How do you hear headphone 'soundstage'

[DonR]

All Headphones have always just been 'In My Head' with nothing perceived outside. Even Binaural recordings fail to do anything outside the confines of my head.

This is also my experience regardless of the headphones or IEM used.

 

[Vini darko]

Every headphone/iem I have is different in headstage. However none project forwards even with funky binaural stuff. Several can do width and hight effects outside my head. With the strangest being modified phillips cityscape uptown. managing to project sound that comes from my sholders. The worst for headstage are my modified fostex t50rp. Wich is just a thin line through my head with blobs at either end.

 

[sergeauckland]

Some peeps say they cannot hear outside their head. Try this. The bell is far right outside. Definitely a outside of the head stage'ing.

Great music, thanks for posting, but it stayed firmly between my ears, nothing outside at all.
S

 

[sq225917]

I rarely hear anything that I'd say is outside the head, it has be an effect, hard panned, phase trickery or similar.

 

[maverickronin]

It really depends on the headphone.

IEMs are almost always a tiny 3D stage inside my head.

Poor circumaurals basically give a 1D line through my ears that may or may not extend outside of my head.

Better circumaurals project forward from that line into a 2D or 3D space to a greater or lesser degree.

Next I'm just going to go ahead and declare that if you aren't at least using basic crossfeed when listening to stereo mixes you aren't listening to headphones correctly. A good circumaural headphone with crossfeed will push the sound stage forward out of my head and sound close to small nearfield speakers.

 

[majingotan]

Some peeps say they cannot hear outside their head. Try this. The bell is far right outside. Definitely a outside of the head stage'ing.

The drum set staging itself is already panned outside my head with my Dan Clark Aeon X Open (No EQ, No DSP, Bitperfect NOS). The staging on this track is extremely wide and 3D deep and imaging from the recording is PERFECT!

 

[solderdude]

Some peeps say they cannot hear outside their head. Try this. The bell is far right outside. Definitely a outside of the head stage'ing.

Even with (EQ'ed) HD800 the sound is always in my head. Panned widely (especially the piano and drums). The recording is good and has a 'roomy' feel but does not become 3D or all around me but is very 'spacious' if that's the word but in the head.
The wide panning of the piano gives the illusion of sitting in front of it or inside of the piano and with a drumkit on the left and right of it, bass slightly on the left.
While being 'weird' in that sense it is high quality.

Now I do have an experience I had a while ago and that was when I was listening on my bed to music (Nex II MP3 plaxer on KTX-Pro) where just before I fell to sleep the sound suddenly became holographic 3D type. This 'woke me up' and it disappeared immediately.

So it looks like it must be a brain thingy for 3D rendition to take place, not a headphone thing per se.

The recording does sound 'better' on HD800 than on a (modified) DT1770 as in better instrument separation/imaging/width (no 'holes' anywhere) and spread out. Not forward as if in front of me. Just very spacious... a big space inside the head.

 

[solderdude]

First off I want to thank contributors to this thread. At least I am do not seem to be a rare duck in not hearing 3D soundstaging in front of me (at least without any digital trickery) and using regular stereo recordings.

it would seem to me that the most likely characteristic accountable for a listener's perception of any "soundstage/headstage" is a result of each driver's frequency response.

I think that it has more to do with signal processing and trickery. If it were frequency response the spatial effects could be obtained by use of EQ alone which is not my experience.
With good EQ on HD800 the spatial qualities do not get worse and no matter how one EQ's the HD600 (even when mimicking the HD800) it does get a similar tonality but not spatial qualities.

I feel like I am in the music or part of the music and it is all around me. I hope I am not the only one.

Agree, partly, in the music/part of the music yes. Not all around me but kind of in the middle as if on the stage and not as public in front of the performance.

Next I'm just going to go ahead and declare that if you aren't at least using basic crossfeed when listening to stereo mixes you aren't listening to headphones correctly. A good circumaural headphone with crossfeed will push the sound stage forward out of my head

My experience with Xfeed is that it narrows the stereo image. I find it to work best (for me) on the HD800 where it 'stabilizes' the stereo image and makes it a bit more compact.
For me it does not make it project 'forward' as in 'in front of me'.

 

[majingotan]

I do agree that there’s a brain activity factor with regards to holographic 3D staging.

I did not perceive 3D staging on the HD800 (S) during my many times of demoing it. The K712 had more of that holographic imaging perception than the HD800 from my distant memory. If you get a chance to demo even the drop DCA aeon open X that I have, you may or may not perceive a sensation that there’s a very distinct lateral front to back imaging in the way that Avo track was mastered

 

[solderdude]

I have heard the MrSpeakers AEON open and closed. I much preferred the closed version (the open was too 'warm') but did not get any special spatial qualities.
Only very few people (at least acc to this small poll) get the 3D experience you are getting. I don't think that it is gear related (outside of the headphones) so must be a brain thingy.

