[Davesrose]

That sounds neat. I'd love to hear what it can do with a good music mix. Especially something like opera where soundstage can add so much to the enjoyment. I can imagine characters blocked so they're walking around the room.

I notice a lot of concert blu-rays have surround sound encoded in high sample lossless: which my receiver keeps 5.1 or 7.1 instead of up-mixing to a 3D format. Then again, maybe the only "music venue" I thought sounded better with overhead speakers is the recreation of Live Aid in Bohemian Rhapsody (when they start with camera pans of the audience). Disney+ is advertising a production of Hamilton coming out July 3. I see the specs for it do list Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision - so I am interested in seeing it with the high production value.

 

[bigshot]

There are only a few true Atmos music mixes. REM Monster and Kraftwork Catalog are the two I have. The Kraftwork is incredible in 5.1. I can only imagine that it would be even better in Atmos.

 

[Davesrose]

There are only a few true Atmos music mixes. REM Monster and Kraftwork Catalog are the two I have. The Kraftwork is incredible in 5.1. I can only imagine that it would be even better in Atmos.

True, that's why I'm looking forward to checking out Hamilton (I'm sure they also used modern video equipment to have native RAW and color grade HDR). Most all music mixed in Atmos is soundtracks with movies. (and I do think it's neat that a lot of older movies are being remixed: look forward to hearing difference with Master and Commander if and when that gets 4K mastering). I actually just watched Gandhi in its new 4K/Atmos restoration. Usually I have heard a music track seem to be further in front going out to the 45 to 50 degree sides (and if dialogue/sound FX...they seem further center and forward). Although what is interesting about end credits in Gandhi is that the music is mainly vocal, and the music is mixed to have voices coming from the sides and rear.

Oh, and when it comes to soundstage/imaging with Atmos....I'm now reminded about Apple+'s series See. I never skipped the beginning credits because they sound great in Atmos. It's an *abstract* music in which it's more sounds of the woods coming from all angles around you.

 

[71 dB]

Why do you come back and want to go right back into the stuff that made you leave before? It makes no sense.

What a welcoming post bigshot! What makes sense to me doesn't necessory make sense to you. I don't know or understand everything, but I know and understand something. Based on that, there's some part of what you say that is not 100 % correct and since this is a science thread I try to correct things, more or less succesfully perhaps, but I try. The existence of binaural recording alone should tell you spatiality is not a property only your listening room can create. If you were right, binaural recordings should be impossible because there is no listening room, but they do exist and if you have ever heard a binaural recording recorded with mics in your own ears you know how convincing such recordings can be. Even recordings done with Jecklin disks give a strong feeling of real spatiality. It's not a far jump from these to having a miniature soundstage with headphones when listening to well-recorded music. So, could you drop these condescending remarks as if only your point of view mattered? Can't you accept the fact that as a speaker guy you might not know everything about headphone spatiality? Is it so difficult for you to admit other people may have a point? When was the last time you listened to headphones? A month? A year? I listened to headphones 5 minutes ago! So MAYBE I know what I am talking about?

I have not made a "full" comeback. Just look at how many days it took since my last visit! You clearly want this place for yourself to promote your anti-headphone propaganda on a headphone forum. That's not how this works and I will say what I think when I see necessory. Sorry if you don't like that. You can always leave. Sure, you have great things to say when it's not about headphones. You make great "anti-snake oil" posts here and you know I value those, agree with them totally, but your non-stop anti-headphone messaging is weird as hell. It's like going to a motorbike exhibition and tell people how motorbikes suck and cars rule.

 

[71 dB]

A difference of a centimeter or two's distance between the outer ear and headphone driver isn't anything like a ten foot or more distance between a listener and speakers. It might make a headphone sound "open" or "closed" depending on the way it sits on the ear, but that isn't soundstage. Soundstage involves physical space- a projected aural stage ten feet or more in front of you. Soundstage is created in the mix, and "decoded" in physical space on playback. The effect of the distance and room is a *planned* part of the mix when it comes to establishing soundstage. If you don't have speakers and only use headphones, you just don't know that. Headphones have many advantages, chief among which is isolation, so you don't bother neighbors. But they do not have soundstage, spacial effect, or dimensionality. They are incapable of reproducing that because the drivers are so close to the ears. The only distance cues that headphones are capable of reproducing are secondary distance cues, like reverb and room reflections caught by the microphone and burned into the mix.

