What makes the sensation of "sound stage"?

[Chrispy]

I never hear imaging in headphones the way it presents in loud speakers

I'd never compare headphones to speakers, they're just different. I prefer speakers much more too....hate clamping speakers to my head.

 

[Destination: Moon]

Eh? The design doesn't change because you perceive the end result in a particular way. A passive radiator is just another way of "porting" a speaker. Bass response issues more likely due to your positioning/room/integration but depends on the design....

Again, I'm far from an expert but the passive radiator seems like it would act like a counter balance spring in controlling or effecting the bigger movement of the woofer. If you press on the passive radiator, it exerts a force that's detached from air pressure to resume is static position. So yes it acts similar to a port but with significant differences.

 

[jonfitch]

Again, I'm far from an expert but the passive radiator seems like it would act like a counter balance spring in controlling or effecting the bigger movement of the woofer. If you press on the passive radiator, it exerts a force that's detached from air pressure to resume is static position. So yes it acts similar to a port but with significant differences.

Also you don't have to deal with port chuffing, especially in smaller speakers where air velocity coming out of the tube can be quite high.

 

[audiofooled]

Passive radiator is essentially a port, but it acts differently bellow tuning. While the port acts like being "open" thus providing no damping to the active driver, passive radiator still dampens the driver by over excursion of itself. For smaller boxes it's much easier to tune them lower with a passive radiator because you can put a large rectangular one over most of the back surface of the cabinet and get such a tuning you could physically never be able to do with a port (without the risk of high air velocity and chuffing). Because the lower the tuning the smaller port diameter and shorter the length which brings you to higher air velocity, and vice versa. Passive radiator has it's problems too and is harder to design, though.

https://accuton.com/en-home/produkte/lautsprecher/passiv-strahler/Passiv-Strahler-Technologie

 

[tuga]

Passive radiator is essentially a port, but it acts differently bellow tuning. While the port acts like being "open" thus providing no damping to the active driver, passive radiator still dampens the driver by over excursion of itself.

So does this in theory mean that a passive radiator will produce a better transient response than ports, though not better a driver that is being directly driven by the amplifier?

Any disadvantages of using a passive radiator instead of a bass reflex port?

 

[audiofooled]

So does this in theory mean that a passive radiator will produce a better transient response than ports, though not better a driver that is being directly driven by the amplifier?

Any disadvantages of using a passive radiator instead of a bass reflex port?

To put things in a bit different perspective, if you want to have the same bass extension for both types of designs, for ported one you would require a much bigger box to allow for a larger port diameter and length (box volume is also very dependent for tuning), but the very transient response would be dependent of the driver's TS parameters and the Q of the box itself. So if transient response is your goal, then yes, it can be done, but would you have all the same bass extension is very dependent of the competence of the design. Also, we must not forget other ranges of the frequency spectrum.
On the other hand, passive radiator would allow for a smaller box, if this is one's goal. But, there's no free lunch here, either. Resonant frequency of the passive radiator is never constant (it varies with frequency), so it may very well be that you can't easily have best of everything (extension, transient response, group delay, phase issues, etc, etc... Both active and passive driver properties are not easy to match. As it was said in the article, good rule of thumb is you need twice the Sd for the passive radiator, but all the rest is very design dependent, thus radiators having options for changing mass for different response...
In reality, you can certainly have a better overall loudspeaker with ported design, also, the opposite can be true.
I can remember one of the old and very complicated passive radiator designs, it was a large towers Technics SBM-1000 https://www.hifishark.com/model/technics-sb-m-1000
You can see how silly the money is even today. As far as I can remember, they are 4-way and per tower they have 4 bass drivers with 4 passive radiators, and then what you see on the front, mid bass, mid range and a tweeter (bass drivers are inside the box and passive radiators are 2 forward and 2 backward firing). I remember a pair of those could blow you out of your socks with transient response, but the tonality I didn't like at all... Maybe the setup wasn't so good, I don't know. I didn't try to find any measurements of them, though.

Cheers,

Goran

 

[Pluto]

One pair has a noticably deeper more 3 dimensional sound. It's like having the musicians in my house. Why? Same amp, same exact location, same source

I would put my money on the accuracy of the match between the two units making up the stereo pair.

 

[puppet]

This may also come down to the xo itself.
As was mentioned, it can come down to acoustic phase of the pair(s). I've noticed this in a DIY system I have that uses an older DSP. A Linkwitz/Riley 2nd or 4th order configuration gives a slightly different "perspective" on the sound stage from say a 2nd order Bessel or 4th order Butterworth.
All (4) are more/less "correct" as far as frequency response goes but the L/R networks sound more like you're listening a bit farther away in a venue (you are there) whereas the Bessel/Butterworth sound like you're listening "up in front" in the venue (they are here).

