Speakers that produce astonishing soundstaging/imaging?

[Robin L]

Ohm F

Good luck finding a working pair:

 

[tvrgeek]

My guess is that speakers won't do much to make a difference on soundstage/imaging. (Recordings will)
But Im probably wrong and I hope Im wrong.

Some recordings, early Beatles for example, were strict right-left with no "stereo" They will never give a soundstage.
Many modern recordings are done n close mic or direct coupled isolated booths, so there is no phase coherent image either. But something like an old Sheffield, two-mike direct to disk can really shine. If the speaker does not screw it up and if the surroundings don't either. You need all three in my experience. But imagining does give all the glossy magazine writers lots of column space. I can fix most speaker problems and I can fix most room problems ( within the limits of WAF) but I can't fix the source material.

 

[pseudoid]

...but currently doesn't have the time to research as much as he'd like.

Set him up on a blind date, vote for him to run for a political office, recommend him to buy Yahoo stock... anything!
But whatever you do, do not get involved in choosing the "proper" speakers for your friend who has no 'time to research' on his own.
If you recommend something he personally does not like << Friendship in jeopardy?
If you recommend him something you personally like << Why don't you own it?
Selecting speakers (IMHO) is an owner participation sport and you can take him to audition stuff and try to discuss particulars of speakers but only in a PSA manner... unless, of course, you are either @amirm or a golden-ear yourself. HMMV

 

[tvrgeek]

No one mentioned the big Maggies. When set up just right, amazing.

 

[Chrispy]

I love it how some of you guys here on ASR like to feel superior to the audiofools, while you're pretty much identical to them, without realizing it.

You did lose me when you talked about the amp "layering" whatever that means. I just find soundstage to be thrown around a lot by folk with not a great amount of consistency or description. Could be level differences for all I can tell. Have fun.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

Sanders 10d with BACCH4Mac.
Very narrow sweet spot but astonishing imaging

 

[MattHooper]

I'm posting this for a friend who's in the market for new speakers but currently doesn't have the time to research as much as he'd like.

A bit of background, he has some mid priced (~about EUR 2k new) floorstanders made by a company that's completely obscure to me, I can't even remember the name right now except that they're made in the Netherlands. They sound detailed but IMO lack bass (especially for the size) and I'd characterize the staging as a wall of sound. Especially no depth. We listened to them in a few different rooms with different electronics but the signature remained unchanged. Definitely not something I would prefer, especially over my speakers. A friend of his who used to work for a radio station and has presumably some exposure to quality audio visited and said the same thing, which finally made him want to upgrade.

Now, this may be controversial to some but in my limited experience spatial qualities of sound are an intrinsic quality of the speakers. Positioning helps to a point and electronics can blur the stage, especially at higher volumes. But I've never had an experience where speakers were transformed beyond recognition by electronics.

Since my days when I used to have the occasion to listen to various systems regularly, visit audio shows etc are a distant memory, I can't recommend him anything, especially since he's willing to spend a few thousand euros. But his willingness to upgrade made me want to post this for him, since I happen to think spectacularly spatial sound is the one thing that misses in most audio systems. This doesn't need to be about this specific recommendation (although I hope that it can help narrow the search) but anyone willing to share about their experiences with this is welcome.

I generally agree with much of what you wrote there.

I'm used to auditioning speakers in various rooms and, yeah, there are room interactions but I find the general character of a speaker is discernible and pretty constant. And some just seem to "disappear" and soundstage like bejesus, others struggle somewhat.

I could talk about speakers I've owned or heard in terms of soundstaging prowess, but it sounds like you want some recommendations, and I may not know as many speakers in that specific price bracket.

Off the top of my head: Audio Physic offers quite a range of speakers and they are very reliable for doing that "magic act" of producing impressive soundstaging and imaging. If your pal could ever find a second hand pair of Joseph Audio Pulsar stand mounted speakers, he'd hear one hell of a "disappearing/soundstaging/imaging" act as well as ticking off most of the audiophile goodies (excellent rich, deep bass for their size too).

There are tons and tons of speakers out there that will image well, so that's a drop in the bucket.

(I haven't heard the smaller Revel speakers but I bet they'd be excellent as well).

 

[audio2design]

Like I said that amp had a huge (for its size) toroid. Likely not a coincidence. Oh and one more thing. At high but not ear bleeding volumes, the thermal protection kicked in after 10 minutes. That's how I know about the toroid, we removed the top of the case to cool it off so we could go on with our listening tests,

I will take Things That Didn't Happen for $800.

