I don't care about stereo imaging - am I alone. (Poll)

[Axo1989]

Unfournantly, to call the stereo image an illusion is a bit problematic as some people seem to associate the word illusion with "magic" tricks.

On one hand, stereo reproduction of sound is a trick on our hearing with two speakers playing the same recorded sound object which will then appear to be coming from points somewhere between those two speakers. But on the other hand, if the recording was indeed capturing a real sound event, all the captured cues are as real as the distance and placement of the microphones used for the recording, there's no illusion used for that capturing part.

I'm pretty sure mono is an illusion: there aren't any tiny musicians in that box.

 

[mhardy6647]

The nice thing about these illusions is they're at least built using wave mechanics.

 

[Els]

Line arrays may not be the panacea you think. The vertical dispersion is usually quite limited.

I never mentioned panacea, regarding speakers there is no such thing, Genesis made some good line source speakers, I wish I could afford.

 

[fpitas]

I never mentioned panacea, regarding speakers there is no such thing, Genesis made some good line source speakers, I wish I could afford.

You wanted flexibility in the vertical listening axis, though. I thought (?)

 

[MattHooper]

- I like recordings with good imaging. E.g. I notice this in Yo La Tengo albums. This pleasant feeling of being surrounded by sound, and sound not coming from the speakers. But the vivid descriptions of imaging I sometimes see, with precision down to the centimeter it would seem, leave me as perplexed as if they were talking about the myriad flavors in a glass of wine. Dr Toole mentions that often, we have "mono left, mono right, mono center", and this is close to my experience of stereo much of the time.

Well we certainly have different experiences of imaging, then.

Objects in a recording can appear literally anywhere between the L/R speakers, not just "Left/Center/Right." (I steer imaging all the time in my work in post production sound). For instance plenty of albums I own will have drum sets panned between the speakers, and as a drummer rolls along all the toms they appear in a nicely graded row in space, certainly not some crude L/C/R as if there are obvious holes in the presentation.

Again, maybe some of the dismissal of what stereo can achieve comes from not caring about soundstaging or precise imaging in the first place.

 

[jsilvela]

Again, maybe some of the dismissal of what stereo can achieve comes from not caring about soundstaging or precise imaging in the first place.

The whole point of this thread was about not caring that much about imaging, and of course that's all down to individual preference.

Wanted to reply to you because of the use of "dismissal", and you citing that you do music post production work.
I did not mean to be dismissive of anyone's work.

But given the experience you describe, I also wonder about trained ears vs. untrained.
Even in recordings were I do get a more vivid soundstage and not just L-C-R, I don't perceive the kind of precision you describe. I can get that this sound seems left of the vocals, say, and maybe this drum seems to come from way back. But all this with the same spatial fuzziness I get with mono sound in phantom center, which seems much wider than a real center.

 

[majingotan]

Well we certainly have different experiences of imaging, then.

Objects in a recording can appear literally anywhere between the L/R speakers, not just "Left/Center/Right." (I steer imaging all the time in my work in post production sound). For instance plenty of albums I own will have drum sets panned between the speakers, and as a drummer rolls along all the toms they appear in a nicely graded row in space, certainly not some crude L/C/R as if there are obvious holes in the presentation.

Again, maybe some of the dismissal of what stereo can achieve comes from not caring about soundstaging or precise imaging in the first place.

I experience this mostly as one of the traits of tube distortion especially those that are directly heated triode single ended transformer coupled amps

 

[fpitas]

I experience this mostly as one of the traits of tube distortion especially those that are directly heated triode single ended transformer coupled amps

I have no tubes, yet I hear what Matt refers to. The image can be and is anywhere between, and indeed, sometimes outside the speakers.

 

[majingotan]

I have no tubes, yet I hear what Matt refers to. The image can be and is anywhere between, and indeed, sometimes outside the speakers.

Some SS amp and speaker combo portray a similar effect. It's just tubes are easier to get those effect than finding a matching ss amp for certain efficient speaker. Tubes distortion not only present those imaging as you also experience in your audio chain, but also alter the FR tonality of the sound which your system won't do of course

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Dr Toole mentions that often, we have "mono left, mono right, mono center", and this is close to my experience of stereo much of the time.

I've got a lot of time for Dr Toole's expertise and work, but he has this wrong. Perhaps it's common for poor equipment or badly set-up systems to only create a mono left, mono centre and mono right and that is what he is reporting on. Certainly I've experienced this with headphones (where stereo is a strange concept!). But I've heard hundreds of domestic and professional two-channel systems create consistently smooth and finely graded images in width and also in depth.

 

[fpitas]

Some SS amp and speaker combo portray a similar effect. It's just tubes are easier to get those effect than finding a matching ss amp for certain efficient speaker. Tubes distortion not only present those imaging as you also experience in your audio chain, but also alter the FR tonality of the sound which your system won't do of course

The effect is caused by phase and amplitude differences, so I don't understand why a tube would help. It's in the recording, put there at mix time.

 

[antcollinet]

On a hopefully related topic, why it is that the 3D perception of sound is called an illusion? We don't call our depth perception an illusion, why is it what I understand to be the audio equivalent of stereo vision gets this treatment?

