Sound stage depth?

[goat76]

I might perpetually be in the wrong frame of mind to allow myself to be tricked into thinking there's actually a band in my room. I've played in bands for so many years, that a pair of speakers is never going to replicate that in a convincing manner for myself.

But "the band in the room" got nothing to do with hearing the depth of the recording, which was your original question. If you hear that it's a clear indication that the reflections in your listening room are the dominating factor, not the reflections of the recorded room.

The reason you can't hear the reverberation of the recorded room is one or a combination of the following reasons. The specific recording doesn't contain a convincing room sound, your stereo speakers are not positioned correctly, your ears receive a higher ratio of reflective room sound from your own listening environment, or your speaker simply doesn't have the quality to reproduce the finer details and clues for the depth of the recording to be heard.

I don't think it's a "you problem" and got anything to do with your lack of imagination. If you visit someone with properly setup good speakers in a good listening room, I'm sure you will hear the depth in the recordings.

 

[kongwee]

I get what these guys are saying and doing, but it isn't what I'm really trying to get at. To me, lowering the level of something and adding reverb to it can make it "sound" like it's farther away, but doesn't actually place it farther away in a 3 dimensional soundscape in my room. It just sounds quieter with reverb, lol. That might be a personal thing though, which I never really considered before. Possibly someone else's brain can hear the same thing and literally create a place in space farther away that they hear it coming from, whereas I'm just hearing levels and reverb.

Yup, it is never to have a quantitive value how much the sound is "far away". It is just study of the modulating the repeating source till we perceived as depth. In mixing, you have to mix kick drum and bass together. You have to add reverb on kick drum to make as if it sound a "distance" to the bass or other instrument. In real world, we see the drum set place further in stage and distance in other instrument. We add different reverb value and delay time to each instrument to create the "distance".

 

[jtgofish]

It seems to me that some people can't hear image depth.Some cannot hear it at first but then something switches in their brain and from then on they can and some people seem to hear it straight away.It is a bit like those picture puzzles with "hidden' pictures that appear to some people straight away and to some never.Of course that stereo information has too be on the recording and recorded in a way that makes it more intelligible.Recording engineers llke Al Schmitt were masters at capturing that depth and space.
I strongly suspect that using simple point source crossoverless speakers like a simple "full" range driver can help you learn to hear or listen for image depth because they tend to do that very well.They are flawed devices but I think everyone should use a pair for a while as educational/training devices .

 

[Kvalsvoll]

I'm still a bit baffled by someone stating that a particular amplifier has much greater depth to the soundstage than another (which I'm sure everyone else here has also seen) as it really shouldn't have anything to do with it.

A result from the Malaise Era of hifi. It started in the 90ies, when the last knowledge-based magasines disappeared, and the rise of glamour and cables. The problem is, it never ended. So, today we have amplifiers and dacs and power cords with depth.

Why and how depth works can be argued and discussed, but everyone with some technical knowledge understands that amplifiers can not have anything to do with depth, it is also easy to show in a controlled listening test.

 

[Tangband]

Lots of great replies and interesting takes. I guess I'll settle in on it being an illusion, and one that I may be less susceptible to for whatever myriad reasons. It's also possible that I just haven't heard the right speakers in the right room that would make me say "holy cow, I can hear the guitar player standing in front of the drummer!" However, my brain tends to interpret level differences as something being "prominent vs buried," not "near vs far." Particular speakers having wider dispersion characteristics that can create early reflections in the listening room could certainly add to or take away from the illusion - I can get on board with that. I'm still a bit baffled by someone stating that a particular amplifier has much greater depth to the soundstage than another (which I'm sure everyone else here has also seen) as it really shouldn't have anything to do with it. Thanks everyone for sharing some great info!

As an amateur sound engineer and professional musician I can only agree what others already have stated.

2-channel stereo playback are at best only an illusion that occures in the listeners brain . Knowing this, one can draw conclusions about this , - is it for instance acceptable to let some late reflections from the side walls fill up the flawed stereo system ? Because of this flawed 2 channel stereo system, it might not be a good idea to have damping material everywhere in the listening room ? Studios have ”live end” and ”dead end” philosophys - but offers no real answer how to make the stereo illusion more real in the listeners brain in an ordinary livingroom.

This is entirely different with 5.1 recording and playback, where a real concert event can take place in the listeners room.

