What is "Sound Stage?"
- Thread starter Phelonious Ponk
- Start date
As a special service to members of the forum I am linking to an excellent resolution oversized photograph showing REG's listening room, where he checks speakers.
http://www.regonaudio.com/Listening room.jpg
I am curious as to how you can use (1) "Height illusion" and (2) "Height I believe is not really recorded in stereo, except via reflection patterns and tonal balance cues."
To prove your case?
Tonal balance cues is precisely what we have been mentioning - reflection patters is more of a canard, hard to prove. And your strange comparison of records with different height-cues in them would probably be served by you checking the SPL on those.
What a glorious listening room, eh?
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Soundproof-I don’t know what to say to people like you who claim they understand the reasons why we hear height information in recordings and yet still want to proclaim it really isn’t there. You can’t have it both ways. No one is slightly pregnant. The information that allows us to perceive height is either there or it isn’t. Your answer is room tone, reverb, and SPL. We can add those to Bill’s list of possible reasons for why we hear the height information that really isn’t there.
I’m not looking to prove a fallacy. People have already acknowledged that recordings contain information that results in our hearing height information. Your take is room tone, reverb, and SPL causes it. If that is what you believe, what fallacy are we talking about here? You can’t have a supposition to explain a phenomenon without believing in the phenomenon in the first place can you?
I’m not looking to prove a fallacy. People have already acknowledged that recordings contain information that results in our hearing height information. Your take is room tone, reverb, and SPL causes it. If that is what you believe, what fallacy are we talking about here? You can’t have a supposition to explain a phenomenon without believing in the phenomenon in the first place can you?
Here's a nice experiment you can try out.
Play the same recording several times. Start with low volume, and note the extension of your sound stage.
Then increase the volume in steps. Note carefully where your perceived sources in the sound stage are now, and what happened to the vertical dimension.
Keep doing that.
And there's the explanation behind the "different recordings have different heights" delivered earlier in the thread. Reverb and SPL give that result.
Ive been experimenting with 3 mm natural woolfelt around the tweeter and the midrange (actually covering 1/3 of the front) , nice, it gives a more relaxed /inviting soundstage , height included i am sorry , the frequency response stays the same .
This should suffice....
I think you could replace "I'm" in the first sentence with "we're," and it would still be accurate.
I think you could replace "I'm" in the first sentence with "we're," and it would still be accurate.
Bill,
As far as I see it now, the weak frequency and reverberation cues are intrinsic to the sound recording. May be some special conditions can enhance their capture - very few recordings seem to have them.
The arguments you repeat seem not the solution to those who have experience with Dynaudio speakers with reverse position tweeters, line planars and point like speakers. I have seen many speakers with mediums above the tweeter and they did not reverse the height information. BTW, most people who associate height with driver location refer to the vertical localization of the bass speaker, something that the psychoacoustics (spelled the way it is used by the Acoustical Society of America) do not feel possible.
I have now found that some people use similar arguments you use about the height illusion to class the depth illusion. Do you also believe that depth in stereo should be also considered an illusion? As far as I have experienced it also depends a lot on small clues - some amplifiers have a flat image, other enhance depth.
True Micro; some amps project a more 3D soundstage. Others are 2D flat.
Same with the loudspeakers. ...And as long as depth is in the recordings, of course.
Same with the loudspeakers. ...And as long as depth is in the recordings, of course.
Depth is a function of distance to the microphone. Proximity provides an absence of reverberation/reflections, and a fuller sound spectrum - increasing distance leads to a reduction of the fullness of the sound. Top/mid carries, bottom attenuates - reverb is introduced.
And we perceive this as depth, an illusion that will also function with just one speaker, because it is not dependent upon the joining of information from two. And it has absolutely no relevance to the height recreation you are desperately trying to justify.
Is Width also an illusion?
And if it is, then the full soundstage of music reproduction is a complete illusion?
Width in Mono?
* We should start adding back the center speaker to our front stereo soundstage,
so the illusion becomes more realistic.
...And perhaps use QSound recording technic to add more realistic ambiance as well.
And if it is, then the full soundstage of music reproduction is a complete illusion?
Width in Mono?
* We should start adding back the center speaker to our front stereo soundstage,
so the illusion becomes more realistic.
...And perhaps use QSound recording technic to add more realistic ambiance as well.
If you have two speakers next to one another, each delivering a discrete signal, respectively right and left - then the entire purpose of that set up is to reveal width, and the placement of sources along that left-right span.
And it follows that to achieve height, you need a comparable set up dedicated to that. But then there are illusions and grand delusions, and I agree with Bill's assessment of a number of participants here.
Are you making an 'allusion' Soundproof? 
* By the way I did add to my above post, and I was asking about width in Mono.
* By the way I did add to my above post, and I was asking about width in Mono.
Part of this argument carries with it the smell of human beings are the "masters of the universe" philosophy: if something occurs because "trained and expert" people have deliberately intended for it to occur then it's real, if the exact same thing occurs "accidentally" because the equipment quite capably transferred the necessary information through without conscious manipulation then it has little validity, little respectability. The genuineness of something is directly related to how deliberately a potent, all wise "master" decided to extend his mighty finger out upon the acoustic earth, it seems ...
Frank
Frank
How's that now?
I think I'll go watch a live music classical concert now;
I need a dose of realism in my life to counterbalance the illusion. :b
* Listening to Mono music from only one loudspeaker is quite revelatory indeed.
Because in real life (nature), how many speakers are there?
None, only one huge global bubble of sound in a 360 degree dimensional sphere.
Try to do that with only one, two, or three loudspeakers.
And then you'll have to add a lot of DSP manipulation ...
Me, I agree with Soundproof and Bill;
what we hear from only two speakers is not a complete reality.
It is very restricted by the full dispersion of sound and reflections,
and of course the limitations in the microphone's true audio capture.
Even from multiple microphones.
So, a 2-channel stereo soundstage is a recreation from a musical recording.
And all we hear; including width, depth, and even height are simply the effects of stereo sound redistribution in our own rooms, with our electronics, and from our two loudspeakers.
Our brain is the final link to the overall recreation.
I think I'll go watch a live music classical concert now;
I need a dose of realism in my life to counterbalance the illusion. :b
* Listening to Mono music from only one loudspeaker is quite revelatory indeed.
Because in real life (nature), how many speakers are there?
None, only one huge global bubble of sound in a 360 degree dimensional sphere.
Try to do that with only one, two, or three loudspeakers.
And then you'll have to add a lot of DSP manipulation ...
Me, I agree with Soundproof and Bill;
what we hear from only two speakers is not a complete reality.
It is very restricted by the full dispersion of sound and reflections,
and of course the limitations in the microphone's true audio capture.
Even from multiple microphones.
So, a 2-channel stereo soundstage is a recreation from a musical recording.
And all we hear; including width, depth, and even height are simply the effects of stereo sound redistribution in our own rooms, with our electronics, and from our two loudspeakers.
Our brain is the final link to the overall recreation.
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