Looking for the next level in imaging...


I enjoy my system every time I sit down and listen. But as we all do, we get the itch to seek improvement!  I am intrigued by Omnidirectional speakers such as MBL’s, German Physiks etc. and breaking free from the head in a vice sweet spot to get better imaging throughout the room and better the imaging in the sweet spot!  I believe changing the speaker will deliver on this quest!  What speakers would you look at? Or would changing a component yield the result? Has anyone gone from the traditional dispersion speaker to an omnidirectional?

current speakers are Martin Logan Ethos

budget $20-30K...could stretch if something is exceptional

polkalover

I have to agree with @mijostyn again. It seems like a bad thing to have reflections changing the recording from the way it was intended to be heard. Although I’ve read the reflections add spaciousness that is pleasing to most people. It truly is totally subjective which one you like better 

@mijostyn

I want to hear exactly what is in the recording. I do not want to hear any editorialization by the room.

How is this possible without attending the recording session? Don’t we want a presentation that we consider natural and representative of the live performance. In other words, all of this depends upon our own preferences. Many of us must compromise due to our room, budget and other constraints, but ultimately we want our system to, as much as possible, have seeming presence of the musicians and instruments in a pleasing space.

Some musicians don't care...Some musicians care, but have to compromise a lot...All kinds of recordings get produced in very unfavorable circumstances. Even an artist who cares will quit being nitpicky when he needs to get paid ( considering the fact that a vast majority of the masses who buy the albums don't care).

I have demo'd my rigs to multiple musicians from different genres, a multichannel object based/spatial rig, a 2 channel rig with BACCH and purist stereo rig (I can literally do that in the same room).

I've asked them, "You are sitting here listening to 3 different presentations of your album...How would you prefer your album sounded? Demo 1, Demo 2 or Demo 3?

Not a single one of them has picked purist stereo, thus far!

 

I have listened to omni speakers and they do produce sound that fills the room but lack pinpoint imaging. 

The answer does not simply depend on speakers alone. A nice 300B amplifier with speakers to match should do the trick. 

 

Remember in the movie, Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield pays Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to write an essay for him about one of his own books.  Rodney‘s character gets an F on the paper with the comment, “I know you didn‘t write this paper but whoever did knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut Jr.“. There is some truth to that.  We interpret things in ways an artist or designer never imagined.

Perhaps musicians listen about as well as we would performing.

I prefer stereo sound without tone controls or spatial processing.  It‘s taken me years to accept listening to music reconstituted back from binary code.

"Every recording  has a correct volume, a volume at which it sounds best. This is because our ear's frequency response changes with volume."

 

The "volume control" is to be used like the "focus" knob on a microscope or telescope.