Soundstage is too wide??

I have been doing some tweaks to my system recently and all of a sudden I am hearing things beyond where the speakers actually are! Is the normal or is the sound supposed to come from between them? Or is this a good thing that I've accidentally been able to achieve?

 

. . . then why not get a Tube Box S? It has switchable gain (41, 51 and 61 db).
What's your budget? And what have you got in mind for a new cartridge?

 

I sincerly apologize for the mess up!

I accidentally reposted something I wasn't intending too and then not knowing how to delete a post, I quickly changed the title and post. Hope this hasn't caused any confusion.

Does any one know how to delete threads?

 

I often hear locations on the "outside" of my speaker axis. This effect has often been sought after in the past. Carver"s "Sonic Hologram" was a feature in some of his hardware. It attempted to create this effect by signal manipulation. I seen to remember Polk and some other speaker brands trying for spacial enhancements by having various forms on interconnects between the speaker pair. This connection manipulated the output signal from the left/right channels. My experiences with these was that the success depended a lot on the recording of the source, the room, speaker placement and frequency. Some sounds like clapping or applause spread very wide with the Carver. Drum rolling from one side to the other also seemed the gain some width. With my present setup I often will close my eyes and try to locate sounds or instruments. Often they seem to be widened beyond the speaker centers. Since this is a straight through system with no tone or other signal path "enhancing", I am pretty sure it is the result of good dispersion characteristics and room acoustics. Also since the mind is a wonderful place I am also sure there is a certain amount of personal interpretation going on. Lastly this effect has been validated by my wife who also uses the system frequently.

 

Very interesting to hear I'm not the only one experiencing this and that it has been actually sought after.

Are the "beyond the speakers" sounds the result of information encoded in the recording or more of an effect caused by other factors? In other words, did the recording engineers intend for this?

It's fascinating how this all works.

 

It took hours and hours for me to achieve this in a balanced fashion in my room now that I'm in more of a nearfield setup. So, I guess what I'm saying is - feel proud, OP Some recordings use weird phasing to achieve such effects (Amused to Death, I'm looking at you), but if you're getting this on more conventional recordings, this is a good thing IMO. True, a drumset shouldn't be 12' wide or whatever, but, say, on a Rush - YYZ drumroll, that thing goes from edge to edge, with both edges being far beyond the outer boundaries of the mains. So long as you have a balance, where one side of the stage isn't larger than the other, and you still have a very strong center image, don't fight it - embrace it!

 

It's your speakers interacting with your room. Remember, you don't just hear what comes out of the speaker. You hear what comes off the floor, off the ceiling, off the furniture, etc... All of these things conspire to complicate the seemingly-simple nature of two channel stereo. In a properly designed and set up system, you should *never* know where your speakers are. This goes for all dimensions: width, height, and depth.

 

OP, I think you should try this and report back ASAP!

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...-stereo-playback-with-it.320990/#post-9021786

 

It's largely a result of factors like the dispersion from your drivers, and the way sounds reflect off of various surfaces in your room. It doesn't entirely make sense to to talk about it as encoded in the recording, but it doesn't mean that it's wrong either, stereo recordings will sound different in every room.

Recording engineers have no control over how speakers are set up and how reflections will interact with surfaces and so forth. That's one of the reasons why some like Phil Spector and Brian Wilson were reluctant to give up mono. They wanted some degree of control over what listeners heard in their homes, and with stereo they lost some of that.

Many people consider this a desirable effect, but that doesn't mean you have to. A too wide soundstage can sound distracting and un-focused to some. Some prefer a more focused and solid center image. Try toeing your speakers in slightly to lessen the effect if you feel it's currently too much. Have fun and don't worry about what's "right" and "wrong." Only you can decide that.

 

Thank for the very informative reply.

Speaking of mono, does that also explain why some mono recordings I listen to almost sound stereo in nature? I swear I can hear distinct left-right separation. It might be because of minute differences in phase if I am reading your post right?

I'll keep playing around with speaker placement and see what happens. It's very cool that I discovered this. The "wow" moments for me have been far and few between recently. (That is until my new cartridge arrives.)

 

When you listen to a live performance is the sound restricted to the width of the stage? Of course not, so why would restricting the sound between a pair of speakers be a good thing? It seems you have found the right combination, so I'd suggest you leave it alone.

There is an inherent flaw in stereo reproduction, which is called interaural crosstalk. Speaker designers try to counteract this in various ways with some doing a better job than others. Of course, speaker placement, the associated gear, the room and even the recording play a role as well. You can have a little fun hearing the reduction of interaural crosstalk by placing one hand right up to your nose and forehead with the other hand in front of it. Your hands should be open with the fingers close together and pointing straight up. You are creating a plane or dividing wall so to speak, which will help restrict the sounds from the right speaker from being heard in your left ear and vice-versa.

