I have a question, has anyone else noticed this?

[Inner Space]

You will never able to measure soundstage in an amplifier!
You are defending the undefendable.

Conversing with you is like teaching Hindi to your avatar. Over and out.

 

[billyjoebob]

You will never able to measure soundstage in an amplifier!
You are defending the undefendable.

The 1st go around, you said a soundstage don't exist.
Now your saying it can't be measured.
Which is it?

 

[TheBatsEar]

The 1st go around, you said a soundstage don't exist.
Now your saying it can't be measured.
Which is it?

Both. If it doesn't exist, you can not measure it.

 

[TheBatsEar]

And so whispers the wind:
"But my soundstage, it's real, i can hear it!"

I whisper back:
"Is the soundstage with us in the room right now?"

 

[billyjoebob]

Both. If it doesn't exist, you can not measure it.

I guess if this is your stereo, I understand why there would be no sound stage.

 

[clearnfc]

That's a FR difference, surely - likely a broad hump in a critical region for the close presentation, and a broad trough for the distant. Both are objectively measurable, and the effect easily inferred.

Do those things matter when locating a real sound in nature? What about in the dark? How then do they matter with a phantom sound?

I feel you're pushing a distinction too far. Value, worth, merit, emotional response to music ... yes, those things can be affected by personality, fleeting mood or physical condition. But a location cue manipulated through amplitude, phase and timing is, I think, a quasi-objective issue, in that all listeners will respond in the same way, given normal hearing and brain function, and a reasonably neutral system.

Just curious, why are you even replying to his posts?? Me just put him on ignore list instead...

 

[clearnfc]

I am glad that there are now more and more pple talking about sound stage and imaging.. back then i have pple telling me that whatever that can be heard can be measured. I told them thats not the case and cite sound stage as an example. Some tell me it doesnt exist and its placebo. Some said it can be measured using certain ways... But none could ever show it to me.

Perhaps Amir could help is and find a way to measure this without using any listening test.

 

[KSTR]

Some said it can be measured using certain ways... But none could ever show it to me.

As you might imagine, measuring (==reliably quantifying/rating) the effect of an electrical property on a complex perceptual phenomenon is more difficult than on a simpler perceptual one. For example, deriving the impact of frequency response changes on "tonality" is much simpler than to examine anything related to soundstage.

We would need to do (or just find) a pile of research where a perceptional change of soundstage was present between, say, DACs even though they do appear to be very similar (and deemed "good enough") in the common electrical base-line measurements (frequency response, signal-to-noise ratio, distortion, etc). Controlled double-blind listening tests and scientific examination of the obtained data, that is. Thorough stuff.

Then we have facts to build on, we know there must be a significant difference in the output signals from those two DACs and go ahead to find a correlation of whatever part of the difference to perception: Isolate what really is dominantly responsible for the perceptional difference and find a way to predict (model) that signal from arbitrary music input signal alone. Basically one should be ably to find a signal that has to be added to the input of the "good" DAC so that it sounds similar or even identical to the "bad" DAC, and ideally vice-versa as well.

Next step is to do that over and over for many DACs and broad set of listeners and many genres and test pieces to establish a reliable data and knowledge base, a full field of research. For example, for the effect of frequency response differences on perception these studies have all been made by now, same goes for distortion. If you will, we may reduce "all" to "most of" as not all aspects of disortion appear to be fully clear and there even is conflicting research.

From the above, it should be obvious that reliable technical measurement of "perceived sound stage rendering" is certainly possible, not using any actual listening, once we have a clearer model of it. Practically, this is a really huge effort in all regards and that's the main reason why there isn't that much research and corresponding results.

It will still take a long way until we have a full set of rules like, picking a random one, "if you have this and this kind of differences between source and output signal you can expect the soundstage to be huge but fuzzy at the same time" which then can be used to light "huge" and "fuzzy" lamps of the analyzer's "soundstage" measurement results. ;-)

 

[Robin L]

Since soundstage is created by .. elements in the recording, the loudspeakers ability to faithfully reproduce those elements, placement in the room and the corresponding reflections they produce .. you're going to have a tough time measuring that 3D spacial illusion using standard metrics.

