Define Soundstage & Imaging

[ralph-bway]

I apologize in advance. I did a search here and on the net. Hell I even bought the 6th edition of "The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook" (which had many, many pages & pages of kinda' neat & interesting advertising in the back, but NO INDEX).

What exactly is the soundstage and imaging of a speaker?

Thank you in advance for making me a little less, well ignorant.

[Jim85IROC]

I was taught through my IASCA training that imaging is how well focused a certain sound is to a certain spot. Is it smeared all over the place, or can you easily close your eyes and point to the location that the sound is coming from.

Soundstage is how accurately the images are placed in space. Do vocals come from the center? Do violins come from the proper location? Does whatever come from wherever it's "supposed" to? That's soundstage.

[Lsharptec1]

ralph-bway,

In the recording studio, the engineer establishes the acoustic position of each instrument and vocal within a stereo "soundstage". This becomes the structure of the recording.

When listening to the recorded track on a CD or vinyl album, you should be able to close your eyes, and visualize in your mind, the exact location of each instrument and voice.

A loudspeaker's ability to accurately reproduce the "soundstage" is commonly referred to as "imaging".

High end loudspeaker manufacturers pride themselves on the "imaging" characteristics of their speaker systems.

Mass market loudspeaker manufacturers are more concerned with selling as many units as possible at the lowest cost.

Hence the old expression, "You get what you pay for".

Larry

[Sherman]

I'll give it a shot since I had the same question several months ago!

Soundstage IMHO is the width and depth (and height I suppose) of the area the music appears to come from when the speakers are playing.

In many systems soundstage is limited to the area between the speakers and seems to start at the front plane of the speakers. In other systems the soundstage extends wider than the speakers and appears to start well in front of the front plane of the speakers and appears to extend well beyond the speakers.

Soundstage is affected by many things other than just the design of the speakers. It is affected by the way the music was recorded. It is affected by the way the tracks are mastered and mixed down. It is affected by room size and shape and probably tons of other things. However with some speakers the soundstage will never be wider than the speakers or be very deep even with an original source that would allow that.

I have a pair of DIY speakers that have a very wide soundstage, almost double the width of the distance between the speakers (with the right source). I have another pair of DIY speakers that don't have that soundstage even with the right source, and a pair of commercial speakers where the soundstage is somewhere between the two.

Again IMHO imaging is how well the soundstage is defined and how precisely the instruments are located in that soundstage.

HTH,

[markp]

Image is clearity of the location of the soundsource, like focus. Where soundstage is the height, depth and width of where the sounds appear to be coming from. Listen to a big orchestral recording and see if you can point at each instrument and imagine how far front to back and high or low they seem to be placed on the stage .

[Val]

From audio pioneer J. Gordon Holt’s Sounds Like compendium:

soundstaging, soundstage presentation The accuracy with which a reproducing system conveys audible information about the size, shape, and acoustical characteristics of the original recording space and the placement of the performers within it.

imaging The measure of a system’s ability to float stable and specific phantom images, reproducing the original sizes and locations of the instruments across the soundstage.

phantom image The re-creation by a stereo system of an apparent sound source at a location other than that of either loudspeaker.