I always get amazed at how people and reviewrs talk about soundstage as something thats dependant on the gear to such extent that amplifiers and cables affect it "significantly" by their personal standards.
And I do understand, and believe, that driver positioning on headphones relative to the ears can more or less modify soundstage, after all soundstage is nothing more than time delay due to our ears position relative to the sound source and the time delay from the reflections relative to the that same sound source. But when that "soundstage" concept gets used to rate an amplifiers, or even worse to compare TOTL amplifiers between each other, or even TOTL DACs, I cant help but get both confused and laugh at the extent some people will get to try to give some esoterical "aura" to relatively simpe functioning and well understood devices.
And ofcourse, you cant have soundstage unless the recording was engineered to transmit such quality, but my concern was directed towards the reproduction side of things.
This is goin slightly off the OP's original topic, but what I really don't understand is why more people/entities/magazines/reviewers/etc. aren't making the effort to do more
in-ear measurements of actual speakers, so that they (and we) can see a little better what's actually going on at the DRP/eardrum in terms of all of this stuff.... FR, distortion, time, etc..
I think that kind of "in situ" information would just be invaluable to the headphone community. And I
know that some audio and headphone manufacturers are doing this behind close doors. And probably learning alot from it that the rest of us in the public sphere don't know yet. And are likely applying it in the development of their own products. I'm not just talkin about some of the smaller guys, like the DCAs, HFMs, Audezes, Focals, ZMFs, and folks like that (some of whom may simply not have the necessary resources for this kind of testing). But also many of the bigger headphone manufacturers, including Sony, Apple, Sennheiser, AudioTechnica, Samsung/Harman, etc.. And probably also some of the other larger Chinese manufacturers that are trying to make some more in-roads into these markets.
I do get the sense that there is some resistance to this kind of thing though, both from some reviewers and also some audiophiles. And I guess I can understand some of that. Because it takes a little bit of the mystery and fun out of just trying out different devices. And having large collections of headphones, each with their own unique sound... It is a bit of a mystery
to me why there isn't more research being done in this specific area though, which is out in the open for all to see and appreciate.
If I was a headphone reviewer, and had a little $$ to work with to set up a good measurement system, then I would try to get or put together one that included a well-designed anthropomorphic mannikin, so that I could do both some headphone and also in-ear speaker measurements with it. It just makes sense to me to have all of that information together in one place.