[rajeevrn]

Is the soundstage on headphones vertical or horizontal? I can somewhat hear at times just how wide at is but sometimes the height aspect just doesnt fit in. That's before I auditioned the HD 800, I can clearly make out a vertical soundstage as well. I can really feel the drums hitting really low and the sparkles up high. So thats my question again actually two:
 
1)Is it vertical or horizontal?
 
2)if both which affects the overall presentation and perception more? Which is more important?
 
For me its the vertical one that seems to make a difference!

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Vertical is part of it. For example look at the recording set-up on the drums - the mics are generally between the drums and the cymbals. That means that the cymbals and bass drum will be at a different height naturally. This is just more exacerbated on speakers to the point of being problematic because you have the tweeters and low drivers at a different height from the midrange, which can be a problem given a few parameters of the room, like if you're not sitting back far enough that there is enough discrepancy in distance to each from your ears, or you are getting too much reflections (from the side = very forward cymbals far out from where the rest of the drums are; from the floor = bass drum too low and too forward relative to the other percussion).

 

Now if the vertical soundstage you're getting is already unnatural and cannot be rationalized as per the recording set-up and increased accuracy of your system (like if it keeps doing that on other headphones not known for their imaging), you have to check if for example something is out of phase. Try imaging test tracks like on the Chesky headphone demo disc - if the system just fails at the test track there's something out of phase somewhere.

 

[rajeevrn]

Originally Posted by ProtegeManiac /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 

Now if the vertical soundstage you're getting is already unnatural and cannot be rationalized as per the recording set-up and increased accuracy of your system (like if it keeps doing that on other headphones not known for their imaging), you have to check if for example something is out of phase. Try imaging test tracks like on the Chesky headphone demo disc - if the system just fails at the test track there's something out of phase somewhere.

 
 I tried the height shaker test from the video here http://www.head-fi.org/t/715795/dr-cheskys-ultimate-headphone-demonstration-disc-head-fi-tv
 and yes it seemed ok. It was out of my head actually with my Grado PS500. Binaural is cool! But yes generally have the problem where the vertical soundstage is not too big!
 

 

Vertical is part of it. For example look at the recording set-up on the drums - the mics are generally between the drums and the cymbals. That means that the cymbals and bass drum will be at a different height naturally. This is just more exacerbated on speakers to the point of being problematic because you have the tweeters and low drivers at a different height from the midrange, which can be a problem given a few parameters of the room, like if you're not sitting back far enough that there is enough discrepancy in distance to each from your ears, or you are getting too much reflections (from the side = very forward cymbals far out from where the rest of the drums are; from the floor = bass drum too low and too forward relative to the other percussion).

 
And thats the sad part! Speakers are known for their soundstage.

 

[kraken2109]

 

Vertical is part of it. For example look at the recording set-up on the drums - the mics are generally between the drums and the cymbals. That means that the cymbals and bass drum will be at a different height naturally. This is just more exacerbated on speakers to the point of being problematic because you have the tweeters and low drivers at a different height from the midrange, which can be a problem given a few parameters of the room, like if you're not sitting back far enough that there is enough discrepancy in distance to each from your ears, or you are getting too much reflections (from the side = very forward cymbals far out from where the rest of the drums are; from the floor = bass drum too low and too forward relative to the other percussion).

 

Now if the vertical soundstage you're getting is already unnatural and cannot be rationalized as per the recording set-up and increased accuracy of your system (like if it keeps doing that on other headphones not known for their imaging), you have to check if for example something is out of phase. Try imaging test tracks like on the Chesky headphone demo disc - if the system just fails at the test track there's something out of phase somewhere.

You've never recorded a drum kit in your life have you?

 

[jcx]

vertical and distance audio effects aren't directly encoded in current commercial multi channel be it Stereo or 7.1 Surround - all assume a horizontal plane that the virtual sound sources can be located angularly from the listener in
 
what vertical and distance effects are heard are from our brain's interpretation of relative frequency response balance, comb filtering, internal echos/phase of notes, transients, decay heard with our 2 ears near (two, horizontal) point sampling of the soundfield
 
so there is a lot of internal state - our expectations of musical sounds, ability to identify individual instruments, performers, expectation that they are in front of us, not moving too much in a performance venue's room's reverberation, floor, wall bounce, all built in to our neural processing by our listening in the real world to real sound
 
for binaural recordings the success of these illusions are determined by the match of the recording setup to our individual HRTF
 
speakers have some advantage of sampling a real sound field - small head movements do give more or less expected changes in the signals entering our ears with our own HRTF
 
headphones without virtualization and head tracking don't change the sound to each ear as we move - most experience the collapse of the soundfield to a line between your ears sensation
 
 
having heard 6 figure speaker systems with insane room treatment and still getting huge difference from recording to recording - pianos half the room wide and in your lap, to drum kit that sounded like it was coming up a stairwell from a nonexistent cellar my take is that the bulk of talk on head-fi about the far weaker headphone soundstage is practically useless
 
its nice when it happens - it is a hopelessly personal neural accident - really not a lot can be usefully shared, doesn't really reflect a characteristic of the headphone as much as the person wearing them at a particular time, with a particular recording, their personal brain state and attentive focus, suspension of disbelief - just an illusion that that could easily fall apart, not happen on a different day, different mood, listening at a different loudness
 
other than the built in expectation of "OMG I'm listening to $3k headphone/amp" - the actual headphone objective characteristics are way down the (mostly empty, at best fuzzy) list of reliable, transferable predictors of soundstage/imaging, particularly in the vertical or distance dimensions

 

[rajeevrn]

 
other than the built in expectation of "OMG I'm listening to $3k headphone/amp" - the actual headphone objective characteristics are way down the (mostly empty, at best fuzzy) list of reliable, transferable predictors of soundstage/imaging, particularly in the vertical or distance dimensions

 
This is clearly not how I feel about the HD 800 plugged into a Lehmann Audio Black Cube Linear.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

 
You've never recorded a drum kit in your life have you?

