simply put, how can two identical looking (for instance) bookshelf speakers produce wildly different imaging and sound-stage?
when i google it, posts mainly just go down the line and list factors such as transformers, driver material, size, crossover components, preamp and power amp components, but what exactly is it about thee factors that makes such a drastic difference?
Don’t forget your dac too lol. The quality and design of the components determines how well the speaker can recreate sound. The better the sound the better your brain gets fooled to sum it up, I’ll let someone else explain the science portion since I don’t think I could do it correctly without a very hard to understand mess of a few paragraphs
cool! i was mainly confused about how the speaker itself does the job. i have a somewhat in depth understanding of the software side of things.
look up off axis response. that is a big key to soundstage. better off axis response = better ability to produce imaging on the far edges.
larger drivers “beam” higher frequencies more then small drivers. IE a 10" woofer crossed at 2k will beam a lot of that frequency range before it has room to disperse, not a factor in a large environment, but in a smaller one can reduce soundstage. that is where driver selection and xover can work into it.
also, like you and M0N mentioned, dacs and amps can widen and lessen soundstage depending on how they do their thing.
It is pretty easy to judge soundstage based off of speaker selection alone. better drivers have better off axis response as a whole, giving better soundstage. better designed speakers use better speaker selection and crossover point.
But the speaker is but 1 part of the chain.
so it’s more the file itself rather than the driver? the driver is simply a representation of the digital file in an analog sense?
Wait what I’m completely lost here lol. What about a digital file being a driver?
driver ie woofer tweeter. those are speaker drivers 
not files =)
This was what I was getting confused on lol
yeah same here lol im not sure what he means, i mean in the very loosest sense hes right i guess lol a compressed file will sound compressed and not as open. but flac hi rez streaming? lol
im just trying to make sense of how 2 similar shaped boxes both w same size drivers can produce different imaging/sound-stage
one has better drivers and design.
Honestly I think it’s more design than driver but they both matter of course
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i have been working on my own coming up with a design that has WAF and these drivers:
https://www.css-audio.com/online-store/CSS-Criton-2TD-Kit-pair-p111042525
the quality of the crossover network itself can add soundstage as well btw. thats part of the design.
edit: that speaker kit i linked has an upgraded crossover network for 400$ that is worth every penny. it replaces all the already good components with literally the top of the line for each. opens up the soundstage as wide as it will get and adds more precision. as the juice has to go through all of the crossovers components, it gets degraded small amounts by the quality of each.
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i hope that all explains it out a little more anyways without going into way to much detail. i can prolly scrounge up some links to articles if you want a long read on it.
how can a crossover add soundstage?
By time aligning the drivers, increasing coherency between the drivers creating a more natural sound, and also minimizing loss of frequencies on the crossover range
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hmm. i’ll look into all of those things. thank you for the info