Soundstage is created in the brain out of an illusion analogous to the old Viewmaster stereoptic viewers, a pair of two dimensional images fused in the brain as a single three dimensional image. Those aspects of the brain focused on sonic dimensionality will seek out stuff that cues the mind to the dimensionality of sound. Thus darkened rooms, glowing tubes, big black discs, perhaps a stimulating beverage or something else along those lines. I would suggest that those sorts of elements---good old "set and setting"---have more to do with amplifying the sense of the presence of music than cleaning up audible sludge due to the sonic vicissitudes of suburban architecture.

 

[TheBatsEar]

Soundstage is created in the brain out of an illusion analogous to the old Viewmaster stereoptic viewers, a pair of two dimensional images fused in the brain as a single three dimensional image.

Right, and you can get statistical information on how well that illusion works. You could have a vote what artist or sound engineer creates the best "soundstage" using his artistry.

But that isn't measured. Agreeing over an illusion doesn't make that illusion a matter of objective measurement. In measurement land you have to go to FR, THD and N because those are physical properties. And they give no clue about the illusion you can create using them. Like a display can give you no clue about what optical illusions it can display.


And now we have a bunch of guys that think there is something in the music we can not measure. It's nice to see they form a community in their painful cognitive dissonance, and decide i'm the root of their problem.
I would guess they would welcome this guy in their club. He would surely hate me with the energy of a thousand suns since he selects his amps on very arbitrary criteria:

Those aspects of the brain focused on sonic dimensionality will seek out stuff that cues the mind to the dimensionality of sound. Thus darkened rooms, glowing tubes, big black discs, perhaps a stimulating beverage or something else along those lines. I would suggest that those sorts of elements---good old "set and setting"---have more to do with amplifying the sense of the presence of music than cleaning up audible sludge due to the sonic vicissitudes of suburban architecture.

Accepting that the hardware to reproduce sound, and the experience of enjoying the art of music, are pretty much decoupled, would invalidate an indoctrination of 30 or more years of consuming magazines and manufacturers prose. That has to be painful.

Younger people don't seem to have that problem in general. They seem to buy more no nonsense hardware. Takes years to get suckered into the "musicaliy" and "lifted veils" and "soundstage" BS.

 

[puppet]

TheBatsEar .. set "soundstage" aside for now. Do you agree that stereo illusion is real? The illusion created by the pair of loudspeakers we call the phantom image? As an experiment, listen to your loudspeaker pair with that illusion established .. then cover one ear. That illusion collapses in your head. It's still there but you can't get a sense of it. You can't measure that illusion because it is created by your brain. Soundstage is much the same but it is an illusion created outside of the loudspeaker pair. The room reflections and loudspeaker placement help to create this illusion .. just like the phantom stereo image is created between the loudspeaker pair.

 

[TheBatsEar]

Do you agree that stereo illusion is real?

The stereo illusion, or soundstage illusion, is as real as those rings are moving.

The rings don't move, and there are no instruments on a soundstage in your living room.

Using an imaginary soundstage to evaluate hardware is pretty stupid. If you do it, you do it wrong.
A good example why that clownery is wrong, is that Darko Video on Youtube i linked.

 

[Axo1989]

I agree in principle, but I think we can afford to discuss the word "imaginary". If we hear a real sound in the pitch dark, is it imaginary? If not, how does hearing it in a stereo image really differ? We have heard the cues which allow identification and localization, and we have no other sensory information, so we must perceive those cues in the same manner as we would a real sound in the dark.

Thus I think we can measure stereo image (or "soundstage", if you prefer) but in a reverse-engineered or negative way. Assuming the signal contains the cues, is the system doing anything that will prevent their perception as real? Is it masking them or corrupting them? We can list several necessary qualities (perhaps good pair matching, lack of local resonances or cabinet noise, low distortion or whatever) and if they measure well, we can at least say the system will permit good imaging if it's present in the signal.

Yes, I used "imaginary" in a limited sense only.

I mean that when we do stereo we reproduce a reasonable facsimile of the recorded/constructed sonics in the listening area, sufficient to perceive normal direction and distance cues and thus experience a stereo image. The apparent location of sonic elements that make up the image is imaginary because the actual sound source locations are two speakers. As you and others have already said, the reproduced sound field at the listening position is real of course—and It approximates the sound field we would experience if sources were coming from those various locations—so it can be measured and characterised in all the usual (or unusual) ways. That's (one reason) why @TheBatsEar's argument is nonsense.

