Soundstage and imaging

[Pearljam5000]

1.If It's impossible to know what's the real size of the soundstage In the recording unless you were in the studio
And if pretty much every system /spearkers have a different sized soundstage
How can you know if your system / speakers create an accurate soundstage ?

2. Is soundstage and imaging the same thing ?

 

[RayDunzl]

How can you know if your system / speakers create an accurate soundstage ?

I created a "click track" once, imposing an increasing delay on the left channel, which moved the "image" to the right, and repeated delaying the right speaker, moving the "image" to the left.

The results matched well enough.

That took care of essential timing, and frequency response the rest.

Sounds fine with music.

Is soundstage and imaging the same thing ?

Imaging and Sound stage

Imaging and Sound stage what are the differences? thank you

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[fineMen]

1.If It's impossible to know what's the real size of the soundstage In the recording unless you were in the studio
And if pretty much every system /spearkers have a different sized soundstage
How can you know if your system / speakers create an accurate soundstage ?

2. Is soundstage and imaging the same thing ?

2) As you bring in the terms, what about defining them?
1) You use undefined terms ;-)

After decades of focus on tonal accuracy, least distortion, and bass extension, the freshman audiophile needs a new talking point. That is well understood. And granted, the new it-thing offers a lot of mystery. Not the least, it needs the highest concentration, a stiff seating position 'right in the middle', alone, so that nobody else can scrutinize the personal experience. That's ideal!

Honestly, for a serious music (!!) lover the stereo effect is of secondary importance at best. It is generated as an artifact under any conceivable circumstances. For starters you may want to read some wiki-stuff on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereophonic_sound.

Even with plain common sense it is well understood that the stereo cannot be real. Even dummy-head recordings don't work when played back over speakers. So, the stereo and associated are more or less tasteful artifacts, an afterthought. And that is why music (!!) lovers don't expect too much from it. It isn't the music that brings it in, right?

 

[DVDdoug]

It's all an illusion... Different people will experience it differently and different speakers, different speaker placement, different listening position, and different rooms will make a difference.

Sometimes "audiophiles" will make a big fuss about soundstage and imaging and they sometimes claim that an amplifier (or other electronics) make a difference. That's nonsense unless something is horribly wrong.

In the analog days we worried about crosstalk/separation from a phono cartridge but it was usually "good enough, and with digital (and modern electronics) it's not an issue at all.

Obviously the phantom center doesn't work very well or home theater systems wouldn't need a separate center speaker.

1.If It's impossible to know what's the real size of the soundstage In the recording unless you were in the studio.

There's almost never a "stage" in a studio. Most modern recordings are recorded in multi-track mono, with the various instruments & voices panned across the virtual soundstage.

Some classical music is recorded "live" in a concert hall. Then the stage and arrangements of the instruments are pretty-well standardized. And of course you can't get a soundstage that wide in your living room but you can approximate the angle.

Other music is also sometimes recorded "live" on a stage and you're right. You don't know the width.

For headphones, this is interesting... Most people don't get a realistic soundstage illusion.

 

[tmtomh]

1.If It's impossible to know what's the real size of the soundstage In the recording unless you were in the studio
And if pretty much every system /spearkers have a different sized soundstage
How can you know if your system / speakers create an accurate soundstage ?

2. Is soundstage and imaging the same thing ?

1. Not only is it impossible to know, but for many - probably most - recordings made in the past 60 years or so, there is no real size of the soundstage, since the recording is likely to be a multitrack where not all the performers were recorded together live, and where each performer was not necessarily standing/sitting in the same location relative to the other performers as they are in the final mix. In most cases, reproducing the soundstage of the original recording studio is not a concern of the artist, recording engineer, mixing engineer, or mastering engineer (or the record label, or anyone else). Even with minimally miked classical recordings, the real soundstage size is irrelevant unless the original recording was made in a tiny recording space that could fit inside your home listening room. So the "real size" of the soundstage is often however it sounded to the relevant folks in the recording and mixing booth. And there again, reproducing the sound of a couple of studio monitors placed relatively close together on top of a mixing console is not a concern for those who make the music, produce it, or listen to it.

Now, if the recording is mixed with the vocalist dead center, a guitar panned halfway to the right, bass slightly to the left, and percussion and horns or whatever panned full left and/or right, then soundstage accuracy is about that - those elements should all be in their proper place in terms of L vs R vs center, and hopefully it will be possible to discern that those horns are panned all the way Left while the bass is a little closer in between L and center. But as far as how wide - or tall - the overall soundstage is, and therefore exactly how far apart center, halfway panned Left, and fully panned left are, that's highly variable based on room size, speaker design, room characteristics, speaker placement, and listener preference.

2. Soundstage precision or accuracy is, in my experience, basically the same as imaging - how clearly can you identify where each element of the recording is. Soundstage width, height, and depth as overall dimensions are not the same as imaging, at least in my understanding.

 

[pablolie]

There are plenty of "walk around" test tracks. Someone walks around clapping or so while describing where they are in the recording room. So it is real, and you can hear it, and it makes sense in that context...

That said, with most recorded music those things are pretty useless.

