Soundstage - when wide is too wide


Although I'm often not confident in my understanding of the meaning of audio terminology as used in many posts, I do have some feeling for what the term "soundstage" implies, at least to me. When listening to orchestral presentations I appreciate a "wide soundstage" with some sense of where the strings, brass, kettle drums, etc are located across a real stage. In some recordings of small jazz ensembles postioning of drums, say, are at stage right, especially in older recordings where stereophonic effect is often somewhat exaggerated.

Here's the issue. A lot of what I listen to is solo guitar so the way I'd rather hear it is as if the guitar was played directly across the room from my listening position with a soundstage, then, centered and only a couple of feet wide. That, however, is not the way I hear it especially since I recently made some significant changes to my system.

To set the scene, the two changes that I made include replacing my Martin Logan Odyssey speakers with The ML Ethos. The other is the inclusion of an Equalizer to compensate for personal hearing and room acoustics issues. I know from over 25 years of using curvilinear electrostatic speakers that postioning is a significant issue so I've paid attention to this factor. I'm still working on that and believe that it still may be a big part of the problem.
128x128broadstone
Play a mono recording of vocalist with sparse accompaniment. You will need to adjust your system to get a tight center image on the voice. If you then play the guitar music and it still has an unrealistically big sonic image, then it's the way it was recorded and mixed.
"12-21-14: Onhwy61
Play a mono recording of vocalist with sparse accompaniment. You will need to adjust your system to get a tight center image on the voice. If you then play the guitar music and it still has an unrealistically big sonic image, then it's the way it was recorded and mixed."

An excellent suggestion, but there can be other factors as well. Given the OP's description of the problem, it sounds like his speakers could be wired out of phase.

Try reversing the speaker cable connections on just 1 speaker at the binding post, and see how it sounds. (black to red and red to black.). Try it even if the connection appear to be correct. I've seen several pairs of speakers that were mislabeled from the factory.
Sometimes I get this with acoustic guitar and singer when you know the singer is also playing the guitar. Annoying to say the least. Before I had a very revealing system I would not notice. Resolution can point out bad mixing for sure
The way it was recorded crossed my mind mainly because not all of my recordings suffer this phenomenon to the same extent. On the other hand, and somewhat off-thread, I'm just learning how to set up the equalizer, an exercise not as straightforward as I anticipated, so I'm dealing with a compound set of variables. The final variable is the new set of speakers (Martin Logan Ethos) which I read would be easier to position than the Odysseys because of their smaller size panels. I've not found that not in any way to be the case and I'm still working on it.

Anyway, the idea of using a monaural source to better evaluate what's going on, makes a lot of sense but I only have the capability to play CD's so where would I find something with a mono source?

I very much appreciate your responses but I think I started this thread a bit prematurely before getting more comfortable with my speaker positioning and proper use of the equalizer.