About Soundstage...

[creatip123]

The more I dig around about headphones, the more I read about 'soundstage'. I have closed back headphones, and open back headphones, so I have the idea of what is soundstage. But after reading some more posts in this forum, I figured there are a lot of people who were just like me, can't quite put their fingers on what is 'soundstage' actually, and they don't have the privilege to compare between a closed back and an open back headphone. 

 

So I was playing around with 'Philips golden ear challenge', and one of the challenge is the 'stereo width' that I think describes about soundstage.

 

Description quoted from the site: 

 

 

Stereo width refers to the perceived distance across the soundstage. Well designed audio systems sound expansive rather than narrow and constricted.

 

They got examples of a song with wide and narrow soundstages. So I thought I'll just record them, put them together for an audio reference.

 

The file is here

 

It's a 20 seconds song excerpt combined in to 5 loops. Each loops got narrower and narrower soundstage, with the last (fifth) loop is the narrowest. It sounds best with open backed headphone, naturally, but I tried with my closed back headphone, and even my cheap IEM, and it's still distinguishable. Harder to distinguish with my IEM, of course. Just set your media player to restart playing, and you'd hear a massive difference from the fifth loop, restarts to the first loop (the widest soundstage)

 

Or just get the short version here (only 2 loops, the widest and the narrowest soundstages)

 

Sorry for the bad sound quality. I recorded it with my old crappy PC.

 

For best result, copy to your PC first, then play in foobar. It's more distinguishable in foobar

 

PS: I don't own or claim any credits, as I just recorded from Philips' website. All credits should go to them.