 

[Tangband]

But "the band in the room" got nothing to do with hearing the depth of the recording, which was your original question. If you hear that it's a clear indication that the reflections in your listening room are the dominating factor, not the reflections of the recorded room.

The reason you can't hear the reverberation of the recorded room is one or a combination of the following reasons. The specific recording doesn't contain a convincing room sound, your stereo speakers are not positioned correctly, your ears receive a higher ratio of reflective room sound from your own listening environment, or your speaker simply doesn't have the quality to reproduce the finer details and clues for the depth of the recording to be heard.

I don't think it's a "you problem" and got anything to do with your lack of imagination. If you visit someone with properly setup good speakers in a good listening room, I'm sure you will hear the depth in the recordings.

As you already know - a bad sound source can also somewhat hide spatial qualitys and small details from the recordings, .
( I can hear slightly more depth and a bigger soundstage in the sound with my mac/DDC than with my Yamaha wxc50 - comparing those two as digital transports to my genelecs. )

 

[jtgofish]

A result from the Malaise Era of hifi. It started in the 90ies, when the last knowledge-based magasines disappeared, and the rise of glamour and cables. The problem is, it never ended. So, today we have amplifiers and dacs and power cords with depth.

Why and how depth works can be argued and discussed, but everyone with some technical knowledge understands that amplifiers can not have anything to do with depth, it is also easy to show in a controlled listening test.

I have used three amplifiers that completely killed image depth and sounded very 2D.I later found out two of these were well known to sound like that-the NAD Power Envelope power amps and an M.E. 550.That quality was acknowledgedby ME and corrected in later versions.The third one was a cheap Kenwood 80s power amp -a KM207 which i used as a subwoofer amp but sounded terribly flat as a full range amp.
Hi Fi Choice magazine ran unsighted group tests of different amps and found significant differences in soundstage and image depth.As they did for all types of components.
If you have ever used an amplifier with variable negative feedback it becomes obvious that image depth is especially influenced by the amount of negative feedback used.Nelson Pass has discussed this extensively.
Preamps can make a huge difference to imaging depth.DHT preamps in particular are known to excel in that area but good SS preamps [like FM Acoustics] can too.In my experience preamps are more influential than power amps.You do not need to spend much to get good image depth from power amps[a gainclone type chip amp will do it] but preamps which do it really well are far less common.
All this is relative of course.The speakers and room make most difference and if they are not right you will never get good image depth.

 

[Tangband]

I have used three amplifiers that completely killed image depth and sounded very 2D.I later found out two of these were well known to sound like that-the NAD Power Envelope power amps and an M.E. 550.That quality was acknowledgedby ME and corrected in later versions.The third one was a cheap Kenwood 80s power amp -a KM207 which i used as a subwoofer amp but sounded terribly flat as a full range amp.
Hi Fi Choice magazine ran unsighted group tests of different amps and found significant differences in soundstage and image depth.As they did for all types of components.
If you have ever used an amplifier with variable negative feedback it becomes obvious that image depth is especially influenced by the amount of negative feedback used.Nelson Pass has discussed this extensively.
Preamps can make a huge difference to imaging depth.DHT preamps in particular are known to excel in that area but good SS preamps [like FM Acoustics] can too.In my experience preamps are more influential than power amps.You do not need to spend much to get good image depth from power amps[a gainclone type chip amp will do it] but preamps which do it really well are far less common.
All this is relative of course.The speakers and room make most difference and if they are not right you will never get good image depth.

True.
The same is true with sources and speakers. Theres howerever no magic in this and has nothing to do with negative feedback in specific, but maybe more with compression effects, ability to drive loudspeakers and low distortion at all stages. A better component is a better sounding component, that hides less of the music information. Sometimes more harmonic distortion in some stage has a positive effect on how we perceive sound. This is not strange because its the same mechanism with tones coming from a violin, creating harmonic or disharmonic frequency overtones patterns in real life. The perceived and measured results might differ.

 

[jtgofish]

True.
The same is true with sources and speakers. Theres howerever no magic in this and has nothing to do with negative feedback in specific, but maybe more with compression effects, ability to drive loudspeakers and low distortion at all stages. A better component is a better sounding component, that hides less of the music information. Sometimes more harmonic distortion in some stage has a positive effect on how we perceive sound. This is not strange because its the same mechanism with tones coming from a violin, creating harmonic or disharmonic frequency overtones patterns in real life. The perceived and measured results might differ.

