Is soundstage DEPTH a myth?

Soundstage depth is real if it’s in the recording to begin with.

AND - If many other things are aligned in your system and room acoustics

Much audio gear just does not image well, particularly speakers, in the true sense of imaging and depth. A properly time and phase aligned speaker not only sounds tonally correct but exhibits palpable imaging.

The biggest obstacle to attain "real life" palpable imaging will be your room acoustics and speaker placement.

I will tell you now, if you have no acoustic treatment going on just forget it, it just won’t happen. If you look at the very best recording studios in the world, they spend loads of money and design effort on acoustics going beyond the RFZ necessity. Once the room has a sufficient reflection free zone in the listening position (the wider the better) then you can start positioning the speakers for optimal soundstage and imaging. This of course is a bit of the chicken or the egg first situation. Acoustics going beyond the RFZ will help with later reflections supporting the ambience of recordings. This is called RT60 and is the length of time frequencies take to decay in a room. If a room is too dead (or dry), the RT60 will be too short and systems sound lifeless.

So you need the right balance in a playback room as well as the RFZ, and speaker positioning.

Many Dacs are also not great at imaging or creating a 3d soundstage, usually timing issues or jitter to blame. I am full digital with really great Dac’s at my disposal so I enjoy breathtaking soundstage and image depth.

Many audiophiles mistaken imaging with just the sense of space versus feeling like you’re actually at or in the venue. This perspective again depends on the recording itself.

I am both a dealer / custom room designer, and I’ve been designing & building AV rooms for 30 years now. 

audiobyditomasso.ca

The points in my previous comment fit still. A system can convey very well but "mono" certainly will not. You need at least a minimum of two point sources to create the sonic imagery. And it can be very convincing when all the proper requirements or elements are in place (as per my original post)

JohnK

You can say that everything audio is not real, that's not the point of this discussion.

Soundstage depth perception is completely real and best replicated with stereo mic pair recordings due to the phase / time arrival differences.

Our Binaural hearing is by design to locate sounds and judge their position and depth! 

However I've come across many individuals who seem to have little to no function in this area and cannot hear phase differences, perhaps you fit in the category?

And that's the science

I've had clients who can't even hear what 180 degrees out of phase is !

Now Now, be nice they say - LMAO

That was worth the wait 

Terraplane8bob - adds more truth which again so many misinterpret in their listening..

AND, things do get thinner and cooler sounding harmonically the further they are from us or recording perspective.

People should understand the recording process and how "audio" works before trying to be so subjective and discuss the merits of audio components. I’ve read both Mix magazine and The Journal of Audio Engineering for years as a hobbyist in audio before I became an active player and designing rooms.

AND: asctim brings up another issue I’ve had as both a hobbyist and dealer. There’s a lot of equipment that makes the imagery come closer, the Pro designers of audio recording gear call this "magification", I hate it, having owned large speaker systems all my life the last thing I need is imagery to be oversized. The same is true of the opposite effect but more rare. I also dislike "in your face recording", we don’t experience music that way in real life! Many jazz recordings tick me off with the vocalist practically swallowing the microphone, result, voice larger that life and sounding amplified due to proximity effect of the microphone.

Di-poles and Bi-polar speakers ADD to the original signal in an unrealistic way and everything you would listen to will be altered as it adds a bounced echo off the front wall. A passive echo effect tunable by the speaker distance from the front wall.

Oh and again, the less you toe your speaker in, the more you involve your room and create greater reflections. You can do this so much that you can create artificial ghost imaging which I’ve called "Sympathetic Reflections", an effect, not realism.

Dolby Atmos - Great effect and totally enjoyable with movies, electronic music or EDM, but I haven’t heard much natural music recorded realistically on it yet .....

If you get use to this, it’s akin to adding artificial flavor in everything you eat, a slippery slope in audio enjoyment i think ...

AND - Room treatment is absolutely necessary to achieve best audio performance and realism from any system.

Want to learn a little more, look up LiveLab McMaster University .ca