Unexpected expansion of earbud sound stage

[Wescott]

Many (20?) years ago I was pretty active here, now I'm back because I want to share something that took me completely by surprise. That comes at the end of this blather after I explain myself a bit so you can judge for yourself how worthwhile my opinions may be.

I recently bought Sony WF-1000MX5 earbuds, and I'm delighted with their sound despite some nuisances in using them.

Long whispered aside number one: I know, Head-Fi being Head-Fi, that many will condemn my choice. However, I come to it in a roundabout and inevitable way.

When I was previously active here, I settled on Etymotics after flirting with can-style Sennheisers and AKGs, but the Ety's sound delighted me best. Then there came a gap, a retreat from recorded music altogether that I can't really explain. Despite having hundreds of CDs (classical except for some Indian and other ethnic music) and being a long-term audiophile to the extent my budget and listening rooms allowed, I just stopped enjoying music except for an occasional concert.

I had been living in Moscow through that Etys-to-amusicality process. Come the recent special military operation, and I decided being an American in Russia was too risky (and I'm 79 and therefore not up to much adventure). So I moved to Tbilisi, still not much interested in listening to music, and left behind all my CDs (and much else). Surely, adventure enough.

Once I was alone in an unfamiliar environment, listening to music began to appeal to me more. And I discovered that classical music online had finally matured to the point where I could find virtually anything I ever heard and all the versions I hadn't to stream for a pretty measly monthly fee (Idagio was what I chose). However, all I had to listen with was a set of low-end Soundcore earbuds. I asked my wife to bring my Etys when she visited, but they shocked me by sounding disappointing compared to the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 set. The Etys sounded recessed and not engaging. Were the tips hardened or softened with time to the point where I couldn't get a good seal? Were my ancient ears incapable of hearing crucial nuances? I fiddled with Winamp to no avail.

But the Soundcores had sold me on wireless. I know the best possible sound can't be had through Bluetooth, and maybe earbuds are in principle inferior for musical reproduction. Audiophile dogma aside, I wanted to enjoy music on my terms as much as my degraded hearing allows and with complete freedom to move around.

Whispered aside number two: The shameful admission is, I like dancing around the room and mock-conducting to the music as a way to keep my body in motion. I must look like a complete fool, but I enjoy it.

Tbilisi is no shopper's paradise, and of top-tier earbuds only the Sonys were available. I plumped for them.

It happens that the apartment I rent in Georgia, the country, is on the nineteenth floor of twenty, and the balcony offers a spectacular panorama of Tbilisi and the mountains it is nestled between. I gaze at that view many times each day.

The point of this post is that--to my amazement--when I go out on the balcony listening to music with my earbuds, the soundstage seems to get much broader as soon as I step outside. It seems to expand to match the breadth of my peripheral vision. I come back in, and it shrinks back. This seems repeatable.

Whispered aside number three: Am I crazy? Does anyone else notice this? Is itan illusion, or is it a psycho-neurological quirk that not everyone shares? Is going outdoors with your headphones a useful way to spread out your sound stage? If so, does it depend on certain characteristics of the view?

 

[Claypole]

When listening to IEMs, the seal in the ear canal from the tips acts as a barrier, keeping the music in and the ambient sound out.

Generally speaking, indoors is quieter than outdoors, so when you go outdoors, the ambient noise slightly breaks down the acoustic barrier created by the tips. The ambient noise mixes with the music, blurring edge of the soundstage.

Or, maybe, as you suggest, it’s psychological. and is dependant on the sense of space you get when stepping outside, as well as the view.

 

[LanceSaintPaul]

I certainly don't know, but I want to encourage you to continue to experimenting with this, try to pinpoint some source of this.
It certainly could be perceptual, but I think there is a physical/mechanical reason for this.
Play with it some more! And keep us posted. It is fascinating, interesting, and fun. The repeatability should peak all our curiosity.
Claypole's thoughts are an interesting point of view (and the simplicity of cause should please Occam). Donno.

 

[castleofargh]

Many (20?) years ago I was pretty active here, now I'm back because I want to share something that took me completely by surprise. That comes at the end of this blather after I explain myself a bit so you can judge for yourself how worthwhile my opinions may be.

I recently bought Sony WF-1000MX5 earbuds, and I'm delighted with their sound despite some nuisances in using them.

Long whispered aside number one: I know, Head-Fi being Head-Fi, that many will condemn my choice. However, I come to it in a roundabout and inevitable way.

When I was previously active here, I settled on Etymotics after flirting with can-style Sennheisers and AKGs, but the Ety's sound delighted me best. Then there came a gap, a retreat from recorded music altogether that I can't really explain. Despite having hundreds of CDs (classical except for some Indian and other ethnic music) and being a long-term audiophile to the extent my budget and listening rooms allowed, I just stopped enjoying music except for an occasional concert.

