[hockeyb213]

Wow! This page has turned into a wall of text I enjoyed reading through it though. But soundstage does exist it is just a name for the process of receiving the info but it is not a physical thing in a headphone rather then an effect on the brain so may be I read a bit too far into what he said that sound stage doesn't exist may be could be rephrased a bit

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[Bilavideo]

Disregard.

 

[Hsiu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilavideo /img/forum/go_quote.gif Or get a girlfriend. Fortunately, my wife dragged me out the door and made me take her to see The Proposal. That helped. Thanks for your indulgence. When I get going sometimes, I'm like a Bible salesman on crack.

getting a girlfriend cost more time and money than getting a good IEM or maybe 10 IEM. not to mention personal skill involve in it.

 

[Bilavideo]

That explains a lot of what goes on at Headfi.

 

[barleyguy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilavideo /img/forum/go_quote.gif Or get a girlfriend. Fortunately, my wife dragged me out the door and made me take her to see The Proposal. That helped. Thanks for your indulgence. When I get going sometimes, I'm like a Bible salesman on crack. F*&^* phase! I don't believe in phase, either, hahahahaha. He still owes me money.Oh, so I did get something right. I believe in treble extension. Treble pays his bills on time.Well, it's off to the library I go, but before I go, perhaps you could tell us more. I understand the role of phase in speaker alignment and crossover construction. Out-of-phase speakers are going to play havoc with aural imaging, but how does that translate into the size of soundstage? Are you saying that the IEM with the larger soundstage is the one with better phase alignment? And what does binaural recording have to do with it? I know there are recordings that are binaural, and by that, I don't mean stereophonic. A binaural recording, as I understand it, is a recording designed to adjust for the headphone environment, a so-called dummy-head capture. What does phase have to do with the vast majority of recordings that are not binaural?

I'll tell you what I know about it. This is based on 10ish years of miscellaneous reading and part time recording.

Essentially, there are 3 elements to sound. Frequency, Amplitude, and Phase. Phase could be considered part of frequency, because it is essentially that way the bumps and valleys in a waveform line up, but it's so important to our perception of sound that it could also be considered separate. Phase is the "place" in the waveform, for lack of a better term. Let's suppose you've got two sounds at the same frequency, for example 1000Hz. The sound is oscillating from positive to negative 1000 times per second. Then you add a second sound at the same frequency, but 1/2000 of a second later in time. It will have the same frequency, but the opposite phase. So the sounds will cancel each other out. This is how noise cancelling headphones work. You can also have something half out of phase, or a quarter out of phase, or any other increment. This is how we perceive "space". Sounds have a primary source, but they also bounce off walls, and other objects. This creates (approximately) the same frequency as the source, but with less amplitude and different phase.

There are two ways our ears perceive the direction a sound is coming from. The first and most obvious is left/right tracking. If the left ear is louder, something is likely coming from the left, and if the right ear is louder, something is likely coming from the right. But there is another way we perceive direction, and that's phase. Suppose there is a noisy fly buzzing around your bedroom, and you're laying on your side. You can only hear out of your left ear, but you can still tell pretty precisely which direction the fly is coming from. That's because of phase information. Phase can also allow us to perceive front/back and up/down information, which left/right tracking can't do by itself. That's why great speakers will have a sense of height and depth.

The way binaural recording works is by precisely creating the phase information a human being, with ears, would experience while sitting in a room with a performance. Because the phase information in that recording technique almost perfectly replicates the experience of sitting in the room with the performance, replaying a binaural recording on good headphones creates an uncanny sense of "being there". All recordings contain phase, however. It's just possibly not as accurate as it is in a binaural recording.

As far as soundstage being something that is an illusion created by the brain based on the sound from our headphones, of course it is. But no more than the rest of the recording. The song comes from a bucket of bits, which are sent down an electrical cable, which are reproduced by little magnets in our ears. So I would argue that the whole thing is an illusion, but the phase is no more an illusion than the frequency and amplitude.

So, yes, if earphones have accurate phase of various frequencies in relationship to each other, and they have enough treble extension to hear the phase in the high frequencies, they will have good soundstage.

.02,

Harley.

