my speaker, room or ears suck for 'depth'

[boogeroo]

Recently I bought some test tracks to test out system placement, it has the usual far left/right, mid left/right, centre test tracks of a guy talking, it all makes sense sonically left to right. Then further on there is something called depth, apparently its the distance from the listener or microphone, e.g 8 ft away, 15 ft away from the mic, now this for the life of me doesn't give me cues to distance, rather to me its purely attenuation, I don't sense distance I only hear loudness/softness. Then i went to listen to some music and yeah, left to right placement seems sane, but I don't get a sense of distance of the instrument from the mic, just that one instrument is louder or softer, and it dosen't help that instruments naturally play louder or softer in certain passages....

So do you guys hear 'depth', or its the room messing up the whole thing, maybe i just have leaded ears. I use a Gustard X16->Benchmark AHB2->Quad Z3, i do have an assymmetric room, where the left speaker is near a window, and the right one has no boundary. No room correction if in dedicated stereo, YPAO if run through the HT setup

 

[majingotan]

With proper room treatment and DSP for compensation, the sound should give you an illusion of the sound "behind" the speakers when the mic is placed quite far from source during the recording

 

[Chrispy]

Not enough to go on for the most part. Maybe start with details of your room and how you did measurements.....

 

[FeddyLost]

So do you guys hear 'depth', or its the room messing up the whole thing, maybe i just have leaded ears

Main issue with spatial details is usually room.
Try to move speakers out of walls and corners, put them symmetrically into equilateral triangle and check if something changes.

 

[Sal1950]

So do you guys hear 'depth',

Yes. Please supply some info on your speaker setup, their positon in the room, maybe a picture or two for clarity.

 

[Beershaun]

How far away from the back wall are they. Depth tends to occur behind the speakers. So bringing them out into the room should increase the depth. Try running the test 24" from the back wall and see if that helps.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

"Stereo" is the Greek word for "solid". The singular reason for having a 2 speaker setup is to recreate an image with depth, like stereoscope photos. The left-right aspect is just part of the image recreation. Two things are needed, volume and phase.
When you hear it for the first time, you won't accept a system that can't recreate it.

 

[Dumdum]

"Stereo" is the Greek word for "solid". The singular reason for having a 2 speaker setup is to recreate an image with depth, like stereoscope photos. The left-right aspect is just part of the image recreation. Two things are needed, volume and phase.
When you hear it for the first time, you won't accept a system that can't recreate it.

Phase and levels are the key, if you can’t treat the room and the output also to get these correct you can be ‘p*ssing in the wind’ as we brits say…

 

[Zaireeka]

You can try setting your speakers with a toe-in of 45°, so the 2 axis cross in front of your head. This setup gives a more stable central image illusion while reducing the side walls reflections, and produced a very positive change in my room.

 

[Chaconne]

As others have said, try pulling your speakers as far away from the wall behind them as possible. If only as an experiment (as opposed to permanent placement), pull them WAY out into the room to see what happens. Maybe a third or even half the length of the room. You might also try sitting closer to the speakers, in the nearfield position, if you're not doing that already.

 

[goat76]

How far away from the back wall are they. Depth tends to occur behind the speakers. So bringing them out into the room should increase the depth. Try running the test 24" from the back wall and see if that helps.

As others have said, try pulling your speakers as far away from the wall behind them as possible. If only as an experiment (as opposed to permanent placement), pull them WAY out into the room to see what happens. Maybe a third or even half the length of the room. You might also try sitting closer to the speakers, in the nearfield position, if you're not doing that already.

That depends on which type of depth OP wants.

Both of you are talking about the reflective sounds of the listening room and the sense of depth that can come from that. Still, if it's the depth information of the recording he wants to hear, which should be the goal for someone who aims for high fidelity, the reflective sounds of the listening room then must be minimized. The direct sound that contains the depth of the recorded room needs to have a higher ratio than the reflective sound from his listening room.

The easiest way to achieve a higher ratio of direct sound in a normal living room, if a lot of acoustic treatment can't be done to the room, is a smaller listening triangle. That way you hear more of the information from the recording, and less of the acoustics from your own listening room.

A correct setup of the speakers is also very important if the depth of the recording will be heard. To better hear the recorded three-dimensional space the two speakers need to be able to play "together", so the distance between them is really important to create a distinct phantom center and the rest will follow/fall in line. If the speakers are placed too far from each other, a "hole in the middle" will occur and the recorded three-dimensional space will suffer.

In short.
Maximize the direct sound and make sure the two speakers are "locking" the stereo information/playing together in the best way possible creating a distinct phantom image. Fine-tune it with the toe-in of the speakers.

How good the end result will be is highly dependent on which compromises are needed in the setup of the speaker in the room. And in my experience, some speakers will just be better than others in revealing the depth of the recordings depending on how they need to be set up for the overall best possible sound.

 

[Cote Dazur]

So do you guys hear 'depth'

Yes, it is all about speaker placement and where you sit, asymmetric set up too close to boundaries will not yield a great 3D stereo image, no matter what gear.