Ears DO NOT MEASURE DISTANCES!! I don't have measuring tapes hanging from my ears. Ears measure air pressure changes. You can't tell the distance of a storm by looking the reading of your barometer, can you? Our hearing decodes spatial cues and deduct the distance (and angle) of the sound source from that. That's why you can create an illusion of distances manufacturing corresponding spatial cues to the sound fed to the ears with headphones. I use crossfeed for example to add simple spatial cues of sound being further away from my head. Our spatial hearing has learned that sound sources very near our head creates large ILD for obvious reasons, while distant sounds create smaller ILD. That's why it's not theoretically far-fetched to assume reducing ILD with crossfeed in some cases may increase the apparent distance of sound source and in my case this seems to be the case. I get miniature soundstage, because the illusion is not a 100 % success. If it's a 50 % success for example, my hearing deducts the spatiality is 50 % "headstage" and 50 % of the intented full soundstage meaning the result is something in between, hence miniature soundstage.

It's useless to tell me I don't know speaker sound! I was a speaker guy from 1993 to 2012 before discovering crossfeed and becoming a "mostly headphones, sometimes speakers" guy. I have told I have heard some seriously good speaker systems like Duntech Princess in acoustically designed listening room. I do know speaker spatiality. I also know headphone spatiality, because I have been a headphone guy since 2012. Sure, I have more to learn and I don't say I know everything (who does?), but I'd say I have a pretty solid understanding of these things.

By your logic speakers should be able to create only a soundstage where all sound sources are reduced to speakers. In fact this is the case if you play test tones free of any burned in spatial cues one speaker at a time or different test tones simultaneously from different speakers. In this case 100 % of spatial cues are created by your room and based on those your hearing (correctly) deducts the sounds originate from speakers. When you play the same test tone from both left and right speaker we suddenly have "burned in" spatial cue of a center sound and convoluted with the spatial cues of your room the result is more or less convincing illusion of a center phantom sound source. If the sound is delayed say 100 µs and attenuated a few decibels on the left channel, the illusion of the sound source moves closer to the right speaker and so on. That's how you "fool" spatial hearing using spatial cues and it more or less similarly works with headphones! Since I don't listen to test tones on headphones, but music with tons of burned in spatial cues. Since these spatial cues are most of the time crafted for speakers like you keep saying yourself, for my spatial hearing they are often too strong without crossfeed and only make sense to my spatial hearing when "scaled" down, something that also kind of happens with speakers in a room, althou a bit differently.

 

[71 dB]

Science does not say there is no soundstage with headphones. That is your opinion and nothing more. So you two guys are of the opinion that headphones don’t have soundstage, then there’s nothing else to say to the OP. Everything else is just noise.

This becomes easily semantics. How perfect does the illusion of soundstage have to be? 95 %? 99 %? 100 %? If 100 % then it could be headphones don’t have soundstage. That's why I don't claim they have and instead talk about miniature soundstage. That's what I get when I listen to music. If there is one "miracle" CD in the world giving 100 % believable soundstage with headphones that's not "practical". As If I wanted to listen to just one CD the rest of my life, possibly containing music I don't even like? Science says one thing, but in life we need practical solutions.

Also, science is not always 100 % correct. In fact it rarely is. That's the nature of science. It slowly becomes more correct and accure vie scientic process. Science may offer the best answers we have, but that doesn't mean the answers are always 100 % correct. I'm sure science of spatial hearing for example has plenty of work ahead to untravel the mysteries of smaller details of it and some things discussed here just aren't scientific or unscientific, because science doesn't have the full answers yet.

Does speakers have the monopoly on soundstage? Semantics!

 

[71 dB]

1. Again, that is CLEARLY FALSE! Science explains what stereo is and that it's an illusion, as illustrated in the patent filed by Alan Blumlein in 1932. Plus of course, there's a great deal of scientific research into HRTFs, binaural, convolution reverb and various techniques in order to create the illusion of soundstage with headphones. I ask again, why do any of these techniques exist and why is there any scientific research into them if headphones already create soundstage?
1a. How did "my opinion and nothing more" find it's way into Alan Blumlein's patent more than 30 years before I was even born?

2. I can't speak to bigshot but I'm of that opinion because science says so and I don't experience soundstage with headphones.
2a. Scientific studies indicate that people can perceive soundstage when listening with headphones, using binaural techniques for example. Some appear to be able to perceive the illusion with nothing more than relatively simple crossfeed, while others require a very specific HRTF, room convolution and head-tracking in order to perceive soundstage convincingly and probably, there are some few who perceive soundstage with headphones playing standard stereo recordings and no binaural technology. I personally have only ever come across one such person but it turned out they were not able to fully perceive soundstage and in fact what they thought was "soundstage" was very significantly different, little more than exaggerated left/right positioning!

