So I could visit your system, or other enthusiasts - and put on my recording of the Sydney Opera House pipe organ, wind up the volume to match that of being in a front seat - and it would sound 'better' than that live experience?
I go to as many real concerts as I can afford.
Mostly orchestral, chamber and choral music and beloved opera. I have no real interest in "rock" music, although I do appreciate some real talent like Queen, Pink Floyd etc.
Whilst luxuriating in the real full bodied (distortion free, by definition!) volume of sound, I have NEVER been conscious of anything reminiscent of a "sound stage".
I rather got over that in the 60's when the "stereo effect" was a novelty. Modern recording where everything is separately mic'ed and panned into position at the desk are just a gimmick for me. About half of my LPs are mono, chosen for the performers and ensemble.
I used to record local church and orchestral recordings on a crossed pair of electret mics into a 15" Revox A77. Lovely sense of ambiance and space but no real interest in plotting the tenor's position relative to the soprano.
Am I just an old fart?
Mostly orchestral, chamber and choral music and beloved opera. I have no real interest in "rock" music, although I do appreciate some real talent like Queen, Pink Floyd etc.
Whilst luxuriating in the real full bodied (distortion free, by definition!) volume of sound, I have NEVER been conscious of anything reminiscent of a "sound stage".
I rather got over that in the 60's when the "stereo effect" was a novelty. Modern recording where everything is separately mic'ed and panned into position at the desk are just a gimmick for me. About half of my LPs are mono, chosen for the performers and ensemble.
I used to record local church and orchestral recordings on a crossed pair of electret mics into a 15" Revox A77. Lovely sense of ambiance and space but no real interest in plotting the tenor's position relative to the soprano.
Am I just an old fart?
To me the "Lovely sense of ambiance and space" is what it's about, and for me is the same as "soundstage". If the only thing a person is thinking about while listening is tape measure figures, then I would suggest they get an audio 'life' ... 😛
at home he can pick just the right one
going to a concert could be mere ordinary
how an instrument sounds very much depends on who is playing it, how and what
I have heard children play church organs quite nicely
not exstremely impressive, but very enjoyable
going to a concert could be mere ordinary
how an instrument sounds very much depends on who is playing it, how and what
I have heard children play church organs quite nicely
not exstremely impressive, but very enjoyable
OK...... explain how you get good sound stage . That was my original point.
Some people just keep explaining soundstage without explaining how to get it.
It's like saying in a recipe that a good cake is tasty but then, never giving the ingredients in the recipe to make it tasty. It's s not at all helpful even if you explain tasty " until the cows come home"
BTW, I 'm sorry if Iopened open a can of worms. I did not mean to but, what has has be said so far illustrate my point to one extent or another . .🙂
Last edited:
That is like asking someone how to make a good loudspeaker*... you get almost as many answers as people who answer. Fas42 gave a good shot at it.
* not hard to understand when one considers that with even the best speakers maybe getting 10-20% to where they need to get, one can have 2 very different speakers that are equally valid.
dave
That is simple bigotry on your part, nothing else. When I talk about Soundstage, I know exactly what I mean and what I want to say. That fact that someone may not understand it has nothing to do with my understanding or intent.
Ok I'm certainly not getting into a ******* match here..
I think my point (which some agreed with ) was addressed many post ago.. 🙂
I will just close by saying that there seems to be a disconnect between old school audiophiles who were well aware of all relevant audio specs, speaker set up, etc. that made for a realistic audio and the new school that just uses the phrase soundstage. I get that..
Let's leave it at that. 🙂
I think my point (which some agreed with ) was addressed many post ago.. 🙂
I will just close by saying that there seems to be a disconnect between old school audiophiles who were well aware of all relevant audio specs, speaker set up, etc. that made for a realistic audio and the new school that just uses the phrase soundstage. I get that..
Let's leave it at that. 🙂
Last edited:
Why leave it at that? You diminish Soundstage to just a buzz word. It's more than that, it's a fun part of the experience. I like fun.
Again you get a D-
I have been around for a LONG time and learned about soundstage back near the beginning. Even then it became quicklu clear that specs were as misleading as they were helpful.
dave
Yeah Dave, I've heard it talked about for at least 30 years. Wouldn't call that new.
