do you get any front to back soundstage?

I listen to classical concerts almost exclusively.

It is added. That is part of the job of the mixing engineer

Not in my world.

If you find soundstage helps your enjoyment fine but when I sit with my eyes shut in the RFH or Glyndebourne or whereever, depth of soundstage is not obvious. So I would say it perhaps exists but not as markedly as it does on certain recordings.

Take for example Britten's War Requiem. Dring the Dies Irae there is a fanfare that is thrown around between the trumpets, horns, trombones & tuba. On stage these instruments are firmly at the back of the stage to the left. On the recording I have they appear there as well until the fanfare, then one by one they play at the front of the orchestra dead centre. Is that natural or manufactured? Did they somehow run to the front of the stage to play or di the engineer remix the instruments? To me it ain't natural

 

Soundstage (in terms it's being described here) is not meant as a facsimile of a live event; there are live recordings for this. It's a misleading term probably coined by hi-fi hacks. 'Production values' or something similar would be more accurate.

You can't turn off the physiological response of the brain/ear to localise spatial auditory information; you can press the button that says mono.

 

One other thing. I get annoyed when drums are played off to one side, or the most annoying thing on earth, band members placed accordingly but the piano with the low notes channel left through to high notes channel right.


Grrr.

Perhaps I would be better off with mono.

 

Good point. The primary advantage of Stereo over Mono is the ability to seperate individual sounds making it easier to hear into the music and make sense of it's complexity.

Being able to seperate sounds in three dimensions makes this task an aweful lot easier.

 

My great uncle had a 15†Tannoy co-axial driver in a brick built enclosure across the angles of one corner as part of a system that pre-dated stereophonics. It sounded (from what I remember) very good!

Also listening in mono - with two loudspeakers reproducing the same signal - Precendence effect causes the brain to effectively ignore one of the loudspeakers.

 

It was irrelevant because toe-in is not mandated by 'the stereo equations', it was incoherent because it's not clear what normal you are seting the speakers up at. It's obviously wrong because stereo obviously works with other than 30 degree angles between listener and speakers and with other than 30 degrees of toe.

Do you have an online reference for 'the stereo equations'?

Paul

 

So why is there a good central image listening to mono on a stereo?

Paul

 

Well, yes it most certainly does, actually. But not according to the internet experts & hi-fi magazines. My Olive Naim pre & CDP "image" just as well as anything else.

But I can't really be bothered to argue with you any more. You'll just have to take my word for it.

 

This is a sure sign of an avid hi-fi magazine consumer. It's obviously nonsense.

 

Chrispa...I could not have said it better myself !

Garyi....if thats what your hearing may be there's a fault with the setup of your system, with out actually coming an having a listen .....are you within a 70 miles of me [Nottingham] Sounds like there something a miss.

 

As to the pathetic thread .....I did it, I was not the only listener in the room to do it.

What you say about sound is correct to a point ...do you understand nodes and anti nodes ? Thes are fixed points in space where sound can be cancelled or amplified by phase differences. So these produce the effect is of sound stopping and starting at various points.

 

I'd just assumed they meant that as an expression as in they could almost do it, not they actually could which as you say is wrong

 

Toe in IS mandated by the stereo equations. Not absolutely but firing your tweeters parallel at the back wall is not stereo unless you have some very odd dispertion speakers. To anyone who knows what stereo is it is not incoherent because the normal is the imaginary line extending out from the listener's nose when seated equidistant between the speakers facing towards them. Its not wrong because stereo doesn't work properly outside 30 degrees which isn't at all hard to hear as the image shifts when you move about. The image doesn't collapse when you move about or are at other angles but it doesn't work properly and things become vague, as Stereo Mic posted, which is defined in the basic stereo principles. Try sticking your speakers at 45 degrees to normal, like Quadraphonics and find out how well that doesn't work.
I'd assumed you would be familiar with the fundamentals of stereo as you feel it necessary to argue every point. Theres plenty of publications on it.

 

If you listening to two loudspeakers each producing the same signal at a listening position that is equidistant such that sounds from each loudspeaker have arrival times to the left and right ears of within about 50ms of each other then a central image would be formed.

If however the signal or sounds from one loudspeaker lags behind the other – arriving about 50ms later because the listening position is not equidistant – then this loudspeaker is not heard despite both loudspeakers producing sounds of identical intensities or amplitude.

Do a Google for Precedence or Haas Effect Paul.

 

Depends where you sit. I'm lucky enough to often have opportunities during rehearsals to be able to wander around and sit in different places in the auditorium (primarily Bridgewater Hall), and you're right, in most of the auditorium there is limited spatial effect. But find the best seats and the effect is glorious.

Agreed.

So, the ability to perceive depth, and therfore the ability of the system to recreate these depth cues, is natural,

..whereas the engineer magically transporting instrument around the mix isn't natural

I think we might be agreed

 

Surprisingly, I've heard some good stereo images from speakers arranged like that (but not depth)

Agreed. Tried it before

 

Strangely, my system seems to do height, but it does depend very much on toe in...
Sometimes I get sounds apparantly coming from higher than the ceiling, depending of course on the recording. A m8 of mine, who's a Beeb dubbing mixer remarked on the obvious height info, and how it shouldn't really be there.
It's probably due to having very low ceilings, with a large inglenook fireplace next to the left speaker, and thick stone walls interspersed with lats and lime plaster divisions causing bizzarre multiple reflections.
Who needs room treatments when you've got an old house!

 

Thats what I was getting at, it doesn't completely not work but your loosing a load of stereo info by doing it, its not stereo by the technical definition

 

So Naim don't make stereo speakers? I think they'll be suprised to learn that.