G

1. the same illusionary nature of stereo sound applies of course both speaker and headphone reproduction. The research to spatial effects is done to achieve better miniature soundstage if you ask me. When the miniature soundstage is done extremely well it becomes hard to tell it apart from real soundstage. Also, when you record a Nikolaus Bruhns Cantata in a church you get tons of "real" spatial cues, but if you create for example synthesized sounds to your music you need to render the spatial cues. Especially older electronic music tends to have very bad spatiality and hardly any kind of miniature soundstage with headphones (althou I find crossfeed helping a lot) whereas newer electronic music can have impressive spatiality thanks to all the research that has been done.

2. Unless one uses some seriously accurate room impulse response convolution with headphones it's pretty unrealistic ot expect speaker soundstage. I expect miniature soundstage with headphones and that's what I get given the recording has reasonable spatiality "burned in." That's realistic and I accept it as part of headphone listening. If I really want speaker spatiality I listen to speakers. Simple as that. The title of this thread should imo be read "What creates miniature soundstage in headphones"? The word "soundstage" is just like other words context-related. In context of headphones it means "miniature soundstage."

2a. Yes, I am one who is lucky enough to get miniature soundstage using only simple crossfeed. The type of music one listens to may play some part. Some genres of music might be for stylistic reasons be produced to be especially problematic in regards of headphone soundstage. Maybe I am not into those genres? The headphone model can make a difference too. I think my Sennheiser HD-598, as affordable as it is is a good model for spatiality. I think it's the forward-angled drivers.

 

[71 dB]

1--Soundstage is designed in miking and mixing and it is monitored and fine tuned on speakers. It isn't purely within the mind of the listener. If that was the case, we would all hear soundstage differently.

2--When you play these back on a good speaker system you get something pretty close to what was heard in the mix. When you play it on headphones, you get a fold down to two channel that isn't the same at all.

3--One of the things that our minds add is scale. I've noticed that secondary depth cues can fool us into reading a relatively small soundstage width as being larger and further away. Hard to describe in words, but imagine sitting in row ten of theater, as opposed to sitting back in the balcony. The aural image is narrower in the balcony, but it is further away, so it still feels large. Listening to bookshelf speakers six feet apart can feel like that sometimes because the mind is filling in the scale. A simple rear channel reverberation can enhance this greatly.

1--I believe our spatial hearing works somewhat similarly. That's because our senses much make sense. If you hear a lion roaring on the right start running to left, not right!

2--Multichannel recordings contain typically very large channel differences. Older matrix-coded surround formats are based on channel differencies so practically everything coded to the rear channel(s) is "food for crossfeeder." on headphones. The channels can be very uncorrelated. That's the point, to have a strong control of the spatiality and the room will always tame it down for ears. That's why you "need" separate highly independent channels with very little correlation. Multichannel sound where all the channels have almost the same signal would be "waste of channels." When I watch movies on headphones I need to use maximal crossfeed for this reason. The result is often pretty good (large miniature soundstage).

3--Yes, this is an example of how spatial cues work. A lot of reverberation tells us the "room" must be large and when the direct sound is quiet compared to the reberberation we must be far from the sound source, because otherwise the direct sound would be louder. Spatial cues have a relative aspect to them: Having less and more reverberant (level difference of direct / reverb) sounds in the mix created depth. Mind pushes the reverberant sounds further, because they must be there compared to the less reverberant sounds. That's one explanation for headphones miniature soundstage.

 

[71 dB]

I'm afraid I don't know anyone in the business using a Smyth Realiser. No one here does production work using headphones. They all have speaker setups to monitor. I would like to hear how it works sometime though.

If you produce sound for movies of course you use speakers, because speakers are used in movie theatres, not headphones. When you listen to music at home, that's when you could use Smyth Realiser + headphones instead of speakers for example to not make loud sound.

 

[gregorio]

[1] Ears measure air pressure changes. You can't tell the distance of a storm by looking the reading of your barometer, can you? Our hearing decodes spatial cues and deduct the distance (and angle) of the sound source from that. That's why you can create an illusion of distances manufacturing corresponding spatial cues to the sound fed to the ears with headphones. I use crossfeed for example to add simple spatial cues of sound being further away from my head.
[2] Our spatial hearing has learned that sound sources very near our head creates large ILD for obvious reasons, while distant sounds create smaller ILD.
[2a] That's why it's not theoretically far-fetched to assume reducing ILD with crossfeed in some cases may increase the apparent distance of sound source and in my case this seems to be the case.

1. But crossfeed does NOT add the spatial cues of sound being further away from the head! Crossfeed just crossfeeds the signal, it does NOT add reverb, EQ and volume differentials that are the spatial cues of being further from the head.