A high resolution amplifier will surely not just resolve more detail and sound cleaner but also more stereo effect information.It will be better at reproducing a phantom centre image.And that is the whole point of stereo recording and reproduction.

 

[kaopad999]

Speaker positiong is the most important thing for this, and making sure that the speakers are not close to a wall. Acpstic refelctions from a wall will effect, and degrade soundstage

 

[goat76]

As an amateur sound engineer and professional musician I can only agree what others already have stated.

2-channel stereo playback are at best only an illusion that occures in the listeners brain . Knowing this, one can draw conclusions about this , - is it for instance acceptable to let some late reflections from the side walls fill up the flawed stereo system ? Because of this flawed 2 channel stereo system, it might not be a good idea to have damping material everywhere in the listening room ? Studios have ”live end” and ”dead end” philosophys - but offers no real answer how to make the stereo illusion more real in the listeners brain in an ordinary livingroom.

This is entirely different with 5.1 recording and playback, where a real concert event can take place in the listeners room.

As I see it, some reflections from the listening room are needed just to hide some of the shortcomings of the simple stereo system.

Still, when enough amount of that "hiding" has already been applied we really don't want to hear any more of the reflections from our listening environment, because, beyond that "hiding" point, the only thing the higher ratio of room reflections vs direct sound will add is the actual position and distance of the speakers in relation to the walls in the listening room. We simply don't want the reflection clues from our own listening environment, we want to hear the room of the recorded space and that information can only come from the actual recording.



So, as most of us already know but I say it anyway...

Depth in a recording can be heard if the sound object was actually recorded at a distance, or it can be created by adding reverb and other tricks which have already been mentioned earlier in this thread. Depth in the recording can be heard with a single speaker, but by adding another speaker in a stereo configuration, it will be even easier to hear it thanks to the phantom image that will pull the various sound objects to different positions in the horizontal plane of the stereo field, and because of that will add distance that creates a sense of 3D space.

If we want to hear the depth and the illusion of three-dimensional space the best way possible, finding the right speaker positioning is very important so that the two speakers in the stereo configuration "work together". The distance between the speakers is critical to get this right, and the easiest way to know when that's achieved is when the center-placed phantom objects (like kick drums and vocals) sound distinct as if an actual center speaker was used. When all this is done right, everything falls in place, and the 3D space of the recording will be easier heard.


That's my take on this and I think this is the most amazing thing about stereo, that a somewhat flawed simple system like this can give away so much information even if it's just two sound sources creating this illusion.

 

[BDWoody]

Hi Fi Choice magazine ran unsighted group tests of different amps and found significant differences in soundstage and image depth.As they did for all types of components.

Not this reference again... Unless you can provide evidence that they were done with enough attention and rigor to not be a total waste of time, let's stop referring to them as if they mean something.

 

[jtgofish]

Not this reference again... Unless you can provide evidence that they were done with enough attention and rigor to not be a total waste of time, let's stop referring to them as if they mean something.

Lets not.There is more unsighted testing data and measurements there than anywhere else.Rather than dismiss it without knowing anything about it perhaps you should ask Hi Fi Choice to release it all and collate it .

 

[kaopad999]

I have used three amplifiers that completely killed image depth and sounded very 2D.I later found out two of these were well known to sound like that-the NAD Power Envelope power amps and an M.E. 550.That quality was acknowledgedby ME and corrected in later versions.The third one was a cheap Kenwood 80s power amp -a KM207 which i used as a subwoofer amp but sounded terribly flat as a full range amp.
Hi Fi Choice magazine ran unsighted group tests of different amps and found significant differences in soundstage and image depth.As they did for all types of components.
If you have ever used an amplifier with variable negative feedback it becomes obvious that image depth is especially influenced by the amount of negative feedback used.Nelson Pass has discussed this extensively.
Preamps can make a huge difference to imaging depth.DHT preamps in particular are known to excel in that area but good SS preamps [like FM Acoustics] can too.In my experience preamps are more influential than power amps.You do not need to spend much to get good image depth from power amps[a gainclone type chip amp will do it] but preamps which do it really well are far less common.
All this is relative of course.The speakers and room make most difference and if they are not right you will never get good image depth.

Yes, in my experience amplifers can also add depth and width to the soundstage.
My questions to this is, can measurements predict/detect soundstage in any way shape or form, or is it that certain characteristics of speakers & amplifers are unmeasurable?

