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What exactly is "imaging" ?

Imaging: the illusion of 3D perspective.
The back wall that disappears.
Simple, really.
Only ESL’s and planars in a big room can do that well.
LS3/5a style mini monitors can do it but the scale is smaller.

I guess you haven't experienced it (we can not have heard everything in HiFi world), but omnidirectionals excel in that area. Also, the later Stig Carlsson (OA 5x series) did (does, you can buy a new set called OA 61).

My explanation is, when listening to speakers, the ear/brain need to be able to differ between the direct arriving sound and the somewhat later arriving reflections of the walls/floor/ceiling, the latter preferably arriving from several directions with no discernable phase relationship. Meaning it should be diffuse. There is more than one way to reach this!

PS. To me, 1D is a straight line between the speakers (or depth in a mono recording), 2D is depth, 3D is height.
 
Imaging / soundstage are highly dependant on room treatment. Just think of all those reflections flying about messing with the true signal from the speakers. Even a few panels correctly placed can help but to get a really good result is often , understandably , difficult to achieve in a domestic multi purpose living room due to domestic constraints.

Agreed, but entirely possible - in my small room I listen near field, about 1.5 meters from ESLs, which are about 1.5 meters apart, angled in slightly with at least 75cm between inside edge of speaker and back wall…plus racks of dense records in shelving directly behind my head. Key for me was getting Centre of speaker at ear height.
 
I guess you haven't experienced it (we can not have heard everything in HiFi world), but omnidirectionals excel in that area. Also, the later Stig Carlsson (OA 5x series) did (does, you can buy a new set called OA 61).

My explanation is, when listening to speakers, the ear/brain need to be able to differ between the direct arriving sound and the somewhat later arriving reflections of the walls/floor/ceiling, the latter preferably arriving from several directions with no discernable phase relationship. Meaning it should be diffuse. There is more than one way to reach this!

PS. To me, 1D is a straight line between the speakers (or depth in a mono recording), 2D is depth, 3D is height.

Not sure I agree with last sentence - if I close my eyes while listening the room itself disappears, the sound appears to be coming from a space much larger than the one I know I am sitting in…and very nice it is too :)
 
For me, what hi-fi is all about.
Yes I know omnidirectional well.
But it has nothing to do with reality.
I also hate the sounds at the movies. Very disturbing and not lifelike.
That’s why I’ll never have rear speakers at home. Not hi-fi.
 
Agreed, but entirely possible -

Yes it is possible . As i also get exactly that with PMC MB2se in a large room listening far field. But that room is a dedicated room , which was fully treated to get the required result. The treatment was done in stages so i learnt how the sound changed with each different stage.
 
I prefer the term sound field. When you have a system that does this right soundstage and imaging are integrated and become part of a continuous sonic picture of the musical event. My Omni’s are famous for exactly this. Unless an instrument is hard-panned left or right nothing seems to come from the speakers
 
I have it the other way round. Soundstaging is about creating an impression of the acoustic space occupied by the performers - its size and, sometimes, shape - and imaging is the location of the performers within that space.
I always thought it was the other way round :D

Well I would say the clue is in the word lol. Soundstaging is placing the performers where they were on the stage when the recording was made. Imaging is creating a realistic image of the sound of the singer or instrument. :)
 
The important is that you can see the instruments or vocalists, as well as imagine the venue’s real dimensions, a church, the opera theatre, the jazz club…
Irrelevant for anything else than classical of course. There can’t be real images with rock music, unless the musicians were recorded live in the studio with just two microphones.
 
I guess you haven't experienced it (we can not have heard everything in HiFi world), but omnidirectionals excel in that area. Also, the later Stig Carlsson (OA 5x series) did (does, you can buy a new set called OA 61).

My explanation is, when listening to speakers, the ear/brain need to be able to differ between the direct arriving sound and the somewhat later arriving reflections of the walls/floor/ceiling, the latter preferably arriving from several directions with no discernable phase relationship. Meaning it should be diffuse. There is more than one way to reach this!

PS. To me, 1D is a straight line between the speakers (or depth in a mono recording), 2D is depth, 3D is height.

Omnis are strange and interesting things indeed.
I spent a weekend listening to some time coherent (1st order crossovers etc.) omnis at the designer's home. They were utterley captivating at recreating (or overdoing?) the acoustic of classical music venus. However they fell to bits when asked to convey a simple pop song (Blondie's Platinum Blonde in this case).

The ESLs act like a 'point source' when you're on or near their beam axis. But they also give a high direct beam / reflected off sidewalls ratio for the first sounds. In my case I found that this means that ensuring damping on the far and behind-you walls helps a lot. but the side-walls matter less. I hang a carpet or curtains from curtain rods that hang them a few inchs away from the front/rear walls.

