Listening Height Adjustment -- Is This Why Two People Don't Hear the Same?


Just wanted to pass on a recent experience, and surprise, in my system

My room (https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/5707) is set up for one person to listen. I have a medium height arm chair at the listening position and had always assumed that it left me with my ears broadly in line with the tweeters in my Magicos (i.e. 42-43" off the ground)

Well I checked and I was actually at 38-40" depending on how upright I sit. Wondering how much of a difference getting it just so would make I purchased a set of add on feet, each 3.5-4" tall and added them to my chair -- not a good look!

But wow, what an improvement in sound. Tonally the speakers take on a very different balance, upper mid range and vocal intelligibility is substantially improved, bass is lighter but better defined and overall integration across the frequency range is much much better than before

The odd thing is that I don’t have the tweeters pointed directly at me -- they’re angled about 2’ off to either side, so what would a couple of inches in the vertical make such a difference assuming the tweeter drop off is uniform in all directions? Is it more a matter of driver integration?

This experience leads me to wonder
a) how many of us have actually measured and adjusted our set height to optimal/tweeter level, and do we do this every time we audition a new speaker, and
b) if two individuals are not the same height do we adjust for the difference in height between them sitting -- say a 5’6 vs 6’ person that’s probably a 3" difference sitting -- unless your chair has adjustable feet the experience of the two individuals may be completely different
128x128folkfreak
@folkfreak Good point and question. I’ve experimented by moving myself around (quite a bit) before picking a spot that works for me.

This has led me to move further back and sit in a higher chair. My speakers are elevated by approximately 2 inches (due to isolation), which in my case, and for my speakers and preferences, means an (ideal) ear to floor distance of 51 inches.

Since I have the Tekton Design SEs, that puts my ear at about 2 inches above the topmost ’tweeter’ in the tweeter array, and just below center of the topmost 'mid-range' driver.
@erik_squires surely tilting causes all sorts of other issues however by changing the relationship of the mid range and bass drivers to the floor -- it also doesn't help if you have more than one listener and need to adjust quickly between the two
surely tilting causes all sorts of other issues however by changing the relationship of the mid range and bass drivers to the floor

Less than you think. 

 
-- it also doesn't help if you have more than one listener and need to adjust quickly between the two

True, but this is why having speakers with smooth off-axis response matters. I mean, with two users, only one is exactly in the middle, right? Why isn't the same vertically?  :) 

Different speakers have different horizontal and vertical sweet spots. Hopefully yours are broad enough to accommodate. 
Nope with Magico Q3s the vertical sweet spot is +/- 1" or less, sucks but that's what it is. The horizontal sweet spot in my room is maybe 1-2" at most. Like I say in my room description it's a big pair of headphones