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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
erik_squires OP
16,049 posts
 
Acoustic controls could often be, or generally, more powerful impact than the upgrade of any piece of gear


Yep, and a good sounding room will often gets people off the merry go round of gear buying and trading.  "What kind of cables will fix the boomy bass?  My speakers are too bright so what kind of power conditioner do I need" all sorts of issues audiophiles go chasing vanish.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,011 posts
 
Yep, and a good sounding room will often gets people off the merry go round of gear buying and trading.
It is what happened to me....Any upgrade, even some good one i dream about, seems to me now a bit ridiculous like useless spending of money for some improvement, yes, but no more comparable to what  my acoustics controls and treatment were, huge S.Q. increase, then....

Most well chosen good gear, the right speakers for the right room for sure, will create miracles only with acoustical embeddings treatment and controls.... Not so much without any in most room..... I am with you about that 100%....

My best wishes to you.....
sokogear
1,095 posts
 
Great topic. I would never consider very directional speakers. I am fortunate to own  KEFs which although sound best in a nice large area, they sound very good anywhere in direct listening range except in back or equal to them in the middle, which is understandable.

My last speakers, Alons, even sounded ok in that position I suspect because the tweeter and midrange were outside and on top of the cabinet.

Since most people are not always stationary In Dedicated listening rooms, I am surprised this feature/topic does not get more emphasis and more speakers are not designed with this in mind.
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ieales's avatar
ieales
1,201 posts
 
This is totally not true. Timing is true in the live music world, but for playback, most of our imaging with the exception of specific dual microphone setups rarely used, imaging is primarily volume, and phase does not play into it, not even one little bit as long as the phase response is consistent on each channel.

TIME is arrival time. Ignoring Xover phase, a flat baffle box with a 8" woofer and dome tweeter has a driver arrival delta of about 500µS or about 2kHz. In a 2 way system, the kick beater will arrive ahead of the fundamental. In a multi woofer system, the direct arrival is at multiple times, PLUS first reflections varying in both time and intensity. Imaging suffers.

PHASE is the synchronicity between fundamental and harmonics. If harmonics arrive asynchronously to fundamental, imaging suffers.

A system with TIME wrong cannot get PHASE coherent.

Most systems make no attempt to get TIME or PHASE coherent.

Imaging is NOT level (volume). Imaging is when the speakers disappear and one can walk into the stage! Most systems fail miserably. Ditto rooms.
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