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If you don't have a wide sweet spot, are you really an audiophile?

Hi, it’s me, professional audio troll. I’ve been thinking about something as my new home listening room comes together:

The glory of having a wide sweet spot.

We focus far too much on the dentist chair type of listener experience. A sound which is truly superb only in one location. Then we try to optimize everything exactly in that virtual shoebox we keep our heads in. How many of us look for and optimize our listening experience to have a wide sweet spot instead?

I am reminded of listening to the Magico S1 Mk II speakers. While not flawless one thing they do exceptionally well is, in a good room, provide a very good, stable stereo image across almost any reasonable listening location. Revel’s also do this. There’s no sudden feeling of the image clicking when you are exactly equidistant from the two speakers. The image is good and very stable. Even directly in front of one speaker you can still get a sense of what is in the center and opposite sides. You don’t really notice a loss of focus when off axis like you can in so many setups.

Compare and contrast this with the opposite extreme, Sanders' ESL’s, which are OK off axis but when you are sitting in the right spot you suddenly feel like you are wearing headphones. The situation is very binary. You are either in the sweet spot or you are not.

From now on I’m declaring that I’m going all-in on wide-sweet spot listening. Being able to relax on one side of the couch or another, or meander around the house while enjoying great sounding music is a luxury we should all attempt to recreate.
erik_squires
erik_squires OP
15,667 posts
 
I'm not an expert in the field, but I believe the research into head related transfer functions (HRTF) can teach us is that we localize sounds based on the complicated comb filtering caused by the shape of our heads, body, ear and even our hair styles.

It's not phase, it's amplitude that seems to matter here.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,551 posts
 
Speakers play a role, their internal design for sure....Their relative electrical audio synchronisation also...

But take relatively good speakers and the imaging will magically appear with the right acoustical settings, location in the room et their relative positions...Decreasing electrical noise and mechanical noise will help also but will be secondary to acoustic settings...

We NEVER hear the sound directly from the speakers ONLY and MAINLY we listen to the speakers/room....EVEN in near listening....In ANY small room....

It was my experience with imaging in my room which is now very good in my 2 listening locations....Not so at all before acoustical controls...My speakers are averagely good, it was not their superlative precise design that was creating imaging here.... But the room/speakers link and interactions did ALL my work....

For sure i am NOT at all competent nor an engineer....An attentive listener.....
djones51
4,947 posts
 
I haven't built anything so I'm not really sure if this is addressing the same issue of phase as applied to the discussion but Floyd Toole in his 
summary of research at the NRC into loudspeaker performance that is described in two classic 1986 papers [32, 33], concluded thusly: "The advocates of accurate waveform reproduction, implying both accurate amplitude and phase responses, are in a particularly awkward situation. In spite of the considerable engineering appeal of this concept, practical tests have yielded little evidence of listener sensitivity to this factor...the limited results lend support for the popular view that the effects of phase are clearly subordinate to amplitude response."

jdane
183 posts
 
I do know what 'timbre' means in music, but I confess I have absolutely no clue what that word means in the context it's being used here.

Serious question:  could someone explain it in such a way that a normal listener can understand what it means here?  

Thanks.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,551 posts
 
I do know what ’timbre’ means in music, but I confess I have absolutely no clue what that word means in the context it’s being used here.

Serious question: could someone explain it in such a way that a normal listener can understand what it means here?

Thanks.
Try wiki read it 2 times.... You will at least understand the complexity of the acoustical mathematical modeling of the problem and understand why without acoustic right settings in a room timbre sound perception is degraded...

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