Thanks for the kind words.
Yes that's my goal, to provide virtual surround while sounding NATURAL and without tampering the quality (audibly, what happens to the signal itself I'm not interested in, I'm only interested in the audible end result). Barely any surround DSPs on their own manage to sound natural, in fact I never encountered one, they always overdid it in one way or another. I however only tweaked this config with the goal to not tamper quality and try to add as convincing surround sound experience as possible without going overboard (it's always a matter of constant balancing, surround sound vs natural sound).
Then about the 2 different configs, this is where we start to touch the subject of sound psychology. Having spent time on this forum I've realized there are mainly 2 different listeners. Some people seem to want to listen and
analyzing the
details in the music, hearing all those subtle tiny microdetails and more the merrier and this brings the satisfaction, a more laid-back listening with a soundstage that isn't so much in-your-face but instead provides an experience as if you were sitting in a large concert hall hearing all the different instruments very clearly from different directions. Sennheiser HD800 comes to my mind as a prime example that provides a very good this kind of experience out of box. For those the "laid-back" config is more suitable. I'd call these "
audiophiles"
Then we have people like me, that primarily as first priority want to
feel engaged with the music, you want to tap your foot, you want to sing along, you want to dance to the music and prefer a more "in-your-face" sound and a distant and very large soundstage can actually be countereffective. Hearing the details comes 2nd priority as scientifically speaking a laid-back sound with less in your-face sound does provide a technical advantage if your goal is to be able to hear maximum detail richness. I.e. they purposedly sacrifice detail retrieval for more engaging listening experience. Especially Grado headphones comes to my mind or bass boosted headphones for bassheads etc. For these people it's more about the feeling you get from the music which is envoked on entirely different grounds than analyzing music and hearing as much details as possible (different parts of the brain is activated most likely). Here the more forward soundstage helps a lot for people with these kind of listening preferences. These kind of listeners I'd call
"music enthusiasts"
The two configs are meant to cater towards these 2 target groups. Ultimately only yourself can decide which one is right for you! Sound psychology is such an overlooked matter in this hobby, I'd say it's due to my understanding of what brings many people satisfaction in music listening that has helped me to optimize the configs, I haven't tweaked blindly, I've had a goal to tweak the configs with these 2 sound abilities, the opposite "soundstaging" sound signatures. Of course some people are more in the middle or more extreme towards one direction, I'd say these two configs are reasonably balanced in that sense in the sound signature they provide, it's not too extreme so that it works with both a large scale of listeners as well as type of music.