Recently Wolfgang posted some comments about listening under the best conditions. Yes, it's true that there is literally no hope of emulating a very large space in a typical living room, regardless of technology if one uses speakers, without obnoxious consequences. This is a simple acoustical fact. There are too many aborbers; the space is too small, etc. So what are we to do? The solution for creating large acoustical spaces used by the automotive audio industry is to vibrate the neighborhood. This is why you hear bass when cars drive by. If you didn't hear it, neither would the occupants in the car. In order for them to hear it, you have to. That's not a good solution, is it? But I think everyone would have to admit that this is an obvious solution to creating large acoustical spaces in the interior of an automobile. It's a very straightforward application of what Wolfgang talked about. Other people have addressed the travel problem. Not many of us can afford to travel to a beautiful acoustical space every time we want to hear music. So while what Wolfgang says is true, it's not helpful --- or at least I don't see how it is. In other words, I agree completely, BUT... My own contribution is to attempt to create generators for impulse response functions that users can calculate to emulate whatever acoustical space they want. These generators are currently quite primitive in that they don't treat all boundary conditions and so on. However, I have found them to be an improvement for my own listening, which is preferably with headphones. With this technique, I hear music that is closest to ideal that I've ever heard short of going to a concert hall or cathedral. I cannot myself generate examples to show every genre in every venue, but the principles should apply equally well. Simply offered as another suggested, approximate solution to an impossible situation: Engineered IR's for convolution and for headphone listening. It's not for everyone, maybe not even most people. But I sure like it.
