What amp or preamp or combo has the HUGEST SOUNDSTAGE?

[caesar]

Holding the source, source material, and speakers constant, what designer / brand has managed to engineer the hugest soundstage?

What types of designs achieve this? Is an amp or preamp more important in this regard?

 

[Bruce B]

You want a huge soundstage? Get the BSG Signal Completion Stage. It will make your soundstage large and artificial!!

 

[andromedaaudio]

I think it has to do with distortion , amps with a lot of distortion sound like a " sound soup"
Amps with very low distortion and low noisefloor make the individual musicians become " visible " and more distinguisable , best so far .....Boulder .

 

[microstrip]

Holding the source, source material, and speakers constant, what designer / brand has managed to engineer the hugest soundstage?

What types of designs achieve this? Is an amp or preamp more important in this regard?

Reproduction of soundstage size is also due to the interaction between the amp and preamp and the remaining parts of the system - there is no generic answer to your question.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

my room tends to allow any speaker to bloom with all the reflective surfaces and almost zero absorbtion, along with getting the speakers out in space and not near any walls.

one thing that has happened with my new MM7 twin tower speakers. when i laser aligned and exactly set up each tower equal distant from my ears within a 1/16th on an inch, all the imaging became somewhat smaller as the bass information became one with the other frequencies and attached itself to the things going on in the soundstage. the music became more real and less large.

the music content is higher, the soundstage is smaller.

so size can come from less than precise imaging.

 

[Bruce B]

There is something to this. Using M/S encoding, the more out of phase signal I dial in, the wider the soundstage gets, thus decreasing the center image clarity.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

OTOH with the recent software upgrade to the PD MPS-5 the noise floor lowered somewhat and the soundstage expanded a bit. images did not get wider or change positions, simply the edges of the ambient information were farther out. not a huge amount, but noticable.

 

[mep]

my room tends to allow any speaker to bloom with all the reflective surfaces and almost zero absorbtion, along with getting the speakers out in space and not near any walls.

one thing that has happened with my new MM7 twin tower speakers. when i laser aligned and exactly set up each tower equal distant from my ears within a 1/16th on an inch, all the imaging became somewhat smaller as the bass information became one with the other frequencies and attached itself to the things going on in the soundstage. the music became more real and less large.

the music content is higher, the soundstage is smaller.

so size can come from less than precise imaging.

If all of that is true, maybe the KRC-HR is the better preamp over the KBL. The KRC-HR has very tightly defined images which are smaller than the KBL. The KBL soundstage is so big it barely fits in your room. The images are much more tightly defined with the KRC-HR, yet they seem to missing energy within the images that KBL brings to life at the expense of the edge definition. I still haven't figured out which one is *right.*

 

[KBK]

The fundamentals of distortion in audio, which originate in the molecular structure of the components, or 'bits' of each finished piece of audio gear... combined with Phase issues with high frequency transient both micro and macro (impedance issues that involve solid matter and electrical signal propagation), these two things combine to make sure that there is now way-no how that anyone can ever produce a single piece of gear that is clear of the influence of additive and masking noise.

All equipment and signal pathways will, to some degree or another, disturb the very micro cues that we use to define 'space' and 'signal' in sound that is heard by the ear.

The simpler the given piece of equipment in internal component count and signal pathway, the more correct and real the representation of the signal will be.

There is NO way around this.

Thus, the folks who work at getting the simplest gear they can are closer to the truth of signal than those who indulge in complex build gear. No builder has ever found a way around this quandary, no matter the given claims.

As long as conductive materials, dielectrics, and signal pathways (and so on) are used to attempt to manipulate an 'electrical' signal, to attempt to replicate an audio signal, this additive and masking noise issue.....will be a fundamental that is inescapable.

This is why folks can get frustrated in their attempts.....going one way then the other, not realizing they keep trading off between noise and masking.

Noise being heard as additive aspects of detail and micro detail (space, ambient cues, and so on) and masking --loss of information through being hidden or covered by out of phase noise which is masking the micro information that is trying to be expressed.

They're trying to get back to the source point, without the noise...this additive and masking noise that is coming to their notice as a 'disturbance in the force' (slowly coming to the realization that something is not right). That this is slowly becoming an itch ..that they try and scratch.

 

[Gregadd]

Allnoc L-1500 ith Moscode 402AU.

 

[GaryProtein]

my room tends to allow any speaker to bloom with all the reflective surfaces and almost zero absorbtion, along with getting the speakers out in space and not near any walls.

one thing that has happened with my new MM7 twin tower speakers. when i laser aligned and exactly set up each tower equal distant from my ears within a 1/16th on an inch, all the imaging became somewhat smaller as the bass information became one with the other frequencies and attached itself to the things going on in the soundstage. the music became more real and less large.

the music content is higher, the soundstage is smaller.

so size can come from less than precise imaging.

I'm sure your system sounds wonderful, but can you really get your head in the exact same position every time, even one time out of ten times to within 1/16th inch?

If you eat a big meal and then listen you probably sink that much more into the cushion of your chair. How do you insure your posture is exactly the same every time? Is your chair bolted to the floor to insure it never moves? Is the seat width of your chair exactly equal to your butt so the position is completely reproducible? Seriously. Is the sweet spot only as wide as the space between the ear canals? You NEVER turn your head as if to look at where the solo violinist is sitting in the orchestra? I really can't see the point of that kind of precision.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I'm sure your system sounds wonderful, but can you really get your head in the exact same position every time, even one time out of ten times to within 1/16th inch?

If you eat a big meal and then listen you probably sink that much more into the cushion of your chair. How do you insure your posture is exactly the same every time? Is your chair bolted to the floor to insure it never moves? Is the seat width of your chair exactly equal to your butt so the position is completely reproducible? Seriously. Is the sweet spot only as wide as the space between the ear canals? You NEVER turn your head as if to look at where the solo violinist is sitting in the orchestra? I really can't see the point of that kind of precision.

sorry. re-reading what i wrote i can understand your point. the point i was trying to make was that by setting up both towers of my speakers exactly symetrically to 1/16th on an inch, the bass energy information did get focused onto the rest of the imaging....everything tightened up, more focus, more real, but less size. the measurements were from a fixed point behind my listening position that was determined by the approximate position of the tops of my shoulders. so both the main towers and the bass towers were both aimed at this point and measured from this point.

the 1/16th on an inch relates to the speakers and the point behind my seating position.....not my ears or head which obviously are not locked into position.

as far as how steady i need to have my head or ear position the answer is that the sweet spot is quite large. however; since my room is symetrical i do have plenty of visual clues to allow me to easily get my head into the exact center spot when i'm so inclined. there are light fixtures in the ceiling, and electrical outlets on the walls, both of which are in exact symetrical locations, which i can sight against the speaker cabinets to get exactly where i want to be without much thought to it. also; i have a center line on a piece of tape on the hardwood in front of my amps i can also sight on.

 

[GaryProtein]

That sounds a lot more reasonable.