ago

wmeredith 2y ago
Pound-for-pound, Vogue by Madonna is one of the most remarkable examples of artificial stereophonic sound ever produced. As a lover of hi-fi, Madonna wasn't really on my radar until someone steered me toward this gem. After about 50 listens and some really interesting research on QSound (the tech used to produce it), I ended up featuring it in my hi-fi music recommendation newsletter.
- peterldowns 2y ago
  Thanks for submitting this here, very cool article — I hadn't heard of QSound before.
- empath75 2y ago
  I don't know, I always thought it sounded simplistic, cheap and dated, even at the time. Placing stuff in the stereo field has been bog standard music production since the 70s. Q sound adds a _little_ bit to it, but somewhat importantly if you are actually listening to this song in a dance club it's all completely lost, a lot of clubs don't have any kind of stereo separation. Just compare it to stuff that was coming out of the acid house scene at the same time (yes i know this song isn't really acid house -- but it does have a lot of fun stereo effects): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qexS5hBB1C0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qexS5hBB1C0
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    A lot of stereo/3d stuff translates differently to each listener. Q sound might not work for you the way it does for others (none of the 3d sound stuff seems to work for me).
  - djborschtbeets 2y ago
    You can't just throw out Orb and expect me not to get extremely excited. Now I have to listen to this entire youtube performance. THANKS.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    IMHO Orbital - The Box (part 2) works even better[1]. Some of the sounds are clearly behind me, to my sides, or surrounding me. And things move around. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGvFObnwKNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGvFObnwKNc
    - helboi4 2y ago
      Really nice track
  - helboi4 2y ago
    Yeah I agree as an electronic music fan the idea that this track is particularly special in terms of digital stereo even at that time seems weird to me.
  - allturtles 2y ago
    Some cool stereo effects, but not something I'd ever want to listen to. I don't see anything interesting about putting nature sounds and a Pink Floyd sample over a very repetitive electronic loop. Maybe I didn't get far enough, since it's 20 goddamn minutes long. To me, Vogue is ear candy. De gustibus!
mmastrac 2y ago
QSound was magic at the time. We had a DSP class in my EE degree where we implemented a very minor transform that would shift position of audio and it was wild. It's impossible to get 3D audio to be absolutely as flawless as the real world because human ears all vary slightly and your 3D spacial perception of sound is literally tuned on your own ears, but QSound's transfer functions come as close as you can get. The algorithm also falls apart a bit outside of the sweet spot, and is really only useful in headphones and specific cases where a human is known to be placed in a certain location relative to speakers. The original model was developed using a simulated human head and lots of hand-tuning. I am curious if we've advanced far enough with tech that a more modern set of transfer function parameters could be developed. Nothing beats N speakers for positional audio, but this is a pretty decent replacement if the conditions are ideal. OpenAL was designed as an open-source library to bring 3D audio to the masses in the same way that OpenGL did (basically exposing QSound/equivalent hardware on sound cards to an API), but I'm not sure what happened to it [1]. [1] https://www.openal.org/documentation/openal-1.1-specification.pdf https://www.openal.org/documentation/openal-1.1-specificatio...
- wrs 2y ago
  Isn’t this the same fundamental technique as Spatial Audio and binaural Atmos rendering? AirPods can even measure your personal ear transfer functions.
  - mmastrac 2y ago
    Looks like it is. The Apple HRTF should be much more accurate than QSound -- QSound was designed to work without any analysis.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - brudgers 2y ago
    Yes and no. Contemporary spatial audio render images in real-time. Older systems rendered the image during mixing. On the other hand psychoacoustic techniques have not changed.
mellosouls 2y ago
As a dancer I had hoped from the title that the article would be a discussion of the death of dance in clubs. It alludes to the record being popular on dancefloors but given that most these days are full of people waving their phones packed tight as sardines, or tiny spaces full of drunks and lechers none of whom can dance in either case, it seems a moot point that it's still popular...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- itsmemattchung 2y ago
