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SO ... HOW do we measure soundstage???

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This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Soundstage is one of the most subjective of attributes posted by Feanor on February 21, 2024 at 04:15:16

(... because there is no magic)

Morricab says soundstage is a "psychoacoustic" phenomenon, (I agree) ... but seems to imply that it is ultimately unmeasurable, (I disagree).

Note: a few days ago I improve my soundstage, (wider, deeper), by moving my speakers a little farther apart; no components were changed. However morricab is talking about differences in soundstage on account of individual components. (Are these different things? I thinks so.)

So how might we hope to measure the soundstage contribution of individual components? Seems to me ..
either we find some presently mysterious direct soundstage measurement (analogous to but not harmonic distortion),
Or we find that some existing measurement(s) correlate with the soundstage phenomenon.

So for example, (to press a point on which still not everyone agrees), tube qualities, such as "warmth", correlate with relatively high low order harmonic distortions and relatively low higher order HDs.

Possibly but hypothetically, another tube quality which AbeCollins has described as "layered imaging" (or what I call "reverberation effect") is another correlate of harmonic distortion profile. I've heard this myself and personally believe it was related to my tube preamp versus s/s and passive preamps that I compared.

Dmitri Shostakovich

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