An even better 'instrument' to 'measure' imaging & soundstage is to arrange an acoustically transparent curtain [*] so you can't see your speakers and their arrangement. Conduct DBLTs and make notes of what you hear before you know what you are listening to.
[*] eg speaker grille cloth from a reputable speaker maker
Placing "objects" or individual instruments on the "sound stage" is largely due to the "mix".
You should go visit a immersive Dolby Atmos studio to see how the sausage is made.
Isn't that kind of obvious?
I don't really get the point.
(I've visited a lot of regular (stereo) studios, recorded in some, and once where they make movies. And yesterday I was at IMAX 😆)
No it is not obvious.
We keep seeing posts from folks that are unaware.
And what is your point? I once saw the pig races at the county fair.
You said to go to the studio – I've been to plenty of studios. So what do pigs have to do with it? Is this passive aggression or a joke I’m not getting? Either way, it doesn’t seem friendly.
The idea is that two different people can take the same track — one that has a visual map of where the virtual sources are placed on the soundstage — and talk about what they’re hearing on their systems. They can compare which speaker gives a better or worse image, meaning how close it matches the map. It’s just a synthetic test to judge soundstage accuracy, nothing more.
Without a map showing where the instruments are and how big they are, any talk about soundstage improvements or problems becomes totally subjective — one person likes one thing, someone else likes another.
The problem is, almost no sound engineers bother to make these maps for their mixes, so most discussions about soundstage end up being guesswork or personal opinion.
That’s my point — does something in that annoy you?
Yes, that's what I thought.
One property is how large the source sounds due to blurring, or how it is shifted due to a specific reflection. Some may not know how ideal imaging sounds if they haven't heard it.
Making these sorts of visual maps seems like quite a bit of work for sound engineers. It would need to be done on a track-by-track basis. And then, how many people in the target market would be all that interested? And then we throw in non-flat loudspeaker frequency responses (just for starters), varying radiation patterns, room acoustics, etc., so would it really be all that worthwhile? Of course, if we have a set up exactly the same as said sound engineer, then maybe? All in all, it seems to be a solution looking for a problem.
Getting the relative tonality of the reproduction right augers quite well for all the rest. It seems to be that the soundstage part is simply too ephemeral a quantity to "reproduce" in a reliable and consistent manner from one system to the next. It's open to too much (personal) interpretation; some people like a wide, diffuse soundstage, others prefer a more concentrated soundstage. Speakers that are "good" and "linear" have an excellent inherent capability for reproducing the so-called "soundstage" in an aesthetically pleasant way; stereo sound reproduction is a bit of an illusion, one that is surprisingly good on many fronts.
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Sound engineers don’t really have many reasons to go the extra mile.
Sure, a few key motivations might exist — like passion for their craft, the drive to show their work in the best light, or a wish to gain recognition through being cited.
But let’s be honest: if even audiophiles show little interest in a test recording that allows for a slightly more objective discussion of soundstage — what can we really expect from engineers? 🙂
This idea was already described by Floyd Toole back in the ’90s as the Circle of Confusion. And honestly, we haven’t made much progress in breaking that loop. There’s still no real standard for stereo playback — and no clear solution either.
On top of that, around 10% of people (if I recall correctly) have different “stereo decoding” settings in their brains — they simply won’t perceive some spatial effects, like sounds appearing above the speakers or behind the listener.
Soundstage is, in the end, an illusion — a subjective one. Ok. But if a guitar is panned right and a saxophone left, most people with a properly working stereo system will agree on that basic layout? Yes, I hope. The next step: how big do these instruments appear in that illusion? Then, we can estimate their azimuth positions. Then move on to other instruments...
At some point, differences between playback systems will show up. But at least we can describe and assess them.
That’s why a visual map of the soundstage can serve as a reference point — helping us discuss playback not in vague terms like "these speakers are better", but with a bit more clarity and nuance.
Yes there are many people who can't hear imaging.I have a some friends with quite expensive systems who have told me this.They still enjoy their systems but I do wonder if they get as much enjoyment out of them as people who do?Although perhaps they just prioritise other aspects of the sound which people who focus on imaging tend not be as pedantic about.One of those friends is very fussy about articulation.Another is obsessed with tone and timbre.As regards bigger speakers giving better imaging I think there is an element of truth in that.Although it might not be due to the size of the driver but rather the size of the baffle.I owned some Sonique Encore speakers][Basically an offshoot of Duntech-well made by former Duntech staff].They used two dome midranges and a tweeter in a stepped time alignment baffle and the drivers were surrounded by profiled felt which I am guessing reduced side reflections.With that arrangement they certainly had very precise imaging but you could remove the felt and then they still sounded very good and produced bigger,wider,taller images but at the cost of some precision and pinpoint placement.I never could decide which of those presentations I preferred. Or rather it depended on the music or recordings.
^ yeah it's about what happens between ears, how the perception is formed in auditory system. You don't have to modify your speakers like that, you could just change your listening distance to swap between bigger wider taller images to more precision, assuming the system is not too bad.
Loud early reflections seem to dominate this difference in perception, prevent the precise images and makes the perception "bloated" in a way. As you move closer to speakers, at some distance this perception changes and could be quite suddenly. This is due to any and all reasons necessary to make the perception change: delays, angles relative SPL of direct / reflected sound changes.
What the distance is where it happens with you in your room with your speakers and setup, depends on your system and room and positioning in the room. It's likely quite short, like 2m or so, could be less, could be more. You could just scout at which listening position the image is precise, and where it's bloated, and then just use which ever feels good at any given moment. I recommend everyone play with this, very good listening excercise as it teaches you about your own perception, your on system in your own room, and helps to define what all the words like imaging or sound stage mean to you perceptually.
Loud early reflections seem to dominate this difference in perception, prevent the precise images and makes the perception "bloated" in a way. As you move closer to speakers, at some distance this perception changes and could be quite suddenly. This is due to any and all reasons necessary to make the perception change: delays, angles relative SPL of direct / reflected sound changes.
What the distance is where it happens with you in your room with your speakers and setup, depends on your system and room and positioning in the room. It's likely quite short, like 2m or so, could be less, could be more. You could just scout at which listening position the image is precise, and where it's bloated, and then just use which ever feels good at any given moment. I recommend everyone play with this, very good listening excercise as it teaches you about your own perception, your on system in your own room, and helps to define what all the words like imaging or sound stage mean to you perceptually.
As a mix/mastering engineer, I’ve shared this example and my own over decades of learned behavior and response many times……..and the result is always the same.
I’m happy for the reviewers and audiophiles who never develop non linear phase detection capabilities………once that becomes readily apparent it cannot be undone.