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

As always, this is entertaining (thanks, Erik), and merely mildly provocative.

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.)

Hello, 
Yesterday I just listened to the Dali Menuet SE. They are an $1800 bookshelf speaker designed to go near the wall. They sounded awesome even off axis.  You wwould swear they had a subwoofer. Under 10” tall they play from 59hz to 25khz. Designed to go near the wall. I was checking them out yesterday at:
https://holmaudio.com/
in the Chicagoland area. They are very unique that they let you try before you buy. If you want a tiny/ powerful sub they have the new KEF KC62 subwoofer that is like a 10” cube that plays way down below 20hz. I like the idea it takes up very little space but can still vibrate the room if you want it too. 

I don't care. My Quad ESL57 loudspeakers are not for sale. 

@audiokinesis /Duke --

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!

JBL aimed similarly with their DD55000 Everest's (DD for "Defined Directivity"):

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.

http://www.audioheritage.org/html/profiles/jbl/everest.htm

The rationale behind this acoustic concept, to my mind, would seem less realized if it didn't entail an appreciation of a sonic correlation as perceived in the seated sweet spot, apart from offering a wider listening area to move within. Image specificity in the extreme doesn't exist in a live acoustic performance, and yet it's a devoured trait in audiophilia. To me at least the predominant takeaway in the debate about a narrow vs. wider spot is honing in on the "sweet spot" between these two dispersive extremes that most closely emulates the perceived impression of a live acoustic presentation, and this also involves for the listener to be able to move from side to side, as one would at a live performance, without seeing the sonic "image" tilt severely.

Image specificity in the extreme doesn’t exist in a live acoustic performance, and yet it’s a devoured trait in audiophilia.

Very important observation....Thanks....

Which observation make me able to say that imaging is important soundwise but LESS difficult to obtain than natural timbre perception in an acoustic settings which perception and experience are the benchmark test of not only sound perception in audio but also of musical perception....

Audio is important but music surpass it, including it .... Electronic is important but acoustic surpass it making it shine or not....

It is MY experience for sure....But the experience of any musician i suppose....

Then the main central concept is no much mainly the "sweet spot" but more the dynamical "envelope " of the sound... One concept is more deep and englobe the other in a SMALL room and this subordination is understood well by any small room acoustic experiments which demonstrate that it is more difficult and ask for more fine tuning of the parameters controls to recreate the timbre dynamical envelope over some imaging ....



If this is true,we could begin to understand WHY we never listen to speakers ONLY in a small room, but to the room itself united with the speakers...


If this is true we could begin to understand why the room could be conceptualize not like a passive set of walls but like an ACTIVATED and ACTIVE participant filled with variable potential pressures zones able to participate and recreate the timbre perception....








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«You bet!»-Chico Marx

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