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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
folkfreak
folkfreak's avatar
folkfreak OP
1,349 posts
 
@pimbo you are more than welcome to come and listen to my system and you may be rather surprised that while it may break some commonly accepted “rules” of setup it does sound surprisingly good 😉

The post by @bdp24 in my system description is helpful in this regard, posting having heard the system in action

You might also want to consider how you come across in your first post in response to a well established member ... its more than a little arrogant of you to suggest I’m a newbie neophyte when it comes to setup. There’s absolutely nothing in “Get Better Sound” I haven’t tried, tested and rejected or adopted based on how it works in my room. If you’d bothered to read the thread and my full system description you would understand how meticulously I have done this, to make the system work in my room, for me. I’ve also benefited from the advice of Art Noxon in the core setup arrangement. It’s always amazing how people can diagnose acoustics based on pictures and specs, I wish I had that ability!

Oh and by the way using shims under Magico Q3s on Townshend Podia will actually cause them to fall over! Don’t try this at home!
folkfreak's avatar
folkfreak OP
1,349 posts
 
Also you said

one of the most important things for great sound quality (speaker placement) wasn’t optimal in the first place.

The whole point of this thread is that the height of each listener’s ears needs to be optimized to the position of the speakers, and that differences in listener torso dimensions need to be taken into account.

My entire premise was that you’d optimized speaker placement in all other regards already, and my surprise was that a small change in this one dimension (vertical) had such effect, whereas front back was very different. Your paraphrase is a gross misrepresentation, or maybe I’m just a terrible communicator 🤔

And also one one thing you cannot tell from pictures is that the wall behind my head is both built from scratch as a semi absorbent surface and bass trap and then further treated with ASC and SR products, I’m more than aware of the impact of close in reflections, see my discussion of the use of GOBOs to treat reflections from the equipment alongside me. Like I said in my first post, this is not new to me and I’m fully aware of how to treat a room



johnk's avatar
johnk
1,976 posts
 
{ The whole point of this thread is that the height of each listener’s ears needs to be optimized to the position of the speakers, and that differences in listener torso dimensions need to be taken into account}. Depends on radiation pattern of loudspeaker not all designs are so picky that a few inches means great sound or poor sound. I would add that if your loudspeaker is so susceptible to such sonic changes than its a inferior in design.
fleschler
2,046 posts
 
This is a major issue for me.  I dislike speakers where the sound is not as pleasing to listeners who are not in the sweet spot.  I've owned speakers which drop off sonically when standing (worst-Acoustat X, the coffin speaker).  My current speakers (Legacy Focus and Signature IIIs) have a small loss of highs when standing but appear to maintain their sound from 2' to 5' high in the vertical realm.  Guests and my wife say they enjoy the sound across a 10' wide span couch as well.  There are many speakers very highly regarded that have a limited height and width seating/listening area.  I would rather own my less than SOTA speakers than those SOTA limited height and or width listening area speakers.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
I’d opine there’s a whole lot more to soundstage height than speaker placement and sitting height. There’s also vibration isolation of the source and the speakers, room acoustics (duh!) and the myriad other things audiophiles do to improve SQ. All dimensions need to come along together, not just height. Think of it as an expanding three dimensional sphere. Or four dimensions, if you prefer. In fact, there’s not enough time left to do everything you would like to an *educated* consumer. 😥

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