Sound
Soundstage
Also called staging
Soundstage is the sense of space in a recording: how wide, deep and tall the music seems, and how far outside your head the instruments appear to sit.
On loudspeakers, soundstage comes from the room, the speaker placement and the recording itself. On headphones there is no room, so the effect is a trick of the brain, shaped by the recording, the headphone design and how sound reaches each ear.
Open-back designs are often described as having a larger soundstage than Closed-back ones, and a few are known for it. Listeners do not always agree on what they hear, and soundstage is hard to measure, so treat any description as an impression rather than a spec.
A track recorded in a real hall, with the players spread out, gives a headphone more to work with than a close-miked studio track. Width is only part of it: Imaging describes how precisely each sound sits within that space, and Layering how clearly front and back are separated.
Where you’ll see this on tonistry.
- Owners rate soundstage on an Intimate ↔ Expansive scale in their reviews; a higher position isn't automatically better. See community reviews and how ratings are read.