Depth perception?

[Bevan]

Does anyone know what causes that psychocustical phenomenon of perceiving depth in the sounstage?

Is it simply just a question of the the lower the volume of a particular instrument in the mix the further away it is perceived to be?

Why then are some speakers only credited with being able to produce a 2 dimetional soundstage?

Why is this illusion of depth so diffult to pull off?

thanks for any ideas

b.

 

[silversurfer]

I can't really answer your question, but most people have a TV nowadays between thier two mains. This in itself creates a pseudo baffle between the speakers and is not a good thing for imaging and "depth perception".

 

[j_garcia]

Does anyone know what causes that psychocustical phenomenon of perceiving depth in the sounstage?

Is it simply just a question of the the lower the volume of a particular instrument in the mix the further away it is perceived to be?

Why then are some speakers only credited with being able to produce a 2 dimetional soundstage?

Why is this illusion of depth so diffult to pull off?

That's tough to answer. The first part is the speaker's ability to reproduce sound accurately, the second is getting the speakers setup properly to allow them to give you that image. The "depth" is in the recording; the spatial cues are there when they are recorded that way - it is the system's job to try to recreate that and it can even be done fairly effectively in stereo. Excellent speakers setup poorly will still sound sub-par, and conversely, you can get good results out of most decent speakers by setting them up correctly for your listening position.