Speaker toe in

Mijostyn wrote, regarding a side effect of extreme toe-in: "High frequencies may drop off as you toe in the speaker."

Yup! Severe toe-in can result in less high frequency energy in the first-arrival sound, but correspondingly a bit more in the reverberant field (which is typically starved of high frequencies relative to the first-arrival sound).

The solution is, tilt the tweeter’s response up a bit! This kills two birds with one stone: It corrects the spectral balance of the first-arrival sound, and further improves the spectral balance of the reverberant field. So the tonal balance is now better throughout the room.

Since 2006 I have been making speakers with user-adjustable high frequency tilt, via a single high-quality changeable resistor (in an dedicated terminal cup) on the back of the speaker cabinet. Imo this is superior to a variable L-pad. Typically this external resistor is bypassing a resistor in a particular location on the crossover board.

Anyway you correctly identified one of the potential downsides of severe toe-in, and that downside is something I should have thought to mention earlier. It hasn’t been an issue for me from the beginning because the tilt adjustment has been built into all of my controlled-pattern speaker systems, and that’s probably why I didn’t think of it.

Thanks for bringing it up! 

Duke

Shoot Duke, I want a bird dog fee:)

 I have an electrostatic hybrid Martin Logan summit X speakers.  My room is well actively long and narrow with the speaker sitting on the long wall in the listening position obviously being on the opposite side long wall. I have my speakers slightly towed in. I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on whether the idea of towing or not is Different for an electro static design?

rbodner, It is extremely different. ESLs beam like crazy. There are ZERO high frequencies beyond the border of the panel.  MLs are curved to increase their dispersion a little but if you toe the speaker in to far the high end will jump off a cliff. ESLs should be aimed directly at the listening position in most installations.