How's my imaging?


Hi,

I'm just wondering if my imaging is what it should be, let me explain. When I'm sitting in my listening chair (which is positioned at the apex of where my front speakers would meet since they are toed in), I'm hearing the voices right (directly) in front of me. But instead of being at head level, they are about one to two feet above where my ears are sitting straight up. (Please see my system to get a visiual, under - man cave system) If you pull up the picture of my room, the voices would be coming from the area where the stars on the flag are.

My question is, is this correct imaging or should the voices be lower? If the voices should be lower, what kinds of things could I try to correct it?

Thanks,
Mike
vman71

Showing 2 responses by ridgestreetaudio

Hi "V".
Sounds like it could very well be a polar response issue in which case, it's cross-over related and/or polarity related. Do all vocals image high? How far away is your listening position?

Regards,
Robert
"V"...

I think the only thing you can do is try a closer (maybe 1 ft closer) listening position. It may help a bit, probably not much though. If it alleviates some of the problem, I suspect the compromise will be you'll lose some energy.

I'm pretty confident you're dealing with a skewed polar response which isn't too uncommon. Polar response is an amplitude measurement in the vertical plain of the speaker and is related to the transfer function of the crossover, driver placement in the vertical plain and driver offset. Polar response aberrations can be further exasperated by using 1st order networks and having one of the drivers wired internally out of phase.

In light of this, one other thing you might try if you're handy with simple mods is take the driver of the baffle and see if any are wired out of phase. With some of the Klipsch, if I remember correctly, you're likely to find at least one driver connected out of phase. Reverse the leads to correct polarity, put it all back together and give it a listen. Usually, when a driver(s) are wired internally out of phase, it's done to correct another problem such as frequency response so you may find yourself making some trade offs to sound quality.

Kindly,
Robert