My Europas also have a rather narrow sweet spot. With that said, once outside of the sweet-spot, there still is a sense of seperation and imaging, but it's not nearly as intense, for lack of a better word. Of course, I'm listening to them from about 6 feet away, so that might have something to do with it. I also have a rather oddly shaped room. I would still buy them again in a second, since I tend to only do critical listening from that sweet spot anyway.
Do 1st Order XO's produce a smaller
In my mind I'm trying to come to terms with two possible conflicting desires:
1. The desire for transparency, accuracy, dynamics and a wide halographic soundstage presentation.
2. The desire for a much larger sweet spot to compensate for multiple listening positions. I want the advantage of on-axis detail, but I don't want this space to be limited by inches or a few feet.
The concept of time coherency makes perfect sense to me and seems to be a superior design philosophy in conjunction with the ability to control phase shift (smear). However, based on what I've read it appears most of the 1st order time coherent designs being created today have relatively narrow sweet spots. If you're on-axis these designs can be musical nirvana, but what if you're off-axis or move to another location in the room? Typically you tend to lose the benefit of this design.
Conversely one has the option of going the Ohm "Walsh" or Meridian route and get an incredibly wide/deep soundstage because of the 360 degree sound dispersion. I've heard you can move around within a room and the sound quality does not deteriorate significantly. In other words this type of speaker design fills up an entire room and sounds great where ever you are sitting or standing. However, are we giving up a critical level of accuracy with this design approach? With sound esstentially arriving at our ears at different times are we really getting an accurate representation of each instrument? Is the music being smeared in some way?
I guess like most audiophiles I want my cake and eat it too! I want transparency/accuracy/dynamics as well as a wide and deep soundstage that doesn't depend on a 12" on-axis listening/positioning limitation. Are there any designs that meet these qualifications?
1. The desire for transparency, accuracy, dynamics and a wide halographic soundstage presentation.
2. The desire for a much larger sweet spot to compensate for multiple listening positions. I want the advantage of on-axis detail, but I don't want this space to be limited by inches or a few feet.
The concept of time coherency makes perfect sense to me and seems to be a superior design philosophy in conjunction with the ability to control phase shift (smear). However, based on what I've read it appears most of the 1st order time coherent designs being created today have relatively narrow sweet spots. If you're on-axis these designs can be musical nirvana, but what if you're off-axis or move to another location in the room? Typically you tend to lose the benefit of this design.
Conversely one has the option of going the Ohm "Walsh" or Meridian route and get an incredibly wide/deep soundstage because of the 360 degree sound dispersion. I've heard you can move around within a room and the sound quality does not deteriorate significantly. In other words this type of speaker design fills up an entire room and sounds great where ever you are sitting or standing. However, are we giving up a critical level of accuracy with this design approach? With sound esstentially arriving at our ears at different times are we really getting an accurate representation of each instrument? Is the music being smeared in some way?
I guess like most