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General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

I'm not certain we really ave agreementdef…

I'm not certain that Borden and I agree on a major point, and I'm not certain that you and I agree on that point.

We may agree that other things are more important than the soundstaging/imaging, but I suspect I give it a higher importance than you do, and definitely higher than Borden ranks it.

I simply would not accept a stereo or multichannel speaker system that did not do well on this parameter. It's not the first thing I would listen for, but if the first speakers I came across that did tonal fidelity and dynamics well enough to satisfy me did not present soundstaging and imaging well enough to satisfy me, I would simply keep looking. If I was choosing between 2 speaker systems that I regarded as equal on the other things I regarded as important, I would pick the one that did soundstaging and imaging best. I might even trade of a little performance elsewhere for a bit extra performance here, though not to the point of accepting less than a high standard elsewhere. If you're going to have a system with 2 or more channels there is no reason in my mind to accept a system that doesn't do this well. It's an inescapable part of multichannel sound so why would you want speakers that can't deliver it?

I'm quite happy to accept that some people don't want or appreciate that particular aspect, or don't think it is essential - we can find people who feel that way about any aspect of the sound at all and that's OK because it is a legitimate personal preference. We don't all listen in the same way or for the same things. BUT, and it's a big but, if you don't want to have soundstaging and imaging, there is a simpler and better way to avoid it than assembling what is essentially a crippled system with two or more channels, and that is to assemble a top notch mono system. That should give you better results.

I also have difficulties with the implicit assumption that many seem to make in this discussion which recurs regularly here, that if soundstaging and imaging are important to you, you're listening to and for that rather than the music. Some people may but that doesn't mean that all do, nor does it mean that there is no advantage offered to musical enjoyment by soundstaging and imaging. I listen mostly to jazz and small group music and I derive a lot of my enjoyment on much of this music from my appreciation of what each individual performer is bringing to the music as a whole. I find the spatial separation that a soundstage and imaging provides helps me to hear those individual contributions more clearly, and to focus on the particular one which interests me most at a particular moment. In other words, it facilitates my enjoyment of the sort of music I listen to, and I think it does the same thing for many other listeners. We don't concentrate on the soundstage or imaging. We're listening to a particular part within the music and the spatial separation of different performers makes that a little less difficult to do, so we hear a little bit more and enjoy the music more as a result.

Not everyone listens to music that way, and not all music encourages listening in that way, so it definitely isn't going to be important to everyone, but it is important to some people and it is important to many of those people for quite sound and valid musical reasons.

I could get by with a top notch mono system, and I could get a lot of musical enjoyment from such a system. In fact, the first few times I heard records played on a system that convinced me that owning a decent sound system could actually be a good thing, the system was mono and I still have extremely strong and fond memories of that system some 40 years later. But I don't have to get by on that and my musical tastes have also changed over that 40 year period - back then I was struggling to learn classical guitar and was interested more in listening to solo performances than to ensemble work. I think stereo does a better job with ensemble music and I currently prefer a system that does stereo well. More channels may do an even better job but the recordings aren't available and I don't have a room that would allow a good surround system setup so I stick with stereo, but that means that I want stereo done as well as I can get it done and soundstaging/imaging is critical to that.

David Aiken


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