Theo
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2018
- Messages
- 288
- Likes
- 183
In his latest post of his blog, Archimago raises the question of the stereo "soundstage" and mentions a solution proposed by John Atkinson (among others, I'm sure) to assess the quality of the system by mean of a "...controlled "standard" signal like the mono pink noise to check for the ability of a hi-fi system to allow faithful reproduction of a synthetic signal that is intended to be "staged" right at the center between stereo speakers when heard...".
This seems indeed a good way to verify that the sound so produced is actually centered between the two speakers, suggesting that the system should produce an accurate soundstage. The method is obviously including the room in the experiment. So this looks like a good tool.
However, this is a sighted listening test, with all the subjectivity that can be attached to it. Of course, recording a pulse response and checking waterfall, distortion or whatever plots may represent a reliable measure of the accuracy of the system, provided we find the good spot to put the microphone. Pulse responses that I have found in most of the publications are far, far from perfect and often show more than 1% THD value. So, how do we discriminate between a good and bad response in term of soundstage? I've heard small speakers with bad rendering of the timbre of instruments that actually provide reasonable focus. This seems to have to do with phase consistency more than frequency spectrum and even harmonic distortion does not seem to matter that much as long as it is identical in both channels.
Archimago defines what he calls "soundstage" as the "...result of the placement of "sound objects" be they voices, instruments, noises as captured by the microphone in whatever configuration, processed by the audio engineer in the studio, and then laid down in the 2-channel carrier whether as physical media or virtual files....". Soundstage is a notion that is often used in audiofool reviews, together with the "air", "veil lifted", "density"... that populate hardcore audio addicts dreams. It is then usually discarded by some objectivists as BS. I personally don't think so and I find that good recordings (not the heavily compressed ones) do offer some sort of image which I like to listen to. Do you have the same feeling?
Are you okay with the above definition of "soundstage"? How do we measure the "soundstage" accuracy?
This seems indeed a good way to verify that the sound so produced is actually centered between the two speakers, suggesting that the system should produce an accurate soundstage. The method is obviously including the room in the experiment. So this looks like a good tool.
However, this is a sighted listening test, with all the subjectivity that can be attached to it. Of course, recording a pulse response and checking waterfall, distortion or whatever plots may represent a reliable measure of the accuracy of the system, provided we find the good spot to put the microphone. Pulse responses that I have found in most of the publications are far, far from perfect and often show more than 1% THD value. So, how do we discriminate between a good and bad response in term of soundstage? I've heard small speakers with bad rendering of the timbre of instruments that actually provide reasonable focus. This seems to have to do with phase consistency more than frequency spectrum and even harmonic distortion does not seem to matter that much as long as it is identical in both channels.
Archimago defines what he calls "soundstage" as the "...result of the placement of "sound objects" be they voices, instruments, noises as captured by the microphone in whatever configuration, processed by the audio engineer in the studio, and then laid down in the 2-channel carrier whether as physical media or virtual files....". Soundstage is a notion that is often used in audiofool reviews, together with the "air", "veil lifted", "density"... that populate hardcore audio addicts dreams. It is then usually discarded by some objectivists as BS. I personally don't think so and I find that good recordings (not the heavily compressed ones) do offer some sort of image which I like to listen to. Do you have the same feeling?
Are you okay with the above definition of "soundstage"? How do we measure the "soundstage" accuracy?