  Fellow (house) dancer here and couldn't agree with you more. Luckily, however, I recently relocated to London and though I rarely stay out late these days, I did go to a venue called Fabric and I bring this because there's a policy (moderately enforced) of "no phones" and in fact, prior to entering, they will place little stickers on camera lens. Of course, some individuals will inevitably whip out their phones to capture a video or photo, at which point an (disguised as civilian) employee will demand that they put their phone away. So again, moderately enforced. All that is to say, dance in clubs still exists...just rare to find.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Clubs with policies like Fabric exist in other cities as well, to me they are usually a sign of a good club. Berlin clubs, at least the ones worthy going to, have the same policy of no photos, and heavily enforce it. I've seen quite a few people booted out from sticking their phone for a picture twice, it's one of the things that can really put a sour feeling on a dance floor. If I'm there to be free and dance my heart out the last thing I want is to be conscious of perhaps getting filmed while doing so. Personally I have politely asked many people to not even try that in those clubs. I've seen the same policy in some clubs in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, and the list goes on. If you can manage to go clubbing at places that enforce such policies I'd say you're 80-90% there on finding a good dance floor.
  - immibis 2y ago
exabrial 2y ago
This is one of my favorite hits from the era. It's a masterpiece.
frankus 2y ago
As a young Gen Xer it's fun to go back and listen to radio hits I heard growing up (on mostly terrible sound systems playing radio or cassette tapes) using modern audio hardware. There's a lot of depth in many tracks that I couldn't really appreciate at the time, because even a half-decent sound system was the kind of luxury I (or my parents) wouldn't have splurged on.
- mikrl 2y ago
  Reminds me of listening to all the OG wave dubstep on YouTube in the late 00s and not getting it, until I plugged in a bass amp I was borrowing and vibrated my walls.
  - adzm 2y ago
    It is amazing that there are entire genres of music like space bass that rely on sub bass for the whole experience, and it's pretty much impossible to get the same experience without a good subwoofer. Good headphones can get close but lose the visceral feeling of the sub in your body.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      To me if the word “bass” is in the name of the genre, then having subs seems like an obvious thing that would miss a lot without subs. That’s up there with judging a book by its cover
  - iamacyborg 2y ago
    And even then you weren’t getting the full live experience. Some of the tracks from that time are an incredible physical experience.
    - epiccoleman 2y ago
      Deep bass sounds in live music are just awesome, in the original sense of the word. Those big dubstep "wubs" or deep downtuned sludge metal riffs vibrate through your whole chest. Reproducing something like that at home is certainly possible, but you're going to have to piss off the neighbors to get there.
wrs 2y ago
Sting’s solo album The Soul Cages was another early QSound adopter. I can remember popping it in the CD player and having a “What the…” moment.
- wiredfool 2y ago
  And Roger Waters' Amused to Death.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    And Nine Inch Nails broken.
cocodill 2y ago
Unfortunately, I can't share the general enthusiasm for this song, neither musically nor in terms of how it sounds. The only thing that is quite good is the part of the video with her transparent sweater.
lucasoshiro 2y ago
If you like this kind of stereophonic sound, I recommend Art of Noise. Here are some songs from them: Moments in Love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNkcZ8QoNuI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNkcZ8QoNuI Paranoimia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F8BD6gNOag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F8BD6gNOag Dragnet '88: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6JQO0KnUZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6JQO0KnUZY I recommend to set the videos to the highest quality and to listen using headphones
- pavlov 2y ago
  Also, Yello. They're pretty much only known for "Oh Yeah" which was used in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", but their albums are full of fabulous stereophonic productions. For example "The Race" from 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C62NSn-3hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C62NSn-3hU This entire album called "Flag" kicks ass. It's a weird ride of thrilling electro and comedic bathos. Every song is different.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Hmm, I have Flag, should give it another listen. I liked Stella better.
