Soundstage Width cannot extend beyond speakers

[fas42]

What I call a competent system is always capable of having sound subjectively coming from outside the speaker span. A clearly defined example of this is using a true mono source over the two speakers; if one steps to the left of the left speaker, then the sound originates from beyond the plane of the speakers, in line with one's lateral position - if one moves laterally the sound image tracks one, being always directly in front.

 

This obviously happens because the brain 'measures' the phase difference between the two sources - but requires high quality rendering for the brain not to be drawn to be becoming aware of nearest speaker being the true source - one of the markers for convincing playback.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, PeterSt said:

What I always noticed (and people may reject this just the same) is that the sound does not go behind the speakers. At least in all my life time I never ran into that.

 

Not quite sure what you mean by that, Peter. If one stands directly in front of a speaker, then the sound will appear to originate from behind the speaker - but you're talking about something different?

[fas42]

1 hour ago, adamdea said:

No. Why should the sound coming from two boxes appear to come from an area outside the two boxes? I do hope this isn;t going to be a tedious ambiophonics plug. The issue relating to stereo speakers is pretty obvious assuming one starts with how you hear and proceeds to how stereo creates an illusion.

 

Because the brain processes all the cues in the sound field, and allocates an origin depending on that information. If the cues are poorly rendered then the typical stereo imaging is all one gets - lift the SQ sufficiently and the full illusion manifests; one's brain has the smarts to work out what it all means, this is the next level of perception from the purely mechanical one.

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

If I stand right in front of my speaker (mind you, one) then the horn blasts in my face.

So no. Not in my case.

 

Okay. There is another level of quality possible where the horn doesn't "blast you" - the audible anomalies need to be attenuated just a bit more for this to happen; there is a clear transition in how it becomes impossible to "hear the speaker" listening like this.

 

It takes throwing everything at the rig to get this consistently - the current NAD combo has not yet delivered on getting this, but that's OK - there's plenty to do still, to push it to the necessary level.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Nikhil said:

STC,

 

The sound stage can and does position instruments and singers outside the speakers. But it requires a tremendous system to do it.

 

 

 

Not a tremendous system, but a tremendous degree of attention to detail in optimising an ordinary system. The problem is that human hearing is pretty sharp, and the slightest aspect being untoward shatters the illusion - it can be extremely frustrating trying to tune a rig to the required standard - so all sorts of extra 'tricks' well done can be a good shortcut to achieving that subjective presentation.

[fas42]

36 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Where-ever I am in the room, the image works out the same, though of course the whole "stage" may shift to the left with me walking to the left (remember, room is 8m wide).

Only when I am as close as approximately 1m to e.g. the left speaker (longitudinal direction) all breaks up. But 1m50 ? all still works (the other speaker 6 meter from the LH one).

 

 

That tells me how close you are to full invisibility. What was so unusual for me is that I had the whole shebang happen in one go, that 30 years ago event. That is, the image didn't break up even when I was cms from a driver - of course I was completely astounded by this, and only recently have I understood why this sort of experience could be possible.

[fas42]

8 minutes ago, STC said:

 

So now we got stereo system where everywhere is sweet spot?

are we still talking about stereo sound?

 

Competent stereo sound has an "everywhere" sweet spot - that's the good part of the experience.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, semente said:

 

Here's the definition of sweet spot as per Stereophile's Glossary:

 

sweet spot That listening seat from which the best soundstage presentation is heard. Usually a center seat equidistant from the loudspeakers.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/sounds-audio-glossary-glossary-r-s

 

Exactly. What happens with high quality SQ is that there is no "best spot" - if I sit in the prescribed, correct position there is zero advantage to be gained. As Peter says, you can walk around, doing some useful things as well at the same time - the experience remains as captivating as it would locking oneself rigidly in one spot, not daring to move a muscle, in case some of the "magic" is lost ... .

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, semente said:

 

"the experience remains (almost) as captivating" this I agree.

But the imaging starts losing quality once you move away from the tip of the isosceles triangle.

 

And I'm actually one of those listeners which finds timbral accuracy more important than soundstage...

 

Okay, this is where I step up another notch from what Peter achieves - the imaging never loses quality, no matter where I move in the room. To repeat what I have said many times, the presentation is convincing - how it comes across is exactly as if the real sources of sound lay in an arrangement from the plane of the speakers back, always behind the speakers - if there was a curtain  in line with, hiding the speakers, extending fully to the side walls, one could walk around anywhere in front of the curtain, and detect no aural clues that you were in fact being fooled ...

[fas42]

Why?

[fas42]

What I find remarkable is that nearly everyone requires an audio system to always give clues to the fakery it performs - if it fools you, it must be lacking something ... bizarre game, this hifi thing ...

[fas42]

An amusing aside - went to a flashy opening  last night - had a pretty good quality PA; one could tell at times what it was capable of. Yet it was set up as such things nearly always are. Lots of bass oomph, making the room feel like it was full of sound, "enriching the space" - and the treble ... where was it?!!

 

A clever violin recital was done; she recorded on the fly a rhythm backing, just plucking it out, and then sequencing that to endlessly repeat; and then accompanying herself. The finale was to add layer upon layer, so that it became ever richer, round by round - very creative.

