How do you hear headphone 'soundstage'

[UltraNearFieldJock]

I voted inside my head and for me it really takes a bit of a mind trickery to experience otherwise, such as this:

Great! Over headphones left-right and in/over the head – particularly the vocal. But over my ultra-near-field setup is magic! Really far and wide and the rare up-down sound movements. In both a great base.

 

[Talisman]

I voted inside my head and for me it really takes a bit of a mind trickery to experience otherwise, such as this:

This is really impressive, I really got the feeling that my headphones were on my ears without playing anything but the neighbors upstairs were throwing a loud party. Very nice

 

[Ilkless]

I've never achieved out of head imaging and headphones never made sense to me until I got into my Audezes, which are sufficiently smooth, and insensitive to seal and placement for me to dial in an EQ that seems to consistently generate spatial cues across a broad range of recordings that are sufficiently close to my HRTF that I perceive them as out of the head. The image has good intelligibility and envelopment, though it is quite upfront. In some recordings there is even the suggestion of height and depth, though that can really much be just all the confounding variables involved (headphone FR, headphone coupling to my ear, acoustic impedance, my HRTF etc etc) coincidentally giving rise to cues my ears and brain process as plausible height and depth cues that may not actually reflect the circumstances of the recording.

Now I'm sufficiently hooked to put on hold plans for a MiniDSP Flex + active speakers to instead look for headphones with better fit, that can also yield a similar illusion consistently without an elusive peak around 8kHz I can't EQ out right now.

edit: Back to the original question, I voted it depend on the headphone for that reason.

 

[tmuikku]

I voted inside my head and for me it really takes a bit of a mind trickery to experience otherwise, such as this:

Anyone know songs on YT that don't have constant panning going on? All 8D 9D and even more D songs I clicked on seem to concentrate on panning stuff around.

 

[solderdude]

I think of it as the optical 'trickery' to see 'depth' in 2D pictures (not meaning the 3D magic stuff).
It creates the illusion of a 3D picture but objectively speaking it is 2D input.

A bit like when one is moving the head with one eye closed you can still get a 3D image of the close surroundings yet if you stop moving the brain can't do that anymore.
It is the same 'trick' but fooling the auditory system.
The fact that one can hear things above, in front and behind them while objectively there is no pinna activation and there are only 2 'input signals' coming from the side only shows that the brain uses that input to 'generate' something that never was but is emulated using trickery.

I could never listen to music if all music would be recorded this way.

A general note:

The poll, however, is aimed at how headstage is perceived without any trickery, so no DSP, crossfeed, 3D enhancers, Smyth, impulcifier, binaural recordings and 'special' recordings like this.
Just a headphone and the regular music one listens to.

When people hear 3D with this particular recording or binaural recordings but not with 'normal' recordings they should not vote '3D' but how they hear 'normal' music.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Starting at 4.40, to me the sounds are either heard left or right or in the middle using IEM. no imaging whatsoever.

 

[Talisman]

I think of it as the optical 'trickery' to see 'depth' in 2D pictures (not meaning the 3D magic stuff).
It creates the illusion of a 3D picture but objectively speaking it is 2D input.

A bit like when one is moving the head with one eye closed you can still get a 3D image of the close surroundings yet if you stop moving the brain can't do that anymore.
It is the same 'trick' but fooling the auditory system.
The fact that one can hear things above, in front and behind them while objectively there is no pinna activation and there are only 2 'input signals' coming from the side only shows that the brain uses that input to 'generate' something that never was but is emulated using trickery.

I could never listen to music if all music would be recorded this way.

A general note:

The poll, however, is aimed at how headstage is perceived without any trickery, so no DSP, crossfeed, 3D enhancers, Smyth, impulcifier, binaural recordings and 'special' recordings like this.
Just a headphone and the regular music one listens to.

When people hear 3D with this particular recording or binaural recordings but not with 'normal' recordings they should not vote '3D' but how they hear 'normal' music.