 

[TheBatsEar]

The apparent location of sonic elements that make up the image is imaginary because the actual sound source locations are two speakers. As you and others have already said, the reproduced sound field at the listening position is real of course—and It approximates the sound field we would experience if sources were coming from those various locations—so it can be measured and characterised in all the usual (or unusual) ways. That's (one reason) why @TheBatsEar's argument is nonsense.

Which metric do you use to measure the imaginary sound source location?
You guys repeat the same assumption, but never come up with the metrics.

I hear Elon Musk works on a thinking cap, maybe we can measure patterns in electric fields generated in our brains.

 

[Axo1989]

The stereo illusion, or soundstage illusion, is as real as those rings are moving.
View attachment 195962

The rings don't move, and there are no instruments on a soundstage in your living room.

What do you think makes the circles appear to move?

 

[TheBatsEar]

What do you think makes the circles appear to move?

An interpretation error based on something our brain does to the signal coming from the eyes. It probably made sense in a specific situation during our evolution, but the interpretation is wrong in this case.

As you and others have already said, the reproduced sound field at the listening position is real of course—and It approximates the sound field we would experience if sources were coming from those various locations—so it can be measured and characterised in all the usual (or unusual) ways. That's (one reason) why @TheBatsEar's argument is nonsense.

Which metric do you use to measure the imaginary sound source location?

 

[Axo1989]

An interpretation error based on something our brain does to the signal coming from the eyes. It probably made sense in a specific situation during our evolution, but the interpretation is wrong in this case.

I mean, what specific elements of the graphic do you think create the illusion?

Which metric do you use to measure the imaginary sound source location?

This has been discussed several times. See @KSTR on this page, and others on previous pages. Stereo image is a function of several inputs, not a single metric. People probably think you are trolling at this point, and have given up responding to you.

 

[TheBatsEar]

I mean, what specific elements of the graphic do you think create the illusion?

I don't know what triggers the error in the interpretation of that particular image. What do you think?

And i don't know why the error is shown for some and not others. Could have to do with pattern recognition and/or data compression i presume. Sadly we don't have schematics for our noggins.

Anyway, it's a brilliant picture to demonstrate that people don't know reality until they measure it.
And once they do, they see that the truth they felt as obvious, is not obvious at all.

This has been discussed several times. See @KSTR on this page, and others on previous pages.

And every time we had to come to the conclusion that you only can measure physical properties, not stereo imaging.
Then people got cranky.
Then they said "It's all a big trolling, i'm outta here!".
You will do the same in 3, 2, 1 ...

Stereo image is a function of several inputs, not a single metric.

Another subjectivist says stereo image can be measured, and that it is somehow complicated, and i would have to find the metrics myself. How surprising.
If you can not explain the metric for stereo imaging, consider that you are wrong, despite your feeling that you should be right.

People probably think you are trolling at this point, and have given up responding to you.

People have stopped responding because one of two things happen:

1. The person sees that indeed there is no measurement for stereo imaging or soundstage and there is nothing else to say.
2. The person has a cognitive dissonance and accuses the one asking for metrics to be a troll or hater or both.

Behind me a bunch of pissed subjectivists, before me a bunch of subjectivists that feel they know the answer, but actually don't have metrics. And if you force them to think, the cognitive dissonance forces them to identify you as the enemy.
What a time to be alive.

 

[BostonJack]

I sometimes wonder if the opposite suggestion might be better - don't post if you own the stuff. So much nonsense seems to be generated by butt-hurt owners unable to process legitimate negatives. Like the regenerator threads right now ... lots of stuff that can't be measured but can be heard, dammit!

among sailors, there is a saying "if you want an honest opinion on a boat, ask the person who just sold one". seems to have a lot of common sense psychology in it. past good experiences, past problems, broader comparisons, all seem easier when one doesn't own the device/system/object in question. Believe me, boat ownership does get emotional (love/hate being pretty common).

 

[Axo1989]

I don't know what triggers the error in the interpretation of that particular image. What do you think?

I'm not asking what you think is happening in the brain (I mean if you did, that would be interesting, but I wasn't expecting it). I'm asking about the characteristics of the image (unlike the brain, the image itself is easy to quantify). Can you identify elements that create an illusion of movement?