Blackness / Black Background

[Al M.]

About 7 or 8 years ago I installed some products in a distant associate's house who had an otherwsie very nice middle-of-the-road system. We let it sit for a couple of months and then he informed me he could hear no difference. So I visited him to have a listen and retrieve the products. IMO, his system sounded far more musical than previously. Now his 2nd story listening room was maybe 20' x 28' and what I consider spatious and he had a nice pair of Avalon speakers with obviously plenty of room to breath. But the really incredible thing was the sound stage which for the most part was in his frickin' front yard. And I'm not talking just on the other side of the window but well into the front yard like maybe 10-15 feet. I'd never heard anything like it before or since. Just incredible. What was even more incredible was here I was having a wet dream experience and he couldn't hear a bloomin' thing. I knew he lacked listening skills but I was dumbfounded he could not hear this depth of soundstage. Anyway, we set up his old system and had a listen and flat as a pancake the soundstage collapsed to right between the speakers and he still could not hear a difference.

Was that front yard soundstage exaggerated? I dunno. Maybe all the planets just happened to be in alignment. I'd kill for that soundstage depth. That was also 7 - 8 years ago and I like to think my listening skills matured much since then.

If for the most part the soundstage was that far away, I couldn't take it. I also had consistently recessed imaging (probably not to that degree), but while at first it was impressive, it made the music uninvolving to me, and I quickly grew tired of it. Now the presentation is much more distinguished and varied, with many shadings from immediate and in your face to tremendous spatial depth with a large acoustic.

Regarding the latter, I have especially a few choral recordings that are just stunning in that respect. My audiophile friends agree. Particularly when you listen in the dark, the sensation of being transported to that other, reverberant and very expansive, acoustic can be phenomenal.

 

[PeterA]

About 7 or 8 years ago I installed some products in a distant associate's house who had an otherwsie very nice middle-of-the-road system. We let it sit for a couple of months and then he informed me he could hear no difference. So I visited him to have a listen and retrieve the products. IMO, his system sounded far more musical than previously. Now his 2nd story listening room was maybe 20' x 28' and what I consider spatious and he had a nice pair of Avalon speakers with obviously plenty of room to breath. But the really incredible thing was the sound stage which for the most part was in his frickin' front yard. And I'm not talking just on the other side of the window but well into the front yard like maybe 10-15 feet. I'd never heard anything like it before or since. Just incredible. What was even more incredible was here I was having a wet dream experience and he couldn't hear a bloomin' thing. I knew he lacked listening skills but I was dumbfounded he could not hear this depth of soundstage. Anyway, we set up his old system and had a listen and flat as a pancake the soundstage collapsed to right between the speakers and he still could not hear a difference.

Was that front yard soundstage exaggerated? I dunno. Maybe all the planets just happened to be in alignment. I'd kill for that soundstage depth. That was also 7 - 8 years ago and I like to think my listening skills matured much since then. Shoot, in the end maybe my associate had the ability to discern / interpret what he heard and I didn't. But the point being is there exists a number of variables including listening skilll levels and perspectives to consider when faced with such a situation and many times we just can't explain it. But taken on its face and assuming everything you installed was genuine and matching, I just don't see how it's possible to have too much depth.

I have some trouble getting such depth from my system, which I would welcome for some large scale orchestral recordings that capture such information. I'm curious to know if you experienced this sense of extreme soundstage depth on all recordings, or just on some. And for instance, if a solo cellist or pianist was on a large stage, was the image of the cellist or pianist playing his instrument closer towards the front of the stage with the impression that he/she is on a large and deep stage, playing near the front? What happened to the sense of depth for say a jazz trio recorded in a studio or even small night club?

 

[PeterA]

That explains your bewilderment with my post. You are apparently not aware of the profound degree to which room acoustics can affect sound.

I agree with you, there cannot be "too much" detail. But spatial ambience is not the usual detail. -- In the context of my post, resolution was about spatial resolution.

First let me say that the specific problems in my room were evident to a larger degree than they might be elsewhere because of the relatively large distance from speaker drivers to front wall (wall behind speakers), which is 7 feet. Many systems have the speaker drivers only 2 to 3 feet from the front wall. If I move the speakers closer to the front wall, the soundstage becomes flatter. In connection with the speaker distance to the front wall, a too lively scoustic in the front end of the room (from speaker drivers to front wall) gave rise to problems.

There was a speaker and room setup manual by Thiel on the web (link deleted; I wish I had copied the file somewhere) that pointed out that many audiophile systems have a too recessed soundstage. The cause, they said, was a too lively front end of the room. This is confirmed by my experience.

