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

^^ see  ieLogical SubterraneanHomesickBlues for a little insight into integrating subs.

Moving my head over 8-10 inches either side, lost the sweet spot. Standing up? Fugetaboutit! Sounded good as long as I sat completely still. Nah, Not for me.

I doubt I've ever moved my head 8-10 inches either side at a live performance. Or stood up.

Properly set up and integrated, HiFi can do an amazing job at recreating a performance bet it Joe Pass playing acoustic alone, The Who or The London Phil. The trade off, due to physics, is the sweet spot is somewhat constricted.

In a live performance, if one has the ability to wander about, one will find there are gross variations in the sonic field, sometimes in as little as a foot.

It's my experience that a wide sweet spot never elicits comments like "Joe Pass is sitting RIGHT THERE!"

quote:       It's my experience that a wide sweet spot never elicits comments like "Joe Pass is sitting RIGHT THERE!"
   Love it. +1

I used the Sumiko Masterset method with some small Thiels (CS1.6) and got a very wide sweet spot, even beyond the width of the speakers. It’s useless for the Naim NBLs I use at the moment as they’re designed for back against the wall placement, 5.5cm in my current room. I can still get a wide image but not as wide as with the Thiels, though it goes deeper into the wall.
If my next room permits I’d like to give Omnis a go, Duevel Bella Lunas are available locally.

@ieales --

I doubt I’ve ever moved my head 8-10 inches either side at a live performance. Or stood up.

But I gather you’re not handed the same, specific seat that says "Reserved to Mr./Ms. [insert name]" as the one and only place to have a proper concert experience, in fact there’s a range seats centered to the stage that will be quite excellent sound-wise. Once seated, if that’s what you do, you could easily move your head about a foot shifting occasionally from one side in the chair to the other, and even so it’s hardly relevant with regard to any changes in sound. If you believe there is something tells me the you’re projecting the head-in-vise experience from your home set-up.

Properly set up and integrated, HiFi can do an amazing job at recreating a performance bet it Joe Pass playing acoustic alone, The Who or The London Phil. The trade off, due to physics, is the sweet spot is somewhat constricted.

No domestic set-up I’ve heard has come even fairly close to resembling a live acoustic concert, not to say some set-ups aren’t more successful in their approximation here than others, which is also to say: the effort isn’t futile. Let’s not fool ourselves though - the trade off is the recreation itself; you’re not there at the live event, you’re not going to fully experience it as such. A surplus in mage specificity, to a certain point, takes away from the holistic experience of music and in turn makes it more about something that’s supposed to impress sonically rather than musically, but that’s also about frequency response and the target curve at play.

In a live performance, if one has the ability to wander about, one will find there are gross variations in the sonic field, sometimes in as little as a foot.

Isn’t this the audiophile tendency to miss the forest for the trees? Just sit down and enjoy the damn music. A few changes in seating position shouldn’t make it a hit or miss; you still get to experience the totality of the event, something your home set-up can’t recreate - even perfectly positioned right smack in the middle.

It’s my experience that a wide sweet spot never elicits comments like "Joe Pass is sitting RIGHT THERE!"

Wide, narrow - to me it’s finding the proper balance somewhere in between here.

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 ....

Well put, mahgister - I certainly agree.