I once heard Quad 989s 2/3rds of the way down a long living room produce a stunning and convincing illusion of the recording venue, I was convinced I could hear reverberation from each of the walls!

ESL63s just sound wrong to me. The top half of the room seems to have way too little treble energy. Maybe (more) tilt or raising them up can fix this?
 
Slightly different aspect, but I once had my sofa against a solid wall but noticed a vast improvement in ambience when pulling said sofa out a couple of feet. Since then in different houses, I've always had space behind the seating area as well as behind the speakers.
 
Soundstaging is placing the performers where they were on the stage when the recording was made. Imaging is creating a realistic image of the sound of the singer or instrument. :)

Not sure of the true relevance here in a studio recording where the mixer desk is largely responsible for the sonic outcome. Regardless, imagination still plays a positive part here in recreating SOME kind of enjoyable soundstaging.

I once heard Quad 989s 2/3rds of the way down a long living room produce a stunning and convincing illusion of the recording venue

I have 2095s, the successor to the 989s, and find the effective width of soundstaging/imagery/whatever extends to about 6 feet of my 7' sofa. Okay, this does form a narrow base to the isosceles triangle which has sides of somewhere around 12 to 14'. Better coverage than my previous ProAc coil speakers.
 
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For me imaging is part of the tangibility of instruments. Having a drum sound like a drum involves having it appear rock solid in three dimensional space.
 
Yes, albeit on a smaller scale of course.
I have a piano and a drumset (and other instruments) at home as points of reference.
 
Well I would say the clue is in the word lol. Soundstaging is placing the performers where they were on the stage when the recording was made. Imaging is creating a realistic image of the sound of the singer or instrument. :)
No, sorry, I disagree. Soundstaging is, as you say, recreating the stage, ie the ambience, the size and shape of the venue. Imaging is the placement of the performers on that stage. The 'realistic image of the sound' is more about fidelity, transparency, accurate timbral information.
 
Oh no. Soundstaging is included in imaging, a part of it.
If imaging is right, soundstaging is right, not the other way round.
Ah, words!
 
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Omnis are strange and interesting things indeed.
I spent a weekend listening to some time coherent (1st order crossovers etc.) omnis at the designer's home. They were utterley captivating at recreating (or overdoing?) the acoustic of classical music venus. However they fell to bits when asked to convey a simple pop song (Blondie's Platinum Blonde in this case).



I once heard Quad 989s 2/3rds of the way down a long living room produce a stunning and convincing illusion of the recording venue, I was convinced I could hear reverberation from each of the walls!

ESL63s just sound wrong to me. The top half of the room seems to have way too little treble energy. Maybe (more) tilt or raising them up can fix this?

That's essential for best results IME.
 
My ESL63s recreate the illusion of voices and instruments having a specific spatial location on the plane from one speaker to another and with some content beyond the speakers to the sides. They also create an impression of depth, ie distances away from the listener. Can't say I've noticed them project different voices or instruments at different heights from the floor. They are a metre from the back wall and slightly tilted in and up so that straight lines perpendicular to the centre of each speaker would each point towards the ear on that side.

I find this works fairly well but recently discovered just how much more pinpoint it was to listen in the garden with no reflective surfaces using KEF 104/2s. Voices and instruments were absolutely pinpointed in the two dimensions described above. It brought home just what a compromise listening in my lounge is and I can see why some people advise to pay as much attention to the room as to the equipment.
 
One track that piqued my interest recently regarding imaging is Feel It by Kate Bush. I've heard this song lots of times as The Kick Inside is one of my favourite albums, but it was only last week when I played the album through my Tannoy Legacy Eatons for the first time that I realised that the piano occupied the full sound stage, with the treble notes coming from the right speaker and the lower notes coming from the left speaker, with all the midrange notes in between coming from where you'd expect (obviously, the very low notes became less point-sourced, as it were).

For some reason, I'd never noticed before that that's how her piano has been recorded/presented to the listener. Normally, you get piano more on one side or coming through both speakers more or less equally, but Feel It has the width piano going right across the gap between the speakers - crossing the phantom divide, as it were - so that the notes ascend to the right and descend to the left. Suffice to say, I was gobsmacked!

As an aside, I think the piano is presented in this way for authentic air piano jamming (mentally speaking, that is) because if Kate was playing the song live in front of you on a real piano, facing the listener, then the treble notes would be on the left, which would be unnatural and perhaps a tad psychologically dissonant for people who play the piano to hear.

 


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