 

[Zaireeka]

I recently discovered the Blauert's bands, which can change the perception of music on the depth dimension:

The tweeter is the most critical part...

I just remember that guy listened The '' state of the art '' Stealth who have perfect fr and bla bla, he just think the Stealth sounds like shit. There is always people who complain about something in audio and believe his opinion is very important. That is off topic and ad hominem... And yes...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Maybe tweaking these frequencies can give interesting results on how you perceive the overall soundstage on your particular system.

 

[Shiva]

See if you hear any depth when listening to the beginning of this track. an old classic. Caverna Magica- Vollenwieider.

 

[boogeroo]

Apologies for the slow response, thanks for your thoughts and replies guys.


Here's some photos of my "listening" area to fill in the details:

Its my living room, a blocky L'ish shaped room with a dining area, there are some 'treatment' in the form of foam directly behind the sitting area.

Here is the dining area:

estimated plan view(blue squares are speakers, orange rect is sitting area),
Speakers have 30cm behind them(right speaker only has partial back wall), left speaker has about 15cm on its left to the window, right speaker has no boundaries to its right.

Speakers are about 140 cm apart, slightly toed in, from where i sit the speakers aim at a position behind me:

The listening area length(back wall to wall behind speakers) is about 270cm, ceiling is 260cm:

I don't have a good plot of the FR, I can't make sense of the YPAO graphs, and googling doesn't seem to give much details. I'm currently exploring DIRAC on PC, but doesn't seem to work with the YPAO mic, I'll need to get one of those calibrated mics to get the FR plot. I'm open to more room treatment as well, but not of the off coloured foam i currently have, the missus is giving me grieve over the white foam that turned yellow...

 

[boogeroo]

With proper room treatment and DSP for compensation, the sound should give you an illusion of the sound "behind" the speakers when the mic is placed quite far from source during the recording

I do perceive the music as coming behind the speakers, and in most cases i don't notice the sound as coming from the speaker, or rather put it another way the speaker doesn't make me notice it is there. I guess at least this part my setup is ok.

 

[boogeroo]

Main issue with spatial details is usually room.
Try to move speakers out of walls and corners, put them symmetrically into equilateral triangle and check if something changes.

i'll try to find some time for this, common use area and kids running about, even if I do get a good setup i doubt i can leave it there for good because of safety and all that...wished i had a spare room

 

[boogeroo]

That depends on which type of depth OP wants.

Both of you are talking about the reflective sounds of the listening room and the sense of depth that can come from that. Still, if it's the depth information of the recording he wants to hear, which should be the goal for someone who aims for high fidelity, the reflective sounds of the listening room then must be minimized. The direct sound that contains the depth of the recorded room needs to have a higher ratio than the reflective sound from his listening room.

The easiest way to achieve a higher ratio of direct sound in a normal living room, if a lot of acoustic treatment can't be done to the room, is a smaller listening triangle. That way you hear more of the information from the recording, and less of the acoustics from your own listening room.

A correct setup of the speakers is also very important if the depth of the recording will be heard. To better hear the recorded three-dimensional space the two speakers need to be able to play "together", so the distance between them is really important to create a distinct phantom center and the rest will follow/fall in line. If the speakers are placed too far from each other, a "hole in the middle" will occur and the recorded three-dimensional space will suffer.

In short.
Maximize the direct sound and make sure the two speakers are "locking" the stereo information/playing together in the best way possible creating a distinct phantom image. Fine-tune it with the toe-in of the speakers.

How good the end result will be is highly dependent on which compromises are needed in the setup of the speaker in the room. And in my experience, some speakers will just be better than others in revealing the depth of the recordings depending on how they need to be set up for the overall best possible sound.

I want to listen to the depth in the recording, as little of the room as possible.

Yeah i think i'll find some time to get a near field experience, pull speakers towards me, pull my sitting position away from the walls, like several people suggested. I"ll do this to get a 'reference' impression of what proper depth sounds like, then i'll start to compromise the placement(kids,safety,wife) and see where it starts to get disappointing.

 

[boogeroo]

You can try setting your speakers with a toe-in of 45°, so the 2 axis cross in front of your head. This setup gives a more stable central image illusion while reducing the side walls reflections, and produced a very positive change in my room.

Hmm i've never tried crossing them in front of my head, i'll give it a go when doing my tests.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

Thanks for sharing pictures. As others have stated, it is mainly the room and your speaker position. It is a non symmetrical setup with one speaker corner loaded and one open to a larger area. Plus the different reflective surfaces eg glas window.

However it is what it is and people seldom have their rooms constructed around their stereo system.

Seeing your restrictions there are not many options if any at all to reposition. The aim would be to achieve symmetry. It could be better from a sound point of view if you position the speakers in front of the window, but then of course your sofa might be in the way and it’s back facing the room. As this is likely not an option for you, the only other thing I can think of to have at least your system EQed to your room.