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If you don't have a wide sweet spot, are you really an audiophile?

Hi, it’s me, professional audio troll. I’ve been thinking about something as my new home listening room comes together:

The glory of having a wide sweet spot.

We focus far too much on the dentist chair type of listener experience. A sound which is truly superb only in one location. Then we try to optimize everything exactly in that virtual shoebox we keep our heads in. How many of us look for and optimize our listening experience to have a wide sweet spot instead?

I am reminded of listening to the Magico S1 Mk II speakers. While not flawless one thing they do exceptionally well is, in a good room, provide a very good, stable stereo image across almost any reasonable listening location. Revel’s also do this. There’s no sudden feeling of the image clicking when you are exactly equidistant from the two speakers. The image is good and very stable. Even directly in front of one speaker you can still get a sense of what is in the center and opposite sides. You don’t really notice a loss of focus when off axis like you can in so many setups.

Compare and contrast this with the opposite extreme, Sanders' ESL’s, which are OK off axis but when you are sitting in the right spot you suddenly feel like you are wearing headphones. The situation is very binary. You are either in the sweet spot or you are not.

From now on I’m declaring that I’m going all-in on wide-sweet spot listening. Being able to relax on one side of the couch or another, or meander around the house while enjoying great sounding music is a luxury we should all attempt to recreate.
erik_squires
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,011 posts
 
I enjoy 2 optimal listening spots in my 13 feet square listening room (8 1/2 feet high)

One i call near listening my head being at 3 feet between the speakers on my desk 5 feet from the front wall.... Listening here is better than  with any of my 7 headphones....I put them definitively  in a drawer...

Other location being near 8 feet from the speakers, 5 feet behind the back wall then, regular listening position, and here the less detailed sounds are replaced by a more bass more natural event, no more like headphone but resembling a lived event...

I like the 2 positions much,unable to prefer one over the other...

Save for my embeddings mechanical electrical and acoustical controls devices, i attibute this 2 ideal position to the fact that my 2 positions are exactly in my room in the golden ratio: 1.6 or 5 feet from the front wall for the seating chair of my desk or 5 feet from the backwall in my extended chair in regular position....

8 divided by 5=1,6

I must say that for me geometry is music for the deaf......
ozzy62's avatar
ozzy62
3,126 posts
 
Even a system that is defined as having a "wide" sweet spot will still sound it's very best in only one location. You can't change physics.

Oz


mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,011 posts
 
Even a system that is defined as having a "wide" sweet spot will still sound it’s very best in only one location. You can’t change physics.
Physics is more large than you think....

We can have 2 ideal listening spots in some room geometry....With the appropriate acoustical embeddings controls... I know i have it....

But the wideness of each spot is limited for sure and precisely located....

To create it we must use not only passive material treatment methods but also Helmholtz more refine pressurized engines called Helmholtz bottles to make the room activated and no more only a set of passive reflecting absorbing walls....I use bottles but more tubes and more pipes....This greatly help to vindicate the constraint of my room geometry in the bass domain and in the imaging domain EVEN in nearfield...

When people say that nearfield help to liberate us from the acoustical constraint of the small room it is not true at all in my experience...

Acoustic is more complex than what customers buying bass traps think about....
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,179 posts
 
Well get a pair of Ohm Walsh then and be done with it. No need to fret on endlessly about this one.

Or mbl. Or German Physiks. Those will set you back financially a good bit more though.  
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,011 posts
 
With acoustic controls we can accommodate ANY speakers easily in the appropriate room for sure... Sometimes even in a less appropriate one...

For an acoustician the speakers type is less important than the room geometry and topology and content....

 What we bought is less important than the way we embed it in our room.....
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