    - pavlov 2y ago
      ”Stella” is the more historically important album for sure, and has more of an avant-garde edge. But I really enjoy the excessive late ‘80s production on “Flag”.
  - bigiain 2y ago
    Chk-cah Chk-cahhhhhh
- bigiain 2y ago
  The whole The Seduction of Claude Debussy album by Art Of Noise is _sublime_. (For the art, I don't even recall if it does anything interesting stereophonically...)
- 2y ago
joenot443 2y ago
I remember being shown Virtual Barbershop on 2000s YouTube as a teenager. I was absolutely blown away by the experience, it did for my ears like what 2024 VR does for my eyes. Total magic. https://www.qsound.com/demos/virtualbarbershop_long.htm https://www.qsound.com/demos/virtualbarbershop_long.htm Very cool to see it’s from the same company!
- aidenn0 2y ago
  I believe they turned that into an attraction at Disney-MGM Studios. I certainly remember it from circa 1990.
- mhh__ 2y ago
  I'd never actually looked into who made it. I guess that makes complete sense.
Terr_ 2y ago
I remember a contemporary technology, Aureal's A3D, experiencing the magic of having one of their sound-cards and playing Counter Strike 1.x. Enemy footsteps felt almost as good as seeing them. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I never quite recaptured that sense with other hardware/games. Another search-able term to drop in here is "Head-Related Transfer Functions" (HRTF), where the inputs are a sound and a given relative location, and the problem is how to subtly adjust that sound for each "ear", giving your brain the kinds of cues normally imparted by the shape of your ears and the different materials in your skull, etc. Aureal suffered from a set of legal battles with a then-not-so-huge company named Creative, which eventually bought out the bankrupt remains. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureal_Semiconductor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureal_Semiconductor
- aaronax 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure Aureal A3D was featured on my family's Compaq Presario 5150[0] back in 1998. The speakers were decently sized units mounted on the side of the 17" CRT and powered straight from the soundcard via 3.5mm plug which apparently was designed to output way more power than a standard headphone jack because it could go pretty loud. A couple nifty demos were included. One was simply a bee buzzing in a circle, and it totally sounded like it was doing loops behind your head. [0] https://aaron.axvigs.com/node/438 https://aaron.axvigs.com/node/438
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Old PC sound cards commonly had op-amps on their outputs that could produce a reasonably-clean Watt or two into a pair of 8-Ohm speakers. Which doesn't sound like much, but 100 Watts is only 20dB louder than that if all else is the same, and most casual music listening happens with peaks that are in the realm of tiny fractions of a Watt.
fsckboy 2y ago
it's an interesting topic, but it's dumb to talk about how important this is, but at the same time conflate "stereo" with "binaural". It's not clear what is being measured here in terms of the result being "good" (stereo is for creating a realistic sound field for a number of people in your living room; binaural is for creating a realistic sound field for 1 person with headphones. there are issues and compromises either way, for example one of the problems with binaural is that when you turn your head, the virtual "stage full of musicians" swings around along with your perspective) there was no technical detail provided here and why is there a ?ref=seekhifi.com on the wikipedia URL? is this some new SEO idea?
- workflowing 2y ago
  Downvote. Dislike sound or music? Please just ignore the topic.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    I'm not aware that downvoting topics is a thing I can do. and I'm intensely interested in audio/hi fi/music reproduction, so I read the article with interest to find out it was trash.
petercooper 2y ago
Sustained synth chords gently surround, laying the foundation for sharp snaps in front and to the right. A Roland TR-909 drum machine starts far in the distance on the left I thought I'd "follow along" by listening to the song myself, and oddly all the directions were the very opposite of those stated in the article on both my phone and desktop with both Spotify and Apple Music (and on both the remaster and original version of the album). I have it on vinyl and CD somewhere, I'll try that later, maybe they are more authentic.
- dgacmu 2y ago
  Same for google music. I wonder if the author meant stage right, or if they had something swapped. (It matches my memory of the CD version but I don't feel like pulling the CD pile out of the basement for this.)
  - imp0cat 2y ago
    Yeah, the claps are coming from the left side.
- obiefernandez 2y ago
  Same exact experience on headphones and Spotify
mhh__ 2y ago
Peter Wright (of Spycatcher fame) wrote that he got good results in the 60s helping people snoop on conversations (i.e. cocktail party problem) by playing mono audio as "stereo" with a slight phase shift in one ear.
dfxm12 2y ago
Capcom's CPS 2 arcade system also used Q Sound. Street Fighter Alpha 3, which ran on that hardware, has some iconic chiptunes. An arcade game was a great use of the technology as well, since the algorithm building the 3D soundscape would work best when you can reasonably assume where the listeners will be relative to the speakers. This is an example bgm from the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huA5sKl7K-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huA5sKl7K-U and the Q sound "demo": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYIy6lavsd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYIy6lavsd4
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jensenbox 2y ago
Is it just me or the way this is described creates visions of American Psycho.
achille 2y ago
Just listened to Vogue on my headphones, and I'm unable to notice anything unique about the soundscape of this song. What do you folks hear and when do you hear it? At what point in the song?
- squid_ca 2y ago
  I agree. The article mentions bits going around their head, or in the front-right. I hear things on the left, and things on the right. And stuff that appears on the opposite side of where the article mentions them. I’m listening on Spotify, maybe all that stuff is stripped out?
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    Are you sure you don't have your left/right channels swapped? You don't know how many PCs I've run into with their speakers wired up backwards...
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  I don't know about Madonna, but the experience I had listening to this song for the first time with headphones on is what I would guess to be a similar experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeTVvhuco4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeTVvhuco4g Sure, it's christian rock, but from South Africa so it has a different vibe from what you may have previously experienced. They got the intro synth to swirl around your head and it's a vibe, and the song itself is decent.
  - wruza 2y ago
    I don't get swirls, it feels like they just swap channels quickly (10Hz+) and that is annoying, tbh.
    - BizarroLand 2y ago
      This is the first time I've ever really noticed a difference between the upload and the CD. The CD Audio glides around your head like a halo, on the YT vid it jitters.
djborschtbeets 2y ago
Okay, I just listened to this on my 16" MacBook Pro from 2023. Holy ** its incredible. The drums have a physical space, everything can be placed in a location. I've seen it in cars, but with my speakers on my laptop this is grade A.
golemiprague 2y ago
[dead]
BlindEyeHalo 2y ago
Anyone interested in more recent examples, look up the binaural versions of some of Jean-Michel Jarre's albums. Most of his music is very experimental but I recommend "Zero Gravity" from "Live in Notre Dame - Binaural headphone mix". It is a straight forward EDM track.
wazoox 2y ago
Sting's "The Soul Cages" from the same year is also relying quite heavily on Q-Sound (or it could be RDS, the alternative competing technology from Roland, I don't remember exacly).
andy_ppp 2y ago
I once heard Marvin Gaye's album What's Going On [1] through a $30000 HiFi and I could not believe the stereo information that was available on good vinyl and a valve amp. You could hear how far each of the backing singers were away from their microphone, it was unbelievable. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApthDWoPMFQ&list=PLc60gkdW0bcFbUwumMvBpxVrFbkeRzoPf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApthDWoPMFQ&list=PLc60gkdW0b...
wappieslurkz 2y ago
Vogue is indeed a stereo fest. But I always felt sorry for the handclap/fingersnap that seems to have been forgotten, trying to get some attention on the left hand side of the mix. Dry and lonely without any shine or treatment. Maybe it's a symbol for the shy people doing their thing on the darker sides of the dance floor...
qingcharles 2y ago
This is the modern version that is all the rage on social media these days: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=8d+audio https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=8d+audio

176 points by wmeredith 2y ago

Pound-for-pound, Vogue by Madonna is one of the most remarkable examples of artificial stereophonic sound ever produced. As a lover of hi-fi, Madonna wasn't really on my radar until someone steered me toward this gem. After about 50 listens and some really interesting research on QSound (the tech used to produce it), I ended up featuring it in my hi-fi music recommendation newsletter.

peterldowns 2y ago
Thanks for submitting this here, very cool article — I hadn't heard of QSound before.
empath75 2y ago
I don't know, I always thought it sounded simplistic, cheap and dated, even at the time. Placing stuff in the stereo field has been bog standard music production since the 70s. Q sound adds a _little_ bit to it, but somewhat importantly if you are actually listening to this song in a dance club it's all completely lost, a lot of clubs don't have any kind of stereo separation. Just compare it to stuff that was coming out of the acid house scene at the same time (yes i know this song isn't really acid house -- but it does have a lot of fun stereo effects): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qexS5hBB1C0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qexS5hBB1C0
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  A lot of stereo/3d stuff translates differently to each listener. Q sound might not work for you the way it does for others (none of the 3d sound stuff seems to work for me).
- djborschtbeets 2y ago
  You can't just throw out Orb and expect me not to get extremely excited. Now I have to listen to this entire youtube performance. THANKS.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  IMHO Orbital - The Box (part 2) works even better[1]. Some of the sounds are clearly behind me, to my sides, or surrounding me. And things move around. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGvFObnwKNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGvFObnwKNc
  - helboi4 2y ago
    Really nice track
- helboi4 2y ago
  Yeah I agree as an electronic music fan the idea that this track is particularly special in terms of digital stereo even at that time seems weird to me.
- allturtles 2y ago
  Some cool stereo effects, but not something I'd ever want to listen to. I don't see anything interesting about putting nature sounds and a Pink Floyd sample over a very repetitive electronic loop. Maybe I didn't get far enough, since it's 20 goddamn minutes long. To me, Vogue is ear candy. De gustibus!

mmastrac 2y ago

QSound was magic at the time. We had a DSP class in my EE degree where we implemented a very minor transform that would shift position of audio and it was wild. It's impossible to get 3D audio to be absolutely as flawless as the real world because human ears all vary slightly and your 3D spacial perception of sound is literally tuned on your own ears, but QSound's transfer functions come as close as you can get. The algorithm also falls apart a bit outside of the sweet spot, and is really only useful in headphones and specific cases where a human is known to be placed in a certain location relative to speakers. The original model was developed using a simulated human head and lots of hand-tuning. I am curious if we've advanced far enough with tech that a more modern set of transfer function parameters could be developed. Nothing beats N speakers for positional audio, but this is a pretty decent replacement if the conditions are ideal. OpenAL was designed as an open-source library to bring 3D audio to the masses in the same way that OpenGL did (basically exposing QSound/equivalent hardware on sound cards to an API), but I'm not sure what happened to it [1]. [1] https://www.openal.org/documentation/openal-1.1-specification.pdf https://www.openal.org/documentation/openal-1.1-specificatio...

wrs 2y ago
Isn’t this the same fundamental technique as Spatial Audio and binaural Atmos rendering? AirPods can even measure your personal ear transfer functions.
- mmastrac 2y ago
  Looks like it is. The Apple HRTF should be much more accurate than QSound -- QSound was designed to work without any analysis.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- brudgers 2y ago
  Yes and no. Contemporary spatial audio render images in real-time. Older systems rendered the image during mixing. On the other hand psychoacoustic techniques have not changed.

