Consider this a bit of a counterpoint to my arguments elsewhere in this forum that home audio reproduction should try to mimic the sound of live unamplified music heard from a good seat in a good concert hall. Never let it be said that I am doctrinaire in my approach to home audio reproduction.
I have long believed that audio system imaging and staging should be at least a little better than the real thing listened to with eyes closed. Making the imaging and staging of the reproduction a bit surreal allows our eyes to "see" performers a bit like they can at the live event. If you can't have (or don't want) the accompanying video of the performance in your home reproduction, enhancing the audio in this way fills in the gap.
I believe that the imaging and staging capabilities of our home music reproduction systems should be a bit surreal in order to give our eyes something to do while listening and thus make up for the lack of actual visual stimulation we experience at a concert. Those who listen with their eyes closed at concerts don't appear to understand this. I'm not sure what the percentages are, but when I look around during concerts, other than those who are obviously just nodding off, I see very few people listening with eyes closed. It thus seems to me that most of us, like me, are used to visual stimuli during live music listening.
I understand where others are coming from on this in advocating listening with eyes closed. They are trying to pare down the sensory stimuli to just a comparison of live sound to home sound reproduction.
But perhaps there is room to argue that by "the absolute sound" of a live event, we really mean "the absolute experience" of that sound. If so, then the goal of the home music system should be to come as close to the overall gestalt or sensory experience of the live event as possible in our usual mode of listening in both places--with eyes open.
If, as some have observed, our brain uses the majority of its processing power interpreting vision, it may well be that our perception of sound will always be at least somewhat different with eyes shut than with eyes open (at least for those of us who are not visually blind). In fact, it may well be that our brains try very hard to relate what we hear to what we see and that if the visual stimuli are cut off, our hearing is somewhat unnaturally adrift.
I think this may well be why much of the audiophile world puts such value on imaging and staging even though many live audience locations produce the "fat mono" type of staging. You have to listen from the first few rows to get anything like the kind of imaging and staging a good two-channel rig is capable of. But imaging and staging are two properties of a sound reproduction system which help replace the lack of visual stimuli we have live.
Another aspect of home reproduction which does this is the ability to reproduce microdynamics or low-level detail. The small sounds of musicians and conductors breathing or vocalizing, the sound of fingerpads on keys, risers creaking, pages turning, music stands being bumped, air handling, subway, and traffic noises, all help give us a "visual" sense of the venue which makes up for our inability to actually see what is going on. And note that this sort of inner detail is also highly valued by audiophiles, even though little of this is every heard live except from the first few rows, and none of it is musically important to musicians. One easy way to get more inner detail is to elevate the upper midrange and lower highs a bit; another is to make the actual distortion of the reproducers very low.
This craving for detail may be responsible for the tendency of many listeners to forgive the fact that most commercial recordings are miked too closely and thus have exaggerated high frequencies. The close-in and up-high miking typical of commercial classical music recordings picks up more high frequencies and thus more detail.
What I am getting at is that we should not be too quick to dismiss the importance of staging, imaging, and detail reproduction in home music reproduction for the seeming vast majority of us who listen to live music with our eyes open. Maybe such things literally are exaggerated in some audiophile systems compared to what is literally heard live with eyes closed. However, if the goal is to make the experience of reproduced music in the home as close as possible to the live experience, then perhaps we need these things.
One of the things which bug me about 5.1 surround sound in home theater set ups is that the sound almost always seems to overwhelm the picture. Only the very best visual recreations, such as those in a good movie theater, seem to support that kind of enveloping sound. But turn off even the seemingly inadequate video screen, and the sound which seemed too good for the picture now seems confused and much lower in quality. The 5.1 surround sound which seemed so good with the picture to order it, often seems much more confused than a good two-channel stereo stage. The picture, even though seemingly overwhelmed by the sound, gives our eyes a related program to focus on and "orders" the sound in some way.
With live music, the visual stimulation is state-of-the-art: 3-D and extremely widescreen. Fully staged operas are perhaps the most extreme example.
Even from a remote seat, the visual stimulation of the overall scene of the concert hall powerfully orders the sound. We are not consciously aware of the auditory imaging or staging from close up, or the lack of imaging and staging from distant seats unless we close our eyes or really concentrate on just the sound. We see what is going on with our eyes, and the powerful visual stimulus taking up much of our brain's processing power forces our ear/brain to conform the sound to what we see. We know when a singer turns left or right or walks forward or backward on stage because we can see it--we don't have to really hear it.
But at home with our two-channel music reproduction systems, to get close to the same experience, we must "see" these events with our ears. Low distortion and flat frequency response don't help with this. Low-level detail, imaging, and staging do. And that may well be why many audiophiles seeking some sort of "absolute sound" experience long ago gave up flat frequency response as the holy grail or even the prime desiderata of the home music system.
