Holographic depth soundstage and 3d impression 2025

[tmuikku]

Elac Debut is not reasonable speaker then did you try them with very small listening triangle? What about the Martens you mention, do they have the sound also back of the room, or just around at the listening position?

 

[steve59]

I have noticed that the subject of holographic sound, the depth of the sound stage, is often ridiculed here. However, having several pairs of speakers in one room and presenting them in different places, one issue stands out very clearly. It is a physical, tangible impression of the presence of the voice/instrument. And this, apart from the acoustics of the room, is due to some speakers, let's not talk about amplifiers. Let's not talk about a large stage to the sides, because when we move the speakers apart, most people will say wow, what a large stage. We are talking about holography and depth front to back that is tangible, you can tell that something is 2 meters in front of you and every 50 cm. Let those who have had contact with it and are delving into this experience speak up. Recommend some speakers that can do this. Thank you and I love you.

Would you say there's only 1 model? the next best replacing the previous best? I could drop a speaker M & M and mention the song that made me think of it regarding image specificity, but one of the things I appreciate about this hobby is how different speakers kinda shuffle my set list by making different songs pop.

 

[Verig]

Elac Debut is not reasonable speaker then did you try them with very small listening triangle? What about the Martens you mention, do they have the sound also back of the room, or just around at the listening position?

Marten Miles did well in main position and farther back. All speakers have their spot but these are not very picky about it.

I know how to position speakers, their size and limits included. Of course I can make Debuts or similar sound pretty decent but they never reach the presence and tangible quality I'd call holographic.

Kef LS50 Meta and LS60 are interesting. Very clean and easy to listen to but they don't do it for me. They're ok but just... so civil about it? Same goes for Genelecs.

Dynadio Contour 60i are very good.

Edit: Harbeth SHL5 driven with Mastersound 300B SE is great. Very tangible images. (Yes, I mention the amp on purpose with this one. I kind of want to see the measurements but no need really because this is one of the few cases where ears are enough.)

Basically I've always thought holography is about a high quality tweeter combined with a bit funky FR. I like it but I suspect it's an error of sorts, very sweet one, but still.

 

[Bartez2000]

Today I listened to B&W 606 s3, B&W 705 s3, Elac uni-fi ub52, Elac Solano bs283, Audio Physic classic 3. This is my subjective opinion, so please be understanding.

The room was treated well, about 6x5 meters.

In search of holography, the 606 s3 was the clear winner. I expected the ub52 to delight me, but it was not the best experience.

In short, my impressions:

606 s3 very open sound and fast dynamic but also very natural, wide sound stage with a very focused phantom center, the only thing missing was a bit of the lowest bottom, but I have a subwoofer just in case. A slightly raised top above 7hkz, a slight bottom around 3khz, but a great pleasure to listen to. Large scale of sound, with very good depth.

More than 3 times more expensive 705 s3 had no chance, it was surprising. I could say it sounded like a 606 that lacked power... But that's for sure.

Elac uni-fi ub52 - despite the admiration of NewRecordDay and cheapaudioman, this is an artificially playing speaker in my opinion, as if the potential of 3 drivers was wasted. Detailed but not as much as 606, less lively, milder transients. Strange, as if compressed sound, imaging good but not what I expected after a few reviews on the internet. Overall feeling of mess and smaller soundstage than 606.

Audio Physic classic 3 - correct, a bit warmer, safe choice but after opinions that Audio Physic are generally very holographic speakers, in the case of classic 3 this is not true.

Elac Solano bs283 - small dark compressed sound.

I thought that 606 would have a wide stage while losing the central image, but despite the wide spacing the center was firmly embedded.

When it comes to holography, the best is 606 s3, then 705 s3 and ub52. The rest are weak.
Here I must add that the 606 s3 did not achieve the holography I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, but the differentiation of sound planes was good nonetheless.

 

[goat76]

I find envelopment much more interesting than depth. Totem speaker (with all their quirks) handle this nicely for my ear.

Why choose when you can have them both at the same time?

The depth information is in the recording, and that will be heard with capable loudspeakers set up correctly in the room, and it helps to have a fairly high ratio of direct sound which often comes with a fairly small listening triangle.

The sensation of envelopment comes with late reflections in the listening environment, and when those are “late enough” they will be perceived as a secondary diffused sound field somewhat “detached” from the dominant direct sound, which in turn gives the listener a “window view” into the recorded venue. I have also noticed that two subwoofers set up in stereo on either side of the main speakers help to enlarge the sensation of development.

