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From whence does Sound Stage come?

What drew me back to this hobby after dabbling in High School, was listening to a friend’s system, in a room over his garage filled with over-stuffed furniture, at least seven different amplifiers and twice that many speakers. What was new to me was a room literally filled with sound, and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I climbed over the furniture and put my ear to speaker after speaker, but I was never able to locate the source of the sound. It was a wonderful, awe-filled, experience.

Fast forward to the present. I have now built several systems, in different rooms, with different components. Sometimes I get a ‘sound stage’ where the speakers disappear, sometimes I don’t. I have been told that getting the speakers to disappear is all a matter of placement in the room: “Give me your room dimensions; and I’ll tell you where to place your speakers.” But I can tell you, some speakers disappear, and some speakers announce their presence with every note. I have had odd staging where a particular sound appeared un-naturally at the wrong place (like a cymbal hit at my feet); only to have the issue resolved to a more coherent shape with an upgrade to the analog output stage of the DAC. I have had a decent sound stage cast by a particular pair of speakers, only to have it destroyed with the use of a sub-par power amplifier. I’ve heard reviewers and designers talk about how their component offers sound stage depth as well as width (depth seems to be more difficult to achieve). And then there is the old canard about how tube amps present a ‘halo graphic’ sound stage. I can detail the equipment configurations that have I have put together that succeeded or failed at the goal of presenting a great sound stage, but I’m trying to ask a general question, I am not a bot, and I’m not seeking help with a particular configuration, just help on developing a strategy to tackle the issue of sound stage and imaging of instruments within it. 
I will say that the best sounding solutions I have developed thus far both involved a Schiit Yggdrasil (now at ‘Less-is-More) into a SS McIntosh C100 (circa 1992) and either a tube Rogue ‘Stereo 100’ or a SS McIntosh MC252 power amp powering either the Warfedale W70E or B&W 801 Matrix speakers. If I substitute different amps, speakers, preamp, or DAC, the pyramid crumbles and I start hearing two speakers again; I lose my ‘sound stage,’ which is really concerning (to me). Anyone with more than two years into this hobby is qualified to address this question. I need some help, I can’t just keep throwing equipment (and money) at this issue. Any ideas?

128x128oldrooney

Showing 1 response by asctim

asctim
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@oldrooney

Have you had other people over to listen to see if they hear the same things you do from the various component changes? This is an area I’m interested in. It’s not clear why a change in a DAC or amplifier would have a perceptual effect on the soundstage, and it’s not clear that it works the same for everybody in the same situation. Our ability to detect the direction and distance of sound seems to be somewhat of a contextual expectation effect. So a subtle tonal shift can be interpreted as just bad tone, or as good tone coming from a different direction. I’ve had this effect flip on me right in the middle of listening to something. A loud noise from nearby can re-set my aural perspective and suddenly the stereo sound field collapses AND the tone sounds funny.

One thing that’s undeniable about 2 channel or even multichannel audio is that it is filled with crosstalk anomalies that you don’t experience from real instruments playing in different positions in space. In the real case, there’s always a consistent way the sound from each instrument hits your head from that direction. So as you turn your head or move around the room, they stay where they are, and everything is easy for your ears and brain to interpret and make sense of. When you start dealing with phantom images, sounds that are supposed to seem like they’re coming from a different direction than they actually are, there are inevitably inconsistencies that the brain/ear system has to interpret. There’s no guarantee that we’re all going to interpret them in a way that sounds good to us. But there may be ways to make it a lot more stable and reliable so that we’ll get the experience we expect and want practically all the time.

I’ve gone to up-mixing 2 channel audio to 3 speakers myself, using a simple crosstalk reduction scheme with all 3 speakers fairly close together. This started off as an experiment but it’s now been going for close to a year now and I’m remaining extremely satisfied with how easily it lets the speakers disappear to create a nice wide soundstage with depth, stability, and perceptually nice tone for me.

I’m finding that being perceptually properly oriented to your system is at least as important as the quality of the components and the listening room acoustics. Quality components and good room acoustics I think do help with maintaining proper orientation in terms of the sound stage. I think some listening arrangements are easier to aurally adapt to and stay oriented to, so the requirement for equipment quality goes down in terms of maintaining a sound stage, although you still can hear improvements in other areas such as dynamics, tonal purity, etc. from using better components.

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