Soundstage Reproduction and Scale: Does Speaker Size Matter?

[Jono]

I have owned most types of speakers.After many years I think I have come to prefer wide baffle point source but that is probably more of a reflection of the sort of music I listen to-smaller scale acoustic music mostly.
I have never heard a wide baffle line source though.That could be interesting.Or really bad!

 

[morricab]

Couldn't disagree more.

Electronics are important but not as much as the matching of speakers to room - by a big margin. Cables, particularly power cables make very small differences. I use regular Belden 19364 and I defy any more costly cable to improve the sound from a good audio system. How can they - what's the physics?

I didn't say the speaker/room interface is unimportant but you are wrong about what makes a bigger difference.

You have to realize that ALL the spatial information you will get from a particular recording is on the recording. Anything that impedes the delivery of that information will significantly degrade the ability of the speaker to reproduce that information and therefore it will not be conveyed in its entirety. Cables make a huge difference in the transmission of information. The cleanliness or dirtiness of power has a huge effect on sound as an amplifier is little more than a modulator of that power coming in. Haven't you experienced the day/night effect with your system? When power consumption is very high around you the sound gets flatter, dirtier and less interesting and then late night listening can be a revelation by comparison. This is mitigated with things like good power cables, power filters/regenrators and even battery (Like Stromtank as an expensive example. Living Voice was year on year the best sound in Munich and particularly when they came with a full battery system to make their own power rather than use the power at the conference center.

I experienced this night and day difference in Munich one year. I was in the Cessaro/KR Audio room (I was a KR Audio dealer at that time) and the room the whole show was sounding rather "meh". I was sitting there on Saturday evening chatting with someone when suddenly the sound in the room FINALLY grabbed my attention. I asked the guy to stop and I sat there amazed at the sound that was now coming from this system that was "meh" a mere few minutes before. Suddenly the harshness in the highs was gone, bass was fuller and the soundstage expanded greatly in all directions but particularly the depth and image 3d and solidity improved drastically. What had changed? Well, it was after 18:00 and most of the other exhibitors had shut down their systems for the evening, so it seemed pretty clear that the power had improved significantly and as a result the sound quality took a leap forward. I will also tell you that prior to that epiphany I thought like you, how can power, or the delivery of that power matter.

Since, i have seen this effect over and over. We did a show in 2017 where we brought a big PS Audio regenerator and the soundstage was night and day better than without it. We were using large speakers in a small room, BTW, normally people would tell you that you can't get a good soundstage in such a setup but we did and the clean power was a big factor.

I have done similar things with good SET amps vs. SS or Class D (like Devialet), where the soundstage went from deep and wide to stuck to the speakers and flat. Same for DACs and other sources. This was mostly in rooms that many would have thought its not possible to get good soundstage because of the speaker/room interaction but they were wrong.

Once that sound is out in the room, the room will modify it but not much of that information will then be destroyed on the way to your ears.

 

[morricab]

Certainly soudstage and scale of a stereo system can be said to depend exclusivelly on the impulse response and dispersion pattern of the loudspeakers and the properties of boundaries of the envoironment they sit in.
I can't conceive of electronics so poorly performant they would dramatically affect the spatial presentation of an otherwise good setup. I can imagine electronics affecting other aspects of the presentation, more related to the spectral balance part: tonality, detail, ambiance retreival, clarity, distortion profile. But something that would introduce the necessary phase shifts required to colapse the spatial presentation would be beyond deficient.

How can you say that it is exclusively the impulse and dispersion of the speakers when the actual spatial information is encoded in the recording? What our brains perceive as space has everything to do with A) how well space perception cues in real life were captured on that recording and B) how unimpeded that information retrieval is from the recording.

The speaker can indeed impede and modify this information but if all that information is not making it to the speaker then it will never be able to reproduce it.

That you can't conceive something is far from making it a fact. MOST electronics get it wrong at least to a significant degree.

