@wtrimble
Glad I could be of some help
What you are describing - with the sound seeming to come from a Center speaker that isn't physically there - that is called "imaging".
When it comes to audio terms, "soundstage" refers to the overall sense of how large the "stage" in front of you seems to be - from side to side, front to back, and bottom to top. It is the illusion that if you were to close your eyes, you could imagine that you are at a live concert. Now, with your eyes closed, do you get the illusion that you are in a tiny jazz club, seated way at the back of the room so that the stage where the performers are is very small? Or do you get the sense that you are front row at an outdoor stadium, where the stage seems to be massive in front of you? A great audio system can create the illusion of either extreme, or anything in between!
Our hearing relies on subconscious audio cues - essentially all of the reflections and echoes that we do not consciously pay attention to, but our brain uses all of that information to give us a sense of our surroundings. It is how you can have your eyes closed, but still get a very good sense of being in a very large room, or a very small room.
Good recordings often include a lot of this "sound cue" information - especially if they are recordings of live concerts, or specially engineered in the studio to contain sound cue information that will inform your brain as to the size of the venue. When all of that sound is properly played back by a great sound system, you get a very convincing illusion. That illusions might be a very small stage, or a huge stage. But the point is that the "soundstage" created by your speakers is whatever size the recording artists intended!
Most speaker systems cannot convincingly create these illusions. And that's because 50% of the equation is the room, not just the speakers! But even in a wonderful listening room that is well designed for audio, your speakers still need to do their part. So, sometimes, you'll read reviews where it's noted that the speakers create a very "wide soundstage" or a very "narrow soundstage". Or you'll read that there was "good soundstage depth" or "a sense of height to the sound". All of those kinds of descriptions are just explaining whether the speakers themselves place limitations on the illusion of the size of the stage in front of you
"Imaging" refers to how well your sound system creates the illusion of individual voices or instruments on that soundstage. Can you close your eyes and picture the exact spot on the stage where the lead vocalist was standing? With your eyes closed, can you easily tell, just by the sound, that the lead guitarists was closer to the audience than the lead vocalist, and standing over on the right hand side of the stage? Can you tell that the drums were behind the lead vocalist? Maybe even tell if the drums were elevated? Or how about an orchestra? Can you tell where each instrument section was seated? Or maybe even pick out individual instruments within each section?
That is all "imaging". It's like an audio hologram that you can picture in your mind's eye
So a rock solid "center image" means that, with your eyes closed, you would swear that the sound was coming from straight in front of you, even though the speakers themselves are to the left and the right of center. If the "soundstage opened up", that would typically mean that previously, you always got a sense of a very small and confined stage in front of you. Or maybe there was just zero sense of front to back depth to the stage, or zero sense of height. If the "soundstage opened up", that means you now have the illusion of a much larger stage in front of you, and you can better picture the actual venue of the performance, rather than everything always sounding confined to the same size stage, regardless of what the recording artist intended.
Re: How much Toe-in do you do?
Originally Posted by jonathan_teller
@wtrimble
I agree here. I even (obsessively) use a large carpenters square to obtain this.
