[MStager]

Soundstage in headphones?
You jest. What soundstage?
 
There really isn't any.
The stereo spread is completely artificial.
The left channel feeds only the left ear and right only the right ear.
 
Listening to speakers, there is a semblance of a natural soundstage where the music is in front of you,
When a musician is on way on the left or right, you hear him/her as in live performance.
 
Through headphones, the pure left and pure right reproduction is completely artificial and often
uncomfortable to listen to. You do get a good center image without the blurring of speakers where,
even if you are dead center and equidistant from each cabinet, the right ear hears the signal from
the left and vice versa. Try listening to a singer or musician in the center with a record jacket,
edge to your nose, and you'll hear the center image with far greater focus since you are reducing
the time offset reaching your ears from opposite speakers.
 
Since this leakage doesn't occur in cans, the center is perfectly defined, but as the music moves away
from the center, the perspective becomes exaggerated and at the extreme, hard right or left, becomes
completely unnatural and uncomfortable to listen to. Of course there are binaural recordings which
are recorded specifically to be listened through headphones and some of these sound spectacular
.
But normal stereo?
Not so good - and often unlistenable.
 
That is the elephant in the room nobody talks about.
 
Simple fix?
A separation control to allow you to cross-pan the stereo signal.
You'd be surprised how close to mono you have to blend before you get a realistic soundstage.
The music becomes much more real and natural, often amazingly so.
 
Marc Stager
Stager Sound Systems,
New York City

 

[Graham Baker]

Soundstage is all in the mind, especially when using headphones...
Headphones potentially give a far more accurate replication of the recording than loudspeakers ever will, no room reflections/acoustics to muddy the sound, no audio from one speaker interfering with the audio from the other speaker.
The soundstage you are getting from loudspeakers is the original recorded soundstage muddied by the soundstage/room acoustics of the room you are listening in. The room and its furnsihings all add or subtract to the soundstage of the recording, something the artist or producer of the recording has no control over or can allow for ...
What is heard from a set of headphones is the original soundstage as heard at the time it was mixed/recorded and intended to be heard by the artist/recording engineer/producer, *without* the addition of your particular room acoustics being added...
I do agree that a 'blend' control could be a handy thing to have on a set of headphones as an optional control for those recordings that have been mixed all left and right with no centre...

 

[MStager]

If and only if the original recording was mixed using headphones as reference monitors, I would agree with you 100%.
 
But anything mixed with speakers playing in front of the mix engineer, when reproduced over headphones or IEM's will have an exaggerated, artificial soundfield.
 
I understand what you mean by room artifacts, and not too many people have the acoustics or equipment of a well designed control room or the ability to play at anything near live volume levels,
especially in an apartment. I can live with that, but not with the spatial distortion of a pulled-apart sound field listening through headphones. It just sounds wrong and distracts from the music.
 
Have you ever watched a movie with the wrong aspect ratio, much wider than for which the original film was intended? Everything looks too wide, everyone is fat. You wouldn't want to watch a movie like that.
That's similar to what headphones do to a stereo image intended for speakers.
 
Now, insert that blend control, dial in the right audio "aspect ratio", and you get the best of both worlds and it Sounds great
That's how I like to listen.

 

[Graham Baker]

Personally I like what I hear from my P7's, nothing is a problem, I really enjoy the immersive sound/feel, even though, as you say, it might not be what the artist/engineer/producer originally intended, although I don't think a set of near field monitors in front of a mixing desk is going to create the same sound stage as most home setups and I think most audio engineers will compensate for that in the mix?
I just don't hear a problem (in general) with a 'wider than should be' left/right soundfield, it all combines nicely 'in my mind' which was my opening line in my reply. I don't hear it as being too wide it all comes together in my head. My 'All in the mind' line has more than one meaning
I have listened to many types of music through numerous (mainly Tannoy & B & W) speaker systems over the years. Speakers and headphones are not the same thing, when you do a direct comparison they are different, perhaps that's what you are trying to say. Perhaps headphones are really not for you.
For me, I am beginning to really appreciate how immersive and personal a good set of cans can be. This sensation is new to me (well, over the last few years, compared to a long lifetime of loudspeaker listening) and I think that I actually prefer using headphones to listening to loudspeakers, generally speaking.
Yes there are some recordings that (to me) are badly mixed (mid-60's UK pop rubbish where stereo was new and used as a gimmick) and need to be listened to either through loudspeakers or as a mono recording (as many old 60's LP's had as an option) - for this sort of stuff your 'blend' control would be a worthwhile addition to a headset.
I remember many years back building a headphone adapter box for a stereo amp that had no headphone jack - I used  a pot/resistors across the two channels to fit a blend control and it worked well for some music.
 
