[goosebill]

I don't know that I "get" soundstage.

I have an old pair of Apple iPod earbuds (not the newer "earpods", I mean the old kind without a mic, from the pre-iPhone days). I also have a pair of Sennheiser HD558s (over-ear, open-back). Supposedly the HD558s are supposed to have a very good soundstage, but I honestly can't tell any difference whatsoever. I have a whole mess of different music and even downloaded a bunch of FLAC "headphone tester" files with 3D spatial recordings, and they both seem to have basically the same sense of "width" and "space". Neither produces sound that seems "inside my head".

I don't understand what the situation is here. The general opinion seems to be that earbuds typically have bad soundstage. Are old Apple earbuds known for being an exception or something? Are my ears broken? What am I supposed to be listening for?

 

[Meetite]

The best explanation I can give is soundstage is how "far away" the audio sounds. For example, a pair of headphones lacking soundstage sound like the sound originates from inside your head (low to mid-tier IEMs are usually like this) while headphones with very large or wide soundstage sound like you are sitting in a room with speakers in front of you or being at a concert with your music being performed in front if you and for you personally.

If this doesn't help, basically imagine being in a studio and having a band's bass and drum set player behind you, brass instruments to the sides, and everything else in front; you would hear these instruments where they are and be able to sort of gauge how far away they are from you. This is soundstage is wide, large, etc. On the other hand, imagine those instruments just all playing inside your head such that you couldn't tell where they were and that all the sound originates from one point inside your head. This soundstage is narrow, small, etc.

Soundstage is another one of those audiphiophile terms that makes sense if you know what it means because you've experienced it before, but makes absolutely no sense to most other people. Your ears most definitely aren't broken, lol. It's just a concept that is really hard to understand without having either demo'd/owned really expensive headphones or having listened to properly tuned speakers (anyone can shove speakers in a room, but for the best experience many people drop hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have their speakers tuned to the room they're in).

3D spacial awareness sound tests won't get you very far. Those are intended mainly for testing surround setups which is a completely different effect to what soundstage is (surround is often used as a way to compensate for poor soundstage in things like gaming headsets). A better test would be a song with a lot of instruments but isn't very busy; you should be able to focus mentally on individual instruments and tell then apart from others and ~sense~ a different "location" for where the sound is coming from (sorry, it's really hard to explain these things). "Kids" by MGMT is a good test track; it's relatively busy but there are significant amounts of separation between instruments and things you wouldn't hear without decent soundstage (there's a synth that plays only in the right audio channel that is difficult to notice in headphones lacking in soundstage).

You don't really listen for soundstage, it's more something you ~sense~. You can't hear depth or distance (well, technically you can but that's a conversation for another day) but you can feel that something sounds further away or in front or behind; it's weird. Feeling how something sounds is an odd concept, but people get paid thousands of dollars to study this and engineer ways to make it happen. If you ever get a chance, find a store near you where you can demo expensive pairs of headphones and compare a pair of really expensive open-backed circumaural (over-ear) headphones (Sennheiser HD800s for example) to your apple earbuds; you should notice the difference.

 

[goosebill]

OK..... that's pretty much what I thought, but I still can't tell the difference. I've even tried a few binaural test tracks for this and with both the iPod earbuds and the HD558s things sounded equally far away, and both pretty much sounded like I was in the same room.

Honestly, I don't really understand how the underlying physics of this are even supposed to make sense in the first place. Unless you have severe crosstalk going on the left/right separation should be identical anyway. Whether something sounds "near" or "far" is, AFAIK, dependent on binaural ear-to-ear delay, right?

 

[Meetite]

OK..... that's pretty much what I thought, but I still can't tell the difference. I've even tried a few binaural test tracks for this and with both the iPod earbuds and the HD558s things sounded equally far away, and both pretty much sounded like I was in the same room.

Honestly, I don't really understand how the underlying physics of this are even supposed to make sense in the first place. Unless you have severe crosstalk going on the left/right separation should be identical anyway. Whether something sounds "near" or "far" is, AFAIK, dependent on binaural ear-to-ear delay, right?

I agree, the science behind this is very confusing, but it does work, somehow. Additionally, comparing between a pair of earbuds and cans is difficult because they have Inherently different designs that affect the sound dramatically. A better comparison would be the HD558s to a pair of cheap cans or to compare your apple earbuds to a pair of expensive IEMs.

Your confusion is definitely understandable. This is a very difficult concept to explain and comprehend.
If you haven't already, look back at my previous post, I edited it a bit to clarify things a bit more.

On the topic of binaural ear-to-ear delay... Not quite. It's a common misconception that the delay between how long it takes sound to get to each ear purely dictates where we believe sound is coming from (if this were the case how could we tell up from down or front from back). Most of what causes us to hear sound as coming from a certain direction is caused by the complex shape of the ear and how it affects sound as it comes from different directions (I may not be 100% correct here so take what I say with a grain of salt). If you want to know the science of this you should go to the Sound Science section on Head-fi and start a thread there. There are numerous people more knowledgeable than me in the field of sound science who can explain to you how this works. IMO what I believe causes us to hear sound stage the way we do is caused by recordings being mastered in such a way that imitates the effect that the shape of our ear would have on the sound and certain headphones are able to reproduce that more effectively (this is just what I believe to be the case, though. I could easily be wrong)

Soundstage really is a very difficult concept, and FWIW it can sound different to different people. Furthermore, you wouldn't hear one instrument being to the right and another to the left despite the track being recorded in mono, it's more of both instruments sounding like they're coming from both sides as opposed to from behind or in front.

