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Listening Height Adjustment -- Is This Why Two People Don't Hear the Same?

Just wanted to pass on a recent experience, and surprise, in my system

My room (https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/5707) is set up for one person to listen. I have a medium height arm chair at the listening position and had always assumed that it left me with my ears broadly in line with the tweeters in my Magicos (i.e. 42-43" off the ground)

Well I checked and I was actually at 38-40" depending on how upright I sit. Wondering how much of a difference getting it just so would make I purchased a set of add on feet, each 3.5-4" tall and added them to my chair -- not a good look!

But wow, what an improvement in sound. Tonally the speakers take on a very different balance, upper mid range and vocal intelligibility is substantially improved, bass is lighter but better defined and overall integration across the frequency range is much much better than before

The odd thing is that I don’t have the tweeters pointed directly at me -- they’re angled about 2’ off to either side, so what would a couple of inches in the vertical make such a difference assuming the tweeter drop off is uniform in all directions? Is it more a matter of driver integration?

This experience leads me to wonder
a) how many of us have actually measured and adjusted our set height to optimal/tweeter level, and do we do this every time we audition a new speaker, and
b) if two individuals are not the same height do we adjust for the difference in height between them sitting -- say a 5’6 vs 6’ person that’s probably a 3" difference sitting -- unless your chair has adjustable feet the experience of the two individuals may be completely different
128x128folkfreak
viking62's avatar
viking62
30 posts
 
This is exactly why Focal does what they do in the Grande Utopia.They create a kind of parabolic arc to the listener.


https://www.focal.com/us/high-fidelity-speakers/utopia-iii/grande-utopia-em
whart's avatar
whart
3,037 posts
 
I have suffered the limitations of a very narrow sweet spot using old Quad (57) for many years-- to the point where many people consider the speaker impractical. (I still love them and consider their midrange peerless). My horns have limited off-axis dispersion and also require some attention to listening position relative to the tweeters. I had them nailed in my old room, and when I moved, it took some positioning to get them right-- not only seat height but distance and their relationship with each other. As for torso length of the listener, I suppose a height adjustable chair would help and let the listener fiddle with to suit, but I often give over the sweet spot to the guest and sit behind, back rowing it. 
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,911 posts
 
Surprised nobody has mentioned Jim Smith book......that and good setup instructions from manufacturers plus laser tools and a willingness to experiment/listen = joy
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,180 posts
 
Tweeter height relative to ears certainly matters but just one of many tweakable factors that determines how things sound.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
We’ve been all over this before. There are many reasons people don’t get the soundstage height or any other dimension the way the big boys do. For starters, the speakers are almost always too far apart. One big reason is everything’s all messed up is the speakers are too far apart and the middle is MIA. To compensate, people toe the speakers in, making things even worse. You have to start with the speakers close together and slowly move them apart until the sounstage suddenly appears, like a bolt out of the blue⚡️. The height specifically isn’t there because of two things mostly, acoustic anomalies and not enough vibration isolation.

Trial and error without a methodology is like trying to solve some simultaneous equations in too many unknowns.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.
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