It is not about phase shifts it is about information retrieval and impediments to that retrieval. Power and signal transmission plays a critical role in this as does the quality of the electronics.

I suspect you are not even aware of the degrees of difference is spatial representation possibilities or you would not have such a purely mechanical conception of what makes soundstage and imaging.

 

[morricab]

Certainly soudstage and scale of a stereo system can be said to depend exclusivelly on the impulse response and dispersion pattern of the loudspeakers and the properties of boundaries of the envoironment they sit in.
I can't conceive of electronics so poorly performant they would dramatically affect the spatial presentation of an otherwise good setup. I can imagine electronics affecting other aspects of the presentation, more related to the spectral balance part: tonality, detail, ambiance retreival, clarity, distortion profile. But something that would introduce the necessary phase shifts required to colapse the spatial presentation would be beyond deficient.

BTW, nice looking speaker designs...given that you would want to drive those with a SET or maybe an OTL amp, I am a bit surprised by your comment about the exclusivity of soundstage and scale being the domain of the loudspeaker...surely you have heard the radical difference between amp types in soundstage with your design? However, you are a speaker designer...so it's got to be the speaker...right?

 

[morricab]

In the case of using the same two systems and placing them in two different rooms you'll get different results, even in two different placements in the same room you'll get different results.

All the manipulations on the signal are done by the room, be it the walls, the ceiling, the materials or the devil knows what.

The room performs hundreds of manipulations on the sound at any given moment. the room chews and stirs the sound and makes it sound completely different everywhere.

Never said it won't have an impact but with really good electronics, power and cabling you will still get a good semblance of the recorded space in most setups. The same can't be said of a good speaker in a good room with crappy signal generation behind them.

 

[tima]

I'll put this psychoacoustic baby back together and say it all needs to come together: Speakers, Room and Electronics. And you don't need dsp to do it, just careful matching for a balanced, natural result. Imo, ambient detail retrieval from a phonostage coupled with a linestage and amplifiers, and I suppose cables too, that do not lose or mess with that detail are important to reproduce the recording context. Optimized speaker-placement-room-interaction is an equal contributor to representing the venue. I want to have a sense of that context - it should differ from record to record.

 

[PeterA]

I'll put this psychoacoustic baby back together and say it all needs to come together: Speakers, Room and Electronics. And you don't need dsp to do it, just careful matching for a balanced, natural result. Imo, ambient detail retrieval from a phonostage coupled with a linestage and amplifiers, and I suppose cables too, that do not lose or mess with that detail are important to reproduce the recording context. Optimized speaker-placement-room-interaction is an equal contributor to representing the venue. I want to have a sense of that context - it should differ from record to record.

I agree Tim. And it all starts with retrieving the information in the first place and what is on the recording. It must first be captured, then retrieved by the cartridge/arm/ turntable. The rest of the system should then not corrupt that information. Set up and choices are thus essential. Everything plays a role. It is difficult to identify a hierarchy but easy to understand what is necessary.

 

[RCanelas]

How can you say that it is exclusively the impulse and dispersion of the speakers when the actual spatial information is encoded in the recording? What our brains perceive as space has everything to do with A) how well space perception cues in real life were captured on that recording and B) how unimpeded that information retrieval is from the recording.

The speaker can indeed impede and modify this information but if all that information is not making it to the speaker then it will never be able to reproduce it.

To be honest, I was mostly mirroring your assertion style to prompt a nice discussion, I could have done it better, mea culpa.

To keep things rolling:
a) is a given, if it is not in the recording it either never there to begin with or was lost forever.
b) our opinion and experiences might vary, and that's ok. Mea culpa because soundstage reproduction obviously isn't simply a function of the characteristics of the loudspeaker/room system, no question the upstream feeding into that is fundamental as you state. I'll grant that power and signal transmission (I'm not sure what you mean by this, ambiguous term) are fundamental and there are more ways than one to ruin a good presentation with those.

That you can't conceive something is far from making it a fact. MOST electronics get it wrong at least to a significant degree.

