Is the seated-centered solo listening to music a dated tech?

+2

I prefer o solo mio for serious listening.

"I prefer "head in a vice" stereo ESLs."

We have stereoscopic vision, two ears (stereo), two nostrils and two nipples.

And you want one speaker…
 

I vote for ‘head-in-vise’ stereo.

i’ve heard at least two different takes on getting a wide sweet spot. the first one was via Magnepan [the speaker company] with their Tympani III speakers, which due to sheer size, dominated the room [made the ears disregard any but the direct-radiator sound]. i have not heard any reproduced music with more sheer impact and clarity and REALISM, than from that megabuck maggie system. no matter where i sit or stood in the listening room [at Definitive Fifi in Seattle circa 1982] i heard the same basic stereo image WITH depth - but the Tympani speakers were the ONLY maggies i’ve heard that could do this trick. on the other hand, on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, i have a bose cinemate sr-1 sound bar [with bass bin] that uses a mixture of spraying direct/reflected sound to the room’s sides [get those shelves out of the way], and interaural crosstalk cancellation [in a manner similar to SRS] that achieves at least the same [perceived] general distribution/dispersion of sound that the maggies achieved [but NOT their depth]. with both systems, i could sit or stand just about anywhere in the room and get the same basic stereo image. these two systems both accomplish the goal of letting more than one person enjoy the best sound that each system could reproduce, without playing favorites with the center listener. if you were to compare the basic sound quality, the maggies win hands-down of course, they have much more direct radiating area, there is just more sound coming out of those things. the bass extended to the mid-20s very cleanly, the mids-trebles were neutral and very evenly reproduced, they live up to the greek root of "stereo" meaning "solid." OTOH the bose had usable response from the mid-30s [low volumes] up to about 16k or so, it was eq’ed fairly flat with a custom tuning for each room it is used in. in a smaller room it played plenty loud and clean. the bose unit will, for most people, be much more affordable, and offer a usable amount of the same large and uniform stereo image over much of the room, that the Tympanis offer. IMHO that is a pretty nifty trick from such a compact affordable system.

A musician/music lover friend who is deaf in one ear seemed to enjoy album listening sessions as much as I did. 
Being dense, it took a few explanations from him about his limitation before I finally quit remarking about how cool the panning was of sounds from speaker to speaker.

I suppose a true mono mix would have been better for him, akin to the OP’s comment, but I’m hooked on stereo.