To an acoustician, with whom I talked about other things, I mentioned in passing that I had a large absorbing panel 2 feet away from my front wall, and that I had put it there in order to bring images more forward. He understood immediately, it was not even a discussion.

In any case, I solved the problem with my room acoustics by making the front end more dead, while keeping the back end lively. Now I get natural imaging and the largest difference in spatial portrayal between recordings, making the reproduction transparent to the differences.

And no, there is nothing wrong with my electronics. Your suggestion came out of a lack of experience with room acoustics and the dramatic effect they can have on the sound.

Al, You mention that the soundstage depth was too much for you with the speakers far out from the wall and that when you moved the speakers further back, the soundstage became flatter. It sounds like you found the balance you like between soundstage depth and a more up front listening perspective by your judicious experimentation with room treatments. You kept the speakers far out from the front wall and added the large absorption panel 2' out from the front wall. And you write that you get all the spatial layering you like with this combination.

Have you tried to go back and experiment some more with speaker positioning front to back without the large absorption panel 2' out from the front wall now that you system components have basically all been replaced in the last year or so?

I am also wondering in more general terms, not related to Al's specific system which I have heard many times, about the different types of spatial information. I think a distinction should be made between image layering, size and location from other spatial information like the size and shape and character of the recording venue. The latter type of information seems a bit more difficult to reproduce. It also may be the type of low level information that contributes to things like timbral accuracy. And I don't really know what about a system is responsible for what kind of spatial information or resolution, but I suspect that the more subtle venue ambiance stuff is lower level and requires a lower noise floor. It is also perhaps the first to disappear, as Stehno suggests, if overall system resolution, is challenged.

In my particular case, I found that over-dampening my gear, or using too much absorption in my room, contributed to a loss of this kind of low level information, and it resulted in a sound with starker contrasts, bolder gestures, and more excitement, but less nuanced, less resolving, less natural.

 

[microstrip]

(...) So from my perspective, I'd probably ask a few questions like, what's your idea of depth? (...)
About 7 or 8 years ago I installed some products in a distant associate's house who had an otherwsie very nice middle-of-the-road system. We let it sit for a couple of months and then he informed me he could hear no difference. So I visited him to have a listen and retrieve the products. IMO, his system sounded far more musical than previously. Now his 2nd story listening room was maybe 20' x 28' and what I consider spatious and he had a nice pair of Avalon speakers with obviously plenty of room to breath. But the really incredible thing was the sound stage which for the most part was in his frickin' front yard. And I'm not talking just on the other side of the window but well into the front yard like maybe 10-15 feet. I'd never heard anything like it before or since. Just incredible. What was even more incredible was here I was having a wet dream experience and he couldn't hear a bloomin' thing. I knew he lacked listening skills but I was dumbfounded he could not hear this depth of soundstage. Anyway, we set up his old system and had a listen and flat as a pancake the soundstage collapsed to right between the speakers and he still could not hear a difference. (...)

I praise a lot adequate depth and layering, and fortunately it is a strong point of the XLF speakers - when needed they recreate a very large and deep soundstage, with proper layering. However some of the best depth and layering I have listened was in a friend system using old SoundLabs A2x - the old flat panel model, unlike the A1's - and Jeff Rowland Model 5 playing Reference Recordings CD chamber music. The source was a Madrigal player and DAC. The soudstage was in his neighbor apartment, filling it all. Layering was exceptional, with an easiness that was really charming. Curiously, the usual Cantata Domino did not sound good in this system.

Sometime later I reproduced exactly the same system in my house, but never managed to get the same effect. But still keep the A2x - one of the bass panels needs refurbishment, easy to carry, but the thirty year old quarter of cylinder electrostatic tweeter still sounds and measures perfect!

Unless strongly manipulated using phase effects, localization in the stereo soundstage is essentially illusory - studies have shown that when people are asked to map a small orchestra in a recording they draw very different diagrams.

 

[Al M.]

Al, You mention that the soundstage depth was too much for you with the speakers far out from the wall and that when you moved the speakers further back, the soundstage became flatter. It sounds like you found the balance you like between soundstage depth and a more up front listening perspective by your judicious experimentation with room treatments. You kept the speakers far out from the front wall and added the large absorption panel 2' out from the front wall. And you write that you get all the spatial layering you like with this combination.

Have you tried to go back and experiment some more with speaker positioning front to back without the large absorption panel 2' out from the front wall now that you system components have basically all been replaced in the last year or so?

Peter, no I haven't. I should, but I have just been lazy and only listened to music. I also should finish the DeOxit treatment of my cables...I guess I am not sufficiently an audiophile .

 

[VLS]

Products with vanishing low distortion, lightening transients, and high s/can sound sterile. The problem with ss and digital.
Velvet black background is nonetheless desirable. We have to be careful how we achieve it.

