will
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Palamino and all.
My room/system does really well width, height, and depth, with great spacial accuracy and individual player saturation. Though I prefer the sound with HR-1s, soundstage did not change notably going from MG944s to HR-1s in this room. I don't have any official diffusers, but do have round log beams with angled rough wood boards for a ceiling, irregular adobe walls, and open segues to other spaces. I also use Synergistic Research Art Basik bowls (they are placed at first reflection points on the sides, and front and back) and a Kemp Schumann resonator. Both contribute to a more defined sound and soundstage in this room.
I have used these for years, so thought I should test them. The difference is subtle in ways, but each is quite clear in contributing its own part. The combination is a very real aspect of a great soundstage. As LR said, the Decware is a big first step, but in this room, these tools really help. I can't say how much they do compared with official diffusers since I have none. I also built a small low bass, and a small mid bass trap, and more absorbers strategically placed in areas where sound got bunched up.
One thing I have really noticed in this difficult room is that when my bass/mid-bass is too dominant in the frequency balance, masking the upper mids and highs, at some point it weakens the sound stage. Right now I have a nice warm tube set that is really good at sound stage though, so it depends on tubes here. I do generally use less pushy, less dense OB3s in my Torii rather than OA3s giving a sound that is still warm, but more articulate. Also, this is where the Schumann resonator contributes in this room...it articulates without messing with the frequency balance in any negative way (positive actually, better micro detail rounding out the timbre).... I think anything that contributes to good power treatment and vibration control really helps by cleaning up/articulating what is there.
My other room also has a great sound stage with a similar ceiling to this, and with segues to other spaces, but with flat sheetrock and masonry walls. It does have a lot more speaker placement flexibility though and it has a great soundstage with no treatment at all, not much of a power filter, and no vibration control. I have not put much energy into that system yet, but the room is so easy, and I don't use it as much, so it is not pressing.
I also find the recording effects the quality of soundstage location and saturation, or, likewise, with well saturated spacial information, the plausibility of the player placement is not always great based on engineer choices.
The recordings I mentioned above do width and depth well in my rooms. Don't know if you can play digital files, but if you can get individual songs without compression, "Inutil Paisagem" is the test tune I use on Ana Caram "bluebossa." Not being as saturated and simple a recording as the Schepp one, it is a good test for bass and drum differentiation in width and depth. They are well back through the wall in this room and spatially well placed, the drums further back and right, the bass forward of them and left.
One with big, complex, and layered music is Vision: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen. This is a new style Hildigard thing with additions of bass, big drums, bells, and with the occasional obvious electronic hyped instruments I uncheck in my play lists, but that is me. There is clear attention to sound stage in this production. I use the tune "Praise of the Virgin" as a test tune. Great for analyzing width and depth, bass, soft or hard mids, highs...the lot.
Also Ayub Ogata the tune "Kothbiro." Nice saturation width and depth, and a good test for depth. With subtler depth differentiation on some of the up front voices and instruments (several feet here), it is quite deep on others. For me the piano is about 15 feet behind the speakers and the bass a bit forward of the piano and not far left of it, so a good test for depth and right/left location and saturation.
Good luck pulling in the front to back part!
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