Walk-in soundstage


Coupled with his Weiss DAC 204 and T+A DAC 200, Mr. Steve Huff claimed to have experienced the so-called "walk-in soundstage" when using the Lumin U2 as the streaming transporter. This refers to a deeply immersive, three-dimensional stereo image where the listener perceives the musical space as so realistic and spacious that it feels as if one could physically walk into the soundstage.

This level of presentation is notably different from the more common “layered” sound field that many average listeners or reviewers report—where the sound is merely projected in front of the listener with some layering or spatial envelopment.

I'm curious how many of you have also experienced this effect in your own systems and listening spaces. If you're open to sharing, I'd love to hear about the components and setup that helped you achieve it.

  

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It's Steve Huff. He must embellish as always.

 

But you can have a system with pretty controlled dispersion patterns for both horizontal and vertical planes, they're pair matched as speakers within ±0.5dB, you have the room where masking is not an issue because of recurring reflections, echoes and ringing (basically you have a treated room using physics and listening and not just vibes) and the finally but the most important of them all, does the song in question have that psychoacoustic phenomenon baked in? Cos you're not getting a sprawling stage with a narrow mix or a mono mix no matter the amount of subjective blabber one can say

 

And I've achieved all in my space so I have a very unchanging presentation over a large space but not walk in stage. That's hyperbole unless you're running line arrays in your space akin to a music festival

kofibaffour, FWIW, I heard this phenomenon at a dealers once. Just an amazing experience and with modest equipment in a medium sized room. The music was a vinyl recording by Opus 3 of "Depth of Image’ played thru a CJ PV5/Threshold SA3 preamp/amp on small floorstanding Thiel 4 speakers. Outstanding. I then bought the recording and actually superior equipment as well as Thiel speakers and tried to duplicate the experience in my homes. I never came really close. But I learned a lot about audio equipment and set up in the process. The most important thing I learned was you had to have a recording that has the information embedded. 

Hyperbole, speaker dependent, I think not. 

Mr. Huff is a writer, more than a reviewer.  I find every time I see a video of his, he goes on and says almost nothing.  There’s only so many flowery words, but he uses them over and over.

Regarding Huff, I still watch his videos to be informed on new gear, but I don't know that I can trust a reviewer that only listens to streaming over physical media. 2 cents.