Lance A.
Active Member
Come listen to my Snell Type A-II's, you can throw the measuring tools away and just let your jaw hit the floor listening to their sound stage!
I could actually do that one day. My sister has a house and boat in Jupiter !
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Imaging and Soundstage Discussion
- Thread starter Lance A.
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I could actually do that one day. My sister has a house and boat in Jupiter !
Great, I'd be happy to demo them.
kevintomb
Well-Known Member
I think you are putting way too much effort to bash different resolutions.
CD can easily sound fantastic, and I hate to say, even 320 is hard to identify, if one is not aware.
"High Res" music to most was a total joke. Did not really sound better and often would use different masters or tweaked masters to make it appear to be better than CD quality sound.
Fast996
Mod that Vintage Gear
Imaging can either be a highlight of a system or just another aspect of the reproduction of music. A lot depends on how the engineers mic'd the original venue. Some of the best imaging are RCA living stereo or all minimally mic'd recordings,especially classical or Jazz or big band.
First does the room disappear or is the soundstage in it's boundaries. The best systems not only the speakers disappear but the room does too. A lot depends on the system setup,speakers and overall distortion level of all types.
Pinpoint imaging both separation side to side and front to back for me adds to the "illusion". Great recordings and great systems can create a multi layered 3D holographic imaging with precision making the illusion from expertly engineered recordings seem like you are part of the audience.
Lot's of work and knowledge on perfecting the system setup.
p.s. Even multi mic'd recordings like London Phase 4 can throw a wonderful image....great recordings.
First does the room disappear or is the soundstage in it's boundaries. The best systems not only the speakers disappear but the room does too. A lot depends on the system setup,speakers and overall distortion level of all types.
Pinpoint imaging both separation side to side and front to back for me adds to the "illusion". Great recordings and great systems can create a multi layered 3D holographic imaging with precision making the illusion from expertly engineered recordings seem like you are part of the audience.
Lot's of work and knowledge on perfecting the system setup.
p.s. Even multi mic'd recordings like London Phase 4 can throw a wonderful image....great recordings.
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Lance A.
Active Member
Agreed, and I am getting that. The soundstage is room wide and high. I ask guest listeners to point to the speakers with their eyes closed and they can't.
I just picked up a pair of Thiele CS 1.2's. They image quite nicely with good precision. I need to play with them more to see just what I can get out of them, though.
JoeESP9
ESL's & tubes since 83
First of all, I'm a staunch CD supporter (have 1600). My complaints about CD's, which I hadn't mentioned, are almost always because of lack of dynamic range or just horrible sounding recordings. I can only speak for myself when I say, "CD's can sound superb. However, SACD's, dsd/dsf files, and PCM recordings made at a higher bit and sampling rate sound better to me". I also have a few CD's that are HDCD coded. Although my player (Music Bee) recognizes and decodes them I haven't noticed much of a difference.
Besides, all of my CD's have been ripped to FLAC. For me, it's streaming, my FLAC files and the occasional LP that I listen to.
I'll also put in a plug for Blu-ray audio (24/96) and full concerts on Blu-ray disks.
dogscanskate
Super Member
Congratulations, you just found the limits of your listening space
. What exactly does "sound stage" have to do with music? Does it affect tone, timbre, attack, decay, scale... of the musical signal? I don't think so personally. I just like listening to the music. It is nice to have a great sound stage but all it is is an artifact. I've always noticed that in live performances, the music was everywhere and I never felt like I saw a soundstage. That's just me. Although I do agree that spatial cues may exist in the recordings (such as reverberation, echo, delay...). Your room boundaries, speaker placement may have a lot to do with the imaging of your system.
bimasta
Addicted Member
@toddalin — "I played clarinet in school from 5th grade through my first year of college, and there were always people walking around the music room playing one thing or another. I will be damned if a trumpet player walked around and I couldn't hear the difference."
I don't know what to say. You didn't hear this particular trumpet player in a noisy Club in a basement in Hell's Kitchen in 1966, you weren't there..
I don't know what to say. You didn't hear this particular trumpet player in a noisy Club in a basement in Hell's Kitchen in 1966, you weren't there..
