Speakers with wide listening window

The "listening window" has two aspects: Tonal balance, and imaging.

In order to get good tonal balance across a wide area, you want a speaker whose off-axis response is very similar to its on-axis response. This also pays dividends in naturalness of timbre and reduced listening fatigue, as it's desirable for the reverberant energy in the room to have approximately the same spectral balance as the first-arrival sound.

In order to get decent imaging for off-centerline listeners, you want the far speaker to be louder than the near speaker to offset the difference in arrival times. This is harder to get, and requires well-controlled radiation patterns and proper setup (strong toe-in). The key is that the near speaker's output must fall off fairly rapidly and uniformly as you move off-axis towards the outside, so that the far speaker ends up being louder at least in the upper mid and treble frequencies, where we get most of our localization cues from. Imaging will still be best up and down the centerline, of course.

Imho, ime, ymmv, etc.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

Bose 901, the only way to get a wide listening window is to use a speaker that is so defuse that it can't possibly have a "sweet spot". The higher resolution and more transparent a speaker the smaller and sweeter the sweet spot. It is simple physics primarily because there is only one spot where the listener is the same distance away from both speakers.
Cheers Johnnyr

Audioconnection wrote:

"...the only way to get a wide listening window is to use a speaker that is so defuse that it can't possibly have a "sweet spot". The higher resolution and more transparent a speaker the smaller and sweeter the sweet spot. It is simple physics primarily because there is only one spot where the listener is the same distance away from both speakers."

What you're overlooking is that the ear localizes sound sources by TWO mechanisms: Arrival time AND intensity. If we can make the far speaker louder than the near one for off-centerline listeners, we can offset the earlier arrival time of the near speaker, and deliver decent soundstaging for off-centerline listeners. The way to do this is with controlled directivity and proper setup, and the end result is much more effective than simply using a diffuse speaker. This sort of setup will work better for some listening postions than for others, but will never be worse than the diffuse speaker for off-centerline listeners, and will still give very good imaging for listeners in the traditional "sweet spot" because of significantly reduced early sidewall interaction (due to the relatively narrow pattern and strong toe-in).

Duke

I do something similar to what AK is saying with my Dynaudio monitors to make them perform more similarly to my more omni OHMs in one of my rooms where I have the placement tweaked for off axis listening.