I used to think that but no longer do: very few, if any, real recording have a complete absence of ambient sound - even if it’s just the musicians moving and rustling while playing. If anything, products with superlatively low distortion specs should reproduce such subtle cues well. Products (and formats) with lower SNR may sometimes supplant the actual background with their own, sometimes not wholly displeasing noise floor. But anything that eliminates the true background and replaces it with “blackness” would seem to be committing a particularly pernicious form of distortion and deviation from the truth.

 

[microstrip]

Peter, no I haven't. I should, but I have just been lazy and only listened to music. I also should finish the DeOxit treatment of my cables...I guess I am not sufficiently an audiophile .

Oh, you made me feel guilty - I have taken the DeOxid tube to my office to solve a persistent intermittence in a laboratory connector with great success and never finished the job in my system. DeOxid is really much better than any other contact cleaner I have tried!

 

[Al M.]

I actually found a negative mention in the audio literature of "black" or even "black velvet". It's not exactly in a high end magazine, but it is still about the high end. It is an article by Edward Rothstein in The New Republic, from 1985, entitled "The Myth of the CD and the Miracle of the LP" (reprint obtained courtesy of Ron Resnick).

The article gushes over the virtues of high end vinyl playback in a justified manner, and really makes a passionate case for the high end, worth a read. Yet it contains a number of the typical, irritating yet tragically funny, technical misunderstandings of how sampling in digital works and allegedly is insufficient. Probably accurately though it describes the not so great sound of CD in 1985 (emphasis added):

"In some cases they differences are shocking. A recording can be rich with detail and nuance, while the CD sounds musically raw and untamed, like a re-counting of the same musical event by someone with a strong voice but slightly bad hearing. Details are lost even though firmness of pitch and frequency response are heightened. In other cases the differences are more subtle. Out of the silent background of the CD can come some impressive sonic effects, which because of the silence become still more finely etched; the record may sacrifice that silence, but places the players in a real room rather than against a black velvet curtain."

***

The reason for the black background without ambient information in early CD replay was, to my knowledge, the poor low-level linearity of the DAC modules in the CD players, thus suppressing low-level spatial information. Of course nowadays you can get DACs with excellent linearity response.

Just yesterday I took off the cellophane wrap from a CD that I had obtained 25 years ago (don't ask me why it was unopened). It was Dutch soprano Elly Ameling singing Schubert songs, on a Philips "Silverline Classics" CD:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=3624

Of course that CD played flawlessly despite its age. Wonderful tone of female voice and piano, and tons of hall ambience -- I was listening in the dark and was relishing in the beauty.

 

[stehno]

That explains your bewilderment with my post. You are apparently not aware of the profound degree to which room acoustics can affect sound.

Al, it seem as though you've got a few quagmires going but I'm not bewildered by your post. On the other hand, I'm routinely bewildered why many put such emphasis toward the effects, e.g. room acoustic anomalies, remedies, etc, rather than the cause. Such a strategy is most always intensive, extensive, costly, and with very little return. It's far simpler, unsually much less costly, and far more rewarding dealing with the cause in perhaps every case and every industry.

I agree with you, there cannot be "too much" detail. But spatial ambience is not the usual detail. -- In the context of my post, resolution was about spatial resolution.

Not sure why spatial detail is any different, I mean it's all just detail, right? Up til now we or at least I've just been dealing with distortions induced at the electronics without real mention of mechanicals. The one thing that sets spatial detail apart is that the speaker, any speaker, has to have some breathing room to disperse its output. There's also the issue of musical bass and optiimal speaker placement. Even so, it's still all embedded in the recording and it's up to us to ensure as much of the 100% music info read and processed remains audible at the speaker. And the only way I know how to do that is by chisling away at the noise floor.

First let me say that the specific problems in my room were evident to a larger degree than they might be elsewhere because of the relatively large distance from speaker drivers to front wall (wall behind speakers), which is 7 feet. Many systems have the speaker drivers only 2 to 3 feet from the front wall. If I move the speakers closer to the front wall, the soundstage becomes flatter. In connection with the speaker distance to the front wall, a too lively scoustic in the front end of the room (from speaker drivers to front wall) gave rise to problems.

First too deep a soundstage and now too lively acoustics. Plus, just as with the deep soundstage, it's seems you're slicing and dicing the soundstage and acoustics into sections and I'm not understanding why. All too often in high-end audio we swallow camels and choke on gnats. I'm not saying you but we can all be guilty of that at times to some degree.

