Muffled voice in the back of stage?

I had similar trouble with a pair of Magnepan 12qrs. Sometimes voices were very prominent and on other recordings it sounded as if the singer was hiding behind the stage. It was a very curious phenomenon as the same recording on my Thiels had the vocalist upfront and center as expected.

I'll take a wild stab at this. Some 20+ years ago when I attended meetings of the local audio club, our club system used a pair of Acoustat 8 electrostatic speakers. The room where we met had an angled ceiling (like the front-to-back half of a room with cathedral ceiling), and it had a strange acoustic characteristic: with some recordings it created reflection/reverb that made music/voice sound like it was coming from above and behind you. By changing your seating position you could reduce this effect. So, I'm thinking that your Maggies, being a dipolar speaker like the Acoustats, generate a rear sound wave can cause strange propogation problems. You might try some room treatment (like Sonex panels) at key reflective points around your room, combined with changes in the amount of forward or backward lean of your speakers. If these approaches don't help, contact a local high-end audio dealer for the name(s) of companies that do acoustic room analysis and tuning. Hope this helps.

Its possible that whoever made the recording, did a poor job. Maybe they did al1right with the musicians on the front of the stage, and messed up on the rear.

Also, disconnect one of your speakers and listen to the one that's still connected.Then do the other speaker. If one side sounds ok and the other doesn't, it will help isolate the problem.

Well, the strange thing is.
It is also very obvious when watching movies.
For instance, when I was watching Master and Commander this week, and after the opening scene the crew is speaking to each other on the deck, the camera and mic taking different angles throughout the conversation, from most angles every voice is clear, but in a few cases a voice at once gets very muffled. Not at all comparable to the others, very annoying and destroying the experience my system creates at the moment.

"For instance, when I was watching Master and Commander this week, and after the opening scene the crew is speaking to each other on the deck, the camera and mic taking different angles throughout the conversation, from most angles every voice is clear, but in a few cases a voice at once gets very muffled."

You can't go by that. Even though they set up and record like you say, they generally don't use those vocal tracks. After they're done filming, the actors go in to a recording studio and record the vocal tracks again. Those are the tracks that you are listening to when you watch the movie.

I think you should isolate each component in the system and see if you can't narrow the problem down to a specific piece.

Zd542, thanks for your reply.

Yes of course they do, but still the problem only is there with a certain mic angle.

I have done a lot of experimenting lately with switching gear to find out where the problem lies, but to no avail.

My room is not symmetrical and am a little off the perfect triangle, is just has never been a problem until now.
I am stuck thinking that it is maybe because my stage is a lot deeper these days than it used to be and my room is far from perfect, maybe the most distant sounding sounds will just never be optimal in this setup.