I demand staging with classical music (since we know where the instruments are, and there is some information missing without that), and also with some jazz performances - beyond that it is quite artificial and IMO often immaterial.

With the vast majority of popular music, I just prefer to hear the vocalist in a clean center (it's kinda odd when they are not), and don't even try to hear too much detail in imaging/staging, although it can be nice when it is done well.

 

[Doodski]

I dig the imaging and enjoy the special effects a lot. It's a major part of the music for me. I can go for some of the old recordings with stuff hard panned left and right and down the middle but it's gets old fast. Jazz recordings for me need to be pretty good for me to bother listening to most of them. I don't listen to classical.

 

[fineMen]

... with most recorded music those things are pretty useless.

Reiterated, the (in)famous sound artist Sun Ra did a lot of experimentation with what you call today a 'soundstage'. I feel it is quite educational to dig into his world ;-) For me personally it shows how little the stereo actually contributes to the enjoyment, but how bad it could become if, like in contemporary recordings, the 'illusion' is exaggerated. Quintessence, listening to music via a stereo needs active imagination anyway, some mental effort. It is by no means virtual reality that may fool - a term often used for some presumably uninformed reason, the ear.

 

[AudioJester]

Properly recorded, well set up system - atmos/multi-channel is where it is at, particularly complex classical
Imho

 

[fineMen]

Properly recorded, well set up system - atmos/multi-channel is where it is at, particularly complex classical
Imho

Do you really think that the message of a musical piece benefits from adding 3..9 speakers? Not taking the effort in the studio into account, because again you shall hear what the sound engineer hears for best measure, the financial expense, let alone the need for room treatment and such, is exploding.

What about(ism), get yourself and your partner a flat-rate ticket to the local concert hall and: meet the artist!

( I personally met many, and literally none were satisfied with any recording--and that wasn't about the playback system ... go figure! )

 

[AudioJester]

Do you really think that the message of a musical piece benefits from adding 3..9 speakers? Not taking the effort in the studio into account, because again you shall hear what the sound engineer hears for best measure, the financial expense, let alone the need for room treatment and such, is exploding.

What about(ism), get yourself and your partner a flat-rate ticket to the local concert hall and: meet the artist!

( I personally met many, and literally none were satisfied with any recording--and that wasn't about the playback system ... go figure! )

Thanks, have music venue memberships for over 30 yrs, lost count of the number of live events I have attended. Talk about the subject rather than preaching....

You really missed the point. For home audio and specifically soundstage/imaging - atmos/multichannel provides the spatial cues that stereo can not. Iam not an expert, if you want to learn more read Dr Toole's and Amir's comments about this. Home audio is about reproducing music, well, at home!

A lot of the time this is not practical, but some of us allready have HT setups. For imaging/soundstsge my atmos setup sounds better than my Lx521 - which is one of those speakers strong points.

 

[Speedskater]

Siegfried Linkwitz (RIP) has many page on the subject in the "Basics" section of his blog.

Linkwitz Lab - Loudspeaker Design

Design and consultation in electro-acoustics. Fundamental concepts of sound reproduction in rooms. Detailed design information for DIY construction of a subwoofer and an open-baffle speaker with exceptional fidelity. Dipole loudspeaker design for true to the original sound reproduction with...

www.linkwitzlab.com

 

[Keith_W]

Well, these are my definitions, not sure if it's the same as yours:

- Soundstage: how far instruments or the stage seem to extend in the x, y, z axis.
- Imaging: how precisely soloists are located within the soundstage.

It is impossible to measure both directly because it is something created in your brain from auditory cues.

I have found that speaker choice and positioning affects the soundstage the most. For example, most dipoles seem to throw it quite deep, and most horns seem to throw it quite forward. Placing speakers wide apart seems to widen the soundstage, and placing absorbers at the first reflection point seems to narrow it. The amount of toe-in also seems to affect the width of the soundstage and precision of imaging.

Although I have a microphone, I do not know what measurements correlate with apparent width and depth of the soundstage so I would love to hear some experts on ASR comment on this.

 

[fineMen]

... read Dr Toole's and Amir's comments about this. Home audio is about reproducing music, well, at home!

A European "nohh" to that. Dr. Toole explicitely lets stereo beside. His very 'book' anecdotally mentiones stereo and foremost cinema sound (engaging in home curves, despite him saying that the direct sound is of most concern). But 'scientifically' stereo is a non issue.

A lot of the time this is not practical, but ...

I always wonder why 'stereo' is discussed in the context of orchestral works, in contrast to chamber music, mostly. Not the least, the music enthusiast enjoying live performances often shouldn't formulate that much of a demand as a fan of electro pop must do. For the latter there is no refernce other than the studio, which is unknown. More so he may feel more betrayed once the 'imaging' of the playback isn't true to the source.

 

[Kvalsvoll]

1.If It's impossible to know what's the real size of the soundstage In the recording unless you were in the studio
And if pretty much every system /spearkers have a different sized soundstage
How can you know if your system / speakers create an accurate soundstage ?

