Soundstaging – An American vice or the face of truth?
We talk to a number of people from outside the U.S. – a significant percentage of our readers are from overseas and Canada – and we often hear something like:
“Oh, only you Americans care about soundstaging.”
Soundstaging – for the purpose of this post – is depth and breadth of imaging – being able to hear WHERE the instruments are. Soundstaging is the opposite of a ‘wall of sound’ – where the sound seems to come to the listener in one big mish mash from the general direction of the plane of the speakers.
OK, it does take a larger-sized room to be able to pull the speakers out from the wall in order to hear any kind of soundstagjing. And many people in Europe do not have large-sized rooms. But we hear the same thing from Australia – which has side-open spaces like we do and presumably large-sized listening rooms.
Funny, Americans are supposed to be unsophisticated – not caring about subtle details that contribute to enjoyment of the finer things in life. Well, at least in this case – I think they are wrong.
Why? Because soundstaging occurs in real life – and one of the things our systems should do is try to mimic real life.
Certainly acoustical instruments soundstage. Otherwise we would be a dead species – hearing the lion’s roar, or baby’s cry, not knowing where it came from.
In many amplified venues, the counter-argument goes, people do not hear a soundstage. I think this is because the amplification is cheap and not setup correctly, sound coming from speakers mounted on the ceiling, in the walls, … coming from amps shared by multiple instruments… etc.
So, not much else to say – it is obviously NOT a vice, and is instead an attribute of the Real Thing. Hopefully our audiophiles overseas will catch up to us 🙂 Funny though, speakers manufactured overseas soundstage just fine thank you, being a result of matching pairs of speakers (frequency response, etc) and a decently detailed treble. So we just got to get them to pull the speakers out from the wall and get with the program…. 🙂
One thing I know, once you get used to soundstaging, it is hard to live without. It is addictive.
Whoo hoo, we’re one of the blogs feeding speshy.com!
Well, I´M from Brasil and soundstage is a huuuge part of the fun having a high-end system(much more than bass, may a say…)
Hi Storelli,
Well, no one else has responded,, so maybe it is just us on this side of the Atlantic (and Pacific), i.e. this CONTINENT, that have this need for our systems to perform realistically with respect to the advanced, and someehat unheralded, aesthetics of soundstaging… ? 🙂
And yes, more than bass for me too, though if it was perrrrfect bass, then well, it would be a hard choice. 🙂
Thanks,
Mike.
Hey Mike, a small poke… i do love my Quads( i know you don´t…), and the soundstage is , well, yet to be beaten.(the bass on the other hand….)
But Storelli, I do like Quads. Or at least, the last few shows we have gone to, the Quads have sounded quite nice. Now, whether that is because the new Quads are better than the old ones, or because the peopl setting up the room knew how to setup and drive Quads, … don’t know.
In the past they had sounded muffled and univolving. As far as soundstage… they are good.. but yet to be beaten? Uh…. Let’s just say that for the price, in my opinion, they have very few competitors in a number of attributes that matter most to many music lovers.
Take care,
Mike.
Ok, i´ll gladly accept the music lover “quality” 😉
And, fair is fair, i´ve never heard any of the speakers you carry, maybe in my next trip to the U.S i´ll stop by…
Best
Storelli
Yes, the irony is that a lot of European gear will soundstage like the dickens when setup to do so. A well setup all-GamuT system (Danish) will re-create a beautiful sound stage, filled with individual images and a realistic rendering of acoustic space (when in the recording). Dynaudio speakers (also Danish) will throw a sound stage to die for.