For example. Say you have a very reasonable straightforward playback system and very reasonable straightforward listening room and you perform an upgrade that improves the presentation's level of musicality. In a perfect world when dealing with fundamental principles, such gains should be theoretically across the board and impacting all the coveted sonic characteristics we cherish equally and across the entire spectrum - even though some seem more audibly apparent than others. This should be true in reality also. For the simply reason that even if one were to make a change with the intention of dealing with say just a harsh or grainy highs, if the upgrade is genuine or true, it does no such thing. Because every genuine upgrade is really just impacting the noise floor up or down.

When a playback system's signal processing noise floor heads south, every last characteristic across the entire frequency spectrum improves roughly the same amount across the board and vice versa when the noise floor heads north. Because the noise floor is universal and does not discriminate between sonic characteristics. Genuine distortion remedies are also universal as are their impacts. But that only stands true when dealing with the genuine cause - not its effects. If an improvement were isolated to only one or a handful of characteristics, my concern would be that there's more than meets the eye and somebody, perhaps the mfg'er is doing something he ought not be doing. And I've no doubt this happens routinely because the name of their game is to impress and sell product.

There was a speaker and room setup manual by Thiel on the web (link deleted; I wish I had copied the file somewhere) that pointed out that many audiophile systems have a too recessed soundstage. The cause, they said, was a too lively front end of the room. This is confirmed by my experience.

Even so, if the playback presentation is genuine (no hidden tricks???) and products and room relatively straighforward, how can it possibly be too lively? Gotta remember that 100% of our music info source is embedded within a given recording. Not more and not less. Detail equals 100% music info embedded in the recording. You already agreed one cannot have more than 100%. But what is spatial detail and lively detail. It's all just detail. More detail audible at the speaker simply means more musical, including more lively and more spatial presentation, more tonality, warmth, timbre, harmonics, bass, midrange, trebble, etc. It's our attempt to dissect this down into independent sectors that I find bewildering. There is such a thing as our getting in the way and crcumventing things. Might some mfg'ers design products to "favor" or "tilt" their design's presentation a certain way to appeal to some? You bet. Should we avoid purchasing certain products? You bet.

IOW, our playback systems can never legitimately reproduce more than 100% detail. And only in a perfect world can a playback system reproduce 100% of the detail and that's not happening neither. But every last one of our playback systems are not just keeping audible less than 100% detail some may not even be keeping audible half that. It's all up to the noise floor. And the same goes for too deep soundstages and too lively acoustics because it's all just detail and just universal.

To an acoustician, with whom I talked about other things, I mentioned in passing that I had a large absorbing panel 2 feet away from my front wall, and that I had put it there in order to bring images more forward. He understood immediately, it was not even a discussion.

And what's his real knowledge of high-end audio and of distortions plaguing every last playback system? And might he develop a different opinion if he knew that some of our playback systems make a high percentage of the music info inaudible at the speaker?

In any case, I solved the problem with my room acoustics by making the front end more dead, while keeping the back end lively. Now I get natural imaging and the largest difference in spatial portrayal between recordings, making the reproduction transparent to the differences.

I'm not understanding this last sentence. Can you explain? Especially spatial portrayal between recordings?

And no, there is nothing wrong with my electronics.

Actually, there's something very wrong with all of our electronics. One rather renowned component designer admitted a few years ago in another forum that every last one of his designs and all others' designs contained at least one serious and unknown flaw that even his professionally calibrated measuring instruments were of no beneift. Near as I can tell, that serious flaw begins the moment we press play and doesn't cease until we press stop.

Your suggestion came out of a lack of experience with room acoustics and the dramatic effect they can have on the sound.

I don't recall suggesting anything specific but you are correct as I'd rather spend my time dealing with causes rather than their effects. And if the concert or recording hall's acoustics exhibited during playback didn't completely overshadow my listening room's acoustic anomalies, I wouldn't hesitate to start addressing my room's acoustic anomalies.

 

[stehno]

I have some trouble getting such depth from my system, which I would welcome for some large scale orchestral recordings that capture such information. I'm curious to know if you experienced this sense of extreme soundstage depth on all recordings, or just on some. And for instance, if a solo cellist or pianist was on a large stage, was the image of the cellist or pianist playing his instrument closer towards the front of the stage with the impression that he/she is on a large and deep stage, playing near the front? What happened to the sense of depth for say a jazz trio recorded in a studio or even small night club?

As far as I know we all have trouble achieving that soundstage depth. I certainly haven't heard it before or since. Perhaps just a 1-in-amillion fluke.

I cannot recall what music I listened too at that friend's house but I'm pretty sure I brought my own so it most likely would have been some classical, oldies, and some Windham Hill instrumental software. The depth obviously varied a bit here and there but as I recall overall it was consistently very deep regardless of genre for the entire hour or so I listened. I think the front of that soundstage was just on the inside of the front wall. Also, I cannot recall placement of various instruments as that was a different time in my ears' life. Plus I was a little pre-occupied talking with this guy (a retired scientist) trying to point out what I was hearing but who obviously couldn't discern a bloomin' thing. Very frustrating time.