If you need any more clarification if I missed something please feel free to ask.

 

[goosebill]

Alright..... played Kids by MGMT. I made sure to listen using the earbuds first to avoid the problem of placebo-hearing something I already know is supposed to be there. Still can't hear any difference, didn't notice anything with the HD558s that I didn't hear the first time with the earbuds, and going back to the earbuds I didn't notice anything in particular being lost.

> there's a synth that plays only in the right audio channe
Do you mean the main synth that plays during the refrain that's panned like 50% right? Because I picked that out with the earbuds right off the bat. If it's some other synth you'll need to quote a time marker because I didn't notice it on the 558s.

 

[Meetite]

Alright..... played Kids by MGMT. I made sure to listen using the earbuds first to avoid the problem of placebo-hearing something I already know is supposed to be there. Still can't hear any difference, didn't notice anything with the HD558s that I didn't hear the first time with the earbuds, and going back to the earbuds I didn't notice anything in particular being lost.

> there's a synth that plays only in the right audio channe
Do you mean the main synth that plays during the refrain that's panned like 50% right? Because I picked that out with the earbuds right off the bat. If it's some other synth you'll need to quote a time marker because I didn't notice it on the 558s.

Hmm, weird.
On the topic of the synth, it's running in the background purely in the right audio channel relatively quietly for the majority of the song. In hindsight, this track is a better example of separation than it is soundstage, but since the two go hand-in-hand was why i suggested it.
Look around online and see if you can find any other explanations or examples of soundstage other than mine. I'm sure I don't have the best explanation out there.

See this thread

 

[goosebill]

Not hearing it, but maybe it's not really there on the compressed youtube versions. Just as a sanity check, am I listening to the right song/remix? Can you hear it on this version?

 

[Meetite]

Not hearing it, but maybe it's not really there on the compressed youtube versions. Just as a sanity check, am I listening to the right song/remix? Can you hear it on this version?

Ooooh. That's a slightly different mix but it is still there; you're right, in that mix it's panned about 50% to the right. I was referring to the mix from the album Oracular Spectacular, where it's panned full right, it sounds slightly different and is more likely to get lost in everything else than it is in other mixes. The main thing with this synth is that better soundstage makes it easier to hear as it tends to sound either further away than other instruments or closer than other instruments. For example, it sounds closer than the main background synth, but further than the synth playing mainly in the left audio channel. Another example would be that the synth playing mostly in the left audio channel sounds like it's coming from somewhere slightly in front to the left and up a little, while the synth in the right audio channel sounds like it's coming from slightly behind directly right. This is partially due to the fact that the tracks are mastered to be to the left or to the right, but also due to soundstage and other things about the recording make it have more directionality (namely up and down and front and back).

Some people may disagree with me here as I know I personally have a tendency to mix up what some people would refer to as soundstage with what others would refer to as directionality. Soundstage and directionality go hand in hand similarly to how separation and soundstage do (separation and directionality are effectively synonymous a lot of the time).
This is a very fuzzy area that is really hard to explain without the person you are explaining it to having experience with it.

Personally I think the best way for you to get the understanding of soundstage would be to find a friend or colleague who has a speaker setup for their TV or living room or something like that and ask if you can join them for a listen some time (if you don't know someone you can do this with see if there's an audio boutique near you that you can do high quality speaker demos at. Many stores like this will let people sit in and listen to expensive speakers for hours on end, but many require appointments). Then later that night go to your home computer and listen to the same things through the built in speakers (or use your phone, that's another good comparison, except phone speakers tend to be pretty bad overall unless you're HTC or ZTE). You will likely notice that the lower quality speakers built in to your phone or computer make the audio sound like it's just coming in front of you while the expensive well tuned speakers make the audio sound like it's coming from around you or generally fill the space. To take this comparison from speakers to headphones imagine the sound of the lower quality speakers instead of coming from directly in front of you instead to inside your head, like it "occurred" inside your skull. This would be poor soundstage while the well tuned speakers would be very good soundstage.

 

[goosebill]

Alright, found the other mix (although they're all super compressed), still can't tell any difference at all in "farther-awayness" or separation between the iPod earbuds and the HD558s. I guess either the earbuds have good soundstage, the 558s aren't as good as people claim, or I'm just incapable of hearing it.



> make the audio sound like it's just coming in front of you while the expensive well tuned speakers make the audio sound like it's coming from around you

No, I understand that part, what I'm trying to say is that I hear it the same on both. The "width of the space" and how "around me" the instruments are and where they seem to be coming from sounds exactly the same to me regardless of which set I use.

 

[Meetite]

Alright, found the other mix (although they're all super compressed), still can't tell any difference at all in "farther-awayness" or separation between the iPod earbuds and the HD558s. I guess either the earbuds have good soundstage, the 558s aren't as good as people claim, or I'm just incapable of hearing it.



> make the audio sound like it's just coming in front of you while the expensive well tuned speakers make the audio sound like it's coming from around you

No, I understand that part, what I'm trying to say is that I hear it the same on both. The "width of the space" and how "around me" the instruments are and where they seem to be coming from sounds exactly the same to me regardless of which set I use.

Oh I see what you're saying. I personally don't know how to explain "width" and directionality without a physical example to explain it with. :/
The best I can really do to explain it would be the more width there is the further apart the instruments sound from each other (not entirely sure this is an accurate statement but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).
Take to other threads on this topic and audiophile terminology threads; you'll probably find some better examples/explanations there.

 

[goosebill]

Hmm. OK, thanks for your help at least.

 

[Meetite]

Hmm. OK, thanks for your help at least.

No problem