The marketing spin might be, tho.
The marketing spin might be, tho.
Actually, at this very moment I'm doing an exercise in improving the "soundstage" of my desktop PC, which gives an idea of what's involved. The CD is a no-name collection of Jerry Lee Lewis Country music recordings, some of which are pretty ratty - and what I'm focusing on is the quality of the drumkit cymbals, this varies dramatically from track to track.
Setup nicely warmed up, pretty big sound, volume wound up to the limit of the speaker power supplies - but there is an edginess, a "unrealistic" sharpness to the trebly sounds. This is typically due to interference effects, so I'm playing with some simple adjusting of power spur feeds, to find an optimum arrangement - everything I do has an audible effect at this point.
The obviously better solution is to dive inside components and make them resistant to such factors - but what I'm doing is a simple, quick, temporary fix - an exploration ...
Setup nicely warmed up, pretty big sound, volume wound up to the limit of the speaker power supplies - but there is an edginess, a "unrealistic" sharpness to the trebly sounds. This is typically due to interference effects, so I'm playing with some simple adjusting of power spur feeds, to find an optimum arrangement - everything I do has an audible effect at this point.
The obviously better solution is to dive inside components and make them resistant to such factors - but what I'm doing is a simple, quick, temporary fix - an exploration ...
That little spurt of of optimising was worthwhile doing, I got the PC speakers the best I've ever done, about 95% of the way to being totally invisible - Pano knows what this is all about - trouble was I had to disconnect the laptop power wart, and the network modem; interference effects were too much otherwise ...
This is the sort of process that needs to be undergone, and it always works, even on cheap, tiny plastic speakers ... 😀
This is the sort of process that needs to be undergone, and it always works, even on cheap, tiny plastic speakers ... 😀
Soundstage is where you can point to the left and say bass player is standing there, the drummer is in the center the singer is just to thr right and the lead guitarist is far right.
One of my favorite quotes of someone who loved his sound stage;
"I can hear the guitarist moving across the stage while playing his lead"
I have never seen a guitarist move his rig across the stage while playing a lead.
In other words, stereo image is an engineering feat.
One of my favorite quotes of someone who loved his sound stage;
"I can hear the guitarist moving across the stage while playing his lead"
I have never seen a guitarist move his rig across the stage while playing a lead.
In other words, stereo image is an engineering feat.
It fascinates me that an audio playback system with only two speakers can create any more than just a stereo effect on one axis, left to right. A Soundstage is something our mind puts together based on incoming data. The data is complicated to say the least.
For example, how our minds perceive it varies substantially with frequency. At very high frequencies the shape of our ear helps in the perception of height. I believe this is largely a learned thing in each person, based on the exact shape of their particular pinea. From about 2kHZ - 6kHZ we determine image location primarily by amplitude comparisons left to right. From about 80HZ - 800HZ we locate images primarily by timing or phase comparisons left to right. Below 80HZ we get emotional impact, sense of largeness, and less about where the sound source is located.
Above about 2kHZ, it would seem that frequency response should be very well matched between the two speakers, so amplitude comparisons would be consistent over that frequency range, to get the strongest imaging cues, and a sense of "soundstage".
Depending on room acoustics and speaker dispersion, there could be major variations in what each ear hears in this frequency range at the listening position, due to comb filter effects created by the room acoustics, and even room resonance due to parallel walls.
More sidewall bounce gives more of a sense of spaciousness, but it's artificial, a distraction from any imaging information that's embedded in the recording, and may get boring after a while since it would be the same sense of spatial and frequency response coloration with every recording. Many recordings may benefit from this, but the best quality recordings that have good imaging info in them will be damaged by it.
In the lower midrange where we sense image location by timing comparisons, inter-aural crosstalk blurs or scrambles our brains ability to be clear about image location, so what we usually get in the real world is a slight sense of imaging due to room acoustics, which again is artificial, and will be the same for every recording. Not the best.
I've found that open-baffle speakers do a significantly better job of re-creating usable imaging information in the lower midrange, fake as it may be. And it is the same for every recording. But it seems to give embedded reverbs more of a sense of being 3-D, as in having a sense of depth on the Z axis and even the Y axis (height). Although it is technically a step away from "fidelity", I find that everything is more enjoyable.