 

[fmplayer]

I'm in no way an expert on this but there are many recordings that have this level of detailed imaging outside classical genre. Jazz recordings with layered studio mixing, often project this imaging too. Its hard to imagine it's by accident. The song I linked to above, has what I think of as an effect, not imaging exactly, that's startling when your paying attention. I can't imagine that's not on purpose either.

Let's make that straight:
1. It's impossible to make 3D from 2D (in our case stereophony), there's something missing. So it's all a matter of psychoacoustics.
2. Sound is recorded multimiked most of the time.
Mics are close to the musicians and the frequency spectrum is not the same compared to a musician farther away (highs are more absorbed by atmosphere than mids for example). For those who might think that recording with more distant microphones solves the 3D problem, it just mixes more reverberation from the room (Add soe flavour of the acoustics at the cost of clarity).
3. The recording engineer is key

Fom the recording engineer's perspective, point is to gel everything from a 3D sound into the 2 channel (2D remember ?) mix. Making something sound more distant is obtained by eq'ing down the highs of a track, eventually adding some delay. In other words, his job is to prepare the stereo signal, and make an illusion because the brain cannot do its job with recorded (2D) music.
Brain processes 3D sound, not 2D.
For those who doubt, compare a debate in real life and a debate on TV. In the former case, you understand everybody clearly, in the latter, it's just a big mess.
Remember also that the sound engineers listens either nearfield with small monitors or farfield with big soffit mounted speakers. In either case, there is little to no influence of speaker placement.

Mastering engineers have another point of view, closer to ours as to room environment influence.
From our perspective, room influence is key. Speakers far away from the walls make for an environment that resembles the recording engineers', where reflections don't mess the signal. For the others, DSP based cardioid directivity speakers (Dutch & Dutch,Kii Audio) aim at lowering room influence. For the vast majority of us, room reflections superimpose to 2D sound, and at best illusion is credible.
Speaker time coherence doesn't hurt of course, but incoherent spectrum between direct and reflected sound is a challenge for the brain to process those sometimes contradictory clues.

 

[Emlin]

Let's make that straight:
1. It's impossible to make 3D from 2D (in our case stereophony), there's something missing. So it's all a matter of psychoacoustics.
2. Sound is recorded multimiked most of the time.
Mics are close to the musicians and the frequency spectrum is not the same compared to a musician farther away (highs are more absorbed by atmosphere than mids for example). For those who might think that recording with more distant microphones solves the 3D problem, it just mixes more reverberation from the room (Add soe flavour of the acoustics at the cost of clarity).
3. The recording engineer is key

Fom the recording engineer's perspective, point is to gel everything from a 3D sound into the 2 channel (2D remember ?) mix. Making something sound more distant is obtained by eq'ing down the highs of a track, eventually adding some delay. In other words, his job is to prepare the stereo signal, and make an illusion because the brain cannot do its job with recorded (2D) music.
Brain processes 3D sound, not 2D.
For those who doubt, compare a debate in real life and a debate on TV. In the former case, you understand everybody clearly, in the latter, it's just a big mess.
Remember also that the sound engineers listens either nearfield with small monitors or farfield with big soffit mounted speakers. In either case, there is little to no influence of speaker placement.

Mastering engineers have another point of view, closer to ours as to room environment influence.
From our perspective, room influence is key. Speakers far away from the walls make for an environment that resembles the recording engineers', where reflections don't mess the signal. For the others, DSP based cardioid directivity speakers (Dutch & Dutch,Kii Audio) aim at lowering room influence. For the vast majority of us, room reflections superimpose to 2D sound, and at best illusion is credible.
Speaker time coherence doesn't hurt of course, but incoherent spectrum between direct and reflected sound is a challenge for the brain to process those sometimes contradictory clues.

Stereo means 3D.

The videos starting hear give a good idea as to the clues that the brain needs for a 3D soundstage: Introduction to Room Acoustics: Part 1 - YouTube

 

[Wombat]

Stereo soundstage is mostly an illusion.

If it is a pleasurable one, just enjoy it.

 

[tuga]

Stereo means 3D.

The videos starting hear give a good idea as to the clues that the brain needs for a 3D soundstage: Introduction to Room Acoustics: Part 1 - YouTube

But it's only 2D - azimuth (left/right) and depth

 

[audiofooled]

Before we get to discussion of nature of reality and open some general topics of quantum mechanics...

Yes, it's all an illusion, and yes, multichannel is the way to go. But we can all freely enjoy even mono, if we like the art and music content, or lack the luxury of having a multichannel, dedicated listening room...