 

I've seen what some of the set-ups look like, but I don't mess with how the engineers deal with it. I just have business with the bands (or not business) but it's not related to their music so I don't even bug the engineers about it - I just see where they have two mics in there. Most of them hang them higher than the cymbals but then some have them on stands like they just moved two vocal mics to where the drums are. Either way wouldn't that put a variance in distance from between the cymbals, the bass drum, and the rest of the drums?

 

If not, then the problem with vertical imaging would come down to response and room modes (and whatever approximates for headphones). 

 

[kraken2109]

   

I've seen what some of the set-ups look like, but I don't mess with how the engineers deal with it. I just have business with the bands (or not business) but it's not related to their music so I don't even bug the engineers about it - I just see where they have two mics in there. Most of them hang them higher than the cymbals but then some have them on stands like they just moved two vocal mics to where the drums are. Either way wouldn't that put a variance in distance from between the cymbals, the bass drum, and the rest of the drums?

 

If not, then the problem with vertical imaging would come down to response and room modes (and whatever approximates for headphones). 

Mic'ing a drum kit usually takes around 10 mics, not two... I have no idea where you've been working. Even in a tiny venue where overheads, bottom snare and hi-hat mics aren't needed you'd use a minimum of kick, snare, toms.
 
A common setup would be:
1. Kick in
2. Kick out
3. Snare top
4. Snare bottom
5. Hi-hat
6, 7, 8 Toms
9. Overhead left
10. Overhead right
 
A microphone, like a speaker, is a transducer. You get different polar patterns, but there is no way top get 'height' into a mic or out of a speaker. Obviously with a setup that involved low and high speakers you could mix accordingly, but I'm not aware of any music doing this. 99% of music is stereo, with the occasional 5.1 mix on DVD or bluray. Live sound is essentially always stereo.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  Mic'ing a drum kit usually takes around 10 mics, not two... I have no idea where you've been working. Even in a tiny venue where overheads, bottom snare and hi-hat mics aren't needed you'd use a minimum of kick, snare, toms.
 
A common setup would be:
1. Kick in
2. Kick out
3. Snare top
4. Snare bottom
5. Hi-hat
6, 7, 8 Toms
9. Overhead left
10. Overhead right
 
A microphone, like a speaker, is a transducer. You get different polar patterns, but there is no way top get 'height' into a mic or out of a speaker. Obviously with a setup that involved low and high speakers you could mix accordingly, but I'm not aware of any music doing this. 99% of music is stereo, with the occasional 5.1 mix on DVD or bluray. Live sound is essentially always stereo.

 
Thanks. To be honest, the imaging on theirs did kind of suck, but like I said since I wasn't a sound engineer I wasn't going to go in there and screw with what they were doing, so basically that explains why it wasn't any good. Not to mention that imaging is usually the very last thing that people notice anyway, so even if I explained to my friends that their drums were a bit too-2D, it would have been a case of "huh?" all around 

 

[bigshot]

Soundstage with headphones is a straight line through the center of your noggin. No up/down, just left/right. Speakers generally have no up/down either, unless they are positioned above or below the listening position or the room itself is affecting the presentation of the soundstage.
 
You can't record a vertical axis with just two speakers, unless you stack one on top of another.

 

[Solrighal]

  Soundstage with headphones is a straight line through the center of your noggin. No up/down, just left/right. Speakers generally have no up/down either, unless they are positioned above or below the listening position or the room itself is affecting the presentation of the soundstage.
 
You can't record a vertical axis with just two speakers, unless you stack one on top of another.

 
This has always been my belief. It's certainly possible that microphones could pick up internal room reflections but there would still be no way to replicate that in a pair of stereo headphones. This discussion makes me wonder why they don't create surround setups which utilize speakers in the roof. Or maybe they do & I'm just old.
 

 

[bigshot]

  This discussion makes me wonder why they don't create surround setups which utilize speakers in the roof. Or maybe they do & I'm just old.
 

 
Coming next year- Dolby Atmos
http://www.dolby.com/us/en/guide/dolby-atmos-speaker-setup/index.html

 

[Solrighal]

Haha, far out! Who knew? I wish I'd stuck in at school.

 

[castleofargh]

well it's not that we can't do vertical, it's more that vertical is mostly a parameter coming from the shape of our ears(and maybe our torso? the ground too?dunno), so what works for one dude might just not for another.
depending where the sound is coming from, the waves will bounce on different areas of the outer ear


that's what gives us up and down IRL. now I don't know if it's only a question of frequency response, or if maybe there is also something with delays, but the end result is that our brain learned the trick from what our own ears sent back. so it might be another excruciating problem to define an average norm for height in a master. and anyway I doubt that the changes would be as significant as the differences between 2 headphones or the work the audio engineer will do on the track.
 
 

 

[bigshot]

Vertical is a direction. If you want sound to come from a direction, you put a speaker up there. It isn't rocket science.