2. Obviously that cannot be true. A sound very close to our head but equidistant from both ears (say just in front of one's nose) would have very small/no ILD and yet our spatial hearing would still easily detect it was NOT a distant sound. And therefore:
2a. That's why it IS theoretically far-fetched to assume reducing ILD with crossfeed will increase the apparent distance of sound. Although, there are apparently some who do perceive that.

[1] In fact this is the case if you play test tones free of any burned in spatial cues one speaker at a time or different test tones simultaneously from different speakers. In this case 100 % of spatial cues are created by your room and based on those your hearing (correctly) deducts the sounds originate from speakers. When you play the same test tone from both left and right speaker we suddenly have "burned in" spatial cue of a center sound and convoluted with the spatial cues of your room the result is more or less convincing illusion of a center phantom sound source.
[2] If the sound is delayed say 100 µs and attenuated a few decibels on the left channel, the illusion of the sound source moves closer to the right speaker and so on.
[3] That's how you "fool" spatial hearing using spatial cues and it more or less similarly works with headphones!

1. No, the result is more or less convincing illusion of a centre phantom sound source IN FRONT OF YOU.
2. No, again, the illusion is the sound source moves closer to the right speaker IN FRONT OF YOU.
3. You're not really "fooling" spatial hearing using spatial cues, the spatial cues created by your listening environment (with speakers) really exist. So it does NOT "more or less similarly work with headphones". With headphones we would have to create and add artificial listening environment spatial cues (convolution reverb for example).

[1] the same illusionary nature of stereo sound applies of course both speaker and headphone reproduction.
[1a] The research to spatial effects is done to achieve better miniature soundstage if you ask me.
[1b] When the miniature soundstage is done extremely well it becomes hard to tell it apart from real soundstage.
[1c] Also, when you record a Nikolaus Bruhns Cantata in a church you get tons of "real" spatial cues, but if you create for example synthesized sounds to your music you need to render the spatial cues.
[1d] Especially older electronic music tends to have very bad spatiality and hardly any kind of miniature soundstage with headphones
[1e] (althou I find crossfeed helping a lot) whereas newer electronic music can have impressive spatiality thanks to all the research that has been done.
[2] ... I expect miniature soundstage with headphones and that's what I get given the recording has reasonable spatiality "burned in." ...
[2a] The title of this thread should imo be read "What creates miniature soundstage in headphones"?

1. Yes it does but in the case of the headphone reproduction of a mix intended for speaker reproduction then you're missing the distance cues of the speakers/listening environment. 1a. No, it's not! The research into spatial effects with headphones is either to achieve a full soundfield (with sounds located at any distance) or in the case of something like the Smyth Realizer, to produce a full soundstage in front of you (like 2 stereo speakers in a listening room).
1b. But as no one is trying to create a "miniature soundstage" how can it be "done extremely well"? And, even if you personally are experiencing what you call a "miniature soundstage" how is it hard to tell it apart from a full/real sound stage? Why call it "miniature" if it sounds the same to you as a full soundstage?
1c. If you record a canata in a church you will "get tons of real spatial cues" but from all kinds of different simultaneous positions/perspectives that are NOT real! With synthesised sounds you would have to render spatial cues, as opposed to mixing a bunch of different real spatial cues in a totally unrealistic manner.
1d. Artificial reverb has been available since the early 1960's and highly configurable algorithmic reverb since the late 1970's. So even fairly old electronic music has the "spatiality" intended by the artists for their consumers, which at that time was almost exclusively speaker reproduction. So, they were NOT even considering, let alone attempting to produce "any kind of miniature soundstage with headphones" and therefore, it did not "tend to have very bad spatiality".
1e. You might find crossfeed helps a lot but as explained above, in theory it shouldn't. And newer electronic music can sometimes have somewhat better spatiality on headphones because the artists' consumers more commonly listen with headphones. It has little/nothing to do with all the research done because the research had already been done in the 1970's and similar results could have been achieved by the late 1970's had the artists chosen to do so.

2. Hang on though, isn't that pretty much the exact definition of expectation bias??
2a. No, it shouldn't, because this is the Sound Science forum, not the "What 71dB perceives" forum! And as already cited/established, most people perceive "lateralisation", NOT a miniature soundstage.

3--A lot of reverberation tells us the "room" must be large and
[3a] when the direct sound is quiet compared to the reberberation we must be far from the sound source, because otherwise the direct sound would be louder. Spatial cues have a relative aspect to them: Having less and more reverberant (level difference of direct / reverb) sounds in the mix created depth. Mind pushes the reverberant sounds further, because they must be there compared to the less reverberant sounds.
[3b] That's one explanation for headphones miniature soundstage.