If you've not already tried, speaker placement is fairly critical as the woofer front centers should be brought out into the room at least 5.5ft to 7ft min. Also, as I recall, you have fairly high-powered amps so if your digital source has passive volume attentuator I highly recommend taking that for a spin as that may do wonders. Both for overall increased levels of musicality but also to recess the entire soundstage toward a more natural depth.

I realize loss of dynamics is always a concern and I swore years ago I'd never go with a passive pre. But that was before I acquired a pair of 575wpc amps. Now the entire performance is upon the soundstage where it belongs with my ears planted firmly in the audience where they belong. No more in-my-face initial attacks or electronics-induced jump factors and my dynamics are more natural and musical than ever but at a more natural distance. Primarily due to the high-powered amps and so long as I have them I've sworn for 6 years I'd never go back to an active gain stage.

If you don't have a digital source with a passive volume attentuator, I highly recommend auditioning one. My source is an OPPO 105d and though it may not seem like much aesthetically or on paper, once I invoked a few of its optons including the passive volume attenuator, it pretty much smoked my Esoteric UX-3SE which cost more than 6 times the cost of the OPPO and even included Esoteric's infamous VRDS transport that so many drooled over. Go figure.

Obviously, there's more to achieving a more natural soundstage depth but these could be excellent starters if you've not tried them and both might even be free.

 

[Blackmorec]

May be worth spending a little time discussing the formation and structure of the so-called hi-fi soundstage. Firstly, although it may sound like it does, the soundstage does not exist in the room...its exists entirely in your head. Soundwaves launched by speakers are partially spherical and uniform i.e all parts of the soundwave are identical so its physically impossible for a loudspeaker to create a soundstage. The soundstage is an illusion created by splitting a point source sound and playing them at different levels and times (phases) from 2 sources to create the illusion of position.

So your 2 loudspeakers enable your brain to create the illusion of position, based on accurately portraying level and phase of the split signal in relation to your 2 ears. The position of the loudspeakers depends entirely on the room and the design of the speakers themselves, Ported designs will require a different position to sealed or dipolar designs in order to achieve a balanced sound spectrum (amplitude vs wavelength).

Ideally positioned and with ancilliary equipment that preserves the audio clues your loudspeakers should produce a pattern of soundwaves from recordings that allow your brain to construct a soundstage with 3 dimensions (width, depth and height). Whether or not a soundstage is produced is a function of the loudspeakers and their position, the ancillary equipment AND the room. Why the room? Reflections that potentially mask and alter the critical amplitude and phase characteristics of the signal. The loudspeakers should not in anyway define the characteristics of the soundstage.....that’s the job of the recording.
When you play 5 diverse recordings, you should hear 5 diverse soundstages. Here’s a list of some of the soundstages you‘re likely to hear

• Left, centre, right with each instrument having its own defined soundfield (typically old jazz recordings)
• Completely enveloping soundfields with great depth, width and height, that have no relationship to the size and dimension of the listening room (typically modern, electronically orientated music or orchestral music recorded in large, reverberant venues)
• Centre focused sound-field with many instruments squashed together (typically made by relatively unskilled sound engineers), where instruments crowd one another spacially.
• Tunnel shaped, centre-focussed sound-field with good depth but very little lateral separation
• Wide, flat sound-field with lots of lateral separation but not a lot of depth
• Orchestral soundfield with good depth and lateral separation where you can point to the general direction of instruments and clearly hear which is further towards front or back relative to others.
• Solo sound-field where instrument and voice have good height differentiation but come from the same lateral position
• Solo soundfield where piano keyboards sound like they have 15’ wide keyboards or singer guitarists who can sing on one side of the room whilst playing guitar on the other.

All the above should be set in some sort of identifiable venue (assuming such information is on the recording) whose perceived size has absolutely nothing to do with the listening room’s dimensions.

When a recording transports you sonically to the venue in which is was recorded or to the space created by the sound engineer, then your system is working well. If the sound stage you hear stays pretty much the same for every recording then its an artefact of the system and you still have work to do. Of course you don’t know what’s on the recording but when what you hear is different for every recording and puts you in mind of a certain type and size of venue, you can be pretty sure your system is working well.

 

[tima]

I am also wondering in more general terms, not related to Al's specific system which I have heard many times, about the different types of spatial information. I think a distinction should be made between image layering, size and location from other spatial information like the size and shape and character of the recording venue. The latter type of information seems a bit more difficult to reproduce. It also may be the type of low level information that contributes to things like timbral accuracy. And I don't really know what about a system is responsible for what kind of spatial information or resolution, but I suspect that the more subtle venue ambiance stuff is lower level and requires a lower noise floor. ...