IMHO, it all comes down to this, love for the art itself and trying to enjoy whatever the heck the means we have to reproduce the essence of it.
All what I'm against is largely in sync with the notion of this very community, hence I like being a member here. And all that I'm for is learning and sharing the knowledge, one topic at the time

 

[fmplayer]

Stereo means 3D.

Nope ...

But it's only 2D - azimuth (left/right) and depth

... and nope.

I said 2D for simplification purpose, but in reality, it's only 1D.
Let's introduce some similarity with geometry.
If you draw a line between 2 points, you have 1D (one axis), as in our case (2 point sources), so you can locate a sound from 100% left to 100% right. That is if you were in a 100% anechoic environment.
Depth (2D) needs a second axis to become real.
3D needs to introduce a third axis which is height.

Back to 2D and 3D: from lack of real additional sound source(s)(read axes), we have wall, floor and ceiling reflections, but they have nothing in common neither with real sources, nor with what the sound engineer did to give us some psychoacoutic clues for an illusion of depth.
Reflections are an altered image of our 2 primary sound sources. Think of it as 2 lights in a mirror box with black floor and ceiling. you could see multiple images of your light sources, but it is in fact the same source. We need additional information from behind, not an altered and delayed copy of the front (reflection from the wall behind the sound sources).
I said altered copies because:
- wall absorption properties alter the spectrum of the incoming sound from the speaker (same for front and ceiling)
- the spectrum sent by the speaker varies according to its directivity (except for some true omnidirectional speakers)

Oh,and did I mention comb filtering due to interference between 2 coherent sources ?

Let's face the truth: recorded music is a projection performed by the sound engineer of a 3D environment to a simple line (1D) in front of you.
Photography is a 2D projection of a 3D environment, where depth is also an illusion, depending on the skills of the photographer.
Ah the skills of the recording engineer ...

 

[tuga]

Nope ...

... and nope.

I said 2D for simplification purpose, but in reality, it's only 1D.
Let's introduce some similarity with geometry.
If you draw a line between 2 points, you have 1D (one axis), as in our case (2 point sources), so you can locate a sound from 100% left to 100% right. That is if you were in a 100% anechoic environment.
Depth (2D) needs a second axis to become real.
3D needs to introduce a third axis which is height.

Back to 2D and 3D: from lack of real additional sound source(s)(read axes), we have wall, floor and ceiling reflections, but they have nothing in common neither with real sources, nor with what the sound engineer did to give us some psychoacoutic clues for an illusion of depth.
Reflections are an altered image of our 2 primary sound sources. Think of it as 2 lights in a mirror box with black floor and ceiling. you could see multiple images of your light sources, but it is in fact the same source. We need additional information from behind, not an altered and delayed copy of the front (reflection from the wall behind the sound sources).
I said altered copies because:
- wall absorption properties alter the spectrum of the incoming sound from the speaker (same for front and ceiling)
- the spectrum sent by the speaker varies according to its directivity (except for some true omnidirectional speakers)

Oh,and did I mention comb filtering due to interference between 2 coherent sources ?

Ok, I see your point. The sense of depth comes from the relative level of the sources and is complemented by ambience cues (real or fabricated) so it wouldn't be correct to call it a dimension, it is only an effect which creates an illusion.

So all we have is this:

 

[audiofooled]

Nope ...

... and nope.

I said 2D for simplification purpose, but in reality, it's only 1D.
Let's introduce some similarity with geometry.
If you draw a line between 2 points, you have 1D (one axis), as in our case (2 point sources), so you can locate a sound from 100% left to 100% right. That is if you were in a 100% anechoic environment.
Depth (2D) needs a second axis to become real.
3D needs to introduce a third axis which is height.

Back to 2D and 3D: from lack of real additional sound source(s)(read axes), we have wall, floor and ceiling reflections, but they have nothing in common neither with real sources, nor with what the sound engineer did to give us some psychoacoutic clues for an illusion of depth.
Reflections are an altered image of our 2 primary sound sources. Think of it as 2 lights in a mirror box with black floor and ceiling. you could see multiple images of your light sources, but it is in fact the same source. We need additional information from behind, not an altered and delayed copy of the front (reflection from the wall behind the sound sources).
I said altered copies because:
- wall absorption properties alter the spectrum of the incoming sound from the speaker (same for front and ceiling)
- the spectrum sent by the speaker varies according to its directivity (except for some true omnidirectional speakers)

Oh,and did I mention comb filtering due to interference between 2 coherent sources ?