Yes, this was clear enough for me, so although that audio had really given me an illusion of sound out of my head, even meters away, my grade does not change, in listening to "normal" music I do not experience anything other than I sound inside my head, or in the immediate vicinity

 

[richard51]

This is a very informative thread.... Thanks to the Op....


For sure 3-D "out of the head" soundfield, is related to the headphone acoustic tuning and design, and to the recording acoustic trade-off of each music album.... Most headphones, at least the 8 i ever owned, dont have acoustical design making them able to externalize the soundfield and improve on the acoustic original recording translation.....

But with my new AKG K340 i listen and perceive an externalization out of the head with many of my albums, often in some recordings, a filling of my room with the sound in a3-D impression .... Not in my head at all in many cases.... I never like headphones because of this "inside the head entrapment" forever......

Few years ago , it takes me a few hundred acoustic experiments to recreate a 3-d soundfield filling the room around me with my speakers... I did not liked when the sound come only from the plane of the speakers.... Then I used one hundred Helmholtz resonators distributed around the speakers and around the room at some critical location...... Mechanically tuned.... I used also a foldable screen... And reflective or absorbing surfaces and diffusive one in a balanced distribution ...

I succeed in recreating a surround sound relative to each recordings ....Then i begun to love my speakers/room at last....

But i lost my house now because of retirement then i was in the obligation to go back to headphone...Without any enthusiasm at all...

5 years ago i begun to modify a bit my AKG K340, the best by a great margin of my 8 others headphone, including dynamic, electroacoustic and even a planar one...

Now by this fate and turn of event in my life, i decided to optimize seriously my K340 this time with, new pads, a new dedicated clean amplifier, vibrations shells control, a new clean dac, etc and WOW! the result was 3-D externalization of sound out of the head accordingly to each albums acoustic atmosphere and peculiar to each original sound recording trade-off and on a level prescribed by each different recordings albums...

For example listening Organ work of Bach by Marie claire Alain, with the k340 i can hear the organ in my room out of my head completely and feel the deep bass in my feet touching the floor , a real extraordinary illusion of the sound presence by transmission of the bass through my body vibration resonance...

The K340 is by far the best designed headphone i know of....

It is underrated because it must be optimized to work well and most people dont want to touch an headphone and modify it a bit....And it need more power swing capability than most headphone amplifier can give too... But this hybrid with his 5 passive resonators/diffusers in the shell creating a dual chamber is an acoustic marvel for me... It replace not a Smyth Realizer for sure but with it i dont feel the need for one at all... It rival my dedicated room, and my other headphone are unnatural sounding timbre compared to it and they recreate only a claustrophobic headstage inside the head... I hate that with a passion...

The waves timing and a balance between direct and indirect one was crux of the matter in my room, and this 5 passive resonators inside the K340 are pure genious for me and do a similar job .... They help to recreate a virtual speaker in each ear with the hybrid drivers which work like 2 small, one real+ one virtual speakers.... When we hear 2 speakers in a room, in reality we hear 4 speakers, because each speakers present itself differently in time and sound level for each ear... The 5 passive resonators in each cup create this direct/reflected waves balance necessary to recreate localization in a real space like my resonators diffusers critically located were doing in my room...

Calling this 3-D impression an "illusion" or a useless artefact is forgetting that all sound experience is made by informative real "illusion"...These real illusions are the artefacts created by the brain to inform us about a reality....

I now prefer headphone listening for the first time in my life.... But not without the K340 though.... i dont even know what other specific headphone could replace it without these 2 original technology inside the shell.......

The K340 was also better in the bass range and in the high frequencies than my speakers so good they were, they were limited for sure anyway by their price range ...