 

[DanielT]

In my experience - omni or wide dispersion speakers have a nice wide soundstage but imaging not so pinpoint. Use of waveguides and horns to control directivity and narrow it up, you get pinpoint imaging but the soundstage tends to stay within the speakers.

Find you directivity to room balance and you get a healthy dose of both imaging and soundstage, like a waveguided tweeter to a 5" mid/midbass. Beamwidth target +/- 45 degrees.

What you say, spot on. Plus another thing to keep in mind is that omni or wide dispersion can be love at first sight. Or at first listening. Can be the pleasure of the news. It is not certain that it turns into long-lasting love.That sound can (or not) after a while be perceived as too smeared and diffused. Big, of course but.You can miss the imaging, the stereo effect/sound a good pair of speakers, with more targeted, controlled (with waveguide), creates. In addition, the room acoustics and placement of speakers, which many have already mentioned, obviously play a big role.
Plus opportunities for EQ.

But that's exactly what the thread is about. Balances. You get to try, taste and decide. This is what is fun with Hifi.

For my part, as long as the speakers "disappear", that I can not locate where the sound is coming from, I am more or less satisfied.

Waveguie. Undeniably the melody of the time.Speaking of. Good job with your DIY! Impressive.
Interesting to see that DIY nowadays, with the help of 3D printer, can make their own waveguides.

Revel M105 Copy DIY build

After seeing the success of Directiva, But knowing the price, I wanted a nice small pair of passive bookshelf speakers for use in the second living room. I didn't need massive SPLs (if you need more SPLs the Directiva is much better - however that build is DSP XO + Multi Channel amplified). The...

audiosciencereview.com

There are many different variants of waveguides:

Home

Explore our stock of horns and waveguides. Find the partner for your horn driver to deliver midrange and high frequencies, with reliable range and coverage.

www.parts-express.com

 

[restorer-john]

Track down a pair of DCM Timewindow 1as. Correctly placed they are quite amazing for soundstage. I foolishly sold mine about 10 years ago.

Twin 165mm Philips bass drivers and 2x Vifa D19 tweeters in a twin ported/low tuned tower. Soft grille all around. The earlier Timewindow 1 is too old and the tweeters were not so good. Also used a different Philips woofer.

I've had some (floor and bookshelf) of the Omni Mirage speakers from about 20 years ago. They were a lot of fun too.

 

[solderdude]

Funny.. I see all kinds of omni directional speakers coming by.
IME the best stereo imaging I achieved with very directional (own build) 2m tall electrostatic speakers.
The only downside was you could really only listen to them in a very narrow spot.

 

[posvibes]

I had an old pair of T+A Delta 30b's and they imaged like crazy, tall, wide, huge and coherent, but it was all on the front wall.

I'm sure it must be psychoacoustics but I have always found sealed speakers do something different in regards to presentation of imaging which I like very much.

 

[DanielT]

I had an old pair of T+A Delta 30b's and they imaged like crazy, tall, wide, huge and coherent, but it was all on the front wall.

I'm sure it must be psychoacoustics but I have always found sealed speakers do something different in regards to presentation of imaging which I like very much.

Interesting, reminiscent of Sonab OA12. A speaker that was popular in the 70's, which in fact is still is today. So much that replacement kits (modern tweeter, drivers, crossover) have been developed. You have to listen to them and form an opinion. I do not think such speakers should be bought unheard of.

Some like them, others do not. They do not have the modern sound ideal of directivity, but they are fun to listen to.

 

[Valhalla]

Taking the price into account, nothing comes close to Linkwitz LXmini.

 

[KSTR]

Everyone's definition of "good soundstage" is different. For some it is "having the musicians playing in my room" whereas for others its "I want to be right there".
The first type is best served with good omnis or dipoles and superb room acoustics and then even ping-pong 50ies/60eis "stereo" gives enjoyable (but fake) soundstage.

The second type calls for narrow beaming speakers, preferably listened to in proximity (2meters max), and of course a well treated room (as always). Linear phase is preferable (it always helps for realism). But it does only work with recordings that contain soundstage cues, if not it sounds almost like headphones. Similar to headphones very dry sources have almost no distance and sound close to the head. That makes for good recordings to have phenomenal soundstage depth and width with well defined phantom sources at the same time.

A compromise between these two antipodes, obviously, might give best overall results.
I'm biased here as I was affiliated with the company and was involved with the development, but the HEDD Type 30 and Type 20 monitors have killer soundstage (and are excellent speakers overall) for reasons that are not always fully identified (for some speakers things just happen to fall perfectly in place whereas for others it doesn't and as designer you cannot simply say it's because this or that).