2. Is soundstage and imaging the same thing ?

Does it really matter? As long as you get a scene with something that resembles real instruments, with separation, and a sense of the recording venue around them.

And it is true that every system will have different renderings of this scene, depending on the speakers and room acoustics. So it will be different. Now it can be argued that a very dry room will be more true to the recording, but then it will also sound, well, dry. Especially if the recording was made intentionally more dry than the real thing, because some contribution from the room was assumed by the creator.

If the recording is made with 2 mics, where the intention was to preserve the room reverb from the venue and the real location of the instruments, then there is a reference. But still, the mic arrangement will have huge impact on the sound picked up on the recording, so it is likely it can never sound exactly like sitting in the audience in the concert venue.

In a very good room, a good typical hifi-speaker can perhaps create instruments with reasonable separation, and seemingly very precise location. The real thing does not sound like this. Real instruments have size and body, they do not necessarily appear to have very precise location, still they sound separated like it is very easy to focus on one instrument only. The best speakers can reproduce this, in a good room. But it does not sound similar to being on the concert.

 

[MattHooper]

It's An Eelluuuwwssioon...

I just set my speakers up until they produce the type of soundstage I like: Immersive.

I played some Joni Mitchell and it felt like sitting in on a fairly intimate session in a recording studio. Then I played some electronic/guitar/ambient music
that was soaked in reverbs and echoes, and it feels like peering in to an entirely new space. If I were just listening to it on a smart speaker, all the reverb
added would have indicated an atmosphere to the music. But with a good soundstage, it actually *becomes* a 3 dimensional atmosphere, with great width, depth, and all sorts of interesting things happening within the space. Then I put on some soundtrack music, big pounding drums, low chugging strings sections, blaring brass section, and again the sonic "space" in my room changed and it felt like I was now peering in to a big hall hearing the music performed. Doesn't matter if it happened to be an actual acoustic, or enhanced with reverb in the mix, the effect nonetheless was spectacular.

That's the kind of stuff that makes it worth sitting my butt down in front of the speakers. I can enjoy music on my smart speaker or in my car, but on a good 2 channel
system the experience is just richer, more transportive, like watching a movie at an IMAX theater rather than at home on an old tube TV set.

 

[Daverz]

A European "nohh" to that. Dr. Toole explicitely lets stereo beside. His very 'book' anecdotally mentiones stereo and foremost cinema sound (engaging in home curves, despite him saying that the direct sound is of most concern). But 'scientifically' stereo is a non issue.

I always wonder why 'stereo' is discussed in the context of orchestral works, in contrast to chamber music, mostly. Not the least, the music enthusiast enjoying live performances often shouldn't formulate that much of a demand as a fan of electro pop must do. For the latter there is no refernce other than the studio, which is unknown. More so he may feel more betrayed once the 'imaging' of the playback isn't true to the source.

I like good imaging in chamber music recordings, particularly if it helps to separate out the musical lines of the first and second violins in a string quartet, since you can't see what they are doing in an audio-only recording.

 

[Philbo King]

I find all this pretty interesting. When I mix down a song, I have a bag of tricks for creating the illusion of width, depth and position. These include Haas panning in addition to the plain old pan control, reverb and delay (EQ, room time, diffusion and predelay), along with mid-side processing, mixing in binaural processing with a straight stereo image, among several others. I'm always on the lookout for new ideas that work effectively to help 'paint the picture', in a manner of speaking.

 

[Axo1989]

'Soundstage' and 'stereo image' are precisely the same thing (the former term somewhat anachronistically evokes the performance/recording environment, the latter refers to the reproduction technology).

People sometimes refer to different characteristics of these words, where 'soundstage' means the outer boundaries of the image—width and depth—and 'imaging' refers to the degree of localisation of sonic events within that boundary (this is basically what @Keith_W says in the post above) which also makes sense.

For people (who aren't me) who often listen to recordings of live performances, the stereo image may be compared to a real-life musical venue. For people (like me) who usually listen to studio-assembled multi-layered sonic collage, the sculptural or three-dimension character of the assembled sonic events can be enjoyed for its own sake.

Other people can't get over the fact that sonic holography can be produced by sonic point sources and an ear/brain system and go on and on about it being an illusion (as if some other reproduction technology actually materialises living musicians and instruments in your listening space). It takes all kinds.

 

[MattHooper]

I like good imaging in chamber music recordings, particularly if it helps to separate out the musical lines of the first and second violins in a string quartet, since you can't see what they are doing in an audio-only recording.

That's a good point that has been brought up before. People say that being able to pinpoint sonically where instruments are in a soundstage is "unrealistic" relative to live music, e.g. symphonies etc, but the fact is most of us listen with our eyes as well, watching the performance, which makes it easy for our brain to pick out what an instrument is doing. Precise imaging can help play the same role when we can't see the musicians playing.

There are of course different views. Some people feel that a speaker can separate out detail/instruments so discretely that it can somewhat affect the cohesion of the music. Some pop music that was produced for the radio in a way that all the layers would come out together can sound a bit odd when everything becomes separated out from one another. Sort of like when a high end chef serves a "deconstructed" lasagna or cheeseburger splayed out on the plate.