I would call it an illusion because it isnt' really there in your room. The sound is emitted from two speakers. There are no instruments in different positions accross the sound stage.

In the same way that a 3d TV is an illusion. There is no 3d in the image: It is a flat screen. It is just that two different images are delivered, one to each eye, creating the illusion of depth.

Distinct from listening to an orchestra in a concert hall, or looking at the real 3 dimensional world - which are obviously not illusions.


I have no beef to grind though if anyone wants to view 3d TVs or Stereo speakers as delivering real 3d vision/sound fields

 

[Snarfie]

For me it is the difference between listening to music/recording or listening into the music/recording or listening to music or a performance. The recording must carry the desired information like reverberation an your speakers must be time alignt/phase coherent. It's discussed that DSP can help a lot. It took me years an endless placement to find the wright spot (inhouse) an speakers.
Imo one of the best very old but excelent recordings where i hear an great image. Recorded with 3 Neumann mic's. The Mercury Living Precence recordings.

 

[TimW]

I voted for important. I know I can listen without it since I enjoy some mono music. Also sometimes I listen to speakers while walking around a room doing things, not really getting the stereo imaging affect but enjoying the hell out of it. When I was younger and blasted music into my ears using cheap ear buds connected to my ipod I didn't pay much attention to imaging, only noticing really obvious dynamic panning. As I got into higher end audio gear and heard about imaging I started to pay more attention.

Since I've gotten into recording and mixing music I pay way more attention to imaging. There are various ways of creating imaging including basic stereo panning, simulated 3D panning, various stereo recording methods, and various effects like stereo reverb, delay, and phase manipulation. I can't listen to a song now without analyzing the panning and speculating about the recording techniques and effects used. I find it very enjoyable.

 

[fpitas]

For me it is the difference between listening to music/recording or listening into the music/recording or listening to music or a performance. The recording must carry the desired information like reverberation an your speakers must be time alignt/phase coherent. It's discussed that DSP can help a lot. It took me years an endless placement to find the wright spot (inhouse) an speakers.

Since it is in some recordings, I'd say a good system should reproduce the effect as intended.

 

[Spocko]

Is "presence" the same as stereo imaging? I'm talking about a vocal presence that's front/center, standing out from the background music which is spread out (stereo width?) and surrounds the musician but serves more like a background canvas for the singer. I'm just hypnotized by this effect - It feels like the wider the soundstage the more presence and separation the singer has whereas if the soundstage isn't wide enough and everything collapses into the same spot, I don't know where this dramatic effect is preserved. This is why I do enjoy speaker/room systems that create a wide/vast soundstage for individual "presence" to be recreated.

This is an effect that's nice to have but not a dealbreaker, HOWEVER, if given a choice between 2 systems all else being the same I would prefer having it over not. But after having it for a while, you don't know it's there, so I do listen to music on my nearfield mixing system where there's very little soundstage but still pleasant. Going from this professional setup to my "stereo" system definitely is great because it gives me something new to enjoy.

 

[fpitas]

Is "presence" the same as stereo imaging? I'm talking about a vocal presence that's front/center, standing out from the background music which is spread out (stereo width?) and surrounds the musician but serves more like a background canvas for the singer. I'm just hypnotized by this effect - It feels like the wider the soundstage the more presence and separation the singer has whereas if the soundstage isn't wide enough and everything collapses into the same spot, I don't know where this dramatic effect is preserved. This is why I do enjoy speaker/room systems that create a wide/vast soundstage for individual "presence" to be recreated.

I'd guess that is an intended imaging effect of some mixes.

 

[TimW]

Is "presence" the same as stereo imaging? I'm talking about a vocal presence that's front/center, standing out from the background music which is spread out (stereo width?) and surrounds the musician but serves more like a background canvas for the singer. I'm just hypnotized by this effect - It feels like the wider the soundstage the more presence and separation the singer has whereas if the soundstage isn't wide enough and everything collapses into the same spot, I don't know where this dramatic effect is preserved. This is why I do enjoy speaker/room systems that create a wide/vast soundstage for individual "presence" to be recreated.

This is an effect that's nice to have but not a dealbreaker, HOWEVER, if given a choice between 2 systems all else being the same I would prefer having it over not. But after having it for a while, you don't know it's there, so I do listen to music on my nearfield mixing system where there's very little soundstage but still pleasant.

Creating space for the various parts of a song, including the vocals, is part of the mixing process and stereo panning (imaging) is one of the tools for achieving this.

 

[JohnnyNG]

I enjoy it quite a bit. It's really what "stereo" is for, a spatial illusion. Then again, I have lots of mono recordings so it's not a requirement.

 

[Spocko]

Creating space for the various parts of a song, including the vocals, is part of the mixing process and stereo panning (imaging) is one of the tools for achieving this.

GREAT POINT so to what degree is the OP's perception of stereo imaging a commentary on the source mix vs playback system? Is this poll about our preferences regarding the stereo source because I voted based on my assumption about hardware (speakers, etc.)