How will an audiophile visualize them?

[Santy]

Soundstage, its width, depth, height, imaging, layering, separation, location of instruments/ singers, distance between them..... in this music:

Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover) - YouTube

There is only one instrument and singers are sitting on each other, well... almost. hyeah:

But I am sure some audiophiles (who haven't see the video) will be able to 'pin-point' the location of different instruments in space.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

ADVICE: DO NOT WATCH THE VIDEO. LISTEN FIRST

You should have told us not to watch the video!

I wonder what I would have made of it. Anyway, it's a great piece of musical showmanship, thoroughly enjoyable, and I'll now check out any more on youtube by the same band. When is a gimmick not just a gimmick? When it works!

 

[murali]

Soundstage, its width, depth, height, imaging, layering, separation, location of instruments/ singers, distance between them..... in this music:

Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover) - YouTube

There is only one instrument and singers are sitting on each other, well... almost. hyeah:

But I am sure some audiophiles (who haven't see the video) will be able to 'pin-point' the location of different instruments in space.

I am not clear what you are trying to address. Your definition of soundstage is okay and you say the singers are almost literally sitting on each other. Fine. But each person has a separate pair of hands though playing the same instrument (but only where their hands can reach and are not trying to jostle each other), each has a separate mouth (they are not trying to kiss each other and sing simultaneously), and there are three mics in front of them. There is absolutely no doubt that a good music reproduction system will be able to distinguish the sound coming between left and right and above and below. What will be lacking is a sense of depth as they are all in the same, more or less, horizontal plane. There are several pieces of jazz I had heard where such single plane assembly is done (may be for lack of space) and some of the tracks I have in the True Hifi CD from Naim follow similar.
Of course it is a different matter if a solo drum sounds more than 20 ft apart presuming the player is not 8 ft or more tall!
Soundstage is what has been created in the music and not what someone listening to it thinks it is. The common mistake we all tend to make is to assess a person or event from what we think he or she or it should be and not what he or she or it is really. That is why we now hear of Ministers' moves to close down fuel stations from 8 pm to 8 am to conserve precious fuels and thus foreign exchange, implying that the consumer is the greatest idiot one can think of in our country, and bent upon destroying the Indian Rupee by gulping down petrol and diesel even in the wee-hours.

cheers.
murali

 

[Santy]

I am not clear what you are trying to address. Your definition of soundstage is okay and you say the singers are almost literally sitting on each other. Fine. But each person has a separate pair of hands though playing the same instrument (but only where their hands can reach and are not trying to jostle each other), each has a separate mouth (they are not trying to kiss each other and sing simultaneously), and there are three mics in front of them. There is absolutely no doubt that a good music reproduction system will be able to distinguish the sound coming between left and right and above and below. What will be lacking is a sense of depth as they are all in the same, more or less, horizontal plane.

Well, if these peeps perform live, will anyone sit at the position where the mics are placed ? Only then I guess we would 'see' or 'hear' the sound coming from different points in space.

Practically, I am sure we would sit quite a distance away from the performers. At that distance, if we close our eyes and listen, will we be still able to 'see' the distances between mouths or length of their hands?

Had we not seen the video first, chances are high that some of us would create a wrong image of the stage in our mind (assuming high quality recording of same track is heard on a good system). The music as well comes from a single instrument so that could be another wrong visualisation we might develop as if there are multiple instruments playing and we'll probably be trying to chop the space and calculate the distance.

Well, actually I did not want to address or prove anything. I wanted to post this video coz I liked their unique performance. Just added some spice to the story in an audiophile perspective.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Except where music is recorded with a single stereo pair of mics, sound stage is what the guy on the mixing desk makes it plus how our walls bounce it around. Up and down is probably mostly psychoacoustic but it can be done.

Frankly, on this one, I enjoyed the performance too much to worry about the technicalities

<crossposted>

Well, if these peeps perform live, will anyone sit at the position where the mics are placed ?

Well, each mic will still have a pan knob --- but unless the effect is extreme, I tend to find that the visual clues work to make the sound "come" from where I see it. This gets freaky when I realise I was making a mistake about who was playing what. That doesn't often happen to me with mridangam, vocal and violin!

Stereo is an illusion. Sometimes, perhaps, it can be illusions within illusions and that can all be part of the fun.

 

[Santy]

ADVICE: DO NOT WATCH THE VIDEO. LISTEN FIRST

You should have told us not to watch the video!

I wonder what I would have made of it. [/I]

I was not sure if someone would do a critical listening of a youtube clip.

Even now, I think we can use this clip as reference, run the same mental calculations we normally do on a piece of music and try to understand what affects our mind in visualizing the sound stage and the space inbetween.

Unfortunately the clip quality is not good enough and to my ears, all the voices are right in the middle. The tapping of the guitar by the guy on the left (at 2:25 ) is heard on right speaker equally loud. May be there was no post processing of this track. May be some might be able to calculate the distance in inches, but I think I am not really concerned. I just liked the music.

 

[Santy]

You are right Thad. I am quite sure that given the speed of sound, they would reach all the mic at the same time. It is the volume panning of each of the multiple mics used in the studio during post processing that helps in creating the stereoscopic imaging. Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I didn't hear much soundstage in it --- but my desk has had a cleanup, and I have not readjusted the monitor positions. Nor did I bother to put on the headphones.

But I did for this. Something new on the wonderful audiocheck site since I last visited.

Stereo Perception and Sound Localization