Audiophile Goal Perfect Center Image


I know the audiophile goal is to have the two speakers disappear and have the musical image floating in the center. My question is, why not use a single column Line array facing the listener. In these systems they project sound 180 degrees. The demo I heard was by a company named Wisdom Audio. It was a 9 foot column made up of multiple small drivers. That one column filled a very large listening space with seemingly 360 degree sound! Of course they also had outboard subwoofers for full range sound and expensive electronics. Incredible experience! Track: Takla Makan by Yello. I know we have two ears but when I went to a live concert recently the sound was coming from that one musician, not from the left or right 10-15 feet apart like speakers are placed. Why do we need two speakers if the goal is to make them sound like they are coming from one source?

wweiss

The center image is the very simplist of things which almost any speakers can achieve easily. That is the starting point for imaging.. well after correct tonal balance and a few other things. Then there is soundstage width (beyond the speakers) and depth from the speakers many feet behind… beyond the wall for good speakers. A good system can reproduce sounds behind you like qsound allows.

What I think you are hearing is a deliberate result of the choices made by the record producer, often called the "wall-of-sound." 

However it is not adopted by all genres and all recordings.