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

i would buy a Fred T speaker......but....there don’t seem to be any...of consequence.... please do correct me if i err....

and you obviously have never figured out where those “ quiet “ tympani are......you spend wayyyyyyy to much time in multi track land.....like i said, flavors you or the producer like....it ain’t moving the ball forward....cat chasing its own tail....

To illustrate my point from my last posts here about "imaging" and the link between imaging and room acoustic....I copy some text from a book of Toole and some paper research from japan scientists who wrote something very interesting in 2008 about The law of the first wave front and the early and late reflections in room and the way a listener live the experience of localization of a source or the experience of being surround by sound...

You will remark that it is not question here of the speakers drivers type and characteristic but ONLY of acoustical elementary law...The reason is simple imaging is fundamentally an acoustic phenomenon not a speakers driver phenomenon, even if drivers types can play a part for sure...And it is not the recording technique and concepts that make us able to recreate imaging, it is basic acoustical law. Period. It is the acoustician field not the recording engineer field first.... 

That was my point from the start....Time and timing between ears and the speakers/room acoustic relation are fundamental in the experience of imaging...

Give me any speakers i will make it imaging well modulo the right acoustic controls of the room... I will use passive materials treatment but also ACTIVE Helmholtz pressurized tubes and pipes, different resonators and others devices i will not name to start a new  debate....  All that will also modify the relation of the frequencies waves intensities or amplitudes in the room...


I am not a scientist at all.... But i know what i did in my room for gaining imaging at my 2 listening positions.......And natural timbre perception....The second experience is way more difficult to recreate and encompass than the first one...

Forget branded name speakers company concentrate on live acoustic law if you want to understand imaging.....

And there is no reflexion about BITS recording technique here in these text nor DRIVERS speakers debate names naming in these texts...... 😁

And to conclude i will repeat here that the TIMBRE experience is more difficult to recreate in a small room than only some imaging.....Timbre experience is the benchmark test to know if an audio system is good or not.... Not imaging....Not bass perception... Tonal instrumental or voice TIMBRE perception.....






In audio in the past, the terms Haas effect and law of the first wavefront
were used to identify this effect, but current scientifi c work has settled on the
other original term, precedence effect. Whatever it is called, it describes the
well-known phenomenon wherein the fi rst arrived sound, normally the direct
sound from a source, dominates our impression of where sound is coming from.
Within a time interval often called the “fusion zone,” we are not aware of
reflected sounds that arrive from other directions as separate spatial events. All
of the sound appears to come from the direction of the first arrival. Sounds that
arrive later than the fusion interval may be perceived as spatially separated
auditory images, coexisting with the direct sound, but the direct sound is still
perceptually dominant. At very long delays, the secondary images are perceived
as echoes, separated in time as well as direction. The literature is not consistent
in language, with the word echo often being used to describe a delayed sound
that is not perceived as being separate in either direction or time.Haas was not
the first person to observe the primacy of the first arrivedsound so far as localization in rooms is concerned.

Sound Reproduction The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms Floyd Toole Chap.6 P.73






In 1989, Morimoto and Maekawa demonstrated that
spatial impression comprises at least two components and
that a listener can discriminate between them [1]. One is
auditory source width (ASW) which is defined as the width
of a sound image fused temporally and spatially with direct
sound image, and the other is listener envelopment (LEV)
which is defined as the degree of fullness of sound images
around the listener, excluding a sound image composing
ASW.

In the field of room acoustics, it is popular belief that the early and late reflections contribute to auditory source width (ASW) and
listener envelopment (LEV), respectively. However, some papers have demonstrated results not necessarily in agreement with the belief.
In this paper, a hypothesis is proposed to clarify the essentials of ASW and LEV from point of view of the auditory phenomenon. The
hypothesis is that the components of reflections under and beyond the upper limit of validity for the law of the first wavefront contribute
to ASW and LEV, respectively. Two experiments were performed to evaluate the hypothesis. In the first experiment, the results showed
directly that the components of reflections under the upper limit of validity for the law contribute to ASW. In the second experiment,
four kinds of threshold were measured to evaluate the relation between the effect and LEV: image-splitting which corresponds to the
upper limit of validity for the law, LEV, reverberation perception, and reverberation disturbance. The results showed that the threshold
of image-splitting coincides with the that of LEV. This suggests that the components of reflections beyond the upper limit of validity for
the law contribute to LEV. In conclusion, it seems that the results of experiments shown in this paper favor the hypothesis.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223804282_The_relation_between_spatial_impression_and_the_l...

