3-Dimensional Soundstage

Having sold David Cheske a microphone or two, a major difference between his recordings and many other "traditional studio" recordings is that David usually chooses large spaces with large sources that [together] sound very good. In other words, if you were there and could hear the the real event, then the recording immediately after, you would say the recording did an excellent job of representing the real event. That’s Davids thing. A choir in a great hall, an orchestra in a famous venue, etc. He’s absolutely great at that kind of recording work and was a niche he sort of owned for a long time I think.

This large venue/large source recording is NOT the type of recording done in studios.  It is quite rare in the business, especially rock and roll. The size of a recording studio’s "live room" is often surprising small, unless it’s designed specially for orchestra (then it’s called a "scoring stage").  Live performance venues set up for live recording had a tremendous amount of work invested to set up for that.  The cabling alone is daunting; mic placement takes hours and hours of experimentation and is certainly not a set up and forget type of thing. Commercial recording studios are already set up, wired and ready to walk in and record as soon as you set up your guitar and amp. It’s fair to say a normal recording done in a normal studio live room would be multitracked out of necessity (one track at a time). Some studios would maybe have enough space for a small 5 pc chamber orchestra to play together- no more. The Pet Sounds room at East West is small- no way could an entire band set up in there and play at once. That’s what makes the recording so brilliant- Brian figured out the production to make it sound HUGE.

So the sound stage question is very much up to the engineer, the producer and the artist. It might vary with the record and the people so it could be one way on one record (Ive seen Bill Schnee record jazz ensembles all at once in the live room) and a completely different way on another record from the same artist or engineering team. And yes @rodman99999 is right- if "its" there, it was put there on purpose and your system has to do the heavy lifting of reproducing it. Not easy!

Brad

Having that immersive 3-d experience is the ultimate goal for an audiophile.  As many said above, you need a good system, a good room, take care of vibrations & room acoustics, and have a good if not great recording.  I believe that the most critical component of generating this 3-d soundstage is the preamplifier and the cables (assuming a good recording).  My 3-d image really got to where it blew me away with the Soulution 725 preamplifier and tara labs the one cables.  The cables really frame the rear of the soundstage, and the preamp is guilty of adding all that gooey goodness.  

@cerrot a preamp cannot "generate"  a 3D soundstage or improve upon what is there.  It can hide things though.  My guess is your previous preamp and cables took away the 3D soundstange of the recording and your new preamp and cables don't.  

Brad

I had a beautiful 3-d soundstage before.  Its just better, now (should be with a $60k preamp)I didn't say it generated it, what it does is reveal it.  My prior preamp was a Jeff Rowland Criterion and it was excellent, but bested by the Soulution 725 as it was even quieter than the JR.  The thing here is removing all the noise and all the vibrations so that you can hear all of the sound.  Stillpoints and SRA bases really shined a bright light on the 3-d sound stage.  

@cerrot That's a great story Cerrot.  Its awesome when you can "discover" better sound in your own system.  Working on the pro side, a lot of studio mix engineers and mastering engineers LIVE for that!

Brad