I still take issue with your declaration that headphones don't have a sound-stage. IMHO a well designed set with no crosstalk will reproduce the exact sound-stage that was recorded which is closer to the truth in some ways than a pair of loudspeakers.
They will not add to an existing sound-stage as a pair of loudspeakers (and a listening room) will

 

[ubs28]

I have my doubts whether a standard 2 channel speaker system is accurate. If you pan a sound hard left ( - 90 degrees), the sound is not coming hard left (-90 degrees) in a standard 2 channel speaker system that is placed in the living room. The sound is still coming from the front partially rather than from the left beside me. So actually in terms of imaging, the standard 2 channel speakers that are placed in front of you are not that accurate.  
 
This is all my opinion ofcourse and based on what I hear with my own set of ears. 

 

[thuNDa]

  I have my doubts whether a standard 2 channel speaker system is accurate. If you pan a sound hard left ( - 90 degrees), the sound is not coming hard left (-90 degrees) in a standard 2 channel speaker system that is placed in the living room. The sound is still coming from the front partially rather than from the left beside me. So actually in terms of imaging, the standard 2 channel speakers that are placed in front of you are not that accurate.  
 
This is all my opinion ofcourse and based on what I hear with my own set of ears. 

 
The musician you would "pan" to the left or right on a stage, would also still play infront of you, so a speaker system is accurate in this regard.
The whole purpose of "Stereo-records" is to create a stage, which is always supposed to be infront of you.
 
From this point of view, headphones are just wrong, but those are all philosophical considerations.
Not philosophical though is, that headphone listenening stresses the brain with the absence of directional cues, which are not present in headphones, due to the ears receiving exclusivly separat signals.
 
The answer to this is "crossfeed"(more sophisticated "blending" of the channels).
It blends frequency dependant(more at lower frequencies, less at higher), and with a little delay from the indirect channel, with both points resembling natural listening.
 
This also creates a more coherent "stage", which moves a bit infront too.
 
This is an example of how it sounds(switching it on and off every 10sec): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOvoL64Ra84

 

[ubs28]

   
The musician you would "pan" to the left or right on a stage, would also still play infront of you, so a speaker system is accurate in this regard.
The whole purpose of "Stereo-records" is to create a stage, which is always supposed to be infront of you.
 
From this point of view, headphones are just wrong, but those are all philosophical considerations.
Not philosophical though is, that headphone listenening stresses the brain with the absence of directional cues, which are not present in headphones, due to the ears receiving exclusivly separat signals.
 
The answer to this is "crossfeed"(more sophisticated "blending" of the channels).
It blends frequency dependant(more at lower frequencies, less at higher), and with a little delay from the indirect channel, with both points resembling natural listening.
 
This also creates a more coherent "stage", which moves a bit infront too.
 
This is an example of how it sounds(switching it on and off every 10sec): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOvoL64Ra84

 
If you want to pan a musician at -70 degrees on the stage, then it should be panned that way instead of panning it -90 degrees.
 
If I pan a sound hard left on a mixing board (-90 degrees), then I expect the sound to come from -90 degrees right beside me.  It shouldn't be coming from -80 degrees or -70 degrees if the imaging is accurate in my opinion.  
 
Headphones are generally wrong with most music because recordings are mixed and mastered on 2 channel speakers which image differently. But it's not due to headphones not imaging correctly and accurately. You can try to "fix" it with cross feed indeed. But the problem is in the mixing and mastering.

 

[akg fanboy]

Most headphones aren't completely flat and accurate in the frequency response either. I enjoy the "artifical" soundstage on my Q701s and it greatly helps me pinpoint objects when gaming

 

[ubs28]

Most headphones aren't completely flat and accurate in the frequency response either. I enjoy the "artifical" soundstage on my Q701s and it greatly helps me pinpoint objects when gaming

 
That is not entirely true. The frequency response depends on the room, where you are in the room and the distance. Headphones are more reliable actually because the room has no impact. 
 
But under ideal conditions, I agree. But very good reference speakers are also way more expensive. And they are not as detailed and transparent as much cheaper headphones.

 

[thuNDa]

   
If you want to pan a musician at -70 degrees on the stage, then it should be panned that way instead of panning it -90 degrees.
 
If I pan a sound hard left on a mixing board (-90 degrees), then I expect the sound to come from -90 degrees right beside me.  It shouldn't be coming from -80 degrees or -70 degrees if the imaging is accurate in my opinion.  
 
Headphones are generally wrong with most music because recordings are mixed and mastered on 2 channel speakers which image differently. But it's not due to headphones not imaging correctly and accurately. You can try to "fix" it with cross feed indeed. But the problem is in the mixing and mastering.

those degrees in a mixing board, don't represent directions of a +/-90° circle around you tho.
Those mixing consoles are meant to mix with speakers after all, which are usually positioned at about +/-30° in circle around you.
 
 

 

[Me x3]

Check this:
http://www.head-fi.org/a/stax-sr-007-omega-ii-a-review-after-4-years-of-ownership-darth-nuts-epic-review