Fortunately I can enjoy music and specifically well made recordings. I just don't get it all around me or in front of me. Just filling my whole head as it were. If I want on front of me I resort to speakers. With electrostatic speakers I get a very stable and easy to pin point 3D image stretching before, after, and weirdly enough above my speakers (which are 2m high)

The guys responsible for the recording and mixing knew what they were doing. Excellent recording quality, certainly for a live performance.
it shows that music can still sound 'airy' even when limited to 15kHz (at least the YT version is)

 

[Mulder]

To me headphones are very similar to when I listen to studio/mixing speakers at my desktop, sitting in front of and close to the speakers. I think the difference is bigger listening to IEM:s compared to headphones. IEM:s are much more in head instead of in front of.

 

[Robbo99999]

Definitely echo your findings here, for me the HD560s has better staging than the He400se. I remember sharing a Santana track in the HD560s owner's thread that literally made me jump out of my chair in bemusement from the staging.

My only planar headphone (the HE4XX), is also not the best headphone for me re soundstage - K702 & HD560s are better in that regard, but the HE4XX is better for soundstage than my closed back NAD HP50 and my Senn HD600. I had expected the HE4XX to be better due to it's angled pads, but maybe it's because the earcups aren't that spacious, eventhough the earcups are big most of the space is taken up by the thick pads leaving a relatively small space for your ear to fit within.

 

[Robbo99999]

Some peeps say they cannot hear outside their head. Try this. The bell is far right outside. Definitely a outside of the head stage'ing.

To me that track is not particularly good soundstage music. If I was to think about my catalogue of music, I'd say stuff by Massive Attack / Aurora / Christine & the Queens (Chaleur Humaine album) are some of the best examples of soundstage music.

 

[Robbo99999]

Even with (EQ'ed) HD800 the sound is always in my head. Panned widely (especially the piano and drums). The recording is good and has a 'roomy' feel but does not become 3D or all around me but is very 'spacious' if that's the word but in the head.
The wide panning of the piano gives the illusion of sitting in front of it or inside of the piano and with a drumkit on the left and right of it, bass slightly on the left.
While being 'weird' in that sense it is high quality.

Now I do have an experience I had a while ago and that was when I was listening on my bed to music (Nex II MP3 plaxer on KTX-Pro) where just before I fell to sleep the sound suddenly became holographic 3D type. This 'woke me up' and it disappeared immediately.

So it looks like it must be a brain thingy for 3D rendition to take place, not a headphone thing per se.

The recording does sound 'better' on HD800 than on a (modified) DT1770 as in better instrument separation/imaging/width (no 'holes' anywhere) and spread out. Not forward as if in front of me. Just very spacious... a big space inside the head.

I think your experience you had when you were just about to fall asleep where the music became 3D is quite telling. I think the brain has a lot to do with it - I think some people can imagine & visualise what they're hearing to become that kind of effect you're mentioning - maybe some people can easily let headphones create this effect. Have you ever tried to do some fps gaming using headphones using a Virtual 7.1 Surround system which is either implemented through the game engine itself or through a 3rd party like Creative? I think it's possible you'd be able to train your brain to allow headphones to become a bit more holographic. I'm aware that when listening to 2-channel music that a person would not flip on Virtual 7.1 Surround - I wouldn't recommend that, but I feel that there is some crossover between training your brain to recognise 3D sound through headphones (via a Virtual World) into being able to use that same kind of cognitive processing to create a more holographic stage when listening to 2-channel music through headphones. It's a loose intuition of mine, I can't prove it, but I certainly think there is a strong element of visual auditory imagination / cognitive processing associated with how people hear headphones in terms of a spatial soundstage. But I also think the soundstage potential of the headphone comes down to the headphone model in question too, so it's not just all about cognitive processing.

 

[odyo]

I think people are too obsessed with ''sound coming from outside'' phenomenon. It's a recording trick.

When people say soundstage big, distant, in front, 3d etc people say it in the realm of headphones. If anyone is expecting a speaker like outside of head sound from a headphone without any software trickery, they will be disappointed. X2HR probably has the biggest soundstage i've heard but it still sounded like a headphone.

Every headphone has it's own presentation of sound and interaction with ear/head(both sound and comfort wise) which results in a different feeling when you listen.

 

[Mulder]

I think people are too obsessed with ''sound coming from outside'' phenomenon. It's a recording trick.

During most recordings these days recording-microphones are placed close to the instrument or amplifier/speaker. Even classical music is often recorded with microphones close to the sources, and mixed. Those recordings with few microphones and a lot of room ambience and/or room reverberation are few. Most reverberation is an electronic effekt these days. Fake mostly in other words. And most recordings these days place the listener in the orchestra/band rather than at a place i front of the orchestra.

 

[Killingbeans]

Some peeps say they cannot hear outside their head. Try this. The bell is far right outside. Definitely a outside of the head stage'ing.

Not to me. It just kind of flutters around at the right side of my skull.

 

[Cote Dazur]

I am just curious how people hear headphone 'soundstage'.

I voted in reply to "how do you perceived headphone stereo image", as, to me, I have no soundstage in head phones. I have soundstage with speakers.
To me, it is right, left and in between in stereo.

 

[solderdude]

For this reason I personally call this 'headstage' and reserve the term soundstage for speakers.

 

[muslhead]

I guess i am the only one who doesnt pay attention to soundstage. Occasionally on songs that are very differently produced (like singing is on one side and instruments on the other) it stands out and is very noticable so i cant help but pay attention. But, for the most part, i am focused only on the tonality.