Soundstage - Too much?

jtinn: it's difficult for me to imagine an audio system's producing "too much soundstage." the width of the perceived image, like many other things, is affected by the quality of your components and the attributes/frailties of your listening enviroment. my speakers are just over 7 1/2 feet apart center-to-center and are placed some six feet from the side walls and rear wall. with a number of sources, the image doesn't just extend to the side walls but well beyond them. more typically, the depth of the perceived image is well behind the rear wall of my sound room. how do i compare this to a live performance? i usually can't unless i'm listening to a live performance of a familiar group or orchestra. studio recordings reflect the production and engineering more than a "reality" you might expect. drums, for example, are frequently recorded in spaces isolated from other instruments and vocalists. tracks are often recorded in different venues and then melded together in a seemingly coherent whole. i have a few discs through which i test an unfamiliar system's sound stage. generally, i begin with a couple of well-recorded acapella pieces: two of my favorites are by the fairfield four and the persuasions. on superior systems in good sound spaces, you should be able to close your eyes and "see" each singer placed properly in a straight or curved line that shifts slightly as the performers move in relation to their assigned microphones. for testing depth of image, i have a few other favorite discs. two of these (among many) are lt. kije on refernce recordings (lp and cd) and fanfare for the common man on telarc cd. from these i move to some rock pieces, including by way of example, the pink floyd tracks from the burmester test disc (vorfurings-cdii). these recordings should seem to come from everywhere, even behind your head. for image size, i generally rely on recordings with solo acoutic guitars; one of my favorites is "treetop flyer" from stephen still's stills alone. if, after all this, i want to get some fix, however flawed, on how a system compares to live performances, i put on two discs with which i have great familiarity, both by the eagles: hell freezes over (cd) and eagles live (japanese vinyl). no, you can't, IMO, get too much soundstage but can produce unrealistically large images of voices and instruments--elephant-like is my description. (after reading this, i fear i may have strayed a bit off topic here but hope you'll find my experiences helpful, nonetheless.) good hunting. -kelly

Interesting question. It's generally accepted that the wider and deeper recreation of the acoustic space your system cam produce, the better. However, it's been my experience that at live acoustic concerts I don't hear any soundstage information. The sound of the music is so entwined with the sound of the space that it's impossible to distinguish between them. This level of reality is impossible to reproduce within another acoustic space (your room).

Is soundstage really that important? You should pay more attention in the tonal balance and the musicality aspect of the system. If you get them right, it pays big time.

A wide and deep soundstage is important. You can have too much of a good thing if you get a wide deep soundstage at the expense of placement/timbre accuracy in the soundstage. On a good recording on a good system the instruments should have weight and presence and be placed accurately in 3 dimensions. If the instruments are blurred or seem to have a “haze” around them then you might want to start tweaking. Most, if not all, live music I have heard were not set up with soundstage in mind at all. Cheers - Dan