When both of those sensations work together (which also depends on the recording), it creates both depth and envelopment at the same time which sounds very three-dimensional.

At least that’s how I would describe it.

 

[Bartez2000]

Elac Debut is not reasonable speaker then did you try them with very small listening triangle? What about the Martens you mention, do they have the sound also back of the room, or just around at the listening position?

I only listened to Uni-fi ub52 but I was a bit disappointed, the depth of sound is quite big but overall the sound seems artificial to me. The consultant in the showroom accurately described the speakers before listening, so when he said that I can skip elac debut if I am looking for depth and holography I believe he was right. But who knows what would have happened if I had listened to them. Thank you for your post.

 

[MattHooper]

Why choose when you can have them both at the same time?

The depth information is in the recording, and that will be heard with capable loudspeakers set up correctly in the room, and it helps to have a fairly high ratio of direct sound which often comes with a fairly small listening triangle.

The sensation of envelopment comes with late reflections in the listening environment, and when those are “late enough” they will be perceived as a secondary diffused sound field somewhat “detached” from the dominant direct sound, which in turn gives the listener a “window view” into the recorded venue. I have also noticed that two subwoofers set up in stereo on either side of the main speakers help to enlarge the sensation of development.

When both of those sensations work together (which also depends on the recording), it creates both depth and envelopment at the same time which sounds very three-dimensional.

At least that’s how I would describe it.

You just brought up something that I don’t think I had thought about before: the relationship between my having a modest sized room (15’ c 13’) and the sense of envelopment I enjoy and have experienced over the years.

I’m not going to attribute this to the reflective effects of my room per se, but possibly more to the fact, a smaller room encourages a more intimate set up of the loudspeakers.
When I see loudspeakers in large rooms, and audiophile set up or elsewhere, understandably, there is often more distance from the speakers to the listening position.

But I like a closer more immersive experience (My current speakers are around 7 feet from my listening position). When I go to audio stores that have big rooms, they’ve often placed the seat at a greater distance from the loudspeakers, so I usually pull my seat closer to the type of distance I will listen at home.

So it’s a bit hard to tell whether my desire for closer seating and immersion is strictly from personal preference, or whether it also derives from simply not having a big room, which meant for closer seating distances, which helped formed my preferences.

By the way, I also noted an increase in spaciousness to the sound when I added two subwoofers to my floorstanding speakers.
That seems to be a pretty common observation.

 

[Bartez2000]

I have one more loose thought. And again I will point out that I am not an audio dealer etc., I have no business, but I think that such comments are worth sharing. I know that generally the results of spinorama are not very good for various B&W, but in 606 s3 the naturalness is nice. Since I work with studio monitors I appreciate the lack of sound coloration. A speaker that honestly tells how the music sounds at the source. Over the years, listening to many speakers I am surprised that so many speaker manufacturers ignore this fact and release something on the market that entertains the sound so much that it sounds very artificial. And like every other "effect" it simply dirty and destroys the music. Of course, this is just my taste, sorry, I am not attacking the listeners here. I understand that everyone has their own preferences. But I was surprised that generally out of 5 speakers only one sounded natural.

 

[Bartez2000]

You just brought up something that I don’t think I had thought about before: the relationship between my having a modest sized room (15’ c 13’) and the sense of envelopment I enjoy and have experienced over the years.

I’m not going to attribute this to the reflective effects of my room per se, but possibly more to the fact, a smaller room encourages a more intimate set up of the loudspeakers.
When I see loudspeakers in large rooms, and audiophile set up or elsewhere, understandably, there is often more distance from the speakers to the listening position.

But I like a closer more immersive experience (My current speakers are around 7 feet from my listening position). When I go to audio stores that have big rooms, they’ve often placed the seat at a greater distance from the loudspeakers, so I usually pull my seat closer to the type of distance I will listen at home.

So it’s a bit hard to tell whether my desire for closer seating and immersion is strictly from personal preference, or whether it also derives from simply not having a big room, which meant for closer seating distances, which helped formed my preferences.

By the way, I also noted an increase in spaciousness to the sound when I added two subwoofers to my floorstanding speakers.
That seems to be a pretty common observation.

