How do I get the best soundstage?

Speaker placement and room acoustics are primary factors affecting soundstage.

@hysteve - I finally achieved an oustanding soundstage (image) once I installed extremely good cables. Up to that point I had never experienced what a truly good image sounds like.- not even in some very good audition rooms in those high end audio stores, having a plethora of room treatments

What I am now hearing is

• the speakers have completely "disappeared"
• the walls of the listening room have also "disappeared"
• the sound evelopes the whole room
• there is the impression of height and scale of the venue
• even traffic noise from ouitside the venue is easy to hear, which is not something that is desired, but is an indication of the details now being heard

So don’t scrimp on cables, they are the arteries of your system and require great cables - like those from

• Zavfino - outstanding products at reasonable prices
• In-Akustik - utilize extremely good cable geometries for a refined sound
• Hijiri (if your budget can stretch that far) takes cable refinement to a whole new level

The best image is achieved by installing cables that transfer extremely fine micro details and for that, your cables need a serious design approach, including...

• solid UP-OCC silver wire for the interconencts
• solid UP-OCC solid copper for the speaker cables
• UP-OCC copper wire for the power cables
• Advanced cable geometry
• adavanced insulation
• high quality connectors
• Low mass RCA and speaker connectors

The three companies I have listed above above utilize these attributes to varying degrees and I have listed them in order of capabilities - the best being Hijiri

I have implemented excelelnt cables on systems ranging from a $200 mini system to $70k high end system, all with the same result - i.e. a significant improvement in audio performance but most of all Imaging

Installing good cables will help tremendously with finalising speaker placement and room treatments

Hope that helps - Steve

What i have found to work is:

Rack well behind speakers or away. If closed cabinet surely far away.

Speaker placement.

Room treatment of any kind (absorbers, diffusers, resonators)

A well designed rack and not tall enough.

I'd like to know specifically which Volti speakers you own as well as interconnects and speaker cables?

Looks like you have very good audio equipment and I don't think an upgrade in equipment will make much difference. I totally agree with those that suggest it has more to due with speaker placement and room acoustics.

lak the speakers are Volti Razz; interconnects are less loss xlr ($950); speaker cables are Audioquest Granite (pretty old but sound decent)