If I may, in my room, with my, mostly DIY system https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ht-our-current-setups.564/page-30#post-749312

I have achieved a very close resemblance of a true, holographic display (minus the rear envelopment, because I don't have any rear channels). I shamelessly used all the available options for having pscychoacoustically indistinguishable tonality of on axis, off axis and reflected sounds. Perceived tonality is the same anywhere in the room, not only at the listening position (apart from bass resolution which is best only at the listening position). So, It can be done, to augment the illusion and sound very convincing, but is it real? No, of course not. But do I have to care about it? Objectively, yes, but subjectively it's way to much of a gratifying experience to even give a damn

 

[Emlin]

Nope ...

... and nope.

I said 2D for simplification purpose, but in reality, it's only 1D.
Let's introduce some similarity with geometry.
If you draw a line between 2 points, you have 1D (one axis), as in our case (2 point sources), so you can locate a sound from 100% left to 100% right. That is if you were in a 100% anechoic environment.
Depth (2D) needs a second axis to become real.
3D needs to introduce a third axis which is height.

Back to 2D and 3D: from lack of real additional sound source(s)(read axes), we have wall, floor and ceiling reflections, but they have nothing in common neither with real sources, nor with what the sound engineer did to give us some psychoacoutic clues for an illusion of depth.
Reflections are an altered image of our 2 primary sound sources. Think of it as 2 lights in a mirror box with black floor and ceiling. you could see multiple images of your light sources, but it is in fact the same source. We need additional information from behind, not an altered and delayed copy of the front (reflection from the wall behind the sound sources).
I said altered copies because:
- wall absorption properties alter the spectrum of the incoming sound from the speaker (same for front and ceiling)
- the spectrum sent by the speaker varies according to its directivity (except for some true omnidirectional speakers)

Oh,and did I mention comb filtering due to interference between 2 coherent sources ?

Let's face the truth: recorded music is a projection performed by the sound engineer of a 3D environment to a simple line (1D) in front of you.
Photography is a 2D projection of a 3D environment, where depth is also an illusion, depending on the skills of the photographer.
Ah the skills of the recording engineer ...

stereo-
combining form meaning solid, hard, three-dimensional.
[Gr stereos solid]

Chambers Dictionary.

So yes.

 

[Destination: Moon]

If I may, in my room, with my, mostly DIY system https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ht-our-current-setups.564/page-30#post-749312

I have achieved a very close resemblance of a true, holographic display (minus the rear envelopment, because I don't have any rear channels). I shamelessly used all the available options for having pscychoacoustically indistinguishable tonality of on axis, off axis and reflected sounds. Perceived tonality is the same anywhere in the room, not only at the listening position (apart from bass resolution which is best only at the listening position). So, It can be done, to augment the illusion and sound very convincing, but is it real? No, of course not. But do I have to care about it? Objectively, yes, but subjectively it's way to much of a gratifying experience to even give a damn

Your probably not going to like, or agree, but that's similar to what's happening in my room with the 2 sets of speakers. One set is VERY forgiving of listening position. It sounds wonderful almost anywhere. The other is VERY position dependent. But when your in position, the sound from the more directional speakers is MUCH different, and to my ears, more engaging, and much more dimensional. Maybe calling it 3d was a mistake. I think some took that too literally. I didn't mean that you can tell where each musician actually stood when the recording was made. The sense of space is an illusion but it's also real - there's a difference. A paradox I guess?

No one has even discussed the position of your ears. If you turn your head 2 degrees, or one ear is angled differently. I'm sure someone here could make the calculations of how that impacts all kinds of things.... Also, if you cup your ears with your hands, the sound changes dramatically, in all kinds of ways. So the shape of our ears creates differences that no one can account for too. Try it and you'll be surprised.

 

[fmplayer]

stereo-
combining form meaning solid, hard, three-dimensional.
[Gr stereos solid]

Chambers Dictionary.

So yes.

But nope It is just one of multiple examples of wrong naming. It is just 2 channel sound reproduction, contrary to mono which is a single channel reproduction and quadrophonia which is a four channel and certainly closer to stereophony. It should have been called biphonia

 

[fmplayer]

If I may, in my room, with my, mostly DIY system https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ht-our-current-setups.564/page-30#post-749312

I have achieved a very close resemblance of a true, holographic display (minus the rear envelopment, because I don't have any rear channels). I shamelessly used all the available options for having pscychoacoustically indistinguishable tonality of on axis, off axis and reflected sounds. Perceived tonality is the same anywhere in the room, not only at the listening position (apart from bass resolution which is best only at the listening position). So, It can be done, to augment the illusion and sound very convincing, but is it real? No, of course not. But do I have to care about it? Objectively, yes, but subjectively it's way to much of a gratifying experience to even give a damn

You're lucky to have reached such a result. It's kind of planets alignment.

Generally speaking, I think the quest for tridimensionality is one cause for the small monitor nearfield listening trend. After all, it resembles the studio way of listening during mixing sessions.