![]() I have heard certain amps that can slightly increase the the sound stage IF the headphones already have a wide sound stage to begin with. Even with DSP or those gaming headsets with so called 7.1 mode. I think with headphones they either have a wide sound stage or they don't. With speakers you can change the sound stage by putting them at different distances, closer or farther to the listener, closer or farther apart and messing with the toe in. I have to assume it has something to do with the drivers or how they are aligned? Much in the same way it works with speakers. I tried open and closed backs because some say the effect doesn't work well with open back headphones. I have heard normal recordings do a better job if mixed correctly. There was no added depth or width that I could percieve. I have listened to binaural recordings, just listened to some last night actually and they are no different to me at all. That colour equals the physical existence of the sound. Does the sound happen in a church? Or in a forest? Or in your living room? Our hearing expects the sound to be coloured. In real life sound gets spatially coloured and that colourization is the information about the kind of existence the sound has. Instead sound reproducing need to be transparent. Sounds don't need to have tonal accuracy. This struggle causes even listening fatique to some listeners including me. If a recording has huge ILD (indicates the sound is near listener) and also strong reverberation level compared to direct sound (indicates the sound is far away), spatial hearing may struggle a lot to make head or tail out of it. Spatial hearing looks at many spatial cues and tries to come up with a interpretation that makes sense. That's when we can have the "widest" headphone sound and going over or under that "sweet spot" makes the sound narrower, just in different ways (the sound is outside or inside the head) Instead of increasing channel separation, the target should be natural levels. So, more channel separation can actually make the headphone soundstage narrower! On speakers the effect is the opposite, because the listening room regulates spatial cues to natural levels. Reducing ILD to natural levels helps spatial hearing to believe the sound is further away, especially if other spatial cues support it (for example reverberation level is high compared to direct sound. ![]() When the level difference between the ears (ILD) is too large (compared to natural levels) spatial hearing is likely to deduct that the sound is very near the other ear (the side with higher level) and that explains the level difference. Often the wideness of headphone sound is ruined by excessive spatiality targeted for speakers. The secret of binaural recordings is the correct or near correct combination of many many spatial cues.ĮQ may help with soundstage (if it can attenuate spatial problems), but it is very limited. Unfortunately binaural sound is not common, because almost all stereophonic music has been produced primarily for speakers and binaural recordings don't work well with speakers. The most convincing soundstage with headphones happens with binaural sound. There is nothing in between to mitigate errors or create real spatial information as is the case with speakers. Headphone spatiality is difficult, because all errors in it are directly shot into our ears. ![]()
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