 

Did it sound like a violin? A million miles from that - the bass strings were huge, inches in thickness, the treble were like spider's gossamer, if you blinked they vanished completely.

[fas42]

4 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 

I can't really tell you why some speakers make images beyond the speaker's edges while others don't, nor why some recordings have that characteristic while others don't. I just know that it happens.

 

The fact that setups were getting the sound right 50 years ago shows how little true progress has been made in understanding - there's nothing new under the sun! Again, it's not the speakers, but how well the whole rig has been sorted - there's a continuum of behaviour: start with very best recordings, on a decent rig - and work up to all recordings, on a setup of highest quality that's been optimised to the last detail - there are places all along the spread between those points for systems to reside.

[fas42]

But who has heard a decent system working in such an environment?

[fas42]

48 minutes ago, STC said:

 

listener can hear it the way it was created. If one leans a little to the left or right,
the featured artist fl ops into the left or right loudspeaker, and the soundstage
distorts. When we sit up straight, the featured artist fl oats as a phantom image
between the loudspeakers, often perceived to be a little too far back and with a
sense of spaciousness that is different from the images in the left and right
loudspeakers (see Figure 8.4 and the associated discussion).
This puts the sound image more or less where it belongs in space, but
then there is another problem:" - Toole

 

" To hear the phantom center image, and
any other panned images between the loudspeakers correctly located, listeners must be on
the symmetrical axis between the loudspeakers. Away from the symmetrical axis, as in
cars, and through headphones, we don’t hear real stereo; we hear a spatially distorted, but
still entertaining, rendering."  - Toole.

 

 

Toole is not wrong, but doesn't have full understanding. The variable which he fails to take into account is the level of audible anomalies - vary that, and the experience changes.

 

Achieving low levels of such anomalies is hard, and hence it's understandable he writes this.

[fas42]

13 hours ago, semente said:

 

Nonsense.

It is you who doesn't have full understanding of Stereo.

 

While people keep asserting asserting that what I say is nonsense, the longer it will take for the benefits of what my approach, and Peter's, delivers to spread everywhere. I've had 30 years to explore this behaviour, which sorta gives me a little bit of authority on the subject, shall we say ... .

 

I'll leave it to Peter to deliver the full blown poetical imagery of what's happening ... I'll nail like this:

 

1) The mind wants to make sense of what it's hearing

 

2) If the presentation is too messy, "blurred", simple tricks like being in the precise "best" place to unscramble everything works a treat - the classic "sweet spot" approach

 

3) The next steps in lifting in the standard is to iteratively reduce the messiness of the presented sound, giving the mind more "breathing room" to decode what the sound all means. Well done, the ear/brain can happily follow the sense of what it's hearing anywhere in the general location of the speakers

 

Toole and others have always relied on "messy" sound presentation to analyse the situation - hence their understanding is flawed.

[fas42]

12 hours ago, Yucca06 said:

Mmmh...I never heard anything about the sugar cubes. Will try if I can.

I've tried for 30 years and more to get immersive music with 2 channels only...so I have now a huge tolerance with music "drunk feeling".

 

Ahhh ... I see the magic number of 30 years - welcome, comrade!!

 

It's about time we thought about opening a bar somewhere, for us good guys to hang out ... .

[fas42]

12 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

The problem with discussing a subject like this properly is you have to be able to disentangle the following aspects:

• how the original music was recorded and the various microphones used
• The effect of the original venue and how its effect was captured
• how the various microphone signals were mixed
• How post recording processing was used to alter the sound 
• How the replay system and speakers present/alter the sound
• The effect of the replay room on the sound
• How human hearing interprets the signals it receives

If you listen to various recordings of a voice for example, you’ll find the following examples

1. A purist approach.....pinpoint source with tonal accuracy and clarity
2. A ‘beautified’ approach, where the recording is enhanced to create a beautified, emotional response 
3. A ‘creative’ approach, where the presentation is manipulated to create a ‘wow factor’ 
4. A ‘commercial’ approach where 2 and 3 are used to optimise the sound and make it sound good for radio and MP3 playback

In view of the above, what you want from a hi-if system and its room is as much detail retrieval with as little alteration to the final recorded sound as possible.  Once you’ve achieved that, its over to the brain. Its been stated that the brain uses amplitude and phase to locate a sound, but its a little more sophisticated than that. A simple left and right location is achieved mainly with amplitude, so with level alone it would be impossible to place a sound outside of the boundaries describes by the loudspeakers. But as soon a time comes into the picture...this changes. 

 

Take a recording like Muddy Waters’  The Folk Singer. There’s a strong ambience in the recording. Let’s look at the characteristics of this ambience....

1. You only hear it on loud passages i.e it takes amplitude for a sound wave to travel the length (width) of the venue, reflect and be once again heard by the ear or detected by the microphone. 

2. The reflection is lower in volume than the original. Obviously there is a loss of energy as sound travels over distance. 

