[ooheadsoo]

These 2 articles pretty well describe why we hear what we hear and why we can only expect true imaging from the exact center without phase and/or other tricks:

Directional Hearing: How to Listen to Stereo

What Can and Cannot be Expected from Stereo, Logically

[Housteau]

Those are good articles.

[Jumpin]

I am always perplexed by this discussion.  having been to many live concerts & with good sound design, the sweet spot can be the entire concert hall.  How come nothing in the home environment can begin to approach this?

Mark

[BrianM]

I am always perplexed by this discussion.  having been to many live concerts & with good sound design, the sweet spot can be the entire concert hall.  How come nothing in the home environment can begin to approach this?

Mark

2-channel people tend to be obsessed with being able to sit in front of their speakers and point to each instrument they hear, i.e. that it have a defined location in the stereo image. And obviously, a big part of what makes a stereo system sound better is the separation of instruments or voices, where no voice loses its individuality within the overall texture.  A live concert accomplishes this simply by virtue of there being no additional electronic medium between the instruments on stage and the human ear, which is of course more sensitive to nuance than any loudspeaker. (Obviously, an amplified concert where the mixing engineers happen to be incompetent can greatly reduce one's listening pleasure.)  So, a stereo that accomplishes good separation and detail of voices should sound good no matter where you are in your home, just as a live concert in a good acoustic sounds good anywhere in the hall.  That said, if your goal is to actually "see" where each voice is, as though you're watching a concert from the fifth row, then obviously where you are in the concert hall/living room becomes a factor.  Not that it shouldn't sound beautiful off center, but a reproduced image just needs more help than a live image to sound totally realistic. When I'm in the next room the string quartet sounds great but more homogeneous; when I'm in front of the speakers I can (if its a good enough recording) "watch" the cellist, and look slightly to his left and "watch" the violist.

[BrianM]

I would add that only the best live acoustics afford listeners more or less equal pleasure no matter where they are in the hall, and those venues are relatively rare.  Usually there's still such a thing as the best seats in the house, and it's no accident that they tend to be near the middle.

[Housteau]

I am always perplexed by this discussion.  having been to many live concerts & with good sound design, the sweet spot can be the entire concert hall.  How come nothing in the home environment can begin to approach this?

I think those articles bring up some good issues, such as the question you just asked.  There are so many variables.  Individual music preferences really determine how we like our systems to sound, and the microphone techniques used in the recordings determine what is most likely to be heard.  A live event in an auditorium produces a lot of indirect sound with nonspecific directional cues.  However, a small club in a more intimate setting has the potential of being reproduced spatially more accurately. 

When we read someone else’s thoughts on the sound of some component, we really need to understand what they are basing that on.  How do they listen to music and what do they listen to.  It could be that their ideas of ideal soundstage, and this or that, may not be the same as ours.

Which brings up another discussion as to what is their ideal of what the sound system should be capable of.  Is it there to attempt the recreation of a live musical event, or is it tuned more to retrieve and reproduce the best of what the recording has to offer.  Personally, I fall into the second category. 

[BrianM]

Which brings up another discussion as to what is their ideal of what the sound system should be capable of.  Is it there to attempt the recreation of a live musical event, or is it tuned more to retrieve and reproduce the best of what the recording has to offer.  Personally, I fall into the second category.

I would disagree and say it should be capable of reproducing absolutely everything on the recording, good and bad.  That seems to me the only way to capture a well-recorded live event, or a well-recorded anything for that matter.  The way you phrase it sounds to me like working some kind of magic on a recording, when the only magic should be in the performance itself, and the ability of the microphone(s) to pick it up.  How does a stereo know what the best a recording has to offer is? It should just retrieve everything and play it back.

[Housteau]

I would disagree and say it should be capable of reproducing absolutely everything on the recording, good and bad.  That seems to me the only way to capture a well-recorded live event, or a well-recorded anything for that matter.  The way you phrase it sounds to me like working some kind of magic on a recording, when the only magic should be in the performance itself, and the ability of the microphone(s) to pick it up.  How does a stereo know what the best a recording has to offer is? It should just retrieve everything and play it back.

No.  We do not disagree at all.  What I meant by "retrieve and reproduce the best of what the recording has to offer", is to present the recording as accurately as possible, the good and the bad.  But, what was recorded that highlights the realism factor should be there resolved by the system.  I guess I could have phrased my earlier post better .

[ooheadsoo]

Have you guys also noticed that you very often can't pinpoint instruments when you close your eyes in live venues?  The live images are also large splotches or swathes of sound, not pin sized points of origin.  Not to mention Bayreuth 

[jules]

yes, good call Jumpin and ooheadsoo ...

a stereo image is merely an artifact of recording technique is it not?

jules

[Housteau]

a stereo image is merely an artifact of recording technique is it not?

Sure, and it can be an artificial one especially with studio recordings.  But, does that really matter?  If it is in the recording I feel it should be present in the listening room as well.  A live recording of an orchestra in a hall may very well be spacious, large and and non-localized without those visual cues.  If the recording of this event was semi-accurate, then it should be reproduced in the same way, with a nonspecific focus.
 
However, in smaller venues it is not hard at all to pick out very specific sounds with, or without visual cues.  That recording should permit you to place that solo voice someplace quite specific within the soundstage.  Good studio recording should be quite specific with focus and placement.  I simply want my system to reproduce what is there to be heard.  But, that is not always so easy to do in practice.

It is a question of balance at times.  Minimonitors can be extremely focused, but may lack the air and the sense of spaciousness.  Large dipoles may have the air and spaciousness, but lack a strong focus.  Those with point source monitors often find themselves shaving points off the focus to gain the spaciousness, while others like myself have the air in spades and work to gain the best focus as possible.  Then there are those that keep things diffuse because that is what they experience at their live events anyway and enjoy all their music at home to sound the same way.

[mcullinan]

Amazing amount of info here, I might have actually learned something. 
Mike

[doug s.]

while some speakers can have an extremely small sweet-spot, (the prewiously mentioned carver amazings come to mind - i found that even tiny head movements changed the imaging - extremely unpleasant, imo),  my experience has been that a big room is the single most important component for a good soundstage from two channel audio.  when  i was blessed w/a large room - ~26x38 - i would still get a decent image even if i was way outside the sweet spot - say: even to the right of the right speaker.  this was true w/several different speakers - proac, meret, totem, gr-research, usher, zu, spendor, swans, to name different speakers that were in that room...

doug s.

[Frihed91]

In my flat (the picture is of my summer house), i can walk around both my Quad 12Ls and LS3/5A V2s without losing at least some sound stage presence.  The best soundstage is more than 90 degrees wide on a 6 foot radial from the center point between the two speakers (adjusting the right and left volume improves this of course).