Soundstaging and imaging are audiophile fictions.

One thing that hasn't been clearly stated is that for an acoustic performance (e.g., orchestral) the microphones are usually placed closer to the performers than the vast majority of the audience. By being closer to the microphones the relative distances of the individual performers to the microphones is greater thereby emphasizing (exagerating?) the depth and width. My experience at the symphony is width and depth are there but not near as prominent as on recordings. While this is a nice effect, I think getting tonality correct is the real secret to a good audio system.

Tastes great; less filling.

Maryann or Ginger.

Bose 901's

Comparisons to live music are subjective but should be looked at as objectively as possible. Amplified music at a live event usually comes across as mono. Unamplified music has a soundstage depending upon where the listener sits. Sit far enough away from your two channel home speakers and they will be perceived as mono.

Some of the best recordings I have heard are mono. Early audiophiles thought stereo was a gimmic and many of the early stereo pressings supported that notion by the album title.

I enjoy a good stereo image and stage depth but other aspects are more important to me. It's just this man's opinion but I'd rather listen to music that has staying power than continually search for sounds that shows off my system. It's wonderful when everything is right though.

Jeffrey, it is true what you state and sometimes it is not. If you have a hall with much reverb, you will find it hard to pinpoint a particular instrument playing, say in a string quartett if you close your eyes, with eyes open however, your ears, brain will make the particular instrument snap into focus, what a good setup can simulate quite well, interestingly enough even better, if you listen with your eyes closed. The subjective effect is almost the same, if you've set up your rig intelligently, only there are different senses involved.
Pin point imaging, and there I fully agree with you,is something invented by audiophiles who I suspect, have little or no experience with live music. If I meet up with those sharply delineated images (mostly without depth ) in a system, I find it disturbing and it causes listening fatigue as far as my ears are concerned. In a live event the sound will emanate from an instrument in every enlarging circles, it will bloom forth, not from a tiny point in space ,but , say from the wooden body of a guitar which will react to the strings being plugged. This bloom to my mind, a highly complex waveform, epecially with many instruments playing, is heavily emaciated by redbook CD, which instead will deliver "pinpoint" musical inaccuracy. The music does not "breathe". I love stators, because to my ears, they bring the closest aproximation to "bloom", are fast enough to bring forth a fair facsimile of those subtle dynamic and tonal changes, which a chord struck, say on Steinway Grand will propell into its surounding air. So bacically, I agree with Duke's post,no small wonder, the man loves stators as well!

In a small hall or venue where you are seated directly in front of the performing artists playing acoustic instruments with no / minimal amplification, you will develop very distinct imagery and soundstaging. That is, if you close your eyes or put on a blind-fold. Visual cues lower your responses to audible clues. That is, until you remove the visual cues from the picture.

If you are in a larger venue and / or seated further away from the front middle of the performers, you lose soundstaging and imaging due to the effects of spacial information and tonal colouration contributed by the venue itself. While some enjoy these "colourations" i.e. the various sonics presented "front", "mid-hall" or "rear", it is not the same thing that one gets when directly viewing the performers on level playing ground spread out in front of you.

As Duke stated and to contradict Pbb's point of view, one can achieve a good sense of space and simulate the radiation pattern of an acoustic instrument in a room with a single set of speakers and a good recording. The key here is the radiation pattern of the speakers and how they load into the room.

Since acoustic instruments radiate sound in multiple directions at one time, and do so in-phase, you need a speaker that can simulate that effect. Obviously, standard front firing box speakers fail miserably at this due to their focused directionality. Dipole's ( E-stat's, Planar's, etc.. ) can do better since they have a more diffuse pattern and potentially larger radiating surface, but the problem is that half the sound that they produce is out of phase with the other half. Multiple driver systems designed to "spray" sound around ( Bose 901's, Design Acoustics D-12, etc.. ) run into comb filters and time delays.

If such is the case, what would one look for if trying to achieve the goals previously mentioned ? You need a speaker that is relatively omni-directional AND radiates all of the signal in phase in all directions AND is time-coherent. In order to achieve all of the above, it would have to be a point source i.e. the source of all sound eminating from one point. Otherwise, you come right back to having to deal with phase & time delays, comb filters, etc.. that one gets when using multiple drivers covering different or over-lapping frequency ranges with differing radiation patterns.

When you start looking for speakers like this, your market is PHENOMENALLY small. So small in fact, that i don't know of ANY speaker that is currently made that meets all of these criteria. As such, you would have to buy older, used designs if you wanted to experience what i was talking about. There are some current models that come very close to the ideals discussed above ( German Acoustics, Huff , etc.. ) but fall short in several areas mentioned above. This is primarily due to the use of a woofer to supplement the bottom end of an otherwise "full range" omni-directional, point source driver. To top it off, these systems are VERY expensive due to the amount of hand labor / out of ordinary construction required to make such a driver / speaker system.

If you can find a speaker of the nature mentioned above and work to optimize it within the confines of your system and room, all others will pale in comparison in terms of spaciousness, dimensionality and "correct-ness" in terms of preserving an acoustic instruments' natural tonal balance and timbre. This is the very reason that i won't part with some specific speakers that i love dearly, even if they do have their limitations in specific areas ( primarily max spl's and treble extension ). Those that have read more than a few of my posts know what speakers i'm talking about. Sean
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