Posted by granch [ 75.163.17.35 ] on August 31, 2007 at 21:24:03:

In Reply to: The "Tallerays" posted by FredT on August 30, 2007 at 09:00:47:

Since I never could tell by listening which foot of the centipede was arthritic at 100 ft distance, I was never into that region of audio appreciation. But at my low level of sophistication, I believe that "sound stage size" is related to the relative area of the sound source compared to the listening environment. One of my early attempts at "high fi" which I may have described hereabouts, started with an EV-SP12B in a copy cat EV rear horn loaded corner cabinet I built and which I later stacked on top of an apartment built Carvin (? the one with the big exponential V in the front panel) with a cheap but decent GE speaker in it. All in mono, of course, in the days before stereo. This made a huge pile of radiating surface in your average corner. Rest was state of the art with Weathers FM pickup and home built "Williamson" (semi-triode) amp and home built preamp, all triodes(?). Anyhow the sense of Huge sound stage was very strong with this system. If you usually sit back in the cheap seats at the symphony, you don't get much sense of left-right at the live performance. With the large source (either my "binary array" or this new one) your speakers are dominating a very large sector of space which would otherwise be radiating mangled room reflected sound. I think that may account for the large sound stage phenomena, even in mono, With it comes what I think folks also refer to as increased "presence".

Replies: