Through my audiophile journey, here is what I learned so I would like to share with the folks here. Right or wrong we can discuss and learn from each other more.
As most people started stereo sound system, we buy a pair of speakers and put into the listening room to check the left channel and right channel then confirm both channel play together to get the perceived center channel sound. If the center sounds right then we are done for the setup.
Now this is actually not sufficient to setup your speakers properly. To get to the next level, you shall find the 9 points wide listening test tone. This unique test tone will start from left and move to the right in 9 different sounding locations from your stereo speakers. The #1 sound shall be outside of your left speaker to be further left, #2~4 shall be between #1 and #5 on your left speaker side, #5 shall be right on the center between your two speakers, #6~8 shall be between #5 and #9 on your right speaker side, #9 sound shall be outside of your right speaker to be further right.
The wider these 9 sounding tones spreading out the better your speakers placement is. The more evenly distributed for these 9 test tones across the range the better your speakers placement is. When this is done, your speakers will disappear for stereo music and you will get much better sound stage that the audiophile is talking about. You do not need very expensive speakers to achieve this phenomenon. It is the magic of sound with your room reflection that is in play.
Now the key is to get your speakers placement right to hear these 9 sounding locations optimized. It will take some efforts to move around your speakers including adjusting your speakers angle for your listening position. While you are doing this adjustment using this 9 points test tone, you will be amazed how these 9 test tone sounding locations are moving around your speaker. This is the result of the sound wave and its reflection from your listening room and surrounding environment such as your furnitures and room shape. If your speakers angle or distance from the side wall is not perfect for your room, you will hear some test tones coming out in not that ideal location. This basically will affect your music listening perception especially the sound stage.
How far your speakers shall be from your front wall? This is more speaker design dependent issue. You shall also find the test tone to test the sound depth. But my experience is that this is more related to your bass sounding effect rather than using the test tone. So play more music and fine tune your speakers placement to get your idea listening experience is good enough.
With this experience, you will have more sense on the sound wave and its phase impact as that is all it matters for the room reflection.
Imaging is based on the balance of the stereo speaker channels accuracy along with the room reflection impacts.
Staging can be affected from stereo channels phase shift and volume difference as well as room reflection impacts.
Holographic is also a function of phase shift as out of phase sound can be perceived as much wider sound stage.
Nonlinear characteristics from tube is likely affect the phase so is why sometimes it sounds more holographic than solid state amps.
Phase shift is frequency dependent so it depends on the transistor or tube characteristics along with the amp circuits implementation it may sound with different sound staging and holographic effects.
Speakers placement has the major effect as reflection from the room side wall has more impact for sound phase shift and volume balance.
Room shape and furniture placements are all affecting the sound as they cause sound phase shifting and volume degradation. This is why people hear different sound even using the exact same setup, let alone each case could use different combination of equipments.
So called equipment synergy is another way for phase adjustment besides the impedance matching, etc.
Your speaker typically has the most wild phase impact besides the room itself. Just look at one of the speaker resistance and its phase plot you can see what this mean. Your power amp will have to deal with this wild inductive or capacitive load at different frequency so different power amp could behave differently for different speakers.
Different cable is affecting its inductance and capacitance which could cause different phase shifting for different frequency. This is very likely why audiophile claims they can hear the sonic impact with different cables along with certain equipments. This is also why you have to try them till you find the perfect synergy of them.
Jitter by nature is a phase shifting effect from timing perspective in the digital world.
Can you hear all these impact and whether you care to chase it will determine if you are an audiophile or just music enthusiast :-) Happy listening!
