How important is imaging to you?

[eboleyn]

Words aren't responsible for people using them without precision (and people will do that for many reasons). To clarify meaning we have dialog, using words. Some (but not all) people with high numerical aptitude/skills have inadequate (relatively speaking) verbal/textual skills, of course. That is a shortcoming when communicating with them for sure, but a preference for numbers is just that.

If we had concise, useful metrics for imaging and spaciousness then we'd no doubt use them as well. But we don't, so words are more useful than the metrics we don't have. The loudspeaker listening and preference research from Harmon often cited here—which is undoubtedly valuable—was basically applying controls and statistics to collection of subjective listening impressions.

My personal comment about your last paragraph is to say: "just because we don't have a consistent metric for something doesn't mean it's not real".

Having said that, pushing for proper measurements whenever possible is of course better than not doing it!

 

[Mr. Widget]

Link still doesn’t work but I found it here:

Very nice!

I was able to find it on both Tidal and Qobuz. A beautiful recording and very nice performance with nice sense of depth, but like so many similar recordings the piano covers almost the entire soundstage and the cymbals are also spaced out just as wide. The cymbals do feel like they occupy space which is very nice, however in my opinion this is not exactly a realistic depiction of the combo in a real space.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

As regards stereo "imaging, it really depends on where one is sitting in a concert hall. Up in the balcony, or any further back than the first ten rows or so, the sound of an orchestra merges into something vague and amorphous. But closer seats give a full stereo effect. I've noticed that rock in big venues has the same effect - the bigger the space, the blurrier the image. "Imaging" is more of a recording artifact than anything else.

Live classical concerts have the HUGE advantage of visual cues. To get an experience that best mimics the spatial qualities of that live experience without the visual cues the recording and the playback have to be optimized to convey those cues exclusively through the sound. It’s about idealized accuracy over actual accuracy. An accurate recording from multiple st sitting positions will not give subjectively good imaging.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

I hate to sound like a one trick pony/shill/fanboy/broken record. Given the subject matter it would just not be right to not bring up the BACCH SP yet again. If imaging matters to you and you feel that accurate spatial perception is the last hurdle to life like audio then please, do yourself a huge favor. Do a proper audition of the BACCH SP with the head tracking. Decide for yourselves. I have said it before and will say it again. IMO it is the single biggest breakthrough since the invention of stereo. Ignore the arguments and just give it a proper audition.

 

[Blumlein 88]

You guys ever use this imaging test file.

Online LEDR™ Sound Test | Listening Environment Diagnostic Recording Test

Audio Test Tones : check your stereo system for correct imaging

www.audiocheck.net

 

[dualazmak]

To get an experience that best mimics the spatial qualities of that live experience without the visual cues the recording and the playback have to be optimized to convey those cues exclusively through the sound.

I agree with your point especially for full orchestral music.
In this context, I always use this rather old but excellent recording;
Schubert: "Rosamunde", Kurt Masur and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (412 432-2 Philips);

If you would be interested, you can hear the "Overture" on YouTube:

Also please refer to my post here on my project thread discussing this album.

 

[dualazmak]

You guys ever use this imaging test file.

Online LEDR™ Sound Test | Listening Environment Diagnostic Recording Test

Audio Test Tones : check your stereo system for correct imaging

www.audiocheck.net

"Sony Super Audio Check CD 48DG3 by CBS/Sony (1983)" is/was prepared for the similar purposes; still very much useful, I believe.

Spoiler

Excellent Recording Quality Music Albums/Tracks for Subjective (and Possibly Objective) Test/Check/Tuning of Multichannel Multi-Driver Multi-Amplifier Time-Aligned Active Stereo Audio System and Room Acoustics; at least a Portion and/or One Track being Analyzed by Color Spectrum of Adobe Audition in Common Parameters:
[Part-15] Again, CBS/Sony's "Super Audio Check CD": Analyzed by Adobe Audition 3.0.1 and MusicScope 2.1.0 #651

 

[Deleted member 21219]

But we don't, so words are more useful than the metrics we don't have.

I'm cognizant of your position, although I don't share it. Please allow me to explain my view.

I realize that the desire for effective communication is strong in people. The frustration from not being able to communicate the concepts that we desire to communicate is understandably great. However, IMO an ineffectual remedy is NOT better than no remedy at all. That would be like saying that gibberish is more enlightening than silence, or bad medicine is better than no medicine at all. It's similar to the adage, "Do something, even if it's wrong". Most likely, it will be wrong.

Yes, there are situations where we need a crutch, so to speak. But I want a crutch that supports me, not one that breaks in use. To me, that crutch that fails is the same as, or in some cases worse than, no crutch at all. And that's what I have against the use of subjective description to convey information; it's a crutch that too often fails. Its use may SEEM to be better than nothing at all, but that's just an emotional reaction, born of frustration and desperation. It's like the adage I quoted above, "Do something, even if it's wrong!". I added that if you follow that dictum, most likely it will be wrong.

