Sound Size

[Macca]

Technically speaking everything going on in the soundstage should be happening behind the plane of the speakers. Vocalists should not be 'Right out on the carpet in front of me', as many a flat earth reviewer used to say in praise. Maybe they still do. But then it's horses for courses isn't it?


Plus you've got the recordings. I've got some jazz and big band recordings from the 1940s and 1950s and some of them are mixed a bit heavy handed. Most professional stuff late sixties and on, everything should be in the right perspective on the soundstage. Artistic decisions excepted of course.

[Pharos]

On voice even a recoding using a Blumlein pair is a compromise, an illusion.

Much of the reproduced sound comes unnaturally from two wide sources, and the stereo effect is designed to fool the ear/brain using phase, and time delay, and IMO that rarely is effective if the vocalist is centred.

The worst giveaway is that sibilants come very definitely from each speaker, top being perceived as more directional, and so in the middle of a vocal phrase suddenly there is a bust of esses coming quite clearly as separate entities one from each speaker. This is a logistical failing of recordings only able to be overcome by having a singer to one side, and removing a bit of top from the other in the mix.

[Macca]

I don't know. Getting the speakers to 'disappear' I've found has tended to be more about reducing noise and distortion at every point in the chain - including the speakers. Room and positioning have been secondary to that by a fair margin.


This was the best imaging speaker I ever heard. Forget your horns and electrostatics. I did not realise how much spatial information could possibly be on a recording until these:

[Light Dependant Resistor]

Technically speaking everything going on in the soundstage should be happening behind the plane of the speakers. Vocalists should not be 'Right out on the carpet in front of me', as many a flat earth reviewer used to say in praise. Maybe they still do. But then it's horses for courses isn't it?


Plus you've got the recordings. I've got some jazz and big band recordings from the 1940s and 1950s and some of them are mixed a bit heavy handed. Most professional stuff late sixties and on, everything should be in the right perspective on the soundstage. Artistic decisions excepted of course.

If the soundstage is happening solely behind the plane of the speakers as suggested, your partnering equipment is losing important spatial information
the usual culprit being the preamp or attenuator,

The soundstage in a really good system will be akin to a sphere allowing forward backward and height information. A test is Los Endos
Genesis Trick of the Tail- listen to where Phil Collins voice projects from, saying " there's an angel standing in the Sun, freed to get back home"
( continuing a similar vocal from Suppers Ready for the Genesis aficionado )

[RMutt]

99.9% of the time I sit and listen to what I feel is a believable sonic landscape. Occasionally there will be an anomaly like drums appearing too wide for one man to play them or a guitar being played by a vocalist and the voice and guitar seeming to come from two different places. These are recording issues though. Usually I am happy with the illusion. It’s amazing really to have an orchestra or a guitar vocalist in your room. I suppose there has to be a little compromise somewhere. It was perhaps misleading of me to focus on vocals. I don’t think it is that they are too forward or not placed in the correct space. It is literally the size of the sound. Quite difficult to describe and much easier to experience. It is only noticeable when you have someone in front of you at the same time as the music that the scale of the two doesn’t quite fit, shut your eyes and the issue goes away. I think the whole sound is big. Oddly it was what I liked about the Magisters, the scale of the sound. It probably gets exaggerated when the music is louder. No real issue, I can always close my eyes!

[Pigmy Pony]

No sound stage is bigger than Mrs. Pony. If she stands in front of the speakers it all goes quiet.. Please don't tell her I said that.

[struth]

No sound stage is bigger than Mrs. Pony. If she stands in front of the speakers it all goes quiet.. Please don't tell her I said that.

ooo, thats blackmail-ible

i wouldnt say that about the wife and shes dead she'd get me

[bumpy]

I don't know. Getting the speakers to 'disappear' I've found has tended to be more about reducing noise and distortion at every point in the chain - including the speakers. Room and positioning have been secondary to that by a fair margin.


This was the best imaging speaker I ever heard. Forget your horns and electrostatics. I did not realise how much spatial information could possibly be on a recording until these:

Open baffles rule OK

[Barry]

Re' 'soundstaging', I'm a believer in what the late Peter Walker of Quad used to say:

"Somewhere near the plane of your speakers and beyond, the walls of your listening room should appear to disappear and be replaced with the walls of the recording venue."

I dislike systems in which the performers appear to be playing in your listening room. It should be a case not of 'they are here', but of 'you are there'.

[Pharos]

I'm very pleased that what Peter Walker said is pretty well what I said in '72, and have been saying ever since, but of course the recording's acoustic is superimposed on the listening room acoustic.