It is not about phase shifts it is about information retrieval and impediments to that retrieval. Power and signal transmission plays a critical role in this as does the quality of the electronics.

I suspect you are not even aware of the degrees of difference is spatial representation possibilities or you would not have such a purely mechanical conception of what makes soundstage and imaging.

This is where we seem to have the bulk of our differences. I haven't experienced any significant collapse of the soundstage and scale of a reproduction with deficient power or otherwise normally functioning electronics, especially at the level we are discussing in WBF. They are clearly important and differences are there and discussable, but I can't say that soundstage specifically was dramatically changed, other differences are much more salient to me and would show much sooner in other forms. The times I did notice an obvious difference there was clearly a phase problem and it was quickly corrected.

If I seem to have a mechanistic view on soundstage and imaging, well, that's because I do. As an engineer and a scientist I can't help but decompose the problem and apply all I known at any given time to model the issue, trying to extract testable conclusions along the way. I would argue you have a mechanistic approach as well, since you have your conceptual model of how it works as well, it is not black magic or the outcome of chance. Our models simply have different weights to different variables, but the variables seem the same (I would argue we have a very coincident view on these things from what I read in your posts, apart from hair splitting such as this). I currently place almost all of the weight on a broad notion of the dispersion pattern, i.e., control of directivity, diffraction and refraction, impulse response, phase. Without these aligned in specific ways, any hope of fulfilling any promises of stereo imaging reproduction is lost, no matter what you do upstream.
As for scale I tend to experience more finesse with low excursion large displacement areas vs more domestic sizes but with higher excursion. I'm sure I'm entangling that with the usual difference in sensitivity as well, but it is hard not to.

As an example, Stavros with Aries Cerat is a master at manipulating these concepts. I would consider their current loudspeakers unassailable from a soundstage/imaging/scale perspective, mostly immune (within reason) to the upstream feeding them in their capacity to hang in space a performance.

TLDR: I agree the upstream system of the loudspeakers/room is fundamental in soundstage, imaging and scale, but I regard the large (by far) contribution to these specific aspects of reproduction comes from the speaker/room system. To the point it would be difficult to mess up a good speaker/room combo with bad electronics, but impossible to uplift supreme electronics with a bad speaker/room interface, again, regarding only imaging, scale and soundstage.

 

[DasguteOhr]

If you want to take the listening room out of the equation so that it has little impact. it is only possible if the loudspeakers are operated in the near field. that is, the loudspeakers are further apart in width than the distance between the loudspeaker and the listening position. the speakers are strongly angled and aimed at the ear. The distance between the speaker and any reflecting wall is greater than the listening distance.
This greatly prevents the stimulation of room modes (increase in sound pressure at certain frequencies.) I don't listen like this at home, but it works very well. i have dipole speakers that sound better when they work on room influence.

 

[morricab]

To be honest, I was mostly mirroring your assertion style to prompt a nice discussion, I could have done it better, mea culpa.

To keep things rolling:
a) is a given, if it is not in the recording it either never there to begin with or was lost forever.
b) our opinion and experiences might vary, and that's ok. Mea culpa because soundstage reproduction obviously isn't simply a function of the characteristics of the loudspeaker/room system, no question the upstream feeding into that is fundamental as you state. I'll grant that power and signal transmission (I'm not sure what you mean by this, ambiguous term) are fundamental and there are more ways than one to ruin a good presentation with those.



This is where we seem to have the bulk of our differences. I haven't experienced any significant collapse of the soundstage and scale of a reproduction with deficient power or otherwise normally functioning electronics, especially at the level we are discussing in WBF. They are clearly important and differences are there and discussable, but I can't say that soundstage specifically was dramatically changed, other differences are much more salient to me and would show much sooner in other forms. The times I did notice an obvious difference there was clearly a phase problem and it was quickly corrected.

