Crosstalk/Channel Separation. How much is good enough?

[aHaidc]

How much Crosstalk would be good enough for DAC/Preamp/AMP?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Believe it or not a channel separation of 40 db is plenty. Somewhere around 18 db difference between channels is enough to hear a sound as fully left or fully right.

 

[RayDunzl]

How much "channel separation" does a pair of speakers in a typical stereo configuration provide at your earholes?

 

[Hayabusa]

How much "channel separation" does a pair of speakers in a typical stereo configuration provide at your earholes?

Quote on audibility of crosstalk

 

[daftcombo]

Can there be an advantage of increasing crosstalk in terms of having a better phantom image, for example sending 90% of the right channel and 10% of the left channel to the right speaker and vice versa?

 

[JoachimStrobel]

Believe it or not a channel separation of 40 db is plenty. Somewhere around 18 db difference between channels is enough to hear a sound as fully left or fully right.

I guess that the very high channel separation found in the red book standard with >80db(?) causes a perceived “digital” soundstage and one might prefer vinyl with its 35 dB separation. Slightly different left and right timings with subtle processing lag engrave the CD type separation problem further and gave analog Dolby a hard time defining a good centre channel from it. So... 35 dB is fine.

 

[solderdude]

I haven't seen much recordings (well some early Beatles stereo records) with hard-panned stereo.
Almost all recordings have instruments panned somewhere in between.
Not panned with 80dB difference.
It simply is possible to reach high channel separation with digital.
Something that can only be experienced with headphones by the way.
Even highly directional stat speakers won't make 80dB separation. You will always here the left speaker with both ears and the right speaker with both ears.
80 or 30dB difference isn't audible with music recordings.

 

[restorer-john]

Can there be an advantage of increasing crosstalk in terms of having a better phantom image, for example sending 90% of the right channel and 10% of the left channel to the right speaker and vice versa?

Ask Matthew Polk about that. SDAs anyone?

 

[Blumlein 88]

You know for a while early stereo studios had what at first look like odd mixing consoles. Each track had what amounted to a switch. Center, left or right. That actually works okay. I often for quick mixing do L,C,R mixing. I remember trying to do 8 recorded tracks into stereo. Spreading them out evenly with the panning resulted in a horrible indistinct mush a wall of yucky sound. Surprisingly, putting percussion and vocals to center and arbitrarily sending 3 tracks left and 3 tracks right resulted in a pretty nice open sound field.

Now back in the day they were using reel tape which had crosstalk specs of 40-45 db and it ends up less with over-dubbing. Then LP has 25-35 db.
But with my modern LCR mixing with 90 db crosstalk it was fine over speakers, but over headphones it was messed up sounding. I found if I went back and panned everything 88% left or right or center at 50/50 then over headphones it sounded about like speakers while listening over speakers was still good. That is only about 17 db between right and left channels when you do that.

Also if a recording were a purist stereo pair of microphones you aren't getting extreme low crosstalk between the channels.

So yes, really in a recording 18 db is enough and in the gear more than 40 db is plenty.

 

[Saidera]

Elsewhere on ASR crosstalk has already been explained away as insignificant to listening in real life. anything from 35 to 80 does not matter at all. But I am confused nonetheless.

Significant audio tuning has reduced crosstalk to an imperceptible 20dB - over 90% lower than USB-C headphone connections.
Can someone guess what the 20dB means here? is it a minus value?
In the Japanese marketing materials, they explain that it is reduced to 1/10th of Xperia 1's analog USB-C dongle crosstalk. Sony's official pages detailing the passion they put into Xperia show graphs without units so the 20 dB remains a mystery.

How much would Xperia 1's analog USB-C dongle crosstalk have been? 2dB? 200dB?

To add further confusion to me, https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/206709234 shows Sonata HD Pro to have very good 'channel separation' which doesn't quite correlate with other measurements found about dongles such as 9038D which has -82db@32ohm, , at 600ohm it will be -108db, up to -135db (unloaded infinite resistance).

It appears that crosstalk is not all that important even for headphones, and brings other matters into question which undermine the entire basis of speakers and headphones and what exactly the proper way to capture, store and play back sound might be. The crosstalk itself is irrelevant.

 

[restorer-john]

You should also consider crosstalk as a function of frequency and particularly crosstalk between various inputs.

The best designed gear generally has the highest channel separation across the band.

LP having 25dB is irrelevant and an ancient low bar all decent pre/main amplifiers exceeded for many decades. The good phono stages, line stages and amplifiers were >80dB.

 

[tuga]

Believe it or not a channel separation of 40 db is plenty. Somewhere around 18 db difference between channels is enough to hear a sound as fully left or fully right.

Is channel separation only important for the stereo effect or does it also affect "clarity", or the overal accuracy of reproduction if you prefer?

I can understand that a lowly 30dB might do the trick with one or 3 phantom sources, but did you try assessing a threshold with orchestral music?

 

[Thomas_A]

You should also consider crosstalk as a function of frequency and particularly crosstalk between various inputs.

The best designed gear generally has the highest channel separation across the band.

LP having 25dB is irrelevant and an ancient low bar all decent pre/main amplifiers exceeded for many decades. The good phono stages, line stages and amplifiers were >80dB.

LP playback might have other issues though; while low crosstalk may not be related to the stereo image, a symmetric and low crosstalk seems to correlate to higher quality of generator, cantilever, stylus and suspension assembly/symmetry. Which, in turn, affects distortion.

 

[H-713]

Crosstalk isn't super audible, however, it should still raise all sorts of red flags since the things that cause crosstalk in an amplifier / preamplifier / DAC very often cause other issues as well.

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

Is channel separation only important for the stereo effect or does it also affect "clarity", or the overal accuracy of reproduction if you prefer?

Accurate Stereo Imaging is not possible when phase, level and dynamic non linearity creep into the picture

Reproducing mono information in two or more locations gives you a muddy midbass, and phase discrepancies shift the location of an instrument based on frequency

Sending a slow mono sine sweep to your speaker will show you how phase problems (as well as crosstalk) affects the position of the image

No two speakers are EVER perfectly matched regarding phase response (nor are headphones)

Planar and electrostat's come closer to the ideal than dynamic drivers, but combing effects will still shift the image from dead center above a certain frequency

If you can eliminate the phase error and crosstalk, the improvement is much greater than many here will admit, but that's because they have never heard such a system

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

Crosstalk isn't super audible, however, it should still raise all sorts of red flags since the things that cause crosstalk in an amplifier / preamplifier / DAC very often cause other issues as well.

Crosstalk "IS" super audible

What did you compare it to?

That midbass mud that you normally blame on room problems might simply be crosstalk

Eliminate the crosstalk first and then tell me it is not super audible

 

[abdo123]

Can there be an advantage of increasing crosstalk in terms of having a better phantom image, for example sending 90% of the right channel and 10% of the left channel to the right speaker and vice versa?

for headphones yes, it kind of provides a sense of imaging that is otherwise lacking.

 

[H-713]

Crosstalk "IS" super audible

What did you compare it to?

I meant that crosstalk at -30 dB isn't super audible. If you have crosstalk that is audible (and audible enough to be objectionable), then you've got a serious problem that needs to be addresed.

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

How much Crosstalk would be good enough for DAC/Preamp/AMP?

For "you" or for "me" ?

For me, none would be good enough!

 

[ShiZo]

This has been a question of mine. Since I have an amp that has very low crosstalk should I make sure my dac has equal or better crosstalk?