Why don't more recordings have soundstage outside of speakers


I always enjoy it when the recording has mixing that the instruments are well outside of the speakers.  I think it's really cool and what justifying spending extra dollars for the sound.  I just wish more recordings would do that.  Most of them would just have the sound from in between the speakers.

What are some of your favorite recordings that have an enveloping soundstage well outside of the speakers?
andy2

Showing 12 responses by mijostyn

Darn Mahgister. Sometimes you do make sense. The fun is in making the best sounding system you can without spending an arm and a leg. But, like anything there are limits to price cutting and you have to have certain capabilities to be able to maximize the performance of your system. Those capabilities are not cheap but neither are they horrendously expensive like the Dayton OmniMic. Very wealthy people buy audio systems like they buy watches. They have no idea what they are getting but it looks nice. These systems are usually thrown into position wired up and used maybe once a month if that. There are of course serious audiophiles that are wealthy and they can afford very expensive equipment but this does not necessarily get them very far. They do not generally know much more than anyone here and their approach to the problems of music reproduction is not any different. 
The best systems I have heard have been no where near the most expensive, which is not to say expensive systems could not be made to sound better. 

As for imaging beyond the speakers, unless the engineer is juggling phasing and delays the instruments and voices should always be limited to the width of the main speakers. The acoustic environment of the venue or that created by the engineer using echo should seem to spread beyond the speakers hopefully placing you within that environment or it is like listening through a door. A good example of imaging beyond the speakers is Roger Waters'  Amused to Death. Fun record. Sound effects like a dog barking and a table radio come from right next to you. The dog seems to be outside! Very cool. 