But what was lacking with my room before my acoustic experiments and with all my headphones, was this surround 3-D out of the head experience with an headphone, and this surround 3-D out of the speakers plane , which only the K340 ever gave me after my dedicated acoustic room happy experience ... All other headphones sleep in a drawer now.....And i will no longer need an acoustic dedicated room either.... Thanks to AKG....

i dont undetrstand why they quitted this design forever and never tried to improve it.... How many hybrid headphone so well done there is with passive acoustic resonators/diffusers inside the shell to this day ?

 

[Killingbeans]

How many hybrid headphone so well done there is with passive acoustic resonators/diffusers inside the shell to this day ?

Not hybrid, but Dan Clark Stealth and Expance use a so called Acoustic Metamaterial Tuning System (AMTS).

 

[richard51]

Thanks but this metamaterials is in the drivers...

In the K340 the resonators are real acoustic devices outside of the hybridated 2 drivers cells... Characteristic of the membrane by itself will not create a 3-D filling the room out of the head experience.... It takes acoustic device to help the brain to compute a "space virtual soundfield..."

And i prefer my 100 bucks K340 .....
Technology of the past are not always obsolete or uninteresting....


But i am anyway interested by these headphones, are they able to give a 3-d out of the head filling the room soundfield in your experience ?

I have it already with this 100 bucks used K340 but if another headphone can do it i want to know.... Replacement of a dying headphone is always a possibility in life....And i could no more go with ordinary headphone....

 

[Emlin]

Thanks but this metamaterials is in the drivers...

In the K340 the resonators are real acoustic devices outside of the hybridated 2 drivers cells... Characteristic of the membrane by itself will not create a 3-D filling the room out of the head experience.... It takes acoustic device to help the brain to compute a "space virtual soundfield..."

And i prefer my 100 bucks K340 .....
Technology of the past are not always obsolete or uninteresting....


But i am anyway interested by these headphones, are they able to give a 3-d out of the head filling the room soundfield in your experience ?

I have it already with this 100 bucks used K340 but if another headphone can do it i want to know.... Replacement of a dying headphone is always a possibility in life....And i could no more go with ordinary headphone....

I get a 3-d out of the head filling the room sound field even with iems. Always.

 

[richard51]

Which IEMS ? it is good to know.... Thanks...

If we read the results of this solderdude polls, it is not so frequent for most people, neither for me, with9out a dedicated acoustic room when i was using speakers and without the K340 with headphones...

If i read you well you suggest that you have that with all your headphones and even IEMS ?

 

[Emlin]

Which IEMS ? it is good to know.... Thanks...

Any, but they do vary a bit in soundstage and imaging.

 

[richard51]

I dont think that your experience reflect the experience of most people with their headphones and IEMS but i cannot explain it....

I never experienced a 3-d out of the speaker plane soundfield before my dedicated acoustic room...

I never experienced a 3-d out of the head soundfield with all my other headphones save the K340...

Then you are lucky and happy for sure.... With no work to do to reach this goal....

I would be envious , if i did not have it too....

 

[Emlin]

I dont think that your experience reflect the experience of most people with their headphones and IEMS but i cannot explain it....

Maybe not, I can't. But there it is, as I listen now.

 

[richard51]

After all each brain is connected in his own way through his own sound history .... Your brain did not match most other brain.... It is probably a characteristic of your own internal brain DSP ...... Thanks for your answers....

 

[Emlin]

After all each brain is connected in his own way through his own sound history .... Your brain did not match most other brain.... It is probably a characteristic of your own internal brain DSP ...... Thanks for your answers....

No brain is the same as any other. Please don't single mine out.

 

[richard51]

You singled yourself out.... The polls show here from the beginning that most people dont experience at all what you lived through with ALL iems...

And i only claimed that we are all different, then you are too..... Then the only person which single himself out is you claimig here something about his singular or exceptional experience.... By the way i believed you.....

 

[musica]

how do you perceive the soundstage of this video?

 

[solderdude]

One should not look at the video itself but only listen to the sound.
Eyes can massively change perception.
Looking at the singers is not a punishment and will surely alter the perception of the recording itself.