Naysayers are on both sides in this argument. They also argue that it cannot be their imagination so they don’t care what a double blind test shows - that they can’t really hear what they’re perceiving. I don’t call it their imagination in those cases, but a confluence of senses coming together to produce an audible perception. My feeling is that if it works for them and they can afford it, enjoy! The whole idea is to trick our senses into perceiving something that isn't really happening. If we're not overly acute in our perceptions the trick is more likely to succeed.
Is soundstage DEPTH a myth?
Ok, help me out fellas. Is it a myth or what?
I’m a good listener, I listen deep into the music, and I feel like I have good ears. But I can’t confirm that I can hear soundstage depth. I can hear 1 instrument is louder, but this doesn’t help me to tell if something is more forward or more behind. Even in real life and 2 people are talking, I can’t honestly say I know which one is in front.
The one behind will sound less loud, but is that all there is to soundstage depth? I think the answer I’m looking for has to do with something I read recently. Something about depth exist only in the center in most system, the good systems has depth all around the soundstage.
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@asctim nope. |
Some legendary vintage speakers produce sound stage depth very well. Quad ESL57, Tannoy coaxial speakers from 50x-70x.
Well, yes but only with the right well recorded music. It was the almost 3D imagery of the Quad Electrostatic when playing back some opera (LP) through some vintage Quad amps that sold them to me. That's probably still the closest I've been to that elusive 'reach out and touch' feeling in audio. However, when I got them back home and put on Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Hits CD, none of that imagery or depth was present. Neither was it on any of my other CDs or Minidiscs. You could call that a watershed moment in my audio journey. The recordings matter the most. My current speakers, the dual concentric Tannoy Berkeley’s from 1978 fall into the the same boat. The imagery is sometimes there, but only with the very best recorded albums. Albums recorded live with exquisite bandwidth, and usually minimal processing. Joni Mitchell’s Travelogue from 2002 and Both Sides Now from 2000 certainly fall into that category, but they are rare examples. Incidentally, I would strongly recommend both of those orchestral re-recording albums to any fan of Mitchell’s.
Could you please cite you sources, for the above figures/information? Well, in all of the numerous articles/interviews I’ve read with engineers and producers neither the subject of sound quality nor soundstage has ever appeared. When you also take into consideration the fact that virtually every single recording since the early 1990s has featured often heavy use of compression (the so-called ’loudness wars’) and realise just how extremely rare uncompressed recordings are, it’s hard not to come to the sad conclusion that the industry just does not care about sound quality. If you were to scan through the Guinness Book of Hit Singles / Albums from the 1950s to the 2000s+ I think you will have to search hard and long to find many audiophile standard recordings amongst all of those thousands of hits and top 100 entries. |
@cd318 - iow: YOUR assumptions/conclusions/opinions |
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