We need to research this matter more, to understand it better. We will, I believe, eventually come to one of two conclusions: either a usable solution will be found, or a usable solution will be recognized as absolutely non-existent. If a usable solution is eventually found, I will embrace it wholeheartedly (if I'm still alive). But until then, I won't depend on so-called "bad medicine" to stand in as a substitute.

And the Harman research showed subjective preference. The people in the study were not tasked with transferring information to each other.

Jim

 

[Mr. Widget]

I'm cognizant of your position, although I don't share it. Please allow me to explain my view....

Thank you for that. I see your point, but I do think that a careful writer like Floyd Toole can effectively use words to help explain difficult to explain audio related topics.

FWIW: I also do not play the lottery. ;-)

PS: A pet peeve of mine is people misspelling Harman.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Thank you for that. I see your point, but I do think that a careful writer like Floyd Toole can effectively use words to help explain difficult to explain audio related topics.

FWIW: I also do not play the lottery. ;-)

PS: A pet peeve of mine is people misspelling Harman.

Oops! I am guilty as charged! I always remember the way Harmon Killebrew spelled his name, and I shouldn't let that lead me into mis-spelling Harman. But I do. (I edited it to correct the spelling.)

I deleted the lottery reference. It was part of another line of thought, which I abandoned.

I also respect Dr. Toole. One of the reasons that I respect him is that he doesn't throw words about ineffectually.

Jim

 

[restorer-john]

Words aren't responsible for people using them without precision (and people will do that for many reasons). To clarify meaning we have dialog, using words. Some (but not all) people with high numerical aptitude/skills have inadequate (relatively speaking) verbal/textual skills, of course. That is a shortcoming when communicating with them for sure, but a preference for numbers is just that.

If we had concise, useful metrics for imaging and spaciousness then we'd no doubt use them as well. But we don't, so words are more useful than the metrics we don't have. The loudspeaker listening and preference research from Harmon often cited here—which is undoubtedly valuable—was basically applying controls and statistics to collection of subjective listening impressions.

This is absolutely correct and it pains me to see, yet again, the usual cohort railing against patently obvious characteristics of loudspeaker presentations in rooms that have been fundamental to the entire pursuit of high fidelity stereophonic reproduction since its introduction and refinement.

If people don't understand the basic concepts of imaging, spatiousness, stability or naturalness, you are better off out of this entire thread altogether.

The OP did state this, remember: I don't won't to go into details or discussions about how someone defines "good imaging"

 

[nvidia_7]

Good imaging for audio, is in my opinion, the single most immersive aspect of AV. For me it was one of the biggest "wow" moments in AV.

 

[jjaskuna]

Different spin for everyone. The image I perceive has become the most important characteristic of a system or headphones as my hearing has changed. More true this year than last for example. It was not until I calibrated by system for my own hearing that I was able to achieve a centered image through the full spectrum. Before doing this, sonic content between 2-6kHz would pan right due to slight hearing loss in my left ear. Maybe it became important for me because my ability to perceive it "accurately" diminished along with my hearing.

 

[Old Listener]

I don't care about soundstage and imaging unless they are distractingly wrong.

I started with hi-fi gear before S&I became audiophile obsessions and never saw much point. I cared about the sound but not a substitute for a visual image of the performers.

I attended lots of classical music concerts - mostly with full orchestras playing symphonies or concerti. Precise location of individual instruments by ear just didn't happen in those concerts. While locating individual performers by ear in live chamber music concerts was possible, it didn't matter to be.

 

[Puddingbuks]

So I've spent nearly the whole of my climb into my audiophile hobby (20+ years) to reach "ideal sound reproduction", which I finally think was achieved about 3 years ago.

How did you achieve it? Equipment, room, speaker placement, acoustic treatment? Pics please!

 

[dualazmak]

I was able to find it on both Tidal and Qobuz. A beautiful recording and very nice performance with nice sense of depth, but like so many similar recordings the piano covers almost the entire soundstage and the cymbals are also spaced out just as wide. The cymbals do feel like they occupy space which is very nice, however in my opinion this is not exactly a realistic depiction of the combo in a real space.

Your hearing "observation" on the specific track I suggested is almost identical to mine. And this is one of the reasons I shared this music track with ASR friends here on this thread.

Regardless of the 3D sound perspectives given by this track is fit to our personal preference or not, I assume this rather quiet but excellenly recorded track is very much suitable to check how nicely our audio setup would reproduce the "intentions" of the sound mixing engineer for "3D sound perspectives/imaging", including the 3D sound allocation of the solo trumpet, more precisely 3D allocation of his lips touching on the mousepiece with his breathing.

I shared similar hearing observation and discussion on solo female vocal music using a few of very nicely recorded "sampler/reference" tracks.