mellosouls 2y ago

As a dancer I had hoped from the title that the article would be a discussion of the death of dance in clubs. It alludes to the record being popular on dancefloors but given that most these days are full of people waving their phones packed tight as sardines, or tiny spaces full of drunks and lechers none of whom can dance in either case, it seems a moot point that it's still popular...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
itsmemattchung 2y ago
Fellow (house) dancer here and couldn't agree with you more. Luckily, however, I recently relocated to London and though I rarely stay out late these days, I did go to a venue called Fabric and I bring this because there's a policy (moderately enforced) of "no phones" and in fact, prior to entering, they will place little stickers on camera lens. Of course, some individuals will inevitably whip out their phones to capture a video or photo, at which point an (disguised as civilian) employee will demand that they put their phone away. So again, moderately enforced. All that is to say, dance in clubs still exists...just rare to find.
- piva00 2y ago
  Clubs with policies like Fabric exist in other cities as well, to me they are usually a sign of a good club. Berlin clubs, at least the ones worthy going to, have the same policy of no photos, and heavily enforce it. I've seen quite a few people booted out from sticking their phone for a picture twice, it's one of the things that can really put a sour feeling on a dance floor. If I'm there to be free and dance my heart out the last thing I want is to be conscious of perhaps getting filmed while doing so. Personally I have politely asked many people to not even try that in those clubs. I've seen the same policy in some clubs in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, and the list goes on. If you can manage to go clubbing at places that enforce such policies I'd say you're 80-90% there on finding a good dance floor.
- immibis 2y ago

exabrial 2y ago

This is one of my favorite hits from the era. It's a masterpiece.

frankus 2y ago

As a young Gen Xer it's fun to go back and listen to radio hits I heard growing up (on mostly terrible sound systems playing radio or cassette tapes) using modern audio hardware. There's a lot of depth in many tracks that I couldn't really appreciate at the time, because even a half-decent sound system was the kind of luxury I (or my parents) wouldn't have splurged on.

mikrl 2y ago
Reminds me of listening to all the OG wave dubstep on YouTube in the late 00s and not getting it, until I plugged in a bass amp I was borrowing and vibrated my walls.
- adzm 2y ago
  It is amazing that there are entire genres of music like space bass that rely on sub bass for the whole experience, and it's pretty much impossible to get the same experience without a good subwoofer. Good headphones can get close but lose the visceral feeling of the sub in your body.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    To me if the word “bass” is in the name of the genre, then having subs seems like an obvious thing that would miss a lot without subs. That’s up there with judging a book by its cover
- iamacyborg 2y ago
  And even then you weren’t getting the full live experience. Some of the tracks from that time are an incredible physical experience.
  - epiccoleman 2y ago
    Deep bass sounds in live music are just awesome, in the original sense of the word. Those big dubstep "wubs" or deep downtuned sludge metal riffs vibrate through your whole chest. Reproducing something like that at home is certainly possible, but you're going to have to piss off the neighbors to get there.

wrs 2y ago

Sting’s solo album The Soul Cages was another early QSound adopter. I can remember popping it in the CD player and having a “What the…” moment.

wiredfool 2y ago
And Roger Waters' Amused to Death.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  And Nine Inch Nails broken.

cocodill 2y ago

Unfortunately, I can't share the general enthusiasm for this song, neither musically nor in terms of how it sounds. The only thing that is quite good is the part of the video with her transparent sweater.

lucasoshiro 2y ago

If you like this kind of stereophonic sound, I recommend Art of Noise. Here are some songs from them: Moments in Love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNkcZ8QoNuI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNkcZ8QoNuI Paranoimia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F8BD6gNOag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F8BD6gNOag Dragnet '88: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6JQO0KnUZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6JQO0KnUZY I recommend to set the videos to the highest quality and to listen using headphones