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JonL
Lunatic Member
Pinpoint imaging is a cool effect that some recordings and playback systems can create. Properly done, a recording can take advantage of imaging capabilities to simulate the sound of being super close to an ensemble, or actually being part of the ensemble. Very cool. But most of the time when we're enjoying live music we're far enough away from the ensemble that there's more spatial information coming from the room and its reflective and/or absorptive surfaces than there is from the positioning of the players with respect to each other. Essentially, the music is coming from one point, and there's a variety of delayed reflections giving us a sonic sense of the room and the position of the players (all together) within the room. For reproducing the sound experienced as an audience member seated typically many tens of feet from the musicians, a monophonic recording can sound surprisingly realistic. In my experience, a mono recording conveys a weightiness, coherence, and immediacy that stereo often lacks. I have some mono records that I have to double check are actually mono because I would swear I hear a precise (but realistically narrow) lateral separation of some instruments and voices.
Comparing my SONY V-5 to my Realistic STA 2000 for purposes of keeping only one of them.
Each is 'Collector Condition" as regards aesthetics.
I am hearing a vastly wider 'Sound Stage' from the Sony, than the Realistic.
How much a factor should I consider that when I compare the two?
Most of my listening is on my exercise bike about an hour a day, twice that in the Winter months, so I am in the 'listening zone' for most of the time I'm listening.
Is superior sound staging an established characteristic of Sony?
Is a much less 'imaging-forward' on the TOTL Realistic by design, or happenstance?
Thanks and respect,
Papa Dog
Each is 'Collector Condition" as regards aesthetics.
I am hearing a vastly wider 'Sound Stage' from the Sony, than the Realistic.
How much a factor should I consider that when I compare the two?
Most of my listening is on my exercise bike about an hour a day, twice that in the Winter months, so I am in the 'listening zone' for most of the time I'm listening.
Is superior sound staging an established characteristic of Sony?
Is a much less 'imaging-forward' on the TOTL Realistic by design, or happenstance?
Thanks and respect,
Papa Dog
Congratulations, you just found the limits of your listening space
It does affect decay- because of the preservation (or not) of the reverberation behavior of the original space.
A properly set up system, can preserve those reverberation cues, caught by the recording microphones. It gets closer to one of what I think are the ultimate goals of a system- to virtually put you "into the space" of the original recording. Once you have heard a system that CAN do that well- it's hard to live without it...I have heard, many times, systems that had sounrstages that were wider, taller and deeper than the room we were in- if you closed your eyes and listened, you heard a room that was altogether different than the (usually smaller) space you were actually in. That's when you know you have truly coherent, time-, phase- damping- and frequency-response correct speakers... and that they are set up properly in the room.
To me, I don't ever get the "music coming from everywhere" sensation, unless the system is coherent enough, and set up properly, to let the speakers truly "disappear". There should be no perception of sound coming from a specific speaker cabinet- it should, instead, on live-mic-ed (unprocessed, in terms of panning, phase-changing, etc) recordings, appear to be coming from the point in space corresponding to where the performer was located...
Regards,
Gordon.
as others have stated, soundstage can easily outstrip the dimensions of the room the system is reproducing it in. Here's a great live recording that really let's a system show it's stuff, Sly and The family Stone, Woodstock, "I Want to Take You Higher".
if your system is set up for it it's easy to tell when sly is speaking through the PA to the audience vs singing through the sound system, his voice moves up high and to the extreme sides vs up front centered on the stage. you should be able to sense the size of the venue, it's outside so...............
Also, with speakers that excell in imaging I've had 2-channel movie sound rival multi-channel with helicopters flying from the front of the room, overhead, then past the rear wall.
