Component contributions to “sound stage”

@blisshifi Thank you for the kind response. You are likely quite right about the OP's intent behind his/her original question. My response was meant to get them to consider that soundstage is "set" way before the needle hits the vinyl. I suppose that subtlety was lost which is completely my fault. 😉 (Being quite sincere!)

I'll have to dig out some mono recordings of mine and give them another listen for what you are talking about regarding depth. Thank you for that!

Happy listening.

@michaellent  +1 for the recording being the boss.  I would recommend reading, "Making of Rumors" (classic Fleetwood Mac album).  It's written by the sound engineer Ken Caillat.  Lots of insight of how they make the special sauce.

The recording is the boss.  The second most important thing is speakers/ placement/ room treatments.

The recording is probably the most important followed by the speakers and their placement.

My speakers are 7.5 feet apart center-to-center, but the Rhodes fills the entire "front of the house" (26 feet), and then some. Some on the JBL forum have said they even experience a wrap-around.

If you can’t get a really WIDE soundstage, way beyond the speakers, on the Rhodes on this cut, fergitaboutit.

@bigtwin

Food for thought or perhaps some really don’t know-nothing Lol. Regardless there’s always room for entertaining humour, bravo you slid some of that in there.

First it is so evident that if spatial information is not encoded rightfully from the recording engineer NOTHING will ressuscitate this information lost for ever...

Then the recording is not a factor which we can control. I did not even mention it.in the right system /room no album present the exact same soundstage. This difference correspond to each recording. We speak about a system/room able to create more so or less so an interesting soundstage for sure already encoded in the vinyl or dac.

@livingwellinco : "The soundstage is unreal." Really, man!

Now saying that only reveal you know nothing about the relation between physical acoustic and psycho-acoustic... And the importance of sound direction for evolutive survival of man as a prey ...And hunter... And sound direction perception ( and the impediment of stereo crosstalk )is the COLLECTIVE perception which our brain create the soundstage impression because of the specific acoustic parameters between 2 speakers and room. Do you call colors illusion? It is not even wrong, it will be an ideological abuse of words.

The soundstage is a real perceived phenomenon which can vary for each of us even with the same system/room... But it is there...