Mahgister: with all due respect, I didn’t ask you to explain the normal meaning of timbre, with which I am familiar. 

I asked you to explain in simple terms how you were using this common musical term in this context. I actually think you may be on to something, but I still have no idea what that is.

(The reason I ask is that I have spent most of my life reading and writing articles on specialized topics of no interest to anyone here and of no real import generally; but I did learn during those decades, that the only arguments, however banal or abstruse, that have any validity are those that can be explained or summarized  in ordinary language. I do not consider it a moral failing not to be an electrical engineer or not to be an expert in any other field.)

Mahgister: with all due respect, I didn’t ask you to explain the normal meaning of timbre, with which I am familiar.

I asked you to explain in simple terms how you were using this common musical term in this context. I actually think you may be on to something, but I still have no idea what that is.

I apologize for my first answer to you first...Here there are many useless arguing and personal attack then sometimes i react too speedily or too rudely.... I am sorry....


Second- i am not a "scientist" especially not an acoustician...


Third- i only wanted to use my audio system at his best....Some years ago and with no big money in my pocket then upgrading cannot do for me what it did for many in the chasing tail race...

Four-I discovered in an incremental sets of listening experiments 2 years ago that "tuning" a system could be way more important than the system itself or his price...I called that improving by controls the 3 working embeddings dimensions of any system... I created this concept to clarify a situation obscured by electronic market engineering and by "tweaks" as secondary addition ONLY to a system and often equated to snake oil or placebos... It may be the case for many but not for all.... And my listening methods use anyway homemade devices at low cost, then i dont sell or recommend any product.... I recommend instead to pay attention to these 3 working dimensions...

Five- The benchmmark ears test for listening experiments is voice or instrumental naturalness of timbre.... Why? because it is by far the more complex factor to recreate.... Why?

There is 2 reasons, the first is that you can recreate imaging in a relatively good manner with playing with acoustical factors .... But you cannot recreate timbre with only playing with acoustical factors linked to acoustic noise floor and timing only in many cases...You must also play with tools to decrease the mechanical and electrical noise floor also of the room/house/ gear...

And the acoustical factors needed to be put in place for the recreation of the timbre experience are more complex than in the case of imaging....
And also this is the second reason, the conceptual mathematical modelling of the timbre constituting factors are way more acoustically complex than for example imaging comcept... In audio and in acoustic ....



Six- i discover the complexity of the experience of timbre and the necessary multudisciplinary approach ne cessary to define it through recent articles and books...In audio thread it seems people, except pro musician dont even understand the concept sometimes...



Seven- any acoustician will do a better job than me to define conceptually "timbre".... The musician frogman here send posts that illustrate to me that ANY musician must perceive timbre correctly and be conscious of the complexities linked to the conditions that make possible this perception...This is for sure...
Why then audiophile ignore it and others players?




My take for a partial answer to this question is this :


I used the timbre experience concept here when i realized that many people erroneously underestimated the role that acoustic settings and controls plays in audiophile experience, hypnotised by other useless debate like tube/S.S., vinyl/ digital , branded name high quality product/versus mid fi quality product, etc all debates motivated by engineeriong design market not by acoustic nor science anyway....

Then people talks about anything except the fundamental question:

Is my audio system able to give a natural timbre experience in my specific room with these specific pieces of gear? If not, why?

My answers to this was given with my listening experiments in my own room with my gear and are about the controls of the 3 working embedding dimensions related to any audio system potential optimal working anyway...

My solutions are NOT always practical for everyone nor esthetically attractive.... But my goal was not selling products, my goal was achieving Hi FI experience at very low cost for me first, and after that suggesting here some idea and concepts which may be useful or not in some case...

The most important asset for my audiophile experience was not the quality of my gear, which is only average and good tough, it was the fact that i was able to enjoy the luxury of owning a room that could be only dedicated to my audio experiments...

I realized that i have not answer really your question... What is timbre? Timbre is the factor that make each of us able to distinguish with the same musical tone the playing of any different instruments very precisely.... If you listen a brass orchestra if your audio system is not good all hues and colors linked to the microdynamics of the playing gesture of the musician will be lost.... Lost also the distinctive tonal voice of each instrument related to his physical and materials properties constitution and his own vibrating microdynamics...

This is why tonal timbre perception is key to audiophile experience...

I will not enter to the details of the mathematical modelling of timbre in acoustic science but they are very complex....I beging only to read about that weeks ago because of heated debate here where i realized some people undersetimated totally the timbre experience in music. audio and acoustic in general... These 3 fields are different fields completely by the way and each has his own perspective about the timbre concept...


 My deepest respect and best wishes to you....