 

[bakhtiar]

IMHO, an accurate earphones/headphones will only reproduce only the content of the source. If it is recorded in studio, it should sound like being in studio. If the ear/headphones give a 'bigger' soundstage than it should be, then can we consider it as a good ear/headphones? Example.
With UM3Xs, IMHO, the soundstage is how it should be.
My friend's Audio Technica T22 headphones : It's like sitting at the back row, with lesser mid/mid-highs energy, mmm.. a V shape equalization.

In other word, IMHO, head/soundstage is closely related to sound signature. Phase or delay do changes the soundstage, but, the effect is much greater with speaker system than ear/headphones.

Thank you.

 

[iponderous]

"Or get a girlfriend. Fortunately, my wife dragged me out the door and made me take her to see The Proposal. That helped. Thanks for your indulgence. When I get going sometimes, I'm like a Bible salesman on crack."

Does your wife have any other films in mind?

 

[barleyguy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakhtiar /img/forum/go_quote.gif IMHO, an accurate earphones/headphones will only reproduce only the content of the source. If it is recorded in studio, it should sound like being in studio. If the ear/headphones give a 'bigger' soundstage than it should be, then can we consider it as a good ear/headphones? Example. With UM3Xs, IMHO, the soundstage is how it should be. My friend's Audio Technica T22 headphones : It's like sitting at the back row, with lesser mid/mid-highs energy, mmm.. a V shape equalization. In other word, IMHO, head/soundstage is closely related to sound signature. Phase or delay do changes the soundstage, but, the effect is much greater with speaker system than ear/headphones. Thank you.

Reminds me of something I forgot. The other obvious way we perceive front/back position is by amplitude. If something is louder it sounds closer, if it's quieter it sounds farther away. (Obvious) But this won't be accurate for different instruments unless the frequency balance is correct. So if the mids are too quiet, the singer will sound farther away. And if the information our ears/brain are getting from amplitude doesn't match the information we are getting from phase, we can't draw an accurate mental picture of the soundstage.

So, I would agree that frequency balance ("sound signature") is essential to soundstage. And possibly even moreso in earphones than speakers.

EDIT: Another point I should make is that not all music is recorded and mixed well enough for this to matter. If the amplitude and phase don't match up in the recording, it's not going to matter whether the speakers/earphones they are played back on reproduce it properly. If it is a classical recording from stereo mics of a real orchestra, an accurate soundstage is more important than some rock recordings, where everything is miced in mono and crammed together in a mixer board. Good effects boxes can create pretty cool soundstage too though. So I guess I'm saying that recordings with crappy soundstage won't be helped out by great playback. Maybe even the opposite, because you'll have accurate reproduction of crap. There's a point in there somewhere.

 

[Bilavideo]

Disregard.

 

[Bilavideo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iponderous /img/forum/go_quote.gif "Or get a girlfriend. Fortunately, my wife dragged me out the door and made me take her to see The Proposal. That helped. Thanks for your indulgence. When I get going sometimes, I'm like a Bible salesman on crack." Does your wife have any other films in mind?

I hope not.

 

[iponderous]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilavideo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I hope not.

Oh. I suspect there would be any number of Head-Fiers willing to chime in with their suggestions.

 

[bakhtiar]

Transformers

 

[knopi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by music_4321 /img/forum/go_quote.gif A bit of a contrast in the last 2 posts - one pretty much saying "Just after a few hours with them they're now up for sale". The other one saying "I've read and read and now just pulled the trigger"

For JoyEnergizer: this is a truth fact. I began to enjoy UM3X after many hours and only with shure foams. So your review does not make sense, I didn't like much them first week..

 

[shigzeo]

yes, but in my experience, only one earphone was nice from the start: atrio m5. all others, i learned to like after listening for a long time, fiddling with earpieces and getting used to wearing them in different styles.

the foam makes sense. tips are a huge problem with iems, but getting used to a phone/burning it in is something else. there have been a few that i never could get used to and which i sold or gave away. the um3x certainly is a beautiful machine though.

 

[derek8555]

After reading the majority of reviews in this thread I have also jumped onto the UM3X wagon...geez how much I hate you guys!

Out of the box I immediately noticed the smaller soundstage, and the much "attenuated" treble. But the more I listen to it the more I like about its lush and smooth midrange over W3.

They do sound more forward than W3 though, but nothing too much "in your face".
I find them much like the UM2s in general sound signature with everything being done much much better.