Is Imaging Worth Chasing?
Man, am I going to be torn apart for this. But I says what I says and I mean what I says.
Here’s a long term trend I’ve noticed in the audio press. Specs that used to be front and center in equipment reviews have essentially disappeared. Total harmonic distortion, for instance. Twenty years ago, THD was the start and end of the evaluation of any amplifier. Well, maybe power, first. Then THD. Armed with those two numbers, shopping was safe and easy.
The explanation for the disappearance is not hard to figure. Designers got so good in those categories that the numbers became meaningless. Today, most every amp on the shelf has disappearingly low distortion. Comparing .00001 to .000001 is a fool’s errand and both the writers and the readers know it. Power got cheap, even before Class D came along to make it even cheaper. Anyone who tries bragging about his 100 watts will be laughed out of the audio club.
Stereophile still needed to fill it’s pages and audiophiles still needed things to argue about so, into the void, stepped imaging. Reviewers go on and on about imaging. And within the umbrella of imaging, they write separately about the images height, width, and depth. “I closed my eyes and I could see a rock solid picture of the violas behind the violins.” “The soundstage extended far beyond the width of the speakers.” And on and on.
Now, most everyone who will read this knows more about audio equipment than me. But I know music. I know how to listen. And the number of times that I’ve seen imaging, that I’ve seen an imaginary soundstage before me, can be counted on my fingers. Maybe the fingers of one hand.
My speakers are 5-6 feet apart. I don’t have a listening chair qua listening chair but I’m usually 8-9 feet back. (This configuration is driven by many variables but sound quality is probably third on the list.) Not a terrible set-up, is my guess from reading lots of speaker placement articles. And God knows that, within the limited space available to me, I have spent enough time on getting those speakers just right. Plus, my LS50s are supposed to be imaging demons.
I’ve talked to people about this, including some people who work at high-end audio stores. Most of them commiserate. It’s a problem, they said. “It usually only happens with acoustic music,” most of them said. Strike one. My diet of indie rock and contemporary jazz doesn’t have much of that. “You’ve got to have your chair set up just right. And you’ve got to hold your head in just the right place.” Strike two. Who wants to do that?
(Most of the people reading this forum, probably. But I can’t think of any time or purpose for which I’ve held my head in a vise-like grip like that.)
It happens, every now and then. For some reason, I was once right up next to my speakers. Lots of direct sound, less reflections. “The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads” was playing. And I literally gave a start because David Byrne was standing on the coffee table. Cool.
But, generally speaking, imaging is something I only read about. And if that little bit of imaging is the dividend of dropping more money into my system, I’m not sure that I want to deposit into that account.
I think that I still have a few steps to take that will pay benefits other than imaging. But maybe the high-end is not for me.
If the room and setup is bad, you will never get good imaging and soundstage. If the room is really good you don't need expensive gear to hear good imaging and a nice soundstage. As the quality of the gear increases you can get more detail, separation, deeper lows, etc., withing the soundstage. Once you "hear it", you can't be without it. |
https://www.binaural-recordings.com/
But... they are not as common and all recordings are not available in binaural format... and... can be much more expensive.... though... they do provide the sensation of "live performance." |
Speaker placement is huge.
Also isolating from vibration - clarity is key to getting imaging and vibration causes distortion. Any time I up the clarity I get more clear imagining. And finally, what is between your speakers? This is something I recently discovered by accident. I formerly had cabinet (sideboard) btw the speakers that was approx 30” high - had decent imaging. But we got a new lower cabinet (18” high) AND ITS BEEN GAME CHANGING. It sounds like the speakers have been unblocked. Imaging is bigger higher, wider and more clear. if you can clear the space btw the speakers or lower any furnature that’s there it will help. |
I cannot agree that simply using a microphone/DSP to make your speakers perfect match as you described will give you perfect imaging and/or that it can compensate for acoustic treatments and asymmetry. Measuring in-room frequency response is of no value to imaging. This only tells you how much sound from each speaker gets to your head, not how much sound from each speaker gets to each ear. If you take it one step further and use a blocking method to attempt to determine what each ear is hearing, that will get you closer. A full measurement test would require both steady state that incorporates reflections in the response as well as an impulse frequency response measurement that looks at first arrival frequency response, but accuracy of this will tie back to speaker placement and room acoustics and the timing and levels of the reflections. This all ties back to comments others have made that imaging is just one of many qualities that people assess for good sound. Two channel is a compromise. Making one thing better, imaging, can make something else worse, ambience and space. Specific to your assertion, making imaging better, by fixing early arrival frequency response may hurt overall tonality. You can't fix that with DSP. You can only fix that with acoustics which would include placement, and starting with a speaker better suited to the room or in general. |
@thespeakerdude , Sorry, you are mistaken. Our hearing sense uses volume and phase relationships to locate sounds. Just twist your balance control and see what happens to a singer imaged to the center. If at any frequency one speaker is louder than the other the image is smeared to the louder side. It only takes a decibel to cause trouble. The only way you are ever going to know what your system is doing is to measure it. Then correct it and listen to what happens to image specificity and the background "blackness." Getting a system to perform at this level requires an acoustically sound room, proper room treatment depending on the type of speaker, correction of group delays and frequency response variations and finally, the right equipment. Some speakers will never image correctly usually because of crossover design and quality. Point source speakers are always going to produce a diminutive sound stage. I prefer line source speakers which produce a larger, to me more lifelike sound stage. The fewer analog crossovers the better. Lastly, price is no indication. Last weekend we set up a pair of Harbeth P3ESR XD on stands with 12" Martin logan subwoofers controlled with an Anthem STR preamp. Total system price about $12K. You would swear you were listening to a large set of Wilsons and the image while not state of the art was very close, better than 95% of the systems out there. |
