Speaker Imaging - Do you hear a line, or do you hear an arc??


Hi Everyone,

I am not trolling, I genuinely am interested in your experiences.


When listening to a system you feel images well, how do you perceive the sound stage? Do you perceive it as a rectangular space on which the speakers sit, or does it sound like an arc, going further back towards the middle?


Please give examples with music and speakers if you have the time.


Thanks,
Erik
erik_squires
 With a good recording,I would say more like a bubble. Height,width,and depth. Images expanding beyond physical boundaries. That's the stuff that makes me love this hobby.
You’re close, very close. It’s a hemisphere, half a bubble. If it was a sphere we’d hear things below the boundary of the floor. 😬 The soundstage is also defined by the density, transparency, gestalt/organization of the images, solidity of the images and accuracy of the shape of the images. Just when you think you have a good soundstage along comes a guy like my customer no. 1 who has completely REDEFINED what is possible for a soundstage. Everyone else, sadly perhaps, is at least two paradigms behind the power curve.
Very interesting indeed and in my experience, probably true ...If what you said is right, and I think so Geoffkait, the good news is my journey begins....Like you said already... It is a good news because even if I had already a musical 3-d audio system, new improvement will show with experiments and with time... In the meantime I love music like never before...My best to you...

P.S. And yes it is a hemisphere....
First...THANKS Eric....for so darn many thought provoking threads that you have started!

I agree with the hemisphere/half bubble description.  No doubt that often the slightest change in speaker positioning will affect the overall sound...sometimes significantly. 


And, the straight line, arc, hemisphere soundstage is maybe most significantly influenced by what the recording engineer did with ambience, echo, reverb and delay....and then how your speakers and room interpret/project what he intended.

For a long time, I was obsessed with the soundstage...but realizing that perfection is probably an illusion in this area, once I had a good stage, I turned my attention to tone...especially piano, drums, horns and voices.

Look into microphone polar patterns. Mic placement is critical (Monk at the Five Spot) puts you in the club (took them two nights to get it right) A good engineer can picture the mix before entering the studio. Width and depth are often discussed - height is often overlooked. Never forget we are listening to the room first - then the speakers. Learn to identify reverb decay times. Roger Waters "Amused to Death" (not the remaster) is a good learning tool. Jethro Tull "Masters" CD contains a few good mixes. Never forget - a phase coherent mono recording played back on two speakers becomes stereo because of room reflections.