pavlov 2y ago
Also, Yello. They're pretty much only known for "Oh Yeah" which was used in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", but their albums are full of fabulous stereophonic productions. For example "The Race" from 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C62NSn-3hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C62NSn-3hU This entire album called "Flag" kicks ass. It's a weird ride of thrilling electro and comedic bathos. Every song is different.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Hmm, I have Flag, should give it another listen. I liked Stella better.
  - pavlov 2y ago
    ”Stella” is the more historically important album for sure, and has more of an avant-garde edge. But I really enjoy the excessive late ‘80s production on “Flag”.
- bigiain 2y ago
  Chk-cah Chk-cahhhhhh
bigiain 2y ago
The whole The Seduction of Claude Debussy album by Art Of Noise is _sublime_. (For the art, I don't even recall if it does anything interesting stereophonically...)
2y ago

joenot443 2y ago

I remember being shown Virtual Barbershop on 2000s YouTube as a teenager. I was absolutely blown away by the experience, it did for my ears like what 2024 VR does for my eyes. Total magic. https://www.qsound.com/demos/virtualbarbershop_long.htm https://www.qsound.com/demos/virtualbarbershop_long.htm Very cool to see it’s from the same company!

aidenn0 2y ago
I believe they turned that into an attraction at Disney-MGM Studios. I certainly remember it from circa 1990.
mhh__ 2y ago
I'd never actually looked into who made it. I guess that makes complete sense.

Terr_ 2y ago

I remember a contemporary technology, Aureal's A3D, experiencing the magic of having one of their sound-cards and playing Counter Strike 1.x. Enemy footsteps felt almost as good as seeing them. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I never quite recaptured that sense with other hardware/games. Another search-able term to drop in here is "Head-Related Transfer Functions" (HRTF), where the inputs are a sound and a given relative location, and the problem is how to subtly adjust that sound for each "ear", giving your brain the kinds of cues normally imparted by the shape of your ears and the different materials in your skull, etc. Aureal suffered from a set of legal battles with a then-not-so-huge company named Creative, which eventually bought out the bankrupt remains. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureal_Semiconductor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureal_Semiconductor

aaronax 2y ago
I'm pretty sure Aureal A3D was featured on my family's Compaq Presario 5150[0] back in 1998. The speakers were decently sized units mounted on the side of the 17" CRT and powered straight from the soundcard via 3.5mm plug which apparently was designed to output way more power than a standard headphone jack because it could go pretty loud. A couple nifty demos were included. One was simply a bee buzzing in a circle, and it totally sounded like it was doing loops behind your head. [0] https://aaron.axvigs.com/node/438 https://aaron.axvigs.com/node/438
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Old PC sound cards commonly had op-amps on their outputs that could produce a reasonably-clean Watt or two into a pair of 8-Ohm speakers. Which doesn't sound like much, but 100 Watts is only 20dB louder than that if all else is the same, and most casual music listening happens with peaks that are in the realm of tiny fractions of a Watt.

fsckboy 2y ago

it's an interesting topic, but it's dumb to talk about how important this is, but at the same time conflate "stereo" with "binaural". It's not clear what is being measured here in terms of the result being "good" (stereo is for creating a realistic sound field for a number of people in your living room; binaural is for creating a realistic sound field for 1 person with headphones. there are issues and compromises either way, for example one of the problems with binaural is that when you turn your head, the virtual "stage full of musicians" swings around along with your perspective) there was no technical detail provided here and why is there a ?ref=seekhifi.com on the wikipedia URL? is this some new SEO idea?

workflowing 2y ago
Downvote. Dislike sound or music? Please just ignore the topic.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  I'm not aware that downvoting topics is a thing I can do. and I'm intensely interested in audio/hi fi/music reproduction, so I read the article with interest to find out it was trash.

petercooper 2y ago

Sustained synth chords gently surround, laying the foundation for sharp snaps in front and to the right. A Roland TR-909 drum machine starts far in the distance on the left I thought I'd "follow along" by listening to the song myself, and oddly all the directions were the very opposite of those stated in the article on both my phone and desktop with both Spotify and Apple Music (and on both the remaster and original version of the album). I have it on vinyl and CD somewhere, I'll try that later, maybe they are more authentic.