Spoiler

- Excellent Recording Quality Music Albums/Tracks for Subjective (and Possibly Objective) Test/Check/Tuning of Multichannel Multi-Driver Multi-Way Multi-Amplifier Time-Aligned Active Stereo Audio System and Room Acoustics; at least a Portion and/or One Track being Analyzed by Color Spectrum of Adobe Audition in Common Parameters:
[Part-06] Female Vocal in Jazz and Popular Music, and One Male Vocal Track for Comparison: #596

Just like many knowledgeable people are now intensively discussing on this thread, it would be quite difficult to have common consensus "by wording" on what would be sound imaging or what would be 3D sound perspectives. I assume, therefore, we would be better having (productive and enjoyable?) discussion and/or exchange-of-impressions using common and suitable reference/sampler music tracks, and this is also one of "my intentions" for hosting the thread sharing my "Audio Reference/Sampler Playlist" with each track's 3D color spectrum by Adobe Audition 3.0.1 (a kind of objective representation, even with little info on "imaging" though).

 

[Sieniek]

Yes, I love them
Very recently I have added a subwoofer too:

Lavoce SSF153.00 15" based dual opposed subwoofer project

I am excited to share my next project here! :) After converting my MCLAs to a sub I have decided to look for a more traditional approach to subs - hence the below project came to my mind I have designed and built several dual opposed subwoofers (DOS) already - I can say I really love this design...

www.audiosciencereview.com

My next project will be to use sphere shaped cabinets with Markaudio CHN110 drivers
Probably will kick off the project in a few months (I have already got the drivers)

That's fantastic to hear ! I have been looking after them on second hand market for a very long time already and only recently I've been very lucky to find them so I've bought them and feel very very happy as I will use them in my future project where the main goal will be that holographic effect. Will use them with subwoofer too.

I'm very curious about your new project then. Hopefully you'll share it with us over here on ASR. Wish you good luck with that project.

 

[theREALdotnet]

You guys ever use this imaging test file.

Online LEDR™ Sound Test | Listening Environment Diagnostic Recording Test

Audio Test Tones : check your stereo system for correct imaging

www.audiocheck.net

Yes, I’ve been using it mainly for speaker positioning and room treatment tuning for the last 30 years.

 

[Axo1989]

I'm cognizant of your position, although I don't share it. Please allow me to explain my view.

I realize that the desire for effective communication is strong in people. The frustration from not being able to communicate the concepts that we desire to communicate is understandably great. However, IMO an ineffectual remedy is NOT better than no remedy at all. That would be like saying that gibberish is more enlightening than silence, or bad medicine is better than no medicine at all. It's similar to the adage, "Do something, even if it's wrong". Most likely, it will be wrong.

Yes, there are situations where we need a crutch, so to speak. But I want a crutch that supports me, not one that breaks in use. To me, that crutch that fails is the same as, or in some cases worse than, no crutch at all. And that's what I have against the use of subjective description to convey information; it's a crutch that too often fails. Its use may SEEM to be better than nothing at all, but that's just an emotional reaction, born of frustration and desperation. It's like the adage I quoted above, "Do something, even if it's wrong!". I added that if you follow that dictum, most likely it will be wrong.

If subjective listening impressions were entirely incoherent, the characterisation as gibberish would be apt. But they aren't, so it isn't. Some sonic attributes are readily audible, and can be interpreted with reasonable confidence, some not so much (and some subjects are reasonably reliable, some less so). If the former wasn't the case, we wouldn't be able to play and perform on musical instruments, mix and produce music, or listen to it live or recorded. It would all be gibberish. And, obviously, it isn't.

We need to research this matter more, to understand it better. We will, I believe, eventually come to one of two conclusions: either a usable solution will be found, or a usable solution will be recognized as absolutely non-existent. If a usable solution is eventually found, I will embrace it wholeheartedly (if I'm still alive). But until then, I won't depend on so-called "bad medicine" to stand in as a substitute.

Solution to what?

And the Harman research showed subjective preference. The people in the study were not tasked with transferring information to each other.

The summary graphs presented upthread are from Ch.3 of Toole's book, relating to the question of whether blind testing is necessary for certain research purposes (it is, of course). We don't have details of the data collection method there, but we do have this at Ch.7 for similar blind listening speaker comparison tests. The research subjects assigned scores to spatial characteristics including imaging, continuity and width of soundstage, depth, spaciousness and so on, and to SQ characteristics of tonality, balance, fidelity, distortion etc in some detail.

The preference scores and rankings (for sound quality and spatial quality) that we've seen posted here frequently were derived from the individual metric scores, which are subjective impressions of sonics. Your deflection to preference here appears to be a misunderstand of the listening and data collection process used. It wasn't a "which speaker do you prefer" poll. And the subjects weren't communicating with each other, they were communicating with the researchers, of course.

 

[Axo1989]

This is absolutely correct and it pains me to see, yet again, the usual cohort railing against patently obvious characteristics of loudspeaker presentations in rooms that have been fundamental to the entire pursuit of high fidelity stereophonic reproduction since its introduction and refinement.

If people don't understand the basic concepts of imaging, spatiousness, stability or naturalness, you are better off out of this entire thread altogether.

The OP did state this, remember: I don't won't to go into details or discussions about how someone defines "good imaging"

All that railing is the odd by-product of black-and-white thinking, seems to me. Don't know if there's a cure.