Certainly those distinctions can obtain in terms of our descriptions of what we hear or how our brain adjudicates what we hear in our 'mind's ear', where we may conjure visual and heard aural impressions as we listen to our stereos. I don't know if these distinctions come from different types of sonic information so much as they are the result of our own psycho-acoustic interpretation, which may be partially grounded in our experience of venues and performances.

I truly enjoy "seeing" the orchestra laid out before me in a hall while I listen to my stereo. In the live concert hall my experience is different somewhat to my stereo experience, though not entirely.

Of course in the hall I literally see the orchestra laid out before me, and I also have a pretty good idea how orchestras are laid out generally - which individuals and sections are positioned where. (Information I tap when listening at home.) But when I close my eyes in the live hall, I do not experience dimensional performers or hear rows of violinists or violin sections like I have 'heard' with certain equipment at home. I don't have much live hall experience of back and side wall reflections as I do at home.

What I do have in the live hall is a very strong sense of energy, energized air perhaps, within, around, and above the orchestra. That is very much a function of the size and shape of the venue. I have a strong sense of energy from what I'll loosely call the rhythm section - violas, cellos and basses whose sound often undergirds a piece of orchestral music. Imo, it is that sense of energy that is more difficult to replicate with a home stereo, though it is possible.

I assume detail resolution, signal timing and arrival timing have a big influence over our ability to parse what we hear into a coherent picture in our head about location, distance, dimensionality, venue, etc. So the things in our system that impact those are responsible. Sure speaker position, room reflectons, etc. and particularly I believe equipment has a huge effect - well, I know it does for me. With everything else remaining the same, switching out a linestage or phonostage can have a big impact on the psycho-acoustic balance or emphasis. I could rattle on about this stuff further, but will wait.

 

[Al M.]

Al, it seem as though you've got a few quagmires going but I'm not bewildered by your post. On the other hand, I'm routinely bewildered why many put such emphasis toward the effects, e.g. room acoustic anomalies, remedies, etc, rather than the cause. Such a strategy is most always intensive, extensive, costly, and with very little return. It's far simpler, unsually much less costly, and far more rewarding dealing with the cause in perhaps every case and every industry.



Not sure why spatial detail is any different, I mean it's all just detail, right? Up til now we or at least I've just been dealing with distortions induced at the electronics without real mention of mechanicals. The one thing that sets spatial detail apart is that the speaker, any speaker, has to have some breathing room to disperse its output. There's also the issue of musical bass and optiimal speaker placement. Even so, it's still all embedded in the recording and it's up to us to ensure as much of the 100% music info read and processed remains audible at the speaker. And the only way I know how to do that is by chisling away at the noise floor.



First too deep a soundstage and now too lively acoustics. Plus, just as with the deep soundstage, it's seems you're slicing and dicing the soundstage and acoustics into sections and I'm not understanding why. All too often in high-end audio we swallow camels and choke on gnats. I'm not saying you but we can all be guilty of that at times to some degree.

For example. Say you have a very reasonable straightforward playback system and very reasonable straightforward listening room and you perform an upgrade that improves the presentation's level of musicality. In a perfect world when dealing with fundamental principles, such gains should be theoretically across the board and impacting all the coveted sonic characteristics we cherish equally and across the entire spectrum - even though some seem more audibly apparent than others. This should be true in reality also. For the simply reason that even if one were to make a change with the intention of dealing with say just a harsh or grainy highs, if the upgrade is genuine or true, it does no such thing. Because every genuine upgrade is really just impacting the noise floor up or down.

When a playback system's signal processing noise floor heads south, every last characteristic across the entire frequency spectrum improves roughly the same amount across the board and vice versa when the noise floor heads north. Because the noise floor is universal and does not discriminate between sonic characteristics. Genuine distortion remedies are also universal as are their impacts. But that only stands true when dealing with the genuine cause - not its effects. If an improvement were isolated to only one or a handful of characteristics, my concern would be that there's more than meets the eye and somebody, perhaps the mfg'er is doing something he ought not be doing. And I've no doubt this happens routinely because the name of their game is to impress and sell product.



