IME they don't necessarily have to affect imaging. That said, sometimes too much focus on low distortion and not enough attention to imaging might not be the best design tradeoff for every application.
Actually, to be technical about it, the soundstage has 4 count em! Dimensions. You got your width, depth and height, the three physical dimension x, y, z plus time t, the 4th dimension. That’s because the reverberant decay, slap echo, first reflections, etc. all have time functions.
Agree but design practices are irrelevant to the point that system interactions can confound what appears to solid test protocol. There will always be some level of distortion addition or cancellation with two 2nd harmonic distorting devices in series.
In the preamp example by definition the amplifier's output is a perfect scaled replica of the preamp input and all other devices perfect. Where is the flaw?
CD sound has improved - but I'm not so sure any longer that jitter was what was "fixed"...
I think there wassomrting else really. Reconstructiuon filter is one more important factor. General cleaner output stages. Power feed in general.
But the femto clocks didn't do squat.... nor will the Nobel atto ones....
//
They are indeed measurable - the real ones. Measuring the real results may help with the illusion creation for stereo imaging, but I don't see it helping measure the illusion.
Which is all fine but Dave was talking about power amplifiers affecting the soundstage.
So why pull a theory out of the air? I could read your post as suggesting that DSD will never have as good a sound stage as old fashioned R2R DACs due to the noise and intermodulation.
Vinyl replay has horrible frequency dependent cross-talk baked in by the cutting head yet since you have been inducted by the merry monks you have said on here it's better than best digital. Not preferable, better. This is just not compatible to me with you grasping for things 100dB down as causes of other problems.
Anecdote alert: Whilst I am not really a fan of Lieder music I have a DG Arkiv mono recording (in the plain yellowish jacket they did back then) where I swear I can hear that the piano is behind the singer and a sideways on concert grand. This is of course impossible for a single microphone to encode so my brain is making it up, or my current room is so suboptimal that all the hash is giving this effect. Unfortunately I can't currently set up for pure mono listening which I would love to do as I have some great mono recordings. Days when my brain is not playing ball I retreat to those. And sad as I am I do have a couple of old deccas in both stereo and mono forms to compare. And on these days a mono orchestral recording sounds more like being in the hall than stereo. Trying to capture a live event ended for the big labels in about 1970 IMO. So what is a soundstage anyway?
I did start building a mid-side processing channel for my preamp to delve into these question until second brood got in the way. I'll get back to it eventually.
Don't think I did exactly. I can hear something, and it sounds a little bit gritty/grainy. Typical symptom of EMI/RFI noise problems. Its suggestive but not conclusive.
So far that doesn't seem to be the case. Empirical evidence so far seems to be the DSD is better for soundstage. Again its not conclusive at this point.
Its not the spatial effect that I was speaking of. It was the lack of graininess if using an optical cartridge for vinyl playback. Haven't heard digital that clean yet. Could be a problem at the ADC end, not sure.
There is no grasping involved for people hearing quantizing distortion of 16-bit audio (or hearing dither noise, for that matter). The audibility of distortion seems to me to have a lot to do with the type of distortion in the time domain, not just its spectral components.
There are many ways for us to misunderstand each other when speaking by text. Worst way to try to communicate. In person is best. Hope you will find time to visit someday.
I am not misunderstanding unless you meant something different when you wrote 'It was the lack of graininess if using an optical cartridge for vinyl playback. Haven't heard digital that clean yet.'
Let's be clear. I get pleasure from vinyl replay as does the wife. Hans gets pleasure from Vinyl reply. Even Jan does/used to, I've lost track. But fundamentally there is a lot of noise and very poor cross talk cut into records. No amount of name dropping on what cartridge you are using will have any effect on that. By definition vinyl will be grainier than digital.
What does interest me is how superior a good linear tracking arm is. A whole slew of artifacts vanish (Hans is looking smug at this point). But that's just measurements of course 😛
Let's be clear. I get pleasure from vinyl replay as does the wife. Hans gets pleasure from Vinyl reply. Even Jan does/used to, I've lost track. But fundamentally there is a lot of noise and very poor cross talk cut into records. No amount of name dropping on what cartridge you are using will have any effect on that. By definition vinyl will be grainier than digital.
What does interest me is how superior a good linear tracking arm is. A whole slew of artifacts vanish (Hans is looking smug at this point). But that's just measurements of course 😛
Mic placement, but also the number of microphones and their relative levels.
I think nowadays people deploy an abundance of microphones and the mixing become an orchestration task. If you are an orchestrator, then it'll all be fine. If not, I suppose some detrimental things might happen.
Maybe it's one of those cases where technical and monetary limitations saved people from over-engineering Pandora's box.
I wish someone who does this for a living would chime in. I would have questions.
Meanwhile, I am amazed at what Frans De Rond can achieve with a single stereo microphone. But, clear, that would not work for orchestra work.
Hi Bill,
A lot of that turns out to be related to magnetic cartridges. Just how they sound. If you get a chance to listen to a good, modern optical cartridge, very much suggest to give it a try. Be interested to see what you think then.
Mark
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So it's the sound similar to microphone transformers, magnetic domains [flipping] in a changing magnetic field - basically, the Barkhausen effect.
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Uusally musch subtler but there are definitly different degrees of information loss on amplifiers, but they tend to be subtler and you first need a set of loudspeakers that let’s you hear that loss.
Generally the smaller the piece of information the easier it is to lose in general. Speakers tend to lose a lot. ALOT!
dave
After hearing both magnetic and optical, to me the difference in sound is suggestive in that way. However before going too far with that idea, it sure would be nice if more people could hear the difference for themselves and then form their own opinions as to what they think.
One visitor we had here recently who has a pretty good vinyl rig with magnetic cart said the optical cart sounds like almost like CD in terms of clarity (CD played on a really good dac, not necessarily what a lot of people may be used to). I just mention that if it will help motivate other people to go see for themselves what they think about it.
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Sorry, It was an emission from my side not to explain why I posted that message.
When you don’t have a proper 3D soundstage to start with, it will be unlikely if not impossible to judge the effect on soundstage by varying amps, dacs or whatever equipment.
Hans
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