Nearfield listening - once more

There are two main advantage of near field listening. 
 

#1 less room sound 

#2 more dynamic as less SLP is needed for the same listening volume. 
 

I always try to sit as close to my speakers as my setup allows. As you know there are lots of things at play that effect how close you can sit. 

If I sit forwards, almost between the speakers, yes, the soundstage will be located here. But is this neccessarily worse?

Yes it is the worse situation ... Because a well done acoustic relation between speakers position and listener position and room acoustics controls will always give a soundstage able to make many well recorded albums filling all space around you outside of the speakers limit border and in front of the speakers ...

Nearfield listening does not equal a soundstage isolated between the speakers ... This is why room acoustics, vibration/resonance controls of the speakers and decrease of the electrical noise floor of the room/house/system matter all together exactly as in farfield listening ...

Nearfield listening must be better than almost all headphones and never being a stopgap ... It is  so for me , with  active speakers i never liked for 10 years which cost me peanuts... But when i had learned how to use them properly and modify them and optimize them they metamorphosed themselves from caterpillar to swan .... What is possible with  this 100 bucks speakers as my own must be possible with any costlier speakers with a basic good design ...

Acoustic rules the gear pieces even in near listening ...

@hiphiphan I understand what Paul is saying about near-field subwoofers, but he also point out piratical implementation of this is challenging. Subwoofer reproduce bass by bouncing the sound from walls, roof, etc. Assumption is one cannot localize the frequencies below 120 Hz. You can hear deep bass from car stereos. My discussion was about reproduction of the lowest octave in a time/phase coherent manner with the rest of bandwidth in spite of not being able to localize below 120 Hz.

If you do the math, largest dimension of the room should be at least 26 ft to "accurately" reproduce 20 Hz frequency signal at the sea-level!  If one lives at high altitude (say 5,280 ft from sea level, aka mile-high), sound travels bit slower and largest dimension can be less than 26 ft. One can hear good bass in near-field listening as @o_holter pointed out with his floor standing speakers from 4 ft. Room modes play a big role for this kind of effect. But I cannot comment on this since I don't know his speakers nor about his listening room. If room modes rocks your boat and you think that is how it should "sound," then who am I to question that (LOL)?

I get better bass for tabla and double bass about 2 ft from my speakers. But I have listened to these enough to know that is NOT how they sound in real life without any amplification. In my case, I know room modes are the culprit. In my room, I need to sit ~12 ft from the speakers to get the optimum sound. There is lot more involve in sound reproduction than just words and technical phrases.

@mahgister I didn't imply that room treatments aren't necessary for near-field listening. I said the impact from the room is minimal since you get the more direct sound than indirect sound. Also I cannot comment on "soundstage" from near-field listening since it is depends on other factors.

@mahgister I didn't imply that room treatments aren't necessary for near-field listening. I said the impact from the room is minimal since you get the more direct sound than indirect sound. Also I cannot comment on "soundstage" from near-field listening since it is depends on other factors.

Ok i understand better ... Thanks for the clarification .. And for sure you are right about the other factors...

Wow what a load of information! Thanks!

Just a quick reply. I suggest that we leave deep bass out of the discussion, for now. Not because we dont need it! On the contrary I understand very well the idea of going from below, when tuning the system, start with the best bass, and so on. Yet I think, for nearfield listening, it is a secondary consideration. You have to get the nearfield sound right, down to 100 - 80 - 60 or something herz. Then you solve the problem of the deep bass. This is my experience from working with small speakers. I have tried 5-6 subs in my main system, plus some small subs in my office system. The idea that you cannot hear where the sub sound comes from below 120 or something herz is PLAIN WRONG to my ears. They can be heard and localized even if the specs say they shut up at 60 80 or something hz, in reality they dont. My smallest sub, a Fostex Submini, is the most honest about this, with a manual showing a curve of how the sub output continues upwards in frequency. Even if the volume level is lower.