SO ... HOW do we measure soundstage???

[Justdafactsmaam]

Beyond measuring, take the speakers into the garden and listen to see if you can feel the ambience of the recording location

Why? My room as it is now is 30 db ambient noise and RT 60 from 125 hz up under 100 milliseconds

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

I confirm and reiterate, the reverberation mentioned in the book is that of our room, the spatiality obtained is that of the room where the event is recorded.

You are reiterating what olieb just told you? Two different “rooms” conflicting spatial cues.

 

[olieb]

I confirm and reiterate, the reverberation mentioned in the book is that of our room, the spatiality obtained is that of the room where the event is recorded.

I am sure there all kinds of books with funny things in it.
To get concert hall spatiality from living room reverberation is quite a trick. Is it a magic book?

 

[Suono]

I am sure there all kinds of books with funny things in it.
To get concert hall spatiality from living room reverberation is quite a trick. Is it a magic book?

we can't do anything with sarcasm, that's a graph on the Hass effect. however I can reassure you and say that the 2 sec. you will never be able to get them from the concert hall, because you listen at 2/3 meters away and the microphones are very close to the performers. having said this, there cannot be spatiality of the event if there is no reverence in our room....read graph.

 

[olieb]

however I can reassure you ...

You keep repeating that but it actually does not mean anything. Instead you are jumping to conclusions.

the microphones are very close to the performers

How do you know? That depends very much on the recording (technique).

the 2 sec. you will never be able to get them from the concert hall

Well the reverberation time of a concert hall is a property of the room and is more or less the same everywhere. Close microphone placement will produce a somewhat higher direct sound level, but the conductor will hear 2sec reverberation as well as anybody else. So you WILL get it as the microphone gets it.

there cannot be spatiality of the event if there is no reverence in our room

This is just a weird statement. It depends totally on the recording. It is obviously wrong for multichannel recordings. And you can have concert spatiality over headphones with no listening room at all. [Even though this is a reduced version, for reasons see below.]
If there is reduced reverberated sound in the recording (which is the case most of the time as the engineer accounts for "usual" listening conditions) you might fix that a bit by mixing in some reverberation soup from the listening room, but that is a mitigation at best.

 

[Suono]

f you mention listening with headphones to be able to reason about spatiality, we are talking about completely different listening with stereo but above all about what I mean by spatiality.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

we can't do anything with sarcasm, that's a graph on the Hass effect. however I can reassure you and say that the 2 sec. you will never be able to get them from the concert hall, because you listen at 2/3 meters away and the microphones are very close to the performers.

Depends on the recording. But concert hall reverb can be heard from anywhere in the concert hall. The musicians hear it. They have to respond to it.

So why wouldn’t the microphones hear it?

having said this, there cannot be spatiality of the event if there is no reverence in our room....read graph.

That’s not true. You can have a completely synthesized recording that has all kinds of imaging.

 

[Keith_W]

So why wouldn’t the microphones hear it?

Because they may be using a cardioid microphone which is specifically designed to not capture concert hall reflections. So yeah, depends on the recording like you said.

 

[Suono]

ok thanks I have nothing else to say

 

[dako]

The soundstage is a psychoacoustic phenomenon that refers to the listener's perception of the spatial locations of sound sources, including their width, depth, and height, as reproduced by speakers. This perception is highly subjective and can be influenced by numerous factors, including the recording, playback equipment, room acoustics, and the listener's hearing abilities.

Measuring Soundstage with Speakers​

While psychoacoustic phenomena like the soundstage are inherently subjective, this does not mean they are unmeasurable. The challenge lies in determining which measurements correlate with the subjective experience of soundstage. Traditional measurements in audio testing, such as frequency response, harmonic distortion, and signal-to-noise ratio, provide insights into a component's fidelity but do not directly address spatial characteristics.

Potential Approaches​

1. Binaural and Spatial Measurements: One way to capture the soundstage could involve binaural recordings and playback techniques that use microphones placed in the ears of a dummy head to capture the spatial characteristics of sound. This method can preserve spatial cues crucial for spatial hearing. Applying this to speakers would require a standardized recording and playback setup that accurately reflects these spatial cues.
2. Cross-talk Cancellation and HRTF: Measurements considering the Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF), which describes how an ear receives a sound from a point in space, could potentially correlate with soundstage perception. Techniques like cross-talk cancellation, which involves processing audio signals to reduce or eliminate the audio signal interferences that can blur spatial cues through speakers, might offer measurable parameters correlating with perceived soundstage quality.
3. Harmonic Distortion and Timbre: Certain subjective qualities, such as "warmth" or "layered imaging," have been associated with specific harmonic distortion profiles. While directly correlating these with soundstage might be challenging, it suggests that the complex interactions between harmonic content, timbre, and spatial cues through speakers could contribute to the perception of depth and spatial positioning. Analyzing the harmonic distortion spectrum in a way that considers its impact on perceived spatiality could provide insights.

Finding a direct or correlated measurement for soundstage among speakers underscores the broader challenge of quantifying subjective audio experiences. Although no direct measurement currently exists that can fully account for the perceived soundstage, exploring the relationships between existing measurements and spatial perception could be enlightening. Combining traditional audio metrics with advanced psychoacoustic models and spatial audio analysis techniques could bridge the gap between objective measurements and subjective experiences, offering a more comprehensive understanding of how speakers influence the perceived soundstage.

 

[Tim Link]

I think it comes down to two things:

1. Inter-aural difference achieved. It doesn't have to be extreme like BAACH can produce, although that can allow for very interesting special effects. Basically, the speakers need to be spaced far enough apart, or some adequate crosstalk reduction method employed.

2. Consistency of tone across the soundstage, including early comb filtering effects. A sound panned left or right or anywhere inbetween should have identical tonal response when measured at the ear offset position, and identical early comb filtering. This means that the comb filtering caused by the two speakers interacting with each other has to somehow be countered, because it's going to cause a huge difference. If that's not addressed, then in my opinion all comparisons are just between bad and worse.