Article: Realism vs Accuracy For Audiophiles | Part 1: Soundstage

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Great article. Raises a number of interesting questions and pushes on a few sacred cows. 
 

I certainly question the value of pursuing some platonic ideal of “accuracy” in soundstage. We can fret over whether the guitar appears Left-Center-Left as it did the moment it was recorded, but the reality is the musicians didn’t really obsess over their seating arrangement and half-way through the song, the bass player moved to the other side of the stage, so where does that leave you? 

I definitely take the point that with un-amplified live music, there is a single point source for most seats in the house. 
 

The more important thing to me is that the sound is clear and mixed in a way that best serves the music and the song,...not in a way that accurately reproduces some arbitrary spatial soundstage, which brings me to this question:

 

Does stereo serve another function (other than reapers in an “accurate” soundstage)? By mixing various instruments so they are distributed among different channels reduces “congestion” at any given frequency and makes it easier for our speakers to reproduce all sounds more clearly. Isn’t THAT the more valid justification for stereo, multi-channel mixing? If an artist wants to create a spatial mix that serves their music, who cares if it accurately reflects where musicians were sitting during recording?

[Temporal_Dissident]

19 hours ago, bluesman said:

I must be missing that.  Are you talking about the Great Guitars video?

No, sorry. I was just referring to a hypothetical situation. Musicians do move; stages are different sizes, etc. I understand that stage position matters to musicians (I play drums), but after reading your article it occurs to me that we listeners may imbue “soundstage” with more importance than do the musicians themselves. I thought the point about the stereo image collapsing as the you move farther from the stage was especially interesting. 
 

The point I was trying to make is that it does seem arbitrary and unimportant that stereo or multi-channel mixing generate a soundstage that “accurately” reflects the placement of musicians at recording. What is more important (to me) is that the mix serve the music and how it will sound coming out of two speakers in my living room (or car, or headphones, etc). Will more stereo separation help me hear each instrument more clearly? Will it better serve the song? That is important; not where the bassist sat in relation to the pianist in a studio when it was recorded originally. 
 

The “accuracy vs realism” frame is interesting, but my guess is that many producers are going for neither accuracy nor realism, but rather for what makes the recording sound most pleasing and engaging through speakers. After reading your piece, I am more at peace with that.