I had been living in Moscow through that Etys-to-amusicality process. Come the recent special military operation, and I decided being an American in Russia was too risky (and I'm 79 and therefore not up to much adventure). So I moved to Tbilisi, still not much interested in listening to music, and left behind all my CDs (and much else). Surely, adventure enough.

Once I was alone in an unfamiliar environment, listening to music began to appeal to me more. And I discovered that classical music online had finally matured to the point where I could find virtually anything I ever heard and all the versions I hadn't to stream for a pretty measly monthly fee (Idagio was what I chose). However, all I had to listen with was a set of low-end Soundcore earbuds. I asked my wife to bring my Etys when she visited, but they shocked me by sounding disappointing compared to the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 set. The Etys sounded recessed and not engaging. Were the tips hardened or softened with time to the point where I couldn't get a good seal? Were my ancient ears incapable of hearing crucial nuances? I fiddled with Winamp to no avail.

But the Soundcores had sold me on wireless. I know the best possible sound can't be had through Bluetooth, and maybe earbuds are in principle inferior for musical reproduction. Audiophile dogma aside, I wanted to enjoy music on my terms as much as my degraded hearing allows and with complete freedom to move around.

Whispered aside number two: The shameful admission is, I like dancing around the room and mock-conducting to the music as a way to keep my body in motion. I must look like a complete fool, but I enjoy it.

Tbilisi is no shopper's paradise, and of top-tier earbuds only the Sonys were available. I plumped for them.

It happens that the apartment I rent in Georgia, the country, is on the nineteenth floor of twenty, and the balcony offers a spectacular panorama of Tbilisi and the mountains it is nestled between. I gaze at that view many times each day.

The point of this post is that--to my amazement--when I go out on the balcony listening to music with my earbuds, the soundstage seems to get much broader as soon as I step outside. It seems to expand to match the breadth of my peripheral vision. I come back in, and it shrinks back. This seems repeatable.

Whispered aside number three: Am I crazy? Does anyone else notice this? Is itan illusion, or is it a psycho-neurological quirk that not everyone shares? Is going outdoors with your headphones a useful way to spread out your sound stage? If so, does it depend on certain characteristics of the view?

By default, we locate things with our eyes. The brain trusts visual cues more than audio cues when they happen to disagree. It's one of the reasons why I keep making a distinction that audiophiles hate, between what people are perceiving with their ears(what something really sounds like), and what they think they are perceiving with their ears.
The experience of music is always more than the sound at the eardrum. It's often discussed and researched(not in audio forum...) as multimodal integration or multisensory interpretation. The general idea is that different senses are initially independent(some cells trigger some neurons, a bunch of them reach an area that's in charge of making sense of that(hearing, vision, taste...), then some other areas of the brain will take in a bunch of information from those various sources of data and create our subjective reality for the entire experience. It's how we make sense of thing. There is no way to bypass the final "mixer/interpret" so we're never just hearing(why I think blind tests are the only true solution to "can I hear this?").

The consequences are numerous, often still mysterious because the brain is mysterious in many ways, and more annoyingly, there can be enough subjective variables to give a different experience to different people. Making useful models out of that is hell, but some clever people try hard anyway.
A few days ago I posted this https://www.head-fi.org/threads/smyth-research-realiser-a16.807459/post-18146469
Only the second part can loosely interest you. It's in the specific context of using a Realiser A16 which is a speaker simulator with head tracking. The PDF I refer to, explains most ways we perceive data relevant to localization. When it comes to sound we're in fact pretty bad at it, so it's not that strange for our brain to cheat when it can and use other sources of information to create audio meaning. Sight, memory, head movement, what you focus on, what you expect to happen, the frequency response of your playback system, anything can play some role in your experience.
My anecdote in that linked post is vaguely similar to your own in how the room I'm in, and what I see in it like the possible presence of speakers, directly affects what I hear and where I hear it. You getting on your balcony is like moving to the biggest room there is.

It's always interesting to me to read about such experiences. Sometimes because I'm surprised they exist, which isn't the case with your story as I think it makes enough sense, but because it gives my that perspective of how different we all can be.
It is often suggested that we can have a somewhat similar experience of bigger than ever imaging when in the dark, eyes closed for a while and our head not moving at all. I don't know if the lack of other cues let us fully focus on sound the way we want, or if it is the lack of visual limits that stops opposing the audio cues, but most people(not all!) can experience a pretty big audio space like that. Of course, if you can't see anything and can't move, you're losing the fun of "air conducting". Something I understand and encourage. Participating is a great way to get truly engaged in the experience(dance exists for a reason). I did something similar just last night with Vivaldi's four seasons, but don't tell anyone. I hadn't played that for maybe a decade. Someone told me about Richter rewriting of it which motivated me to then play a version of the real thing. And by the end of spring, there I was doing something that might be closer to boxing than conducting, but having a blast while it lasted.