 

[BDWoody]

Lets not.There is more unsighted testing data and measurements there than anywhere else.Rather than dismiss it without knowing anything about it perhaps you should ask Hi Fi Choice to release it all and collate it .

That's not how it's going to work. You are referring to these 'tests' on a forum that values actual evidence rather than whatever they represent. Having more testing that doesn't meet basic rigor thresholds doesn't make them any more valid.

If you want to shore up your references, by all means do so, but that's not 'our' job. Here is where those tests go to be beaten like the dead horse they represent.

 

[jtgofish]

No soup for you!

 

[kongwee]

Yes, in my experience amplifers can also add depth and width to the soundstage.
My questions to this is, can measurements predict/detect soundstage in any way shape or form, or is it that certain characteristics of speakers & amplifers are unmeasurable?

I won't say it is measurable but you can capture it. Let say you mic a close drum kick and far away. Definitely you can see the waveform of close mic and far mic. You can see the direct sound waveforms and reverberated waveforms. In fact, you can download so call the impulse response of any surrounding like cave, hall, studio room online, and throw it into convolution reverb plugin to recreate the so call reverb of these surroundings. Since you have the datas, it is measurable. But making it like SINAD, sure it is not possible. How can you judge which is accurate which is not. How many studio acoustic goes by RT60?

 

[DonDish]

This is what I was told, too.



Here is my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it.

As far as I can tell, the operative word here is "illusion". Myriad reflections contained in the recording are interpreted by our brain. They bear resemblances to sets of reflections that we hear in real life, in the world around us. The brain therefore compares these reflection patterns (on the recording) with 3-dimensional patterns that we've actually experienced in the world at large. If the comparison is a match, or reasonably close, then our brain provides the illusion of a 3-dimensional sound field, which includes the illusion of depth.

If the recording does not contain a set of reflections that the brain can recognize, there does exist an argument that reflections in the listening room can mimic the reflections of a 3-dimensional space in a recorded venue, providing the brain with a valid pattern that is not contained in the recording itself. I can't say anything about that; I don't know.

Jim

I stick with your explanation. Its mostly between the ears. + added spatial effects like small echoes and delays will enhance the feeling of depth. This is up to musicians and mixing engineers.

A couple of better speakers in a better room would enhance the depth feeling too IMHO. Try Pink Floyd - is there anybody out there, on a couple of big magnetostats. Super HD high fidelty experience. If you close your eyes you would wanna rise up and walk away into another dimension.

 

[Puddingbuks]

3D sounstage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSound

“Qsound is essentially a filtering algorithm. It manipulates timing, amplitude, and frequency response to produce a binaural image. Systems like QSound rely on the fact that a sound arriving from one side of the listener will reach one ear before the other and that when it reaches the furthest ear, it is lower in amplitude and spectrally altered due to obstruction by the head. However, the ideal algorithm was arrived at empirically, with parameters adjusted according to the outcomes of many listening tests.”

Check out some of the albums mentioned. Roger Waters “Perfect sense pt1” (original version, not the version with 2001 a space odyssey quotes) has his voice in the beginning at my left, a little behind me, and the piano on the right. Amazing. Not left and right from the speakers, but from my listening position.

I have a heavily treated room with lots of absorption. Helps a lot to hear everything.

But there are also many stereo classics, check out the cure’s “a forest” lomg version and how guitars come creeping up your left and right wall after the intro. Love these effects.

 

[jtgofish]

The Revel F208 is an interesting modern speaker because it has relatively poor image depth and projection despite measuring very well.There is very little projection in front of the plane of the speakers although there is some depth back behind them.There is a small dip in the 1500Hz -2500Hz range that some reviewers have commented on and which they have suggested might account for this recessed soundstage but it is only very slight.Very odd that Revel would release a speaker that sounds like that and yet they sold lots of them.They would probably be OK with orchestral music but sound quite odd with closely mic'ed vocals.They have now discontinued them.That speaker was measured here but nothing too unusual was found.
Another common speaker that has poor mage depth is the Yamaha NS1000.Many people seem not to hear how poor the imaging is on them.They have a peanut shaped soundstage and you will observe experienced listeners moving their heads from side to side trying to get a central image to lock in but it never happens.
Some people seem to only hear left/right and tone.