Is soundstage DEPTH a myth?

@toddalin  

 How did you get stereo in the recording? The mic. in the picture looks mono. It’s interesting to hear the original track over headphones and then compare it to you recording, which sounds more reverberant and brighter.

Our ears have no direct depth perception mechanism like our stereoscopic eyes do. Our brain can simply measure the convergence angle of our eyes for things up close. Once the convergence angle gets close enough to zero everything is just far away. That’s why the moon looks like it’s the same size and distance as the sun. Or maybe you can see that the sun is over 200 times the diameter of the moon just by looking. I can’t tell.

But there are definitely indirect ways for our ears to perceive depth, and the most obvious methods are reverberance and tone. There’s also another potential way of perceiving depth with sound and that is lateral shift as you move slightly. As with visual perception, things close will seem to move quickly relative to your motion, while things that are far away will seem to follow you along. A strange effect of the phantom center image when using just two speakers is that sounds that are panned hard to each speaker will tend to stay put, so as you move your head left or right you will get proportionally closer or further to the apparent sound from each speaker. On the other hand, center panned images  tend to follow your movement. If you move left, the center panned vocalist seems to follow you in that direction. This could conceivably create a sense of depth for some people, and may explain why they don’t like a center speaker for music. The center speaker will pin the vocalist to one specific location and that could make them seem closer. That’s a complaint I’ve heard and taken interest in because I am an oddball who absolutely LOVES a center speaker for 2 channel playback of music, but I try to commiserate with those who disagree with me. I really don’t care much about soundstage depth but I continue to perceive it on 2 channel recordings whether I’m just using 2 speakers or deriving a center channel.

Thanks for clarifying the use of the Nikon camera’s microphone. You had mentioned that but I didn’t make the connection to it also being the audio source. Is it the camera’s built-in mic. or a separate mic. you attached? I can hear the stereo separation.

I own that same Behringer DEQ2496 and it's calibrated microphone. It's been a useful tool over the last 15 years or so that I've owned it. Yes, you can't calibrate the tweeters at the same time unless you can somehow get the distance to each tweeter exact within about 1/8". That should get you up to about 10,000 Hz. Of course our ears are separated on our head so our ears really don't like two tweeters playing into both of them at the same time either. At least my ears don't care for it. 

@hypoman 

Visual is a huge part of discerning depth for me, and in general making sense of what I'm hearing. If I can see that I'm in a small room my brain will try to interpret whatever I hear in a way that can fit into that small space. David Greisinger had some binaural recordings on his website that he'd taken in a concert hall. I used his method to calibrate my headphones to my ears and then listened to the recordings. They seemed unremarkable until I also stared at the picture of the orchestra as taken from that seat. The effect was amazing. By looking at the picture I could interpret and make sense of the spacial cues in the recording and the sense of space and depth became very apparent. I really felt like I was there.

@cey 

Really good perception may not be the best thing for listening to recordings.  An ability to relax and suspend one's disbelief might be more helpful. Really good perception will just make it all too obvious that you are listening to 2 speakers that are hitting your head from just 2 specific directions, creating a bunch of weird phase and interference patterns that don't often occur in nature, and mixing the acoustics of a recording space with the acoustics of your listening space. This will all shout FAKE to anyone who's perceptual acuity can't relax a little. 

@cey 

Are you not merely defining people who enjoy high quality audio as more perceptive? If not, how do you know? 

I read that Paul Klipsch hired people to do blind testing, and found that some of them were very perceptive to subtle differences while others not so much. There was no correlation between their ability to hear and their interest in music or hifi. Appreciation is a different thing than perception. 

@rodman99999

Naysayers are on both sides in this argument. They also argue that it cannot be their imagination so they don’t care what a double blind test shows - that they can’t really hear what they’re perceiving. I don’t call it their imagination in those cases, but a confluence of senses coming together to produce an audible perception. My feeling is that if it works for them and they can afford it, enjoy! The whole idea is to trick our senses into perceiving something that isn't really happening. If we're not overly acute in our perceptions the trick is more likely to succeed. 

One thing I haven’t heard many complaints about are audio systems or components that over exaggerate depth effects. I do hear about them over exaggerating width from time to time.

Imagine a dac that makes instruments that should just be a little closer sound like they're right in your lap, while instruments that should just be 10 feet further back sound like they’re 300 feet further back. I’ll bet some people would get a kick out of that.