dgacmu 2y ago
Same for google music. I wonder if the author meant stage right, or if they had something swapped. (It matches my memory of the CD version but I don't feel like pulling the CD pile out of the basement for this.)
- imp0cat 2y ago
  Yeah, the claps are coming from the left side.
obiefernandez 2y ago
Same exact experience on headphones and Spotify

mhh__ 2y ago

Peter Wright (of Spycatcher fame) wrote that he got good results in the 60s helping people snoop on conversations (i.e. cocktail party problem) by playing mono audio as "stereo" with a slight phase shift in one ear.

dfxm12 2y ago

Capcom's CPS 2 arcade system also used Q Sound. Street Fighter Alpha 3, which ran on that hardware, has some iconic chiptunes. An arcade game was a great use of the technology as well, since the algorithm building the 3D soundscape would work best when you can reasonably assume where the listeners will be relative to the speakers. This is an example bgm from the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huA5sKl7K-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huA5sKl7K-U and the Q sound "demo": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYIy6lavsd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYIy6lavsd4

deleted 2y ago

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jensenbox 2y ago

Is it just me or the way this is described creates visions of American Psycho.

achille 2y ago

Just listened to Vogue on my headphones, and I'm unable to notice anything unique about the soundscape of this song. What do you folks hear and when do you hear it? At what point in the song?

squid_ca 2y ago
I agree. The article mentions bits going around their head, or in the front-right. I hear things on the left, and things on the right. And stuff that appears on the opposite side of where the article mentions them. I’m listening on Spotify, maybe all that stuff is stripped out?
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  Are you sure you don't have your left/right channels swapped? You don't know how many PCs I've run into with their speakers wired up backwards...
BizarroLand 2y ago
I don't know about Madonna, but the experience I had listening to this song for the first time with headphones on is what I would guess to be a similar experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeTVvhuco4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeTVvhuco4g Sure, it's christian rock, but from South Africa so it has a different vibe from what you may have previously experienced. They got the intro synth to swirl around your head and it's a vibe, and the song itself is decent.
- wruza 2y ago
  I don't get swirls, it feels like they just swap channels quickly (10Hz+) and that is annoying, tbh.
  - BizarroLand 2y ago
    This is the first time I've ever really noticed a difference between the upload and the CD. The CD Audio glides around your head like a halo, on the YT vid it jitters.

djborschtbeets 2y ago

Okay, I just listened to this on my 16" MacBook Pro from 2023. Holy ** its incredible. The drums have a physical space, everything can be placed in a location. I've seen it in cars, but with my speakers on my laptop this is grade A.

golemiprague 2y ago

[dead]

BlindEyeHalo 2y ago

Anyone interested in more recent examples, look up the binaural versions of some of Jean-Michel Jarre's albums. Most of his music is very experimental but I recommend "Zero Gravity" from "Live in Notre Dame - Binaural headphone mix". It is a straight forward EDM track.

wazoox 2y ago

Sting's "The Soul Cages" from the same year is also relying quite heavily on Q-Sound (or it could be RDS, the alternative competing technology from Roland, I don't remember exacly).

andy_ppp 2y ago

I once heard Marvin Gaye's album What's Going On [1] through a $30000 HiFi and I could not believe the stereo information that was available on good vinyl and a valve amp. You could hear how far each of the backing singers were away from their microphone, it was unbelievable. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApthDWoPMFQ&list=PLc60gkdW0bcFbUwumMvBpxVrFbkeRzoPf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApthDWoPMFQ&list=PLc60gkdW0b...

wappieslurkz 2y ago

Vogue is indeed a stereo fest. But I always felt sorry for the handclap/fingersnap that seems to have been forgotten, trying to get some attention on the left hand side of the mix. Dry and lonely without any shine or treatment. Maybe it's a symbol for the shy people doing their thing on the darker sides of the dance floor...

qingcharles 2y ago

This is the modern version that is all the rage on social media these days: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=8d+audio https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=8d+audio