Spacial Widening on the Nokia phones

I am normally not somebody to turn on equalizers or sound processors and I can see no reason why you would want to have your music altered so that it shoulds like you are in your bathroom but I turned on the spacial widening on my phone and I think that I like it.

I have been thinking recently how, when using headphones, you get a really tiny sound stage. The band feels like it is playing about a gig on the bridge of your nose. Now this is okay for most things and I think that it helps with the feeling that you are not interfering with other people on the train or bus but it is missing something.

Spacial widening settings have always left me cold, giving a feeling that you have somehow just taken the heart out of the music. Nokia's new system on the other hand still keeps the majority of the sound at the bridge of the nose gig but just pushes some of it out beyond your head on either side. It does sound pretty nice. Having said all that it still fails for some tracks, sounding too open and washy but for the majority it's an improvement.

It looks like they have stopped thinking "What else can we do with this DSP?" and started to think "How can we improve the sound?".

Time will tell but for now it's getting left on.