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

What you really want is a crossoverless ESL with a 45 degree dispersion angle.

I am starting to wonder if a whole-house Sonus system might satisfy some better? <grin> When I listen to two channel music it is for pleasure and I am not walking around in the room, nor in the rest of the home. Music for that walkabout experience is known as ‘background music’ to me. Fortunately my speakers sound fine from other rooms due to large openings.

When I am listening for pure musical pleasure I want the very best experience. My spouse is not concerned. Having a large mushy sweet spot and losing imaging, etc. seems like a poor trade-off for me.  It’s great to want a large sweet spot, if you use it, and if you have company that can actually appreciate it. But, understand you are not getting the very best your system can offer. It may be the best it can average out to over a large zone though.

(+1 to cymbop, prof, musicfan2349, and wspohn, as I remember…)

I think it comes down to how one uses the audio system. I can enjoy my primary at its best in the living room, or in another room if desired for background. I just don’t move around enough in the living room to want to sacrifice the best sound possible for when I am listening critically.

Finally, I’d say it is easier to argue that the true audiophile is the person who demands the single best audio reproduction his system can give.  And that is not from six different seating positions all over the living room. We know that. It makes me chuckle if we are talking ‘true audiophile’. For me, a fat and wide, non-optimum, sweet spot doesn’t fit the bill.

(Remember Dunlavys? The largest wooden floor-standing headphones on earth.)

What I’m going to suggest is sometimes called "time-intensity trading", as the off-centerline listening locations which have a later arrival from one speaker compensate by having greater intensity (loudness) from that speaker.

Briefly, start with speakers which have a very uniform radiation pattern of perhaps 90 degrees wide (-6 dB at 45 degrees off-axis to either side) over most of the spectrum. Then toe them in severely, such that their axes actually criss-cross in front of the centeral "sweet spot".

For an off-centerline listener, the NEAR speaker naturally "wins" arrival time, BUT because of the aggressive toe-in and relatively narrow radiation pattern width, the FAR speaker "wins" INTENSITY!

The design went through a fairly extensive evolution before arriving at the final configuration. Originally, the concept was to develop a "super L300" with a similar sonic character. It was given the working designation of the L400. However, that designation had a notorious past and was soon dropped (see sidebar below). The system would be designed around a new acoustic concept referred to as "Defined Directivity" (the DD in DD55000). This concept had been pioneered by Don Keele in the professional 4660 ceiling speaker. That speaker was intended to provide rectangular coverage with constant volume from front to back. Bruce Scrogin realized that mounting this horn sideways in a home system could provide constant horizontal coverage. The asymmetric design would force more sound to the distant axis compared to the near axis so that someone walking a horizontal line between the speakers would be exposed to a constant sound level.