Even so, if the playback presentation is genuine (no hidden tricks???) and products and room relatively straighforward, how can it possibly be too lively? Gotta remember that 100% of our music info source is embedded within a given recording. Not more and not less. Detail equals 100% music info embedded in the recording. You already agreed one cannot have more than 100%. But what is spatial detail and lively detail. It's all just detail. More detail audible at the speaker simply means more musical, including more lively and more spatial presentation, more tonality, warmth, timbre, harmonics, bass, midrange, trebble, etc. It's our attempt to dissect this down into independent sectors that I find bewildering. There is such a thing as our getting in the way and crcumventing things. Might some mfg'ers design products to "favor" or "tilt" their design's presentation a certain way to appeal to some? You bet. Should we avoid purchasing certain products? You bet.

IOW, our playback systems can never legitimately reproduce more than 100% detail. And only in a perfect world can a playback system reproduce 100% of the detail and that's not happening neither. But every last one of our playback systems are not just keeping audible less than 100% detail some may not even be keeping audible half that. It's all up to the noise floor. And the same goes for too deep soundstages and too lively acoustics because it's all just detail and just universal.



And what's his real knowledge of high-end audio and of distortions plaguing every last playback system? And might he develop a different opinion if he knew that some of our playback systems make a high percentage of the music info inaudible at the speaker?



I'm not understanding this last sentence. Can you explain? Especially spatial portrayal between recordings?



Actually, there's something very wrong with all of our electronics. One rather renowned component designer admitted a few years ago in another forum that every last one of his designs and all others' designs contained at least one serious and unknown flaw that even his professionally calibrated measuring instruments were of no beneift. Near as I can tell, that serious flaw begins the moment we press play and doesn't cease until we press stop.



I don't recall suggesting anything specific but you are correct as I'd rather spend my time dealing with causes rather than their effects. And if the concert or recording hall's acoustics exhibited during playback didn't completely overshadow my listening room's acoustic anomalies, I wouldn't hesitate to start addressing my room's acoustic anomalies.

Your post is just another attempt at denying the pivotal role of room acoustics in the sound from the system. You can talk all you want about addressing 'causes' rather than 'effects', but it really doesn't matter. You just do anything to try to justify your untenable and ill-informed position. It is not worth my time.

And by the way, you should pay more attention. You reply to Peter A. with issues around digital, but Peter has a vinyl only playback system.

***

Blackmorec says it well when he points out the importance of the room, also for soundstage depth:

Ideally positioned and with ancilliary equipment that preserves the audio clues your loudspeakers should produce a pattern of soundwaves from recordings that allow your brain to construct a soundstage with 3 dimensions (width, depth and height). Whether or not a soundstage is produced is a function of the loudspeakers and their position, the ancillary equipment AND the room. Why the room? Reflections that potentially mask and alter the critical amplitude and phase characteristics of the signal.

 

[Al M.]

When a recording transports you sonically to the venue in which is was recorded or to the space created by the sound engineer, then your system is working well. If the sound stage you hear stays pretty much the same for every recording then its an artefact of the system and you still have work to do. Of course you don’t know what’s on the recording but when what you hear is different for every recording and puts you in mind of a certain type and size of venue, you can be pretty sure your system is working well.

Well said.

That is what I have worked on over the years and achieved to a satisfying degree.

As I said in an earlier post, my presentation varies greatly, from upfront and in your face to portrayal of great spatial depth in a large, reverberant acoustic, e.g., on some large choral music. And there are many gradations and layerings in between.

 

[Al M.]

As far as I know we all have trouble achieving that soundstage depth. I certainly haven't heard it before or since. Perhaps just a 1-in-amillion fluke.

I cannot recall what music I listened too at that friend's house but I'm pretty sure I brought my own so it most likely would have been some classical, oldies, and some Windham Hill instrumental software. The depth obviously varied a bit here and there but as I recall overall it was consistently very deep regardless of genre for the entire hour or so I listened. I think the front of that soundstage was just on the inside of the front wall.

This suggests a sameness to the presentation that shouldn't be there (see above).

There seem to have been room problems that caused this too consistent 'depth', regardless of recording and genre, probably not too dissimilar to the ones my room had and which I managed to overcome.

 

[PeterA]

As far as I know we all have trouble achieving that soundstage depth. I certainly haven't heard it before or since. Perhaps just a 1-in-amillion fluke.

If you've not already tried, speaker placement is fairly critical as the woofer front centers should be brought out into the room at least 5.5ft to 7ft min. Also, as I recall, you have fairly high-powered amps so if your digital source has passive volume attentuator I highly recommend taking that for a spin as that may do wonders. Both for overall increased levels of musicality but also to recess the entire soundstage toward a more natural depth.

I realize loss of dynamics is always a concern and I swore years ago I'd never go with a passive pre. But that was before I acquired a pair of 575wpc amps. Now the entire performance is upon the soundstage where it belongs with my ears planted firmly in the audience where they belong. No more in-my-face initial attacks or electronics-induced jump factors and my dynamics are more natural and musical than ever but at a more natural distance. Primarily due to the high-powered amps and so long as I have them I've sworn for 6 years I'd never go back to an active gain stage.

