[doomlordis]

I have bought a Sansa Clip on the basis of the many glowing reviews on here, for the record its a good player, not the all conquering uber player some would have you believe but i put it somewhere in between my X5 and H10, certainly better than my Touch.
Anyway one thing i noticed when compairing it to my touch was how much wider the soundstage was , it didnt make music happen in the centre of my head like some players do nor did it play on the left and right of my head , it had a large horizontal plane that expanded beyond my ears.
Got me thinkin , how did it do this, i always though headphones would dictate soundstage to a degree but i cant understand technically how a MP3 player would achive it.
I suspect that the wider soundstage may just be the result of better seperation between the instruments.

 

[ljcii]

Could it be the stereo crosstalk?

 

[doomlordis]

Could be , i just know that in my house the speakers position dictate the soundstaging and the source i use makes little difference.

 

[parrot5]

It's probably less stereo crosstalk (than other players), or they have applied some 3D EQ to the sound. I hope it's not the latter.... as I'm still waiting for mine to arrive..........

Quote:

Originally Posted by doomlordis /img/forum/go_quote.gif Could be , i just know that in my house the speakers position dictate the soundstaging and the source i use makes little difference.

It makes a bigger difference with planar speakers, not so much with normal speakers in my opinion.

 

[lauinbeta]

i was always under the impression that the processor could delay output on different sides by fractions of a second in order to simulate the delay you would get from different orientations of instruments.
that or it just processes the signal better and you can hear the seperation just cause you get a cleaner source.

dont know for sure though.

 

[Currawong]

I found this amazing headphone review that explains so much about these things, though it's a review of a top-of-the-line STAX rig.

 

[bigshot]

Soundstage is an imaging effect that is created by the recording engineers in the mix. Just about all modern stereo equipment have adequate channel separation to be able to reproduce soundstage perfectly. The only thing that really affects it is speaker placement and room acoustics.

 

[xnothingpoetic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif Soundstage is an imaging effect that is created by the recording engineers in the mix. Just about all modern stereo equipment have adequate channel separation to be able to reproduce soundstage perfectly. The only thing that really affects it is speaker placement and room acoustics.

Obviously not, because IEMs don't benefit from speaker placement- and room acoustics is irrelevant in the head-fi world. Yet anyone can clearly disquisition the width and depth of the Sansa Clips soundstage in comparision to any other DAP they have.

This isn't placebo- this is a very big and noticeable difference.
So something besides 'speaker' placement and room acoustics is playing a big role here- unless crosstalk is playing a bigger role than you thought.



Maybe Sansa does do some sort of 3-d EQ to the sound (as said above)? or maybe it's the inherent nature of the DAC chip to give it this effect?

 

[nvkid909]

is it also something as simple as not having so much audio data in a recording? rather like a wood that's too full (can't see the wood for the trees), & then, placement of said trees (- i mean instruments), giving everything sufficient space to be heard? nosebleed vs. minimal techno, you can listen to dubby glitches in minimal but nosebleed is just assault on the ears... or classical music having enough silence space for quiet instruments to be heard wherever they are placed.

 

[Punnisher]

On full size cans, the main factor is the distance from the drivers to your ear. This is why Grados have a small stage, Beyerdynamics have a large stage, and the K1000 has a huge stage.

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xnothingpoetic /img/forum/go_quote.gif Obviously not, because IEMs don't benefit from speaker placement- and room acoustics is irrelevant in the head-fi world. Yet anyone can clearly disquisition the width and depth of the Sansa Clips soundstage in comparision to any other DAP they have.

That isn't soundstage. That's a crosstalk/phase manipulation effect added to the music, or perhaps how open or closed the headphones are and how they fit your particular ears. Soundstage is the placement of the instruments left to right in the mix.

See ya
Steve