Cross-talk and distortion, chief soundstage contributors...


In my continuing effort to learn about the "chemistry" of sound, I have recently been informed that it is significantly low (vanishing) distortion and avoiding crosstalk that supply the key sonic elements for deep, broad, tall, etc. soundstage... this, of course, is independent of speakers, pre-amp, cables, etc. I'm focusing on the amplifier, alone... Again, the issue here are the fundamental (amplifier) qualities involved in soundstage. Can anyone add some dimension to what I'm learning in this...

Thanks in advance,
listening99
The prerequisite for sound stage is room acoustics.

I have found that the sound stage is directly tied to the room treatment.  Want height? Treat the floor and ceiling.  Depth? Treat the wall behind and in front of the speakers.  

Do this experiment on your own.  Put your speakers out into the room and set your chair 3' from them.  What you are losing from that to your normal seating position is due to room acoustics.

I always recommend GIK Acoustics, and they are having a sale. :) Talk to them.
Staying within the scope of your tiny little window, amplifiers only, crosstalk isn’t hardly even relevant. This would be different of course if there were amplifiers with huge amounts of crosstalk. But that’s the thing. Crosstalk per se is only really relevant or significant when it starts to fall outside a certain range. Which nobody really knows what that is. But that’s the problem with specifications. Nobody really knows.

The thing of it is, if you want to begin to understand the full depth and nature of the misconception here, then think of this: you can get a really solid image from an amplifier with 100% crosstalk. A mono amp. The same exact signal going to both speakers will throw a perfect center image.

Now imagine the same amp only it now has a lot of separation, but still has some crosstalk, and instead of a center image we’re listening to a singer standing ten feet left of center. Everything else with our imaginary amp is absolutely perfect. Everything but the tiny little bit of crosstalk.

So what happens? Almost all the signal is telling us the singer is on the left. Only a tiny little bit is telling us she’s on the right. To the extent that tiny little bit matters it will pull her image a bit to the right. But also at the same time a little bit of the right side is leaking over into the left. Actually the same amount is trying to pull her image each way. So the result is a bit of smearing or loss of focus.

How much crosstalk before this becomes a serious issue? This is where your question is so narrowly focused it almost guaranteed a bad answer. Because phono cartridges have the worst crosstalk numbers in the world, orders of magnitude worse than amplifiers, CD players, just about anything else. Yet my cartridge with its lousy crap crosstalk somehow manages to throw a rock solid palpable wide and deep sound stage that would have you drooling and shaking your head in amazement.

How much crosstalk does my Melody amp have? I don't know. I have no idea. Absolutely none. Its probably in there somewhere. I just can't be bothered with such things. Too irrelevant. I deal with what matters. This ain't it.

Kind of a long way around but that’s how hard it is sometimes to show just how far off base a lot of these conventional wisdom ideas really are. Not your fault. Everyone parrots this stuff so much, so few bother to stop and think things through, its what makes this such a hard thing to do.
What am I missing here. Crosstalk? What does crosstalk have to do with soundstage?. 

One or more information sources bleeding into the source being used? Crosstalk..

Usually through a  point to point preamp, with no RCA crosstalk caps.

Yes crosstalk is considered BAD. But pretty easy to fix. Crosstalk caps

Is there another type of crosstalk?

Differential as opposed to non differential? definite channel separation there..Left volume, right volume, no balance circuit, usually good indicator.

Regards
There is no substitute for Signal to (Noise + Distortion) Ratio. But analyzing the various contributions to Noise and Distortion is not straightforward, the total Noise and total Distortion represent the sum of the various contributors. No one source of Noise or Distortion holds sway over the other sources. How many sources of Noise and Distortion are there? And what are their percentage of contribution? Hey, that could be a pop quiz!
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