 

[Wescott]

I certainly don't know, but I want to encourage you to continue to experimenting with this, try to pinpoint some source of this.
It certainly could be perceptual, but I think there is a physical/mechanical reason for this.
Play with it some more! And keep us posted. It is fascinating, interesting, and fun. The repeatability should peak all our curiosity.
Claypole's thoughts are an interesting point of view (and the simplicity of cause should please Occam). Donno.

Without getting obsessive about it, I have done one informal comparison. Tonight I was listening to the Diabelli variations (Arrau on Philips) via streaming, and it was dark when I went out on the balcony, although there were plenty of points to look at from lights everywhere in the city.

The finding was that no change in the sound stage occurred, or maybe just a momentary surge as I went out the door. But if it was there, it collapsed at once. I think this is down to the recording having no real spatial cues. It was probably made in a small studio with the microphones stuck down close to the soundboard, and the engineers expected the room where playback occurs to provide the spatial context.

Next up, I will try a solo organ recording where I expect the phenomenon to hold because the microphones will be catching some of the church's effect on the sound.

 

[Wescott]

By default, we locate things with our eyes. The brain trusts visual cues more than audio cues when they happen to disagree. It's one of the reasons why I keep making a distinction that audiophiles hate, between what people are perceiving with their ears(what something really sounds like), and what they think they are perceiving with their ears.
The experience of music is always more than the sound at the eardrum. It's often discussed and researched(not in audio forum...) as multimodal integration or multisensory interpretation. The general idea is that different senses are initially independent(some cells trigger some neurons, a bunch of them reach an area that's in charge of making sense of that(hearing, vision, taste...), then some other areas of the brain will take in a bunch of information from those various sources of data and create our subjective reality for the entire experience. It's how we make sense of thing. There is no way to bypass the final "mixer/interpret" so we're never just hearing(why I think blind tests are the only true solution to "can I hear this?").

The consequences are numerous, often still mysterious because the brain is mysterious in many ways, and more annoyingly, there can be enough subjective variables to give a different experience to different people. Making useful models out of that is hell, but some clever people try hard anyway.
A few days ago I posted this https://www.head-fi.org/threads/smyth-research-realiser-a16.807459/post-18146469
Only the second part can loosely interest you. It's in the specific context of using a Realiser A16 which is a speaker simulator with head tracking. The PDF I refer to, explains most ways we perceive data relevant to localization. When it comes to sound we're in fact pretty bad at it, so it's not that strange for our brain to cheat when it can and use other sources of information to create audio meaning. Sight, memory, head movement, what you focus on, what you expect to happen, the frequency response of your playback system, anything can play some role in your experience.
My anecdote in that linked post is vaguely similar to your own in how the room I'm in, and what I see in it like the possible presence of speakers, directly affects what I hear and where I hear it. You getting on your balcony is like moving to the biggest room there is.

It's always interesting to me to read about such experiences. Sometimes because I'm surprised they exist, which isn't the case with your story as I think it makes enough sense, but because it gives my that perspective of how different we all can be.
It is often suggested that we can have a somewhat similar experience of bigger than ever imaging when in the dark, eyes closed for a while and our head not moving at all. I don't know if the lack of other cues let us fully focus on sound the way we want, or if it is the lack of visual limits that stops opposing the audio cues, but most people(not all!) can experience a pretty big audio space like that. Of course, if you can't see anything and can't move, you're losing the fun of "air conducting". Something I understand and encourage. Participating is a great way to get truly engaged in the experience(dance exists for a reason). I did something similar just last night with Vivaldi's four seasons, but don't tell anyone. I hadn't played that for maybe a decade. Someone told me about Richter rewriting of it which motivated me to then play a version of the real thing. And by the end of spring, there I was doing something that might be closer to boxing than conducting, but having a blast while it lasted.

Certainly, perception is not just a straightforward result of what happens at sense organs (to the extent that those are distinct, like eyes and cochlea-eardrums.

I've noticed a similar--what?--distortion? augmentation? of my heard experience when watching videos of concerts. When a solo part emerges and the editor cuts to a close up of that player, I seem to hear their instrument as louder. In fact, I don't like this about concert videos because it seems to me like a distracting interruption of the balance in the sound, like gain-riding but altering only the visuals and not the audio output. But it has the same effect on me.