Carver's Sonic Holography was an attempt to correct this flaw. It is an active system requiring the signal be run through additional circuits and IMO, never quite got it right. Polk's SDA on the other hand is completely passive and got it right.

 

If it's a good quality stereo mix the sound is not supposed to be heard only within the frame between the speakers, but also beyond them, so unless your sound stage is not abnormally and artificially wide, then you just did great job setting up your gear and placing your speakers.

 

What he said! Be proud and happy!

 

I hear this a lot. I'm at about 11 ft (ear to driver) and speakers at about 9. I think Marley's "Blackman Redemption" comes to mind, huge spread and image placement, i3's backup vocals go out beyond speaker axis. There is one track I can't remember that is crazy, might be an India Arie track; will look.

 

But I thought that was desirable as opposed to headphones that isolate the sound for each ear, creating an unnatural, excessive stereo separation, not to mention the action seems to be taking place inside your head instead of in front of you.

 

As others have already mentioned, the effect comes largely from timing differences as sound waves interact with the room. I use DEQX speaker & room correction and although pin-point imaging and holographic soundstage depth are like nothing else I have ever heard, the lack of room interaction restricts width to (normally) just beyond the speakers. Most listeners comment that it is like looking into a quite intimate & very deep but narrow-ish 3d stage. If I apply fractional time delays to one channel only (I'm talking less than 1ms) then this changes completely and becomes extremely wide but it is rather artificial by comparison. Nice to have the option though.....

 

I agree that headphones make it seem as though the sound is all inside your head and that's because they are firing directly into your ears, which is not how one hears the sound of live performance. Speakers in front of you firing at your ears more closely resembles the direction of sound travel at a live event. However, the sound at a live event is generally not (dare I say rarely, if ever) coming from only 2 speakers placed 6 to 10 feet apart with the sound stage pretty much trapped between them due to interaural crosstalk.

As for the unnatural and excessive stereo separation comment. It's an odd thing, folks seem to be so used to listening to stereo at home that they seem to forget what live music sounds like. There's nothing unnatural and excessive about an expansive, yet coherent sound stage.

 

It just sounds to me like the OP is hearing stereo the way that it is supposed to sound for the first time in his life. In good system which is setup well, in a good room, with a good recording, the speakers should disappear, and leave a soundstage behind.

 

I know everyone is writing about what a good thing this is and that you've improved your set up but I have to ask, since this resulted suddenly from tweaking, are you sure that you haven't wired something out of phase? Is this something you hear on every an all recordings? Is there still a tight, focuse center image on recordings that have them?

While typically recorded stereo recordings, without encoded phase special effects, without using omni directional speakers or without special effect signal processers, can sometimes sound wider than the stereo pair of speakers in the right room with the right recordings; and, as the poster says above, a soundstage will appear to open up behind the speakers with good recordings in properly set up system and room at least as wide as the speakers (depending to some degree on toe-in also, if everything is suddenly sounding enormously wide, wider than the speakers, and at the same kind kind of unfocused in the center, that's probably not right, it could be that in your tweaking you've wired something out of phase. It's unlikely unless you've done some actual tweaking to the electronics, but worth asking.

 

I'm pretty hear this effect on any sufficiently good recording with stereo sound. I'm pretty confident my speakers are in phase but I'm unsure of how to test it. All I know is the red and black posts of the power amp are connected to the speakers respectively.

 

At the end of the day ask yourself "do I like what I am hearing"? To be simple about this; if your inputs are all right to right and left to left (RCA cables) and your speakers are red-left to red-left speaker/black-left to black left speaker; and the same for the right side then you are "in electrical/signal path" phase. The rest is what is your experience? From what you have said all is good and perhaps you can kick back and enjoy the music? What components make up your system? How is your room dimensioned and furnished? Where do you sit? If you could change anything about what you hear, what would it be?

 

Unless you noticed a coincidental, substantial loss of bass response, it's probably not a phasing issue. Assuming red goes to red at both the amp and speaker, on both sides, you should be fine. Unless you have some reason to think the wiring inside the speakers has ever been touched, I don't think you have anything further to look for. Still, @chervokas has a good point; sometimes it pays to consider more than the obvious

 

Well, if you still have good center focus on centered images, and you haven't in your tweaking done anything to alter the phase between the two sides then you're probably just hearing a good stereo soundstage. You never know when people describe stuff exactly that they're hearing so, when someone seems surprised by a sudden ubiquitous change of the type you're talking about -- super wide, beyond the outer edge of the speakers sound stage -- it often suggests to me checking phase (and not just speaker polarity).

 

Look up the Sumiko Method of speaker setup / placement.
You're supposed to get a HUGE phantom center and a very wide soundstage (on classical recordings and the like) if your speakers are positioned correctly.