Bowmoreman
100+ Head-Fier
But you lost me with your point that “soundstage may or may not have no meaning”. It clearly HAS meaning, the question is how much and to whom. If it had NO meaning, Stereo itself would fail to function.
But, to my more specific point, in a system optimized towards its ability to reproduce acoustic (not amplified instruments) instruments real sound in a real space (i.e. “The Absolute Sound”, as it were) will produce an excellent soundstage, when (and only when):
1. The recording itself was done minimally, with careful miking, etc.
2. The music was recorded live/“all of a piece” (i.e. no multi-channel mixing, blending in separate instruments asynchronously recorded, etc.)
3. It was no subject to any intentional processing or alteration. No, pure wire with gain doesn’t exist, but that’s what makes this HARD
4. It is played back on a speaker (or headphone, but I’m not yet certain ANY HP can do proper/full 3D soundstaging) capable of coherence, in time, and frequency response, and appropriate for the playback space.
In my experience the last 40 years, Planars do the best 3D soundstages. Others opinions obviously vary. That doesn’t matter. Pretty much any/everyone I’ve ever had hear my system experiences a full, 3D soundstage that, on familiar recordings (especially in familiar venues), has them also experiencing the same thing I do.
This is what makes listening to live, un-amplified music so critical. For Many years, I’d go to things like the BSO, and then go home and play the same music (obviously not always to have an exact match - might be different conductor, or whatever) on my system… and carefully compare/learn. I always did it with classical.
That is how I ended up with the system I have used for 34 years now. I *know* (that for me and my tastes/perceptions) it is going to be unlikely to improve the systems sound wrt: soundstaging in particular. It’s my current “reference”. I can take people TO the concert hall and they can close their eyes and suspend their disbelief. But it only works on people who know/love Classical enough to be familiar with how it sounds in real life.
And, also why it freaks me out to consider changing anything. Because I no longer have the ability to “re-calibrate” with reality. I don’t get to the symphony much anymore (alas). Great example: I recently had to deal with the caps in my Classe’ pre-amp failing in the line-stage (phono pre still worked via tape outs). So, in two steps I replaced it. Step one was just getting an old Levinson/Proceed AVP1 to use as a balanced line stage. Kept using the DR6 phono via tape out to the AVP1, and thence, balanced to the Classe’ DR9/Apogees. But it didn’t sound RIGHT to me. Staging was compressed, especially in depth from what I REMEMBERED (I couldn’t A/B after all).
So when I saw Kara, and then shortly Skoll, I said, heck, I’ll give them a try. They’re cheap enough. And you know what, the magic was back! If anything better than I remember, but no way of knowing that.
Hopefully in mid-year, I’ll come due on my techs calendar for him to recap the Classe’ and then I can do a proper A/B and see which is better/more real soundstaging-wise.
But, TL;DR version: Soundstaging in any stereo system is a thing. It exists. The only question is to what degree (L/R, U/D, F/B) and to what degree across which listener. A system with NO soundstaging would be a flat, narrow, short “hole” of sound coming from a point in space… and that would suck.
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