For me, my home patch cables were not backwards (my balance works correctly for both home and car), but my perceived soundstage changes differently in the car due to its speaker locations, the car interior reflections, and the interaction between the rear and front speakers.

I just asked cos I dont have rear speakers at this time but I wanted to know what can be the sound with this patch.

How can youi rear fill if the delay is aslo applied to the rear speaker ?

The DSP cannot change the delay between front and rear.

The rear speakers are an exact copy of the front speakers. You can EQ the rears differently from the fronts, but that's about it.

You can only change the left-right delay in software.

Well, now that it's consistent, it doesn't make my head scratching any less puzzling. If the interaction of the speakers is so F$*%d up that location cues are ass backwards, why doesn't that mess up the sound staging entirely? Think about that.

Calvin

My sound stage in my car has always sucked.

My soundstaging is getting to be pretty reasonable. Not anywhere as good as the home setup, but instrument placement is coming around to be pretty darn precise. This is based on the instrument location graphs in the IASCA booklet/CD.

Calvin "puzzle.."

Your only "problem" is that you didn't realise it was working correctly. Everything you described in your recent message is EXACTLY how everything should work. For both balance and the delay.

Applying the delay to ONE SIDE, casues the sound stage to move to THE OTHER SIDE. So any delay to the LEFT should move the sound stage to the RIGHT. Just as you described.

Bruno

Right, that's how it should be. If you delay the right side, it's like moving the right speaker AWAY from you, so your stereo image center moves to the LEFT.

And vice versa.

Ok, given that, the visual paradigm used in the GUI for delay is the confusing point then. If you have an interface with a |-----------I-----------| -- the middle point is "center" and when you move the bar left |--------===I-----------| then it implies something is moving to the left. DItto for the right. This makes sense in the balance widget. It works in the opposite manner in the delay widget.

Calvin

That explains it. You were using the original hack, right? I've been using the implementation in Hijack without a bar and it made perfect sense. It just says "left" or "right" next to the delay time. If you delay one side, you know the image is moving toward the other.

The graph thing is hard ti make correctly for everyone. Having no graph is probably less confusing. Otherwise, the opposite of what you described would better indicate which way the image is being moved.

Bruno

Ok, wait, now I am using 221 by MLord and I could not see any bar. However, the wording is quite confusing in v 221. It says, for example,

Shift 0.4 msec LEFT

Mark, what does this mean? I suppose (and also it sounds as) that means that the LEFT channel is delayed by 0.4 msec. So WHAT exactly is being shifted LEFT, as the UI says? The left speaker is the only thing being shifted "virtually" LEFT in the "SPACE", BUT the stereo image center is being shifted RIGHT.
Mark, consider that when no correction is applied, if you are sitting on the LEFT seat, you are in a situation where the center of the stereo image is on your left (because you're closer to the left speaker than to the right one), and by delaying the left channel you move the center to your right until it is right in front of you.
So, I would use the word "DELAY" rather then "SHIFT", which I find extremely confusing.

Also, as to the bar in the GUI, allow me to suggest again what I said in a previous post of mine, in this same thread, posted on Feb 17th . I still thing that is the best way.

>Shift 0.4 msec LEFT
>Mark, what does this mean?

It means "shift the sound .4 milli-seconds to the left.
So, the sound centre will appear to move left.

Got a better wording for that line for me? I found the original incarnation incomprehensible (to me), so I just threw that in quickly before release.

Actually, I think the next step is to use a slider (similar to LR balance), and dispense with the numbers entirely.

Cheers

I would keep the distance number, as that is useful if you are up for actually measuring your distance from the center.. Right? The 0.4 millisecond number is a little less understandable...

Please don't get rid of numbers, after all even the volume slider has a dB number displayed.

Ok Mark, sorry to bother but I am afraid I am having listening problems here.
My question simply is:

When the display says

SHIFT 0.4 msec LEFT

which channel is being delayed?

The right channel, is that correct?

Mlord, I actually find this wording easy to use. It's the soundstage moving left or right that I picture in my mind while I'm making the adjustment.

> When the display says SHIFT 0.4 msec LEFT
>which channel is being delayed?

That's not relevant, really. The sound should appear to be centered more to the LEFT in this case. The end result is relevant, not the means. To do this, the software can either delay one channel, or speed up the other channel.

I guess, to shift the centre to the left, it must be delaying the right channel, or speeding up the left channel.

-ml

Well, Mark, the means is definitely relevant if for some reason you can't hear the result clearly. My point is that for some reason I could not understand clearly where the center was being moved, and the very relevant piece of information I asked was really helping me in figuring out what was going wrong. And since the UI had changed I had doubts about my understanding of it. So, thank you for the clarification.

As to your interesting lesson on logic and moral, means and results, I thank you but that was not relevant, really

Also, hoping to do something nice, I'll answer your guess: yes, in order to shift the the center of the stereo image to the left, you must delay the right channel versus the left one, which is the same as speeding up the left channel versus the right, obviously, but that was not at all the point.

Commands imply means, settings imply results. IE, if you configure something to shift the soundstage 30 cm to the left, you don't care how it actually does the shifting, you are only interested in the end result. However, if you are performing a command, you would have it delay the right channel 3msec or something.. The context is important in this situation, which is why I think some people are being confused..

we need nice graphics of a left speaker and a right speaker on the display. And cranking the numbers should show either the centerpoint moving relative to the speakers or the speakers themselves moving around or something, to show clearly what is really happening.

I just upgraded my hijack to version 224 and the left and right seems to be working on my headphones!!!!!!! I'm so jazzed, i can't wait to try this in the car. The weird thing is when I went into the delay menu, my usual setting of 4.1ms RIGHT was flippd to 4.1ms LEFT after the hijack upgrade. (?????)

I was running one of the very early versions of the delay code before and maybe it was backwards? ?

Calvin

If you remove the numbers you are killing the interface. The numbers and what was written in the first version, were meaningful and accurate. The shift thing makes no sense if you've left the actual performance of the function the same. In the first versions, applying a delay to the left would shift the soundstage RIGHT. If you've just reworded it, then you've broken the status display.

Bruno

In reply to:

---

to do this, the software can either delay one channel, or speed up the other channel

---

How is it possible to speed up sound?(unless you own a time machine)

The music is decoded faster than real-time. But in the end, six of one, half dozen of the other... To the listener you don't care when things are happening internally, so long as one side comes before the other by the appropriate shifted time.

Bruno

No, he didn't just reword it. It is actually moving the soundstage as the ui says, so when shifting LEFT you are actually applying a delay on the right channel. I got confused too since for some reason in car I could not hear clearly what was happening (guess it depends on the particular mp3 i was listening to). At home it sounded correct, as the UI says. However, I too found the original wording more clear, but I guess that's just a personal thing...

Mark is Back !!!

I messed up in my earlier posts. The fact that nobody noticed (or didn't say anything) shows how confusing the terminology can be. On my drive home tonight I smacked myself in the forehead and gave a Homer Simpson "Doh!"

I accidentally used the word "soundstage" as some other people had mentioned when describing how the L/R was working (and how it was working correctly). The fact is that even with a delay, if you want to look at the interface logically, it is actually your Virtual Listening Position that is changing.

So a delay to the left, moves the "perceived" soundstage to the left, but moves your virtual listening position to the right. That's where my goof in word choice was. And that's why some people were hearing things shift to what they thought was the incorrect side.

While driving I also thought of something that may be able to work as an easy interface/description:

Actual Listener Position:
|-----||==>|----------|
Virtual Shift +20cm Right

There we go. The slider is used to set where the listener is sitting. If you are left from center, you move it to the left. If you are right, you move it to the right. This is where the delay will be applied. It starts centered, so in the example above, the user has moved it a few posoitions to the LEFT. The arrow shows the Virtual shift direction. The line below shows the effect of the delay. A delay to the left, causes a virtual shift in sitting position of X cm to the right.

Anyone else find the above more straight forward that everything else we've been talking about?

Bruno

Creative does the same sort of thing in the positional sound configuration of their Live! cards... You have the listener at the center, and position the various sound sources around the 'soundstage'.. So when I think of shifting a sound to the left, I think that it will sound like it's left of wherever it sounded before.. As I'm to the left of the center of the speakers in the car, I would expect it to sound more centered to me.. I care not about the delay or whatever magic is used to make it work..

Mmm.. dunno. I think the less geeky user might just expect it to work similar to a left/right "balance" slider, moving the sound rather than the user (because that's what it really does appear to do).

Or at least that's how I expect it work. But I'm not as geeky as most of this crowd.

Possibly we are all aware when shifting, that LHD and RHD vehicles are catered for. When a car driver adjusts this setting they need to either know about accoustics and/or make some assumption on the programmer's perspective on the problem/solution. One easy to percieve situation for most people must surely be the (intuitive but subconcious) assumption that LHD cars need a left delay, RHD cars need a right delay? As a driver (and 1st time user) I tried to second guess the programmer in terms of whether 'Left Shift' meant move me left or whether I drove on the LHS of the car to start with - sure, it's obvious when you know the programmer's viewpoint but not so obvious as the 'consumer'.

What about, when shifting the centre to the left the display reminds us which side of the care we are (likely) occupying i.e. the display would read (for LHD):
Shift: 1.0 msec left
Distance: 33.30cm [LHD]

... try to think in terms of the driver when you read this (aren't car player settings driver centric after all?) e.g. [LHD] reminds us of the driver position when adjusting. If we go right, past zero, the display would show:

Shift: 1.0 msec right
Distance: 33.30cm [RHD]

I.e. the [LHD]/[RHD] text would automatically switch according to the driver's position in the car. I think there's space on the display to accomodate this.

Rue