Pin point imaging isn't for everyone

Instruments are always louder at the sides than in the center.

@erik_squires I’ve listened with attention regarding what you posted... for over two days now AND:

I am not hearing any of this across a wide range of randomly chosen as well as Roon Radio queued up tracks.

No issues whatsoever.

Two albums stood out in this evaluation. Calle 13’s ~reggaeton~ "Residente o Visitante" and the OST from "Slumdog Millionaire"

I mention the above two albums because each contains copious amounts of musical information on the Left, Right and Center with strong volume levels across.

All of my listening was 2Ch PCM Native.

@audiokinesis   Duke, thank you so much for your detailed posts. Very helpful!

You bet Duke. This is a major reason line source dipoles sound the way they do. They minimize reflected energy in a way no other type of speaker can match. Horns can be made to do almost the same thing by controlling their directivity. It seems harder to do with standard dynamic drivers. Their directivity changes continuously with frequency getting narrower as the frequency increases. Dispersion is not uniform and I would think this would cause problems.

@david_ten wrote: " Duke, thank you so much for your detailed posts. Very helpful!"

Thank you David, my nerdy tangents aren’t always welcome, very glad to hear you found these helpful!

@mijostyn wrote: "This is a major reason line source dipoles sound the way they do. They minimize reflected energy in a way no other type of speaker can match."

Imo line source dipoles have many things in their favor, and minimizing early reflections is certainly one of them. Imo their backwave energy is also uniquely beneficial.

First off, the backwave of a dipole is spectrally correct, which is a really good start. Then assuming the speakers are fairly far out into the room, the backwave can actually REDUCE the small-room signature I alluded to earlier! Let me explain:

The ear/brain system judges the size of a room by the time delay between the first-arrival sound and the "center of gravity" of the reflections. When we have a significant path-length-induced time delay on the arrival of the backwave energy, the ear/brain system interprets that as "we’re in a pretty big room". So less "small room signature" is super-imposed on the soundstage in the recording! Imo this is an example of "reflections done right".

(The highly counter-intuitive implication here is that MORE reflections [in this case the backwave energy], done "right", actually result in hearing LESS of the room you are in and MORE of the soundscape on the recording!)

Mijostyn again: "Horns can be made to do almost the same thing by controlling their directivity."

Yes! Horns can definitely reduce the amount of energy in the early reflections AND generate a spectrally-correct reverberant field, through uniform pattern control. (Imo gotta use the right kind of horn the right way to avoid audible colorations.)

I really like the liveliness of good horns but probably like the timbral richness and sense of immersion in the recording’s soundscape from a good dipole speaker even more. So my best horn systems have a rear-firing array dedicated to generating a spectrally-correct, relatively late-onset approximation of the backwave of a dipole speaker. There are still things that a good line-source dipole does better, but imo the additional "backwave" energy tightens the race in some areas.

Duke

Sure Duke but I think there is one caveat. You don't want reflected energy off the front wall coming right back at you. I wish I could draw a picture here but essentially you want the reflection to take the long way around the room. So with a properly toed in dipole the rear sound would head towards the front wall angled towards the side wall. Then it would bounce off the side wall and head towards the rear wall to your side around you. This gives you that late reflection from around the room that makes you think the room is bigger. If sound heads toward the center of the front wall and bounces back right at you it really confuses the image just like a blurry photograph. It also diminishes the sensation of a 3rd dimension. I place acoustic tile on the front wall to prevent this reflection towards the center. It only works for frequencies above 250 Hz but that is enough to do the job. This is the only place I use room treatment.