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dogscanskate
Super Member
I'll repeat myself: I've always noticed that in live performances, the music was everywhere and I never felt like I saw a soundstage. I never mentioned the word "recording" in this sentence. I was talking about live music not recorded music. The raw emotion of a performance is absolutely not in its soundstage, the instruments are the stars (voice, strings, horns, bass...) that actually make music. I do not listen to see pictures, I just do it to hear the notes being played. Great if a system throws a huge soundstage but it is not a defining factor in a system's quality. I'll repeat my question: what does a soundstage have to do with music???? It brings no musical value, just a pictorial value of instrument placement which is a nice artifact but has no musical value. What comes out of your speakers bounces off your walls so what you hear is a mix of what is on the recording plus the colorations added by soundwaves travelling in the room and colliding with walls, floors, ceiling, furniture... i'd rather just enjoy the music
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Every live music event I've attended had a soundstage, I had no problem discerning where each member of the band was on the stage, confirmed with my eyes. Even at my son's school marching band rehearsals I could hear where the trombones were (my son's instrument), the trumpets, French horns, tubas, etc, soundstage has EVERYTHING to do with music.I'll repeat myself: I've always noticed that in live performances, the music was everywhere and I never felt like I saw a soundstage. I never mentioned the word "recording" in this sentence. I was talking about live music not recorded music. The raw emotion of a performance is absolutely not in its soundstage, the instruments are the stars (voice, strings, horns, bass...) that actually make music. I do not listen to see pictures, I just do it to hear the notes being played. Great if a system throws a huge soundstage but it is not a defining factor in a system's quality. I'll repeat my question: what does a soundstage have to do with music???? It brings no musical value, just a pictorial value of instrument placement which is a nice artifact but has no musical value. What comes out of your speakers bounces off your walls so what you hear is a mix of what is on the recording plus the colorations added by soundwaves travelling in the room and colliding with walls, floors, ceiling, furniture... i'd rather just enjoy the music
if you're just hearing a wall of sound and you're ok with that then more power to you.
at home I don't have the same confirmation that what I'm hearing is true to the event, but I still hear a soundstage when one is present, it's just one way to know your time spent setting up your system is on the right track.
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dogscanskate
Super Member
Ain't that funny? I don't see the soundstage but I can pick out any instrument (classical music) because it's there lol. As for amplified music, it's just a wall of noise. I've seen too many concerts that were too loud and I could not pick any particular instrument like in classical music. The acoustics of most halls for amplified music is poor at best.
Most systems give a soundstage but I don't see that as one of the main characteristics of a good system.
you didn't get it, maybe you should use your eyes more, as I stated, I hear where the instruments are at live events, CONFIRMED with my eyes eh?
sorry you only get a wall of sound at home, maybe once you get your system set up right and actually have a soundstage then you'll understand that it's one of the things that get us closer to the live event.
And isn't that the point, music that sounds like REAL music? It's why we aren't all just listening to boomboxes, earbuds, transistor radios, getting closer to live music.
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dogscanskate
Super Member
I look at movies with my eyes, I listen to music with my ears, I eat with my mouth... Have I ever said that there is no soundstage at home? Tell me where did I write this? Music has the best chance of sounding "REAL" if and only if you hear it. What got most of us into music were these small portable record players, transistor radios, boom boxes and such. That's exactly where we found the music. A cheap transistor radio got me to hear the bands and artists iI absolutely loved. Short of a highly expensive system, I can still appreciate those basic components that brought me to where I am presently. I can still feel the music through these components, maybe not the soundstage but heck, what do I care? I got the music.
Good for those of you who value a sound system by its soundstage capabilities. I want my gear to retrieve the musical signal first and foremost. Notes bounce of walls, ceilings, floors, furniture, objects in the recording studio and in your listening room. I can be just as happy with a boom box if it's all I have at hand. BTW I am not particularly interested in getting closer to live music, we are still eons away. Funny how a piano can fill a room like a system cannot.
again, the eyes confirmed what the ears heard, so stop purposely being obtuse eh?
and it's a good thing Yamaha didn't get the message or we wouldn't have these great "electronic" pianos lol
Good enough for Juilliard.
actually, I don't have time for people that like to play these kinds of games, congrats you've made the list.
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sp58
Active Member
It was yesterday ( sunday ) evening that i had this roomfill effect while listening with my Spendor BC1´s to piano jazz. Feels like the piano was implemented in my room, was amazed and a little bit confused.
having a hard time wrapping my head around why someone would go to a live event and say it wasn't to see the band, orchestra, singer
then why not just stay home and play records lol?
then why not just stay home and play records lol?