Of the systems I have heard, painfully few of them were operating at near the level of their maximum capability. The people were generally happy with what they had and did not feel like spending any more money or messing around with tweaks. Judging from this I think many people could make very significant improvements in sound quality without changing most of their equipment. 
Mahgister, I am all for creativity. My greatest improvements in sound quality have come from thinking about it and making adjustments. The only caveat is that these adjustments are not made entirely on what I hear but on accurate measurements. 
Mahgister, I can get to the tonal balance I want to hear by ear. But I can not get the system to image at its best by ear. The problem is you have to make the frequency response of both speakers exactly equal at all frequencies within 1 dB. In order to do this you have to able to measure exactly what each speaker is doing and have the ability to make 1/2 octave adjustments with variable Q. Doing this takes hours of listening to short sine sweeps, making changes and remeasuring. Sometime you can speed things up by doing the adjustments on the fly but it still takes hours. Why go through all the trouble? Because you go from the usual imaging that everyone is use to to something that is truly uncanny in a very good way. Characteristics of the image that you never knew were there become unmasked and you will hear details that were previously hidden. It is like getting a blurry image into focus. Two identical speakers will never have exactly the same frequency response, Then they occupy different locations in a room and  their response goes more astray. People are lucky if their speakers are within 5 dB of each other between 100 Hz and 10 kHz where it is critical. Location depends almost entirely on volume. If a speaker is louder at one point and softer at another then location cues of the instrument become broken up and the image blurs. Subtle characteristics become lost in the haze. It is something you have to experience. It is pretty special. 
But, in the end it is only important that you enjoy music on your own system. Rock and Roll!
Hilde45, it is not difficult at all! You just have to spend your money in the right place. You get one if these, https://www.amazon.com/miniDSP-2x4-HD/dp/B01I4NWRNM/ref=sr_1_9?crid=2FFPLBUR1NKCV&dchild=1&k...
and one of theses, https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-OmniMic-V2-Acoustic-Measurement-System-390-792
You not only have a wonderful subwoofer crossover but a full equalizer with adjustable Q. The entire package costs $550.00 and boy will you have a great time. You will learn more about room acoustics and speaker performance in one hour than most people learn in a lifetime. Your system's performance will improve by leaps and bounds even if you are analog only!
Mahgister, I want to limit this discussion to live recordings only. Studio recordings are all bets off. But, with live recordings one would like to be able to appreciate the acoustics of the venue the music was recorded in. Those acoustics are imbedded in the recording sonically but unless you have a very elaborate multi-speaker system you can not replicate the directionality of the reflections that clue you into the acoustics. You have to depend on your room to reflect the reflections from the rear where they came from originally. Your room becomes an integral component to your system. This is why a totally dead room sounds "wrong." It is sort of like the applause in a live recording is wrong because it is all coming from the front and not all around you. The distinction comes in the timing. Very early reflections could not be construed as acoustics from the original venue. They come to early and they are loud. They ruin detail and imaging. You want to turn them of to the greatest extent possible but allow surfaces farthest away from the speakers to remain reflective. 
@simonmoon, I certainly agree about the gimmicks however I have learned that instruments themselves should not come from beyond the speakers which is what you would expect if you think about it. I use to occasionally hear some instruments on certain recordings come from beyond the speakers. I have been using dipoles exclusively for 40 years and I use to never put any sound absorption behind the speakers and I always put my speakers near corners. So, sound would bounce off the front wall then off the side wall to the listening position. It is no surprise then that sounds would appear to come from beyond the speakers. Back then I felt the sound had more "air" to it that way and I really did not appreciate what it was doing to the image. I now use 4" acoustic tile behind the speakers and at first things did sound more closed in on a relative basis but the specificity of the image increased very noticeably.
Now only gimmicks come from beyond the speakers but, now close your eyes and the speakers disappear. Even instruments that are panned hard left or right do not appear to be coming from the loudspeakers, they just hang in space. You could walk around them (if you could walk through walls).  
My intent is not to brag but to help others achieve the same results. No system images well out of the box, it is a virtual impossibility and that goes for my system also. You get the standard 2 dimensional blurry image that most of us think is the cats meow, until you hear a system that really images. I have been talking about the need to synchronize the frequency response of the main speakers for years. That need became even more obvious with the Sound Labs speakers as they are capable of a better image than my old Acoustats. This synchronization and control of the room's acoustics are the two most important considerations if you want your system to image at it's best. I am convinced that this applies to regular dynamic loudspeakers also and not just to big dipoles. I hope to prove this to myself with my friend's new S7s.  
@simonmoon , It is not about the recording method Simon, it is about the playback. The symphony orchestra is so wide and so deep. At a live concert the sound of each instrument appears to comes directly from that instrument. The sound of instruments does not come from beyond the stage. In a full concert hall there is extremely effective sound absorption in the form of human beings. The reflections you hear are extremely late and relatively weak due to the distances. Up front in row 6 center- left where my dad's season tickets were the image of each instrument was very specific. I could easily close my eyes and point to each instrument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_Hall,_Boston#/media/File:Symphony_hall_boston.jpg. The orchestra has a distinct size and in row six it is really large. On playback you are expecting two speakers to recreate the orchestra's size and the position of each instrument. Since you do not have an individual speaker for each instrument the position of each instrument is determined predominantly by the relative volume of the that sound coming from the two speakers. Phase and timing assists but only if you sit dead center otherwise that information is corrupted. The full size of the orchestra will be determined by the speaker separation and how close in you are sitting. If all early reflections are well dampened it is physically impossible for sound to come from beyond the speaker without studio tricks. Not only that but sound coming from outside the orchestra would be anything but realistic. What you are hearing when you hear imaging beyond the speakers is poor control of room acoustics. How the orchestra was recorded might affect the quality of the orchestra's timbre and image but unless studio tricks are applied it should not produce sound outside the limits of the orchestra which would be surrealistic anyway. My experience with systems over the years bears this out. This type of thing may sound cool but it is not accurate. On the bright side you have identified a problem to conquer and once you do you should have a much tidier image. I have many recordings of Seiji Ozawa at Boston Symphony Hall and most of them are surprisingly accurate. None of them cast an image beyond the speakers and in my front row it is about the same as being in row 6 at the hall, wonderful. 
pragmus and anyone else who thinks stereo systems should image outside of the loudspeakers:
You ability to determine where a sound is coming from depends mostly on where the loudest sound in coming from and the delay between getting to one ear to the other. If you do not agree with this you can stop right here.
The volume of the sound coming from a point source speaker decays at the cube of the distance. If you do not agree with this you can also exit here. 
lets set up two microphones each one connected to it's own speaker in another room 10 feet apart left and right. I'm going to have a trumpet player walk up to the left channel microphone and play a tune. The listener in the next room is going to hear the trumpet coming from the left channel speaker and maybe a tiny bit from the right channel speaker as the right channel mic is on and it will pick up the trumpet but at a much lower level. In short you hear the trumpet coming from the left channel speaker directly and not to either side because the sound to either side drops of at the cube of the distance and you only hear the trumpet coming from the loudest source which is directly from the speaker. The same will be true in opposite if the trumpet is played into the right channel mic. If I put the mics together and play into both on them the trumpet is going to appear as if were coming out of thin air directly between the speakers. You can read her for the theory  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereophonic_sound 
Never does the sound come from beyond the speakers and this holds for an entire symphony orchestra. If a sound is coming from outside the speakers there are only three ways that can happen. 1st is there is another speaker such as a surround sound set up playing. Next is a studio phasing trick where you get cancelation in front of the loudest source throwing the sound out to the side like Roger Waters does on Amused to Death. Last is the speaker is right next to a wall and the first reflection is loud enough to move an instrument beyond the speaker. This is a distortion as I pointed out earlier. All first reflections should be dampened so this does not happen. Imaging outside the speakers is a sign of poor room control. The ambiance of a recording can be outside the speakers as it is a product of late reflections but that is it.  
I forgot to mention dipole users. If angled correctly dipoles can bounce sound off the front wall, then the side wall next to the speaker to the listener and the reflected sound can throw instruments to the outside. But, this is also a distortion and should be dampened out.
This is probably a good reason why many people do not get decent imaging because reflected sounds can play havoc with it.
Pragnmus, what are you talking about. I mention the delay. It is not as important for localization as relative volume. Studies have confirmed this and you can prove it to yourself with one control. The one that says "Balance"

With a system that really images you will have to make small adjustments in balance with most records. Like 0.5 dB or so. 
@sounds_real_audio , you are absolutely correct, most speaker do suck even the better ones. 

Andy2, You can by reflecting sound off the side walls. The reflected sound can throw instruments that are hard left or right beyond the speaker. This is a distortion and a sign of poor system/room management. This is not to say that the ambience in the recording can not seem to come from everywhere, it frequently does. The ambience is at a low level to start with and in the smaller rooms we listen in the reflected sound can compete with sound coming directly from the speakers creating the sensation of venue ambience. Very cool.