There is also another side to this discussion. I totally agree that you do not hear pinpoint imaging live from most, if any, audience positions.
But you hear more enveloping space than with home two-channel reproduction and there are many close-in seats where depth of field is phenomenal, and height is not an illusion since there is quite audible upward projection due to sound bouncing off the stage floor and then off the proscenium. There is also the type of "action" in terms of apparent movement and projection of solo instrument sounds right to the top or back of the hall that you rarely get at home--soprano soloists hitting high notes and turning as they do so is a good example.
The pinpoint imaging a good two-channel home system is capable of is a consolation prize for giving up these spatial aspects of what we can hear at live concerts, in addition to making up for the actual visual cues of the musicians playing. At real concerts, the visual allows you to pinpoint just which musicians are playing. I know some want literal, aural accuracy. I'm more inclined to want a level of involvement from the audio at home that the whole concert hall experience can give you live. To do that in an audio-only reproduction, the sound has to be surreal in certain respects, like imaging.
Also, the "ideal" concert hall seat varies with individual preference. Many times you will hear it said that the "ideal" seats are in the 10th to 13th row of a concert hall. This is typically about 50 to 60 feet back from the front of the stage. In a good hall, that's typically about as near the stage as you can be and still get what many consider to be an ideal blend of the entire orchestra into a coherent source of sound, mixed with an obviously generous amount of hall ambiance. If seat price is not a consideration, those who want to hear more individualized sound sources from soloists and sections--a bit more dissection of the whole--sit closer. That's me. On the other hand, those who value the radiant ambient glow above all and don't mind a "fat mono" sounding orchestral image, sit further away.
My preference for near-field 90-degree separation home listening paradigm tends to allow my home listening experience to better mimic my favorite down-front concert hall seats. From such seats, the perceived subtended angle of the musicians is large and the musicians seem very close to me. Front-to-back orchestral depth is enormous from such audience seats, just as it is at home with my set up.
For someone with my concert hall seating preferences the bit-surreal imaging I want from my audio system is less surreal than it is for folks who prefer to sit further back in the hall at concerts. If the front of the stage is farther from your nose, perception of depth will be diminished because the ratio of closest to deepest object in the stage decreases as the listening distance from the speaker plane or orchestra increases.
Thus, this is not such a counterpoint at all--for me--since what I seek at home is very close to what I experience in my favorite seats in the first few rows of the concert hall.
I have long believed that audio system imaging and staging should be at least a little better than the real thing listened to with eyes closed. Making the imaging and staging of the reproduction a bit surreal allows our eyes to "see" performers a bit like they can at the live event. If you can't have (or don't want) the accompanying video of the performance in your home reproduction, enhancing the audio in this way fills in the gap.
I believe that the imaging and staging capabilities of our home music reproduction systems should be a bit surreal in order to give our eyes something to do while listening and thus make up for the lack of actual visual stimulation we experience at a concert. Those who listen with their eyes closed at concerts don't appear to understand this. I'm not sure what the percentages are, but when I look around during concerts, other than those who are obviously just nodding off, I see very few people listening with eyes closed. It thus seems to me that most of us, like me, are used to visual stimuli during live music listening.
I understand where others are coming from on this in advocating listening with eyes closed. They are trying to pare down the sensory stimuli to just a comparison of live sound to home sound reproduction.
But perhaps there is room to argue that by "the absolute sound" of a live event, we really mean "the absolute experience" of that sound. If so, then the goal of the home music system should be to come as close to the overall gestalt or sensory experience of the live event as possible in our usual mode of listening in both places--with eyes open.
If, as some have observed, our brain uses the majority of its processing power interpreting vision, it may well be that our perception of sound will always be at least somewhat different with eyes shut than with eyes open (at least for those of us who are not visually blind). In fact, it may well be that our brains try very hard to relate what we hear to what we see and that if the visual stimuli are cut off, our hearing is somewhat unnaturally adrift.
I think this may well be why much of the audiophile world puts such value on imaging and staging even though many live audience locations produce the "fat mono" type of staging. You have to listen from the first few rows to get anything like the kind of imaging and staging a good two-channel rig is capable of. But imaging and staging are two properties of a sound reproduction system which help replace the lack of visual stimuli we have live.
Another aspect of home reproduction which does this is the ability to reproduce microdynamics or low-level detail. The small sounds of musicians and conductors breathing or vocalizing, the sound of fingerpads on keys, risers creaking, pages turning, music stands being bumped, air handling, subway, and traffic noises, all help give us a "visual" sense of the venue which makes up for our inability to actually see what is going on. And note that this sort of inner detail is also highly valued by audiophiles, even though little of this is every heard live except from the first few rows, and none of it is musically important to musicians. One easy way to get more inner detail is to elevate the upper midrange and lower highs a bit; another is to make the actual distortion of the reproducers very low.
