Five feet from the front wall


Just what does "X" feet from the front wall mean? Is this from the front of the speaker or the back of the speaker?

 

 

 

 

dsper

To call the wall behind the loudspeakers the rear wall makes no sense. Sure, that wall is behind the speakers, but so what? The wall the listener is facing is the front wall, the one behind the listened the rear wall. Period.

5’ from the front wall in a 10’ deep room.....?

Just a random concept to be or not to.... ;)

A Hall effect....

Regarding the wall behind dipole planars: One of the hardcore Maggie owners on the Planar Speaker Asylum completely damps the wall behind his very-modified Tympani T-IVa’s (he also braces the panels to the walls), other owners prefer diffusers.

Both absorption and diffusion can work; when choosing between the two, one consideration is the acoustic properties of your entire room. If you have a very lively room, absorption is probably the way to go; if it’s on the dead side, perhaps diffusion. Too much absorption in a dead room can lead to lifeless sound.

My room is definitely on the dead/warm side, so I went with diffusion. I have stacked Vicoustic Multifuser DC3’s behind my planars, and have found them to work great. Diffusers don’t absorb high frequencies, they scatter them randomly, keeping the inherent sound of the room intact. The scattered reflections don’t head straight back to the planar (or listener), so it’s back wave doesn’t compromise the sound coming from it’s front side. But that back wave does enhance spaciousness and depth, not a bad thing imo.

@mijostyn Wrote:

The image is extremally fragile when out of the listening position even by a few inches. 30 degrees or more off axis you can even lose the far speaker completely. 

I like well designed (CD) horns for home stereo playback. Listeners both standing and seated can move up to 60 degrees off axis and still get the same frequency response as center, even in close proximity to the speakers. See below page 8 theory of operation:

Mike

https://www.lansingheritage.org/html/jbl/specs/home-speakers/1985-everest.htm

https://www.xlrtechs.com/dbkeele.com/PDF/Keele%20(1981-05%20AES%20Preprint)%20-%20Monitor%20Loudspeaker%20Systems.pdf

@bdp24  I have apogee duetta 2 speakers and my room is on the live side, but my speakers are just over 82" from the wall and sound great without any damping. I think it depends if you have them far enough from the wall behind the speaker you may not need  absorption .