But IMHO the real key to "palpable" soundstaging is using three speaker, LCR, with Trinaural (or Trifield) static rematrixing of two-channel content. That's a whole new league compared to two speakers and it is highly addictive for many who have tried it. One of the reasons is that the soundstage varies less with head movement and rotation. Another reason is that it sort of de-virtuallizes the center content and virtualizes the side-only content, a third reason is it decorrelates the room response more from the apparent image source locations and a fourth reason is that it creates nice comb filter patterns for the room sound for specific content (the room/reverb sound in the recording, and any content based on intechannel time delay) which triggers 3D-spaciality (including height) via HRTF-based cues, making reverbs and recorded room sound really huge.

 

[Discoball]

My audio journey revolves around two keywords: Soundstage and imaging. My first real speakers were Focal Aria 926 (3 way floor standers) with Purifi 1ET400A power amp and RME ADI 2 DAC as preamp and DAC. Signal comes Flac, dsd or TIDAL via Jriver or Roon. I sold Focal Aria and had backup bookshelf's Sonus Faber Veneer 1.5 which were hooked up to main system. I remembered when I first played Sonus Fabers in small room they sounded unpleasant, but now with my living room they were surprisingly good.

I followed a New Record Day guide "L.O.T.S. Loudspeaker Optimization Techniques for Soundstage!"

After moving the speakers around in the room along the guide, the soundstage really came alive, like never before - the tightly focused centre image, clearly noticeable positions between two speakers etc etc. Downside is that wife didn't allow to keep the speakers so far out from the wall.

My reason to sell Focals was to built a LXmini speakers designed by Siegfried Linkwitz. Now my LXmini is ready and they outplay my previous speaker by far. Soundstage is so satisfying, it feels that sound emerges from precise points between the speakers or it is like a wall of sound. With previous speakers, when source was playing only L or R side, I felt that the sound is directly coming from speaker, this is not a case with LXmini - the speaker just disappears.

In short. 2 take away point: follow the New Record Day speaker placement guide and investigate LXmini speakers.

 

[DanielT]

But IMHO the real key to "palpable" soundstaging is using three speaker, LCR, with Trinaural (or Trifield) static rematrixing of two-channel content. That's a whole new league compared to two speakers and it is highly addictive for many who have tried it. One of the reasons is that the soundstage varies less with head movement and rotation. Another reason is that it sort of de-virtuallizes the center content and virtualizes the side-only content, a third reason is it decorrelates the room response more from the apparent image source locations and a fourth reason is that it creates nice comb filter patterns for the room sound for specific content (the room/reverb sound in the recording, and any content based on intechannel time delay) which triggers 3D-spaciality (including height) via HRTF-based cues, making reverbs and recorded room sound really huge.

Que?

Interesting, but how to..hm maybe a new thread about that?

Edit:
No new thread is needed about it. I found this:

3 Speakers For Stereo Content?

Hi, this has been on my mind alot. Anyways... My understanding is that the precedence effect or "stereo" effect of having 2 speakers is not as good as actually having a dedicated center channel. But the problem is that a huge amount of content both movie and music (especially music) is...

audiosciencereview.com

 

[gn77b]

I will take Things That Didn't Happen for $800.

Sorry, we're out of stock. We can offer you Just Shut Up And Be Happy In Your Self-made Bubble. And it's free!

 

[gn77b]

Come on guys.
While this an aspect of the production and recording, the presentation of soundstaging and Imaging do vary greatly in speakers and in different rooms and with different arrangement of the speakers in the room.

I find it incredible that on an website that's about serious audio but without the typical snake oil BS someone needs to spell this out. Of course the spatial information must be there in the music, I don't think that anyone expects a mono sine to give perceived depth or left-right information. But the ability of speakers to produce a credible and sometimes spectacular 3D stage (maybe height not so much, I've heard of speakers that give some illusion of height but never listened to one) is obvious and people saying that it's not intrinsic to the speaker is like saying all speakers are the same which ironically contradicts physics and engineering, which is what this website is supposed to be about. What's next, saying that distortion doesn't exist, drivers don't exhibit certain directivity patterns, all crossovers are the same?

But maybe I'm mistaken and ASR is about let's just yell from the top of our lungs until any claim that contradicts our limited experience is silenced because we like to call this noise we make SCIENCE. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Xombul]

Magnat Edelstein: the soundstage of these tiny loudspeakers is amazing (physical?). However they lack bass, low medium and the treble is a bit harsh. More interestingly, I tried to EQ them using Audiolense: they subjectively sounded better (the deep bass was still lacking...) but the magic was gone and the holographic soundstage had vanished. Weird?