This craving for detail may be responsible for the tendency of many listeners to forgive the fact that most commercial recordings are miked too closely and thus have exaggerated high frequencies. The close-in and up-high miking typical of commercial classical music recordings picks up more high frequencies and thus more detail.
What I am getting at is that we should not be too quick to dismiss the importance of staging, imaging, and detail reproduction in home music reproduction for the seeming vast majority of us who listen to live music with our eyes open. Maybe such things literally are exaggerated in some audiophile systems compared to what is literally heard live with eyes closed. However, if the goal is to make the experience of reproduced music in the home as close as possible to the live experience, then perhaps we need these things.
One of the things which bug me about 5.1 surround sound in home theater set ups is that the sound almost always seems to overwhelm the picture. Only the very best visual recreations, such as those in a good movie theater, seem to support that kind of enveloping sound. But turn off even the seemingly inadequate video screen, and the sound which seemed too good for the picture now seems confused and much lower in quality. The 5.1 surround sound which seemed so good with the picture to order it, often seems much more confused than a good two-channel stereo stage. The picture, even though seemingly overwhelmed by the sound, gives our eyes a related program to focus on and "orders" the sound in some way.
With live music, the visual stimulation is state-of-the-art: 3-D and extremely widescreen. Fully staged operas are perhaps the most extreme example.
Even from a remote seat, the visual stimulation of the overall scene of the concert hall powerfully orders the sound. We are not consciously aware of the auditory imaging or staging from close up, or the lack of imaging and staging from distant seats unless we close our eyes or really concentrate on just the sound. We see what is going on with our eyes, and the powerful visual stimulus taking up much of our brain's processing power forces our ear/brain to conform the sound to what we see. We know when a singer turns left or right or walks forward or backward on stage because we can see it--we don't have to really hear it.
But at home with our two-channel music reproduction systems, to get close to the same experience, we must "see" these events with our ears. Low distortion and flat frequency response don't help with this. Low-level detail, imaging, and staging do. And that may well be why many audiophiles seeking some sort of "absolute sound" experience long ago gave up flat frequency response as the holy grail or even the prime desiderata of the home music system.
There is also another side to this discussion. I totally agree that you do not hear pinpoint imaging live from most, if any, audience positions.
But you hear more enveloping space than with home two-channel reproduction and there are many close-in seats where depth of field is phenomenal, and height is not an illusion since there is quite audible upward projection due to sound bouncing off the stage floor and then off the proscenium. There is also the type of "action" in terms of apparent movement and projection of solo instrument sounds right to the top or back of the hall that you rarely get at home--soprano soloists hitting high notes and turning as they do so is a good example.
The pinpoint imaging a good two-channel home system is capable of is a consolation prize for giving up these spatial aspects of what we can hear at live concerts, in addition to making up for the actual visual cues of the musicians playing. At real concerts, the visual allows you to pinpoint just which musicians are playing. I know some want literal, aural accuracy. I'm more inclined to want a level of involvement from the audio at home that the whole concert hall experience can give you live. To do that in an audio-only reproduction, the sound has to be surreal in certain respects, like imaging.
Also, the "ideal" concert hall seat varies with individual preference. Many times you will hear it said that the "ideal" seats are in the 10th to 13th row of a concert hall. This is typically about 50 to 60 feet back from the front of the stage. In a good hall, that's typically about as near the stage as you can be and still get what many consider to be an ideal blend of the entire orchestra into a coherent source of sound, mixed with an obviously generous amount of hall ambiance. If seat price is not a consideration, those who want to hear more individualized sound sources from soloists and sections--a bit more dissection of the whole--sit closer. That's me. On the other hand, those who value the radiant ambient glow above all and don't mind a "fat mono" sounding orchestral image, sit further away.
My preference for near-field 90-degree separation home listening paradigm tends to allow my home listening experience to better mimic my favorite down-front concert hall seats. From such seats, the perceived subtended angle of the musicians is large and the musicians seem very close to me. Front-to-back orchestral depth is enormous from such audience seats, just as it is at home with my set up.
For someone with my concert hall seating preferences the bit-surreal imaging I want from my audio system is less surreal than it is for folks who prefer to sit further back in the hall at concerts. If the front of the stage is farther from your nose, perception of depth will be diminished because the ratio of closest to deepest object in the stage decreases as the listening distance from the speaker plane or orchestra increases.
Thus, this is not such a counterpoint at all--for me--since what I seek at home is very close to what I experience in my favorite seats in the first few rows of the concert hall.
The magic was gone. It now sounds like a digital recording 