3. No it doesn't! We can have a lot of reverb in a small room (say a tiled toilet for example) and relatively little reverb in a large room (say a cinema for example) yet our hearing perception is NOT fooled into believing a small toilet is larger than a cinema!
3a. No, the mind doesn't "push the reverberant sounds further". Again, we can have a sound a few meters away with a high proportion of small room reverberation, and a sound many more meters away, with a lower proportion of large room reverberation and the latter sounds further away!
3b. As headphones don't add any reverberation, that's an explanation for headphones having lateralisation and NOT having a miniature soundstage!

Again, you take one parameter of how we perceive distance, in this case reverb/direct sound balance and ignore all the others that the brain relies on IN COMBINATION, You are ignoring RT, ER delay times, direct sound and ER freq response and level, plus various other parameters that the brain uses to perceive distance, and manipulating these other parameters can easily invalidate your assertion!

You've made all these points previously (in another thread) and they've all been refuted previously, numerous times! So what's the point of going round that circle yet again?

G

 

[bigshot]

If you produce sound for movies of course you use speakers, because speakers are used in movie theatres, not headphones.

I mostly work on television stuff. But I have worked on CDs, and even an LP!

I think I'm not going to engage in the merry-go-round of feeding your need for attention any more. I'll just cut to the chase. You're wrong. It's already been explained to you why you're wrong a dozen times. You don't listen.

 

[71 dB]

1. But crossfeed does NOT add the spatial cues of sound being further away from the head! Crossfeed just crossfeeds the signal, it does NOT add reverb, EQ and volume differentials that are the spatial cues of being further from the head.

Crossfeeding "changes" some spatial cues of the sound being near head into cues of more distant sound. To me this improves sound, ok? If that doesn't happen to you then bad luck I guess... ...I have accepted crossfeed is not for everyone. CAN YOU ACCEPT IT IS FOR SOME PEOPLE????????????=????????????

 

[71 dB]

2. Obviously that cannot be true. A sound very close to our head but equidistant from both ears (say just in front of one's nose) would have very small/no ILD and yet our spatial hearing would still easily detect it was NOT a distant sound. And therefore:
2a. That's why it IS theoretically far-fetched to assume reducing ILD with crossfeed will increase the apparent distance of sound. Although, there are apparently some who do perceive that.

2. Obviously it does not work this way, but small ILD is not a problem to begin with. Sounds mixed center don't really have cues of being near when not crossfed. We simply do not have cues of distance when using headphones, crossfeed or not. Sounds with large ILD do because of the large ILD. Im my case my spatial hearing "extents" some distance from the sides to the front, so in that sense it works to some extent FOR ME. I am lucky!!! LUCKY!!! LUCKY!!! HAHAHAHAH!!
2a. To me it does and I think there is theoretical base for it. HRTF responses have this encoded. HRTF measured near has larger ILD (sides, not forward of course). this is also logical. Why do you think these things are not related at all?

 

[71 dB]

I mostly work on television stuff. But I have worked on CDs, and even an LP!

I think I'm not going to engage in the merry-go-round of feeding your need for attention any more. I'll just cut to the chase. You're wrong. It's already been explained to you why you're wrong a dozen times. You don't listen.

Only a dozen times? Are you sure? I kind of agreed with you (headphones are not used much "in the business"), but maybe we are both wrong?

 

[71 dB]

1. No, the result is more or less convincing illusion of a centre phantom sound source IN FRONT OF YOU.
2. No, again, the illusion is the sound source moves closer to the right speaker IN FRONT OF YOU.
3. You're not really "fooling" spatial hearing using spatial cues, the spatial cues created by your listening environment (with speakers) really exist. So it does NOT "more or less similarly work with headphones". With headphones we would have to create and add artificial listening environment spatial cues (convolution reverb for example).

1. YES YES!!! Where ELSE could convincing illusion of a centre phantom sound source be than IN FRONT OF YOU?
2. Well I didn't say it happens BEHIND YOU, so what the hell are you complaning about? Yes yes, IN FRONT OF YOU!!! Where the hell else??
3. I'm afraid you are wrong. If your spatial hearing was not fooled, ALL music would sound like coming from your speakers in your room, because that is what physically happens. Your room adds correct spatial cues of sound originating from your speakers, and you would hear it that way if your spatial hearing wasn't fooled, but I am pretty sure you don't hear it that way so your spatial hearing is fooled. So is mine and it's a good thing.