If you don't have a digital source with a passive volume attentuator, I highly recommend auditioning one. My source is an OPPO 105d and though it may not seem like much aesthetically or on paper, once I invoked a few of its optons including the passive volume attenuator, it pretty much smoked my Esoteric UX-3SE which cost more than 6 times the cost of the OPPO and even included Esoteric's infamous VRDS transport that so many drooled over. Go figure.

Obviously, there's more to achieving a more natural soundstage depth but these could be excellent starters if you've not tried them and both might even be free.

Stehno, I do not have a digital source and am quite happy with my active preamp. I do have fairly robust Pass amplifiers driving 90db sealed speakers. I have recently achieved a deeper soundstage than I ever thought possible in my room. My speakers are about 5'-6" in from the front wall and 4'-3" in from the side walls.

The improvements to the soundstage were done without changes to my gear (aside from a new cartridge) but rather, the removal of certain audiophile accessories, absorptive room acoustic treatments, and repositioning of my loudspeakers and eliminating toe-in. These changes have been positive and did not cost anything. IMO, gear matters, but set up matters a lot too, perhaps even more.

My room is small but adequate and I now have pretty good soundstage dimensions, presumably more representative of what is on my LPs. And on some recordings, the boundaries go beyond the dimensions of the room, particularly depth. Things could always improve, but I'm pretty satisfied at present.

 

[spiritofmusic]

I never hear a black background in real life. Concert halls always have some hubbub at the very least, and quite a bit of ambient murmur.

 

[stehno]

Your post is just another attempt at denying the pivotal role of room acoustics in the sound from the system. You can talk all you want about addressing 'causes' rather than 'effects', but it really doesn't matter. You just do anything to try to justify your untenable and ill-informed position. It is not worth my time.

And by the way, you should pay more attention. You reply to Peter A. with issues around digital, but Peter has a vinyl only playback system.

***

Blackmorec says it well when he points out the importance of the room, also for soundstage depth:

At least you didn't suggest that I'm still beating my wife. My overall point is, almost regardless of the symptom (including blackness), the cause is almost always the same - a tremendous lack of music info remaining audible at the speaker because of a much raised universal noise floor.

You are obviously free to focus on your room, your too deep soundstage, your too lively presentaition, and whatever other holes in the dike come your way. And I'll just continue my focus on the noise floor comprised of eletronics-induced distortions that determines how much music info remains audible at the speaker.

But it seems to me one strategy is rather complex and open-ended and one is not.

Sorry to hear you think my comments are not worth your time. Are you implying you prefer to receive input only from those who think as you?

 

[stehno]

Stehno, I do not have a digital source and am quite happy with my active preamp. I do have fairly robust Pass amplifiers driving 90db sealed speakers. I have recently achieved a deeper soundstage than I ever thought possible in my room. My speakers are about 5'-6" in from the front wall and 4'-3" in from the side walls.

The improvements to the soundstage were done without changes to my gear (aside from a new cartridge) but rather, the removal of certain audiophile accessories, absorptive room acoustic treatments, and repositioning of my loudspeakers and eliminating toe-in. These changes have been positive and did not cost anything. IMO, gear matters, but set up matters a lot too, perhaps even more.

My room is small but adequate and I now have pretty good soundstage dimensions, presumably more representative of what is on my LPs. And on some recordings, the boundaries go beyond the dimensions of the room, particularly depth. Things could always improve, but I'm pretty satisfied at present.

Sorry, Peter. Your earlier post sounded as though you were still struggling with a lack of soundstage depth. I also just assumed you had digital along with your analog source. But my suggestion of a passive pre- would still apply regardless of format and it was just to observe the potential difference if you were to try it.

 

[Al M.]

At least you didn't suggest that I'm still beating my wife. My overall point is, almost regardless of the symptom (including blackness), the cause is almost always the same - a tremendous lack of music info remaining audible at the speaker because of a much raised universal noise floor.

You are obviously free to focus on your room, your too deep soundstage, your too lively presentaition, and whatever other holes in the dike come your way. And I'll just continue my focus on the noise floor comprised of eletronics-induced distortions that determines how much music info remains audible at the speaker.

And I did/do BOTH!

BOTH are important. One is not at the exclusion of the other.

Sorry to hear you think my comments are not worth your time. Are you implying you prefer to receive input only from those who think as you?

I prefer input from people who are knowledgeable, and I have learned immensely from them over the years. And often I have had to adjust my thinking.

You may be very knowledgeable about electronics, but have displayed an ignorance of, and dismissal of the importance of, room acoustics that I happily can be without.