Looking for the next level in imaging...

My stereo system has great imaging. How great, you ask?

Well, one time I spilled my drink and I thought would get a cleaning bill from one of the performers.

Ba Da Bump.

But seriously folks...

Try playing Alice Cooper’s, "Blue Turk". It has a large, deep and spacey soundstage with instruments all around the stage front to back. Plus the guitar at the end goes progressively lower typically transitioning from the midrange to the bass driver.  See how well your speakers integrate that.  

And then play, "School’s Out" just because they played that song on the radio every spring through the 70’s.

On my stereo system I can hear singer‘s voices about 6 feet above the floor and their guitars about 3 feet or so above the floor.  Some Eric Clapton albums, for example are like that.  His unplugged album you can tell he is sitting down.  His voice is a little to the right and about 4 feet above the floor and his guitar about 3 feet.  I have heard several other albums/singers like that- even if they are to the left or right.  I don‘t know how my system does it.  And sometimes the voice is 3 or 4 feet above the floor with the instruments at the same level.  Chorale pieces are very exciting.  Voices in some recordings extend up to the ceiling and beyond the walls.

Different recordings have different imaging.

I agree that a lot of studio recordings are two dimensional. The images sound great but they all line up in one plane. There are exceptions like that Blue Turk, that I mentioned- really good recording from the early 1970s. Cowboy Junkies‘ Trinity Session was recorded with a stereo mic in a Church. It has a great spacious soundstage that sounds fantastic on modest and grand stereo systems.

I stream a lot of music on Qobuz now.  The music produced by the big name studios has much better dynamics and 3D soundstage vs. a lot of these lessor known studios.  Voices will move to the left or right and then back to center on some songs by less well known bands.  But I still love all the music, the large selection on Qobuz.  A number of gems to be found.

I appreciate live recordings more with my current speakers. The large spacious soundstage of live recordings come across as interesting and enjoyable.

Increasing detail and resolution will improve imaging.  Increased detail provides better imaging cues, more air around images.  An effective way to improve detail and resolution is to isolate the speakers and components.  The best way to isolate is by using springs.  

For decades my speakers sat on spikes.  I knew spikes improved the sound over the speakers resting directly on the floor.  Then a few years back I got the idea to build some spring platforms for my speakers.  The improvement in sound and detail blew me away.  Eventually I bought the Isoacoustic footers.  They sounded a bit better than my self made spring platforms and were also much easier to use.  Wrestling 130 lb speakers onto my self made spring platforms was a bit tricky.  I use Isoacoustic footers on my current 238 lb speakers and they are clearly superior to the factory supplied spikes.  The subwoofers in my HT setup now use my self made spring platforms and they sound great.  Having the subs isolated from the floor eliminates all muddiness in the bass.

With that success I tried isolating my components with springs.  I found that it is better to isolate the shelves with the springs vs. putting the components directly on the springs.  Isolate the shelves and then place the components on those shelves and use your damping of choice between the component and shelf.  The ideal isolation is to have the shelf/component combo resonate at around 3 Hz.  That can be difficult to achieve sitting on compression springs; but I find that below 7 Hz works very well.  I have thought about building shelves that hang on extension springs.  It would be much easier to achieve 3 Hz but my system sounds so good right now I have no motivation to tinker any further.  Maybe later, perhaps.  Although I have already seen a couple of examples of racks using shelves suspended on springs.

I gained so much detail that I found it distracting at first.  It took away from the music.  I almost wanted to go back but it is like letting the genie out of the bottle.   Fortunately, in time I grew accustomed to the added detail and resolution and was back to enjoying the music even more with the improved imaging.  It's quite a thrill listening to a Chorale piece and hearing each individual voice across the sound stage vs. a cloud of voices.

Remember in the movie, Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield pays Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to write an essay for him about one of his own books.  Rodney‘s character gets an F on the paper with the comment, “I know you didn‘t write this paper but whoever did knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut Jr.“. There is some truth to that.  We interpret things in ways an artist or designer never imagined.

Perhaps musicians listen about as well as we would performing.

I prefer stereo sound without tone controls or spatial processing.  It‘s taken me years to accept listening to music reconstituted back from binary code.

What I‘m saying is, if you take a cross section of musicians the percentage that have high end stereo systems and take time to listen intently is likely no different than the general population. I‘m not saying they can‘t hear their instruments. Years of playing and practice brings a unique sensitivity to the sound of musical instruments and voice. No question musicians can hear the subtle variations between instruments to such an extent as to identify time period and maker of an instrument. And the same is true for an experienced audiophile. They can hear things and identify sounds many of us would miss.

To brag about tricking people makes no sense. Lots of ways technology is used to fool our senses. And to estimate the sensitivity of someone else‘s hearing without a formal hearing test seems foolhardy. How can we even estimate our own hearing ability without a formal hearing test?  But a formal hearing test is just one factor.  Learning to listen is just as important.

Scene from, Kung Fu, the TV show ca. 1970.  “Old man, how is it that you could hear the grasshopper at my feet.  Young man, how is it that you could not?“

Some of you may recall a TV show titled, Mr. Ed.  It's a sitcom from the 1960's with a talking horse.  Season 5, Episode 1 titled, Hi-Fi Horse, is a great, timeless performance aimed at us audiophiles.  It first aired in 1964.  I had just flown back from Europe in the 1990's one time, it was 3AM and I was wide awake.  I turned on the TV to Nick at Night and found this episode.  It has all the classic hifi stereo lines but remember, this was 60 years ago.  Wilbur buys his wife a Stereo console for their anniversary.  She is less than thrilled at this gift she never wanted.  He puts on a sound effects record.  Two people are playing ping pong and he says to his wife, "Are you listening to that?  It's like they are right here in this room playing ping pong."  That does it.  She is off to her mother's.

Take a moment to look it up and play it.  A lot of fun.  And Mr. Ed, the horse gets in on the hifi as well.