Today in the listening room I crawled on all fours to have the speakers closer to my ears, I left the chairs where they were I completely understand you. In addition, I played pink noise sound in mono and rotate my head to see if the phantom center was solidly blocked. I also have ATC very close and wide in my place to be in the middle of the sound stage

 

[Axo1989]

Today I listened to B&W 606 s3, B&W 705 s3, Elac uni-fi ub52, Elac Solano bs283, Audio Physic classic 3. This is my subjective opinion, so please be understanding.

The room was treated well, about 6x5 meters.

In search of holography, the 606 s3 was the clear winner. I expected the ub52 to delight me, but it was not the best experience.

In short, my impressions:

606 s3 very open sound and fast dynamic but also very natural, wide sound stage with a very focused phantom center, the only thing missing was a bit of the lowest bottom, but I have a subwoofer just in case. A slightly raised top above 7hkz, a slight bottom around 3khz, but a great pleasure to listen to. Large scale of sound, with very good depth.

More than 3 times more expensive 705 s3 had no chance, it was surprising. I could say it sounded like a 606 that lacked power... But that's for sure.

Elac uni-fi ub52 - despite the admiration of NewRecordDay and cheapaudioman, this is an artificially playing speaker in my opinion, as if the potential of 3 drivers was wasted. Detailed but not as much as 606, less lively, milder transients. Strange, as if compressed sound, imaging good but not what I expected after a few reviews on the internet. Overall feeling of mess and smaller soundstage than 606.

Audio Physic classic 3 - correct, a bit warmer, safe choice but after opinions that Audio Physic are generally very holographic speakers, in the case of classic 3 this is not true.

Elac Solano bs283 - small dark compressed sound.

I thought that 606 would have a wide stage while losing the central image, but despite the wide spacing the center was firmly embedded.

When it comes to holography, the best is 606 s3, then 705 s3 and ub52. The rest are weak.
Here I must add that the 606 s3 did not achieve the holography I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, but the differentiation of sound planes was good nonetheless.

If you don't control for loudspeaker placement, listening room characteristics and program material—not to mention sighted bias—then these observations may be interesting, but not definitive.

Edit: in my own (somewhat limited) experience the most dramatic differences appear to derive from the source material. A recording/mix can be very open/spatial or not. The effect is usually discernible on different listening devices and speaker vs headphone. But I haven't listened to the range of loudspeakers that say @MattHooper or @Duke have.

 

[Bartez2000]

If you don't control for loudspeaker placement, listening room characteristics *room and program material—not to mention sighted bias—then these observations may be interesting, but not definitive.

Edit: in my own (somewhat limited) experience the most dramatic differences appear to derive from the source material. A recording/mix can be very open/spatial or not. The effects usually discernible on different listening devices and speaker vs headphone. But I haven't listened to the range of loudspeakers that say @MattHooper or @Duke have.

I swapped them and switched them all the time. That's all I could do

 

[Axo1989]

I swapped them and switched them all the time. That's all I could do

Yes, personally I find it very difficult to judge stereo image performance of loudspeakers in different dealer listening rooms. But fun to try.

 

[Axo1989]

No. It’s an accidental artifact of the room and speaker interaction. It’s not by design. Love it when it happens though.

Hmmm, I'd say it's the deliberate intention of stereo reproduction.

You should hear if it's in the recording, provided your room setup, listening position and equipment etc aren't doing something wrong.

 

[Gringoaudio1]

Hmmm, I'd say it's the deliberate intention of stereo reproduction.

You should hear if it's in the recording, provided your room setup, listening position and equipment etc aren't doing something wrong.

Well stereo placement of instruments across left to right is deliberate but the so-called holographic thing is just luck. Someone in pro audio told me that mixing can’t account for the effects of the crazy sound we sometimes hear with some speakers in some rooms. Room reflections and speaker dispersion(?) at play. But I certainly am not qualified to support this. Many of the experts here would agree though. Whatever causes the magic I love it when it happens!
R

 

[majingotan]

Well stereo placement of instruments across left to right is deliberate but the so-called holographic thing is just luck. Someone in pro audio told me that mixing can’t account for the effects of the crazy sound we sometimes hear with some speakers in some rooms. Room reflections and speaker dispersion(?) at play. But I certainly am not qualified to support this. Many of the experts here would agree though. Whatever causes the magic I love it when it happens!
R

Does this imply that the reproduction is NOT accurate then because of "luck in resonances" that create holography? I wholeheartedly disagree! It's all about the speaker design and deliberate tuning in crossovers to simulate this effect. As an example, I experience 100% holography with my Hifiman Susvara original headphones (which eliminates room resonances by default) without any DSP involved: just pure DAC conversion from source file to headphones. In my case, the group delay inaccuracies are what cause my Hifiman Susvara to produce stereo sound that sounds like binaural recordings in nature all the time (inherent effect).

