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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
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
2,030 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. 😥

”No matter how much you have in the end you would have had even more if you started out with more.” - old audiophile axiom

The higher you fly
The deeper you go
The deeper you go
The higher you fly

Your inside is out
Your outside is in
Your outside is in
Your inside is out
pimbo
14 posts
 
@folkfreak ,

Let me start by apologising for 'concluding' you're a 'neophyte'. (I had to look that one up...English isn't my first language) just by looking at some pictures.
Out of respect I've decided to read your whole system thread and got a lot better idea of your setup now. To be honest, on the pictures it looks like your speakers are way further apart than they actually are, hence my wrong 'conclusion'. Again my apologies.
Just to explain where I was coming from; I've too often seen and heard good audio setup badly and it saddens me. I therefore applaud you for starting this thread for everyone to learn something new.

Back on the topic of speaker / head hight. Once I worked out how important it was to have the tweeter / midrange pointed at the right angle to my head, I made some simple timber blocks to tilt my speakers. The result was much better than having them on stands. Looked awful though...
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