Stereo imaging

[RodHQ]

What exactly affects stereo imaging? I can "see" the phantom center, but I can't seem to get depth to finish the illusion, plus the 2 main speakers are very clearly there, they're not disappearing

 

[lovinthehd]

Much of it is in the recording, the balance in your speakers and their interaction with your room.

 

[ryanosaur]

The room interaction is the one thing you can sort of control.
Proper Set Up is probably the most overlooked and abused element of this hobby.

What are your Speakers?
How are they set up? (Distance between, distance from the front wall, distance from the side walls, are they toed in....)
How far back is your Listening Position?

These are the most basic questions to consider for your situation.

 

[Verdinut]

For a good front sound stage imaging, with no hole in the center, you need speakers with a wide horizontal dispersion. The best dispersion comes with ribbon or air motion transformer tweeters.
Of course, if there's too much distance between the left and right speakers, you will miss that perfect sound stage. Have you tried to slightly toe in both speakers? That might help.

 

[RodHQ]

They're a pair of klipsch rp 600m. I have read a lot about set up, granted, I'm in a less than ideal room (Not a square, but close). I've played around with toe in, distance between speakers, distance from wall, listening area, etc. The center channel can be very very clear, but the speakers don't really disappear. It's like there's sound coming out of 3 boxes

 

[ryanosaur]

Allow me to be more blunt:
Please answer those questions for us so we may offer some assistance if possible.

 

[lovinthehd]

Then again maybe it's just the speakers not being up to snuff....

 

[MrBoat]

Weird. Just about everything I have listened to with even a subtle waveguide apparatus has had exceptional imaging. In the case of the SEOS, I can walk right up to either speaker and pretty much have to put my ear right up to the horn to break the image to left or right.

Try closing your eyes and see if you can pick out where the instruments are, if it is music we are talking about. Otherwise, it sounds to me like you are situated right at the first reflection points. Try a true near field arrangement and see what happens.

 

[TLS Guy]

They're a pair of klipsch rp 600m. I have read a lot about set up, granted, I'm in a less than ideal room (Not a square, but close). I've played around with toe in, distance between speakers, distance from wall, listening area, etc. The center channel can be very very clear, but the speakers don't really disappear. It's like there's sound coming out of 3 boxes

This is a common problem. Unfortunately timing errors in speaker crossovers have been minimized as it is hard to correct. However my researches show they can not be overlooked. Timing error in the speech discrimination band cause the most problems. This band is roughly 400 Hz to 4 KHz. The absolute worst area to place a crossover is 1500 to 2K Hz, just where Klipsch place theirs. These errors do not show up in frequency response measurements. As I have said here many times, it is easy to design and build a speaker that has a perfect FR and be totally unlistenable. That obviously means taking timing errors to an extreme degree.

However timing errors I am certain diminish speech intelligibility significantly. They also upset the sound stage and acoustic perspective. This is an issue that has been almost universally ignored by all but a few, to the detriment of achieving realistic reproduction. Speakers devoid of these serious issues in the band where the ear is most sensitive, will if well designed in terms of other parameters, have superior imaging, stable location of central image and a good depth of field, in addition to excellent intelligible natural speech. Most designers are totally cavalier about this issue and they absolutely should not be.

As more and more active speakers become available that employ DSP to perfectly time align speakers, the importance of this issue will become clear to all.