 

[Ktacos]

I don't do drugs

Funny you mention that, I do and it's created one of the toughest experiences for me to figure out. I write music as well and part of that journey has had me try psychedelics. I expect a pretty poor reception to that here as most users seem to be on the older side and I always get crap for mentioning it. Personally it's only helped increase my drive to drive understand audio reproduction more and helped me write some neat songs.

Anyway, curiously the most engaging holographic/enveloping/whatever experiences I've had with speakers and music, was some stuff I played off a little JBL bluetooth speaker in the woods in my back yard on some mushrooms. That's a mono speaker, but with the aid of chemicals that we don't really understand yet, my brain turned it into a massive all encompassing sound with depth that just does not come to fruition on other speakers with a sober mind. I've got genelec/nuemann/diy 3 ways with well executed dsp filtering so it's not like my other speakers can't do it, and they can but it really seems to come and go. Can't seem to really make it happen either, some days music will just sound incredible and others it just sounds terrible.

I think mental state is almost entirely responsible for generating a "holographic" sound. Setting is likely important as well. I've had some friends show me their system and I've had them hear mine, and honestly in those setting my brain is just not in a position to be enveloped.

 

[MattHooper]

Someone in pro audio told me that mixing can’t account for the effects of the crazy sound we sometimes hear with some speakers in some rooms.

I think there’s some truth in that, in the sense that I’m not sure how many music mixers are actually concentrating on creating the specific three-dimensional layering of the sound.

From my limited experience in music recording, it is really mostly about balance - the balancing of the instruments to serve the music. And of course panning the instruments as well, which itself could help serve the balance of the sound.
For instance, we might put one of my keyboard parts fairly low in the mix and also with a bit of reverb to give it a sense of distance. But I don’t think it was so much sense of spatial distance, but invoking a sense of distance just by the level and the reverb so as to separate it from the other instruments. Played back on a good stereo system, that keyboard part may end up in a very holographic specific distant place in the soundstage. But that’s generally not what we were caring about. We were trying to get a mix that sounded good anywhere such as our car stereos.

I know that when I am doing sound design for movies and TV, I’m not concerned with stereo imaging and stereo depth per se. It’s more about balancing the sound. But then I’m editing to try and get the sound to “ stick” to the image of the screen in front of me, So I guess it’s a bit different that way. I know that I’ve been successful when it feels like every bit of sound that I’ve put together seems to be becoming right from the image itself. And then when we get to the theater, that’s when we can start to play with space and more placement.

But anyway, as far as music mixing, I’m sure this differs among different artist and mixers and engineers. So some may be paying more attention to the image, layering, and depth than others.

 

[DWPress]

Bob Carver toyed around with "Sonic Holography" in the 90's with a bunch of gear. I had a preamp and, briefly, a stand alone unit. I'm not sure what the analog "magic" circuit was doing but I only had moderate success with it once and your head may as well of been clamped into one single point in space IF you had the room for the proposed set up. It was also very dependent on recording and mixing quality.

 

[MattHooper]

Bob Carver toyed around with "Sonic Holography" in the 90's with a bunch of gear. I had a preamp and, briefly, a stand alone unit. I'm not sure what the analog "magic" circuit was doing but I only had moderate success with it once and your head may as well of been clamped into one single point in space IF you had the room for the proposed set up. It was also very dependent on recording and mixing quality.

View attachment 428193

I grew up, listening to KEF 105.2 speakers, powered by Carver amplification, and the Carver C-4000 “ Sonic holography” pre-amplifier.
(we also had a pair of rear speakers as well, since the carver allowed you to dial those in too).

Back then, I found the Sonic holography a neat trick. But I also found it a bit more artificial sounding, less natural, and so lots of the times I left that feature off.

 

[DWPress]

Far nicer rig growing up than my folks Montgomery Ward branded integrated with TT on top and whatever speakers it came with. Obviously, I was not deterred from enjoying it.

The C-4000 I had just introduced way too much noise into the system but the C-5 pre was pretty nice, didn't use the SH feature much. I think I still have it in the closet actually, just found the remote for it the other day.