Below about 300HZ, most typical living/listening rooms will cause severe peaks and dips, due to the way the wavelengths fit into and interact with the room boundaries. Comb filter effects happen at virtually all frequencies, but in this frequency range the cancellations are wide enough in frequency to be perceived as being as bad as they measure.
At high frequencies there are many reflections with different path lengths filling in each others cancellations by the time the energy reaches the listeners ears. Down around 100HZ (half-wavelength of 5 Feet) there may be only one or two reflection paths in the room that are doing all the damage. Nothing else to help swamp out their cancellations. So we get boominess, and wild variations in amplitude and phase between the left and right acoustic signal at the listening position.
Theaters have the advantage of much bigger room dimensions, so these issues are at substantially lower frequencies, which means from 80HZ to 300HZ it's unlikely that the room acoustics will cause much of a problem with perceived frequency response. The longer delays in theaters have their own set of problems, mainly intelligability where echo delays are between 50mS and 150mS.
Anyway, the more things we get right, based on what we know about how the ear-brain mechanism works, the more a pair of speakers will allow our minds to construct a sense of depth, width and even height. A sense of "soundstage" is a sense of being in a different environment, where the music is. Perhaps a measure of how well the speakers disappear. I think it's a valid term.
For example, how our minds perceive it varies substantially with frequency. At very high frequencies the shape of our ear helps in the perception of height. I believe this is largely a learned thing in each person, based on the exact shape of their particular pinea. From about 2kHZ - 6kHZ we determine image location primarily by amplitude comparisons left to right. From about 80HZ - 800HZ we locate images primarily by timing or phase comparisons left to right. Below 80HZ we get emotional impact, sense of largeness, and less about where the sound source is located.
Above about 2kHZ, it would seem that frequency response should be very well matched between the two speakers, so amplitude comparisons would be consistent over that frequency range, to get the strongest imaging cues, and a sense of "soundstage".
Depending on room acoustics and speaker dispersion, there could be major variations in what each ear hears in this frequency range at the listening position, due to comb filter effects created by the room acoustics, and even room resonance due to parallel walls.
More sidewall bounce gives more of a sense of spaciousness, but it's artificial, a distraction from any imaging information that's embedded in the recording, and may get boring after a while since it would be the same sense of spatial and frequency response coloration with every recording. Many recordings may benefit from this, but the best quality recordings that have good imaging info in them will be damaged by it.
In the lower midrange where we sense image location by timing comparisons, inter-aural crosstalk blurs or scrambles our brains ability to be clear about image location, so what we usually get in the real world is a slight sense of imaging due to room acoustics, which again is artificial, and will be the same for every recording. Not the best.
I've found that open-baffle speakers do a significantly better job of re-creating usable imaging information in the lower midrange, fake as it may be. And it is the same for every recording. But it seems to give embedded reverbs more of a sense of being 3-D, as in having a sense of depth on the Z axis and even the Y axis (height). Although it is technically a step away from "fidelity", I find that everything is more enjoyable.
Below about 300HZ, most typical living/listening rooms will cause severe peaks and dips, due to the way the wavelengths fit into and interact with the room boundaries. Comb filter effects happen at virtually all frequencies, but in this frequency range the cancellations are wide enough in frequency to be perceived as being as bad as they measure.
At high frequencies there are many reflections with different path lengths filling in each others cancellations by the time the energy reaches the listeners ears. Down around 100HZ (half-wavelength of 5 Feet) there may be only one or two reflection paths in the room that are doing all the damage. Nothing else to help swamp out their cancellations. So we get boominess, and wild variations in amplitude and phase between the left and right acoustic signal at the listening position.
Theaters have the advantage of much bigger room dimensions, so these issues are at substantially lower frequencies, which means from 80HZ to 300HZ it's unlikely that the room acoustics will cause much of a problem with perceived frequency response. The longer delays in theaters have their own set of problems, mainly intelligability where echo delays are between 50mS and 150mS.
Anyway, the more things we get right, based on what we know about how the ear-brain mechanism works, the more a pair of speakers will allow our minds to construct a sense of depth, width and even height. A sense of "soundstage" is a sense of being in a different environment, where the music is. Perhaps a measure of how well the speakers disappear. I think it's a valid term.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.