what kills soundstage depth?


Hi folks. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
I am getting nice solid imaging from my current set up, but it is 2 dimensional. No depth. And I'm not sure why. my hunch is speaker placement or lack of room treatment. Any thoughts would be helpful. Also- a suggestion for a good recording for testing soundstage depth would be helpful. My taste in music is pretty lowbrow and it might just be they way stuff is recorded.
Thanks!
jimmy3993
I hoped to see some pictures of your room set up - with your stuff you certainly have the foundation for some decent imaging. Some questions 1) How far are your speakers from the wall behind them - too close to the wall is a major killer of quality depth of image. 2)How close are the speakers to the side walls. Too close and the reflections off the wall will mingle with direct sounds a muddy up the imaging and occasionally emphasize highs. 3) Are the speakers set up in a (close to) equlateral triangle? What is the distance betwwen speakers. What is the distance from speaker to listening seat. Too far away and you will loose a lot of depth of image. 4) How much toe in? Finding the best toe in will optimize radiation pattern inherrent with the tweeter output you hear on or off axis and side wall reflections as well. 5) Rugs on floors? 6)Reflective wall surfaces on back wall, and/or side wall and wall behind speakers? 7)Shape and heigth of ceiling?

Suggestions in the 'dark' would be to begin set up with the speakers on the short wall about 4 to 5 ft out into the room, spread the same distance apart as they are your your listening chair at the apex of the triangle. Many programs will recommend a starting point for your speakers of about 1/3 of the length of the room from the wall behind them and your listening chair about the same distance from the wall behind it. BUT this applies to rooms with a regular shoe box configuration. If 1/3d doesn't work, another good starting point is with try 25%. Also try toeing in the speakers until the axis of each speaker crosses behind your head. Make sure that walls have randomly placed absorbent and/or diffusive materiels to break up any reflective patterns which can detract from the speakers direct signal. That will get you started.............

Regarding a recording to use in set up, one of the most useful in my experience is put out now by Opus 3. These recordings came out on LP but have now been reduced to a couple in a set which includes "Depth of Image" and "Timbre". The are recordings of music which has been very simply recorded in an excellent acoustic by a bunch of Swed's. There is classical, jazz, vocal, orchestral music and music of solo instruments. Each cut comes with a concise description of what a well set up system will produce, depth of image wise, and in an optomized system this discription is accurate. Not necessarily easy to obtain but its there. You can only blame your set up if you can get it. But, even if you can't get all that it suggests it will certainly help you to get much more from your system. I used it for years and its far better IMHO than any of the others that I've heard and owned since, including Chesky's.

Hope that helps a bit, at least to get the ball rolling.
Your hunchs are spot on. Get your speakers away from walls, try to keep area between and behind speakers clear, ie. low equipment racks, no big screen tvs. Treat first reflection points on side walls with absorption, I use diffusion at first reflection point on ceiling. Your equipment should do depth.

XLO/Reference Recordings Test Disc has some good tracks for image analysis, some of the Stereophile Test Discs also have tracks for this.
Thanks guys. I will get a picture up of my system set up on my page.
Yall are gonna laugh... It has to double as an ht set up so I may be out of luck.
Thanks for looking. Will have picture up soon.
Speaker placement. Without question.

Away from the back wall and side walls. Try them closer than you have them presently. Experiment with toe-in.

There are many resources for suggestions. Google "speaker placement guide" and you will get a list of links to useful alternatives.