What should you hear?


I'm new to the hobby and curious what type of imaging sound stage you should hear.  I have a pair of Vandersteen 2ce signatures and they sound great.  What I find however is that the imaging, sound stage is very dependent on the recording.   

Norah Jones?  She sounds like she's sitting right in the room.  It's amazing.  

One I'm particularly interested in learning more about is Brubek's Take Five.   The saxophone images great.  Sounds dead center.  The piano however is clearly coming from the right hand speaker and the drums are clearly coming from the left.  Is this typical? 

Thanks for your input and tolerating a "newbie" question. 
mvrooman1526
Many old stereo recordings, especially jazz trio/quartet had the individual instruments recorded only on one channel, or one instrument on the left, one on the right and one in the center. It's very common with older stereo jazz recordings.

Google "hard panning stereo" for information on this type of recording technique. 

OP, What you just described is the very definition of sound stage to me. The recording engineers will pan instruments left to right within a recording. You will find on many pop and rock records that the kick drum, snare drum, vocals, and bass guitar are dead center with the other instuments panned around to create space and separation.

They will also make certain instruments louder or softer so they seem closer or farther away from you. Instruments with more reverb may also sound more distant, which helps to create the illusion of a 3D sound stage.

What you described in Norah Jones vs. Dave Brubeck is 100% correct. That is the way the engineers mixed those recordings.

Cheers,Joe

Another quick example is Oscar Peterson - Night Train. Oscar Peterson is mixed dead center, while Ed Thigpen is panned to the right speaker, and Ray Brown left.
What I find however is that the imaging, sound stage is very dependent on the recording. 

Right. Mono recordings everything is in a sort of sphere in the middle. Some recordings are flat, others deep. Sometimes vocals are centered, sometimes off to one side or the other. Entirely recording dependent.

Norah Jones? She sounds like she's sitting right in the room. It's amazing.
 
If you say so. Never could get into her myself.
One I'm particularly interested in learning more about is Brubek's Take Five.
 The saxophone images great. Sounds dead center. The piano however is clearly coming from the right hand speaker and the drums are clearly coming from the left. Is this typical?


Been a while but that sounds just about right to me. The cymbals I want to say are left and above the drums just as they should be. Piano I can't remember if this is one where the piano stays put or moves left to right depending which end of the keyboard it is. At all times when one side is playing you should hear the room acoustic "light up" on the other side. 

The thing to listen for with imaging is not so much where things are, as that is recording dependent, but how palpably real they are and how clearly each individual sound source is distinct and separate from the rest. This also varies from recording to recording. Of course it does. Everything does.