3. The reflection takes time. There is a delay between the original sound and the echo. 

 

The brain is able to compute those 3 variables in order to tell us something about the venue. It takes the original amplitude and that of the reflection to compute the degree of attenuation of the reflection. It also takes the time between the original sound and its reflection, so it now has 2 pieces of data to compute distance.....the time it took for the sound to travel to and from the reflection point and the degree of attenuation. Those 2 pieces of information are used to compute distance.

 

So back to the original discussion. Can a system present sound outside the loudspeaker’s left and right boundaries?   First, let’s modify that question slightly to take the ears and brain into consideration.....Can a system create the illusion of sound coming from outside the speakers L&R boundaries?  From the above you’ll see that no directly recorded sound can come from outside those boundaries, as the boundaries are related to amplitude and you can’t have more than 100% or less than 0%, which are the levels that define those boundaries. But reflected sound is a different story. Here the overriding factor for defining size or distance is time and relative amplitude, so for reflections or ambience a system can create the illusion of sitting in a large hall, rather than in a small listening room.  To create a huge sound stage whose boundaries far exceed those of the listening room is a matter of recording or adding judicious amounts of ambience with significant time delay. The nature of that air and space can be manipulated for size (delay time and attenuation) and texture (frequency shifts). 

So yes, its possible for a hi-if system to create the illusion of sitting in a venue far larger than either the listening room or the dimensions imposed by the loudspeaker’s position. 

 

 

Excellent alternative explanation.

[fas42]

1 minute ago, Blake said:

 

Why yes, Mr. Toole, you see....  if I may be so blunt, the fly in your ointment is your reliance on "messy" sound presentation.  Toole must be smacking his forehead now and cursing himself.  All this time the problem was right there, like an elephant in the room, so obvious, yet so invisible to him.   

 

 

 

Yes, the fly in the ointment is the "messy" sound presentation. You're attempting to be sarcastic, but I find great humour in your "protecting" him ...

[fas42]

12 hours ago, Yucca06 said:

 

 

I have stereo 2 channels only.

Processing is from an analog processor, used to amplify harmonics (SPL Vitalizer, really great)

NO multichannel.

An the sound is all around me.

 

A little bit of manipulation, to help the ears pick up key data that's critical for decoding "what it means" - all's fair in love and war - I likee ...

[fas42]

4 hours ago, gmgraves said:

"...a setup of highest quality that's been optimised to the last detail..." Yeah like with an admittedly cheap NAD amp and "boom-box" speakers, you'd know! Like an old Turkish handyman that worked around my college campus once told me: " You can put a tuxedo on a goat. But it's still just a goat."

 

There's a long way to go beyond what I play with - I use what's at hand to experiment with, try ideas, etc. If one went on an all out exercise to do the best that was possible, it would far exceed what any of my rigs have achieved at times.

 

The biggest issues have always been that cheap gear has to be extensively conditioned by hard drivin' to give of their best. Would you buy a car that took 2 hours of travel before the engine properly came on song?

[fas42]

3 hours ago, Blake said:

 

Warning off topic post!

 

And don't forget Frank's source- a generic laptop, with no external DAC in his system!  Therefore, I am assuming Frank is using the 1/8" headphone output jack of his laptop, then using a headphone jack to RCA splitter cable to his NAD amp.  What happened to soldering connections, etc. that Frank mentions all the time?

 

By the way,  I have no problems with Frank's setup.  I am no audio snob and I believe Frank means well (to be clear, I have no animosity for you Frank).  As long as Frank enjoys his system, that is great. But I find it perplexing because Frank is always preaching to the CA members about the need for optimizations and how his system achieves sonic nirvana.  Suddenly bad recordings miraculously sound good on his system.  Also, with Frank's setup, he claims the sound staging and imaging remains perfect, even when walking around the room, he gets identical sound as compared to sitting in the sweet spot.  

 

  

 

Try not to get confused ... .

 

I was very active some time ago now tweaking a NAD plus Sharp speakers. The source was a NAD CDP - three items, all hardwired together.

 

In day to day listening to clips, etc, I use the laptop straight. The internal speakers only - this sound path is surprisingly good - I have a very ambitious Dell laptop as well, with very poor sound - not worth thinking about making it better.

 

Neither the NAD nor the laptop have ever given me peak SQ. Ever. But I'm not fussed, because prior rig combos have delivered - and that's what I refer to, in terms of what is possible.

[fas42]

3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

as in from Sharp minds come Sharp products??

 

As in the brand Sharp - classic boombox product, was good enough to pick differences in sound using different settings in Lame, encoding MP3 at the highest possible quality levels ... too messy to fiddle with, so I just use the speakers now. The cabinet is paper thin, will have to be made more robust down the track - but the drivers are excellent, can handle lots of power - 200 watts rated - have barely tickled them so far.

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

I'm beginning to think that you are just making shit up.

 

Why? I've slowed down a lot lately, and I don't need to prove anything to myself any more - I'm just coasting at the moment, for a variety of reasons  ..

 

Just because I'm not ferociously engaged every waking moment on building the Greatest Audio System In The Universe, I have a problem ... is that it?

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

That's fine, but get tmt. for tweaking.

 

Don't follow ...