@twoleftears wrote: "Almost without exception, if you pull the speakers further out, you’ll get a greater depth of soundstage."
Yup!
As a rough first approximation, I have found that the apparent soundstage depth is often about twice the distance from the front of the speakers to the wall behind them. I believe it has to do with how the ear/brain system uses reflection times to estimate room size. I’m not saying that distance out from the wall is always a reliable predictor of soundstage depth, but I believe there is a correlation.
I’ve played around a bit with techniques for tricking the ear/brain system into thinking the room is bigger than it really is, which among other things increases soundstage depth.
@newbee wrote: "To not deal effectively with the close side wall reflections can definitely give a sense of increased stage width, but it can also increase the sense of brightness and, due to the too early merging of the direct signal from the speaker and the side wall reflection, reduce the resolution in the main soundfield."
Very well said.
(I suspect the seeming over-abundance of toed-in speakers rvpiano observed at the New York HiFi Show was due to exhibitors making tradeoffs involving coloration and imaging, necessitated by room acoustics. What we don’t know is, how much worse these rooms may have sounded without the toe-in.)
There seems to be disagreement over the desirability of early sidewall reflections. One group of researchers reports a listener preference for the "image broadening" effect of early sidewall reflections.
Other researchers claim that early reflections are generally detrimental to imaging and clarity, while late reflections are generally beneficial with no degradation of imaging or clarity.
I subscribe to the latter view, so managing the arrival times of reflections as much as is feasible makes sense to me.
My preference is for minimizing the early sidewall reflections via good radiation pattern control and strong toe-in, spacing the speakers wide enough to get good soundstage width. If the room is sufficiently wide then the toe-in isn’t as important for the central sweet spot, but imo the radiation pattern control still matters (assuming we aren’t listening nearfield) because the reflections should sound have nearly the same tonal balance as the first-arrival sound. When they don’t, we can get anomalies like that sense of brightness you mentioned.
Rvpiano wrote: “You could well be right about distancing the speakers further from the wall, but it’s not feasible in my situation.”
And a little later, “I’m very happy you brought this topic up. I never would have known why I was missing that component. Now I have to figure out a way to not let that knowledge drive me crazy!”
@rvpiano, I believe it is possible to improve the soundstage depth without having to pull the speakers out further into the room. If you would like to know details, shoot me a message or an e-mail. Just so you know, it involves something that I have a commercial interest in.
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