If I seem to have a mechanistic view on soundstage and imaging, well, that's because I do. As an engineer and a scientist I can't help but decompose the problem and apply all I known at any given time to model the issue, trying to extract testable conclusions along the way. I would argue you have a mechanistic approach as well, since you have your conceptual model of how it works as well, it is not black magic or the outcome of chance. Our models simply have different weights to different variables, but the variables seem the same (I would argue we have a very coincident view on these things from what I read in your posts, apart from hair splitting such as this). I currently place almost all of the weight on a broad notion of the dispersion pattern, i.e., control of directivity, diffraction and refraction, impulse response, phase. Without these aligned in specific ways, any hope of fulfilling any promises of stereo imaging reproduction is lost, no matter what you do upstream.
As for scale I tend to experience more finesse with low excursion large displacement areas vs more domestic sizes but with higher excursion. I'm sure I'm entangling that with the usual difference in sensitivity as well, but it is hard not to.

As an example, Stavros with Aries Cerat is a master at manipulating these concepts. I would consider their current loudspeakers unassailable from a soundstage/imaging/scale perspective, mostly immune (within reason) to the upstream feeding them in their capacity to hang in space a performance.

TLDR: I agree the upstream system of the loudspeakers/room is fundamental in soundstage, imaging and scale, but I regard the large (by far) contribution to these specific aspects of reproduction comes from the speaker/room system. To the point it would be difficult to mess up a good speaker/room combo with bad electronics, but impossible to uplift supreme electronics with a bad speaker/room interface, again, regarding only imaging, scale and soundstage.

I can give you a very recent example I had of a soundstage degradation (total collapse is perhaps too strong).

A friend of mine has a Nagra Classic DAC (SS output) that he brought over to my place when he first got it. My system being all tube with SET amp, tube preamp and Tube output DAC does image dimensionality and soundstage depth quite well. We inserted the Nagra DAC and within seconds it was clear that image 3d essentially evaporated and now we had flat images upon a soundstage that, while not completely flat, was foreshortened by a significant amount. Was it unlistenable? No, of course not and if I had not already been for a long time immersed in a fully 3d soundfield I might not have even noticed it. But notice it I did with seconds of the music playing and once heard could not be unheard.

IMO, this was a dramatic difference in soundstage/imaging that I would not be able to live with. FWIW, the owner also heard it in contrast to my setup and sold the DAC as he was then dissatisfied.

You mean to tell me you have never experienced a dramatic difference between day and night listening sometimes? Maybe you have perfect power (or terrible power) at all hours so there is no change but at my place this can be drastic...in addition to the examples I gave in another post around power dependence at shows.

By mechanistic I meant that you are seeing the problem all in the speaker dispersion/phase and room reflections...these primarily mechanical waveform issues and the timing of those waveforms.

I have experimented heavily with ALL types of loudspeakers, conventional box, various horns and lots of planars (electrostatic, planar magnetic, etc.) and was able to get good imaging and soundstage out of most, although the best were probably the big full-range electrostats.

We can agree on the low excursion, sensitivity drivers as I have two systems, one with 97db and the other 99db sensitivities...both are back horn loaded two-way systems and I get very good soundstage from both...but it can be easily destroyed from poor gear choice.

As an Aries Cerat importer, I know the products well and that he was not satisfied with the state of electronics out there, which is why he designed his own to complement his speakers.

 

[Robh3606]

If you want to hear your sound stage collapse just adjust/change your toe in. With electronics can't say I have experienced anything quite as severe as placement issues in room where you can manipulate the sound stage with relatively small adjustments in speaker position.

Any electronics that can have effects that severe should be considered broken IMHO.

Rob

 

[Amir]

 

[Duke LeJeune]

Based on my auditioning experience I have found that I like tall loudspeakers, because I find that height contributes to realistic soundstage scale and a more authentic reproduction of the size and grandeur of a classical symphony orchestra. This is why I like tall systems like Evolution Acoustics MM7 and Rockport Arrakis and Wilson XVX and Gryphon Pendragon/Kodo and Von Schweikert Ultra 11 and YG Sonja XV, etc.

Imo there are two versions of "tall" in the speakers you mention: Mids-n-tweets at the top (Wilson and YG Acoustics), and full-on vertical symmetry (Evolution Acoustics, Rockport, Gryphon, and Von Schweikert). It looks to me tweeter height in the former is in the 56"-58" ballpark, and in the latter tweeter height looks more like 43-46" ballpark.

My preference is for the tweeter to be a little bit higher than seated ear height, but too much and I find it distracting, so I lean more towards the 43-46" range, at the most.

 

[DasguteOhr]

the ear level should actually be between the tweeter and the midrange because the human ear is most sensitive there at 2-6 kHz. that forgives only a few mistakes in this area. you can tell immediately if something is wrong. example spatial representation when the omnidirectional behavior of the loudspeaker is no longer correct because the angle has been exceeded.

 

[morricab]

the ear level should actually be between the tweeter and the midrange because the human ear is most sensitive there at 2-6 kHz. that forgives only a few mistakes in this area. you can tell immediately if something is wrong. example spatial representation when the omnidirectional behavior of the loudspeaker is no longer correct because the angle has been exceeded.

Depends on the crossover frequency and the lobing pattern, which is a complex mix of crossover design and driver diameter and spacing. If the main lobe tilts up then you may need the tweeter to be low (think Dynaudio Consequence) and if tilts down then I would need to be above the ear. The true D’Appolito has a flat broad main lobe which gives very smooth stable imaging.

 

[Robh3606]

the ear level should actually be between the tweeter and the midrange because the human ear is most sensitive there at 2-6 kHz. that forgives only a few mistakes in this area. you can tell immediately if something is wrong. example spatial representation when the omnidirectional behavior of the loudspeaker is no longer correct because the angle has been exceeded.

You should been on the recommended listening axis from the manufacturer. That's where the system has been voiced and will give you what the designer intended you to hear minus any room issues. The closer you are the more critical that becomes. If it's a large system you need to be at the minimum listening distance as well or you won't get good driver integration.

Rob

 

[DasguteOhr]

You should been on the recommended listening axis from the manufacturer. That's where the system has been voiced and will give you what the designer intended you to hear minus any room issues. The closer you are the more critical that becomes. If it's a large system you need to be at the minimum listening distance as well or you won't get good driver integration.

Rob

I agree. see measurements of the vertical sound radiation, from +- 15° the frequency response is usually very wild, so you should always stay on the axis of the tweeter and midrange. The further away you sit, the bigger the window gets. The bass is uninteresting for the listening axis with most Lps from 100hz-250hz mono

 

[Folsom]

I agree. see measurements of the vertical sound radiation, from +- 15° the frequency response is usually very wild, so you should always stay on the axis of the tweeter and midrange. The further away you sit, the bigger the window gets. The bass is uninteresting for the listening axis with most Lps from 100hz-250hz mono

It’s usually wild on speakers that have the tweeter and mid really far apart. (Depending on some factors). Part of the magic in tuning Wilson’s I’m sure.

 

[DasguteOhr]

It’s usually wild on speakers that have the tweeter and mid really far apart. (Depending on some factors). Part of the magic in tuning Wilson’s I’m sure.

yes ...fresh dynamic sound in the midrange likes that too. is a similar phenomenon with set amps when they add more voltage to higher impedance part in the midrange. just sounds more alive. that why so many like wilson with set amps. Exsample alexandria

 

[Rensselaer]

no...size doesn't matter unless you want to reproduce live volume at a concert. that was the best performance i ever heard in munich. the small loudspeaker viewfinder can no longer be found acoustically at all the music filled the entire room simply gorgeous sound. that's why there are so many ingenious concepts that in my opinion it doesn't have to be big.

I absolutely love that song by “Dead Can Dance” I believe? The room has three turntables and many LP’s stacked on edge. Is that an LP playing or other? If one can obtain an analogue recording of that would someone say from where?