Imaging, Soundstaging, Reality and Enjoyment

[Neli thinks I write too many pieces on the industry, so here is one on sound]

I was surfing and ran across an article on imaging and soundstaging at Romy’s site

Now, Romy is too opaque for me in that thread, but I am pretty sure I disagree with what he is saying 🙂

Lot’s of people are confused about soundstaging – and it is indeed popular to tarnish it as being faux and imaging as being required to be in some nebulous constraints of size and specificity.

Let’s define these two, shall we? At least for the duration of this post, and I hope these are more or less in line with what you think of them as. So we will define:

—————————

Soundstaging: as the location on a virtual 3D stage of where a sound is coming from, usually on the side of the room where the speakers are

Imaging: as the spacial and textural definition of the musician and or sound – their outlines, their weight, etc.

—————————

So imaging has to do with perceived image specificity and soundstaging as its location in 3D space.

I think I will ignore imaging in this post and talk about the much maligned soundstage.

I, personally, love the soundstage. Even though it is probably 5th or 6th on my list – it is still very important to me.

The only thing I can think of why people disparage soundstaging so much is, as pointed out on Romy’s thread, is that it is popular to do so [though not for monetary gain, as implied there, and which requires a very cynical view of the industry to imagine – though, yes, there are many unscrupulous types in retail out there, I just don’t think they are this smart :-)].

It obviously occurs in acoustic reality. But what really interests me [and I think upsets the detractors] is the liberties that sound engineers take with the positions of sounds in the 3D space.

On a good system [the precise quality and make up of which we can debate and agonize over some other time] you can hear the sound engineer move things around, fade them in and out, and change them in other ways that have nothing to do with unamplified/unprocessed sound.

I think of sound engineers as the ‘forgotten musician’. They add all this stuff to the music – and yet they do not get the big bucks. Nobody knows their name. And many people – audiophiles anyway – think the music would be better off without them.

I don’t think so.

Obviously I am talking about bands like Radiohead and Pink Floyd, and not Led Zeppelin or classical music. But if you listen to your casual pop rock country and crossover songs – in the background, there is a lot of stuff going on that is very entertaining. To me anyway.

And that is why I like soundstaging. I enjoy all the background stuff and the way it appears and disappears and moves around [in, out, left, right, up, down] and [rarely] changes phase and pitch and texture.

On a car radio, or iPhone, all this stuff is merged into The Song. But on a quality high-end audio system – this stuff expands into a wondrous playful menage of delightful sounds, which just feeds back into greatly enhancing the overall song.

For me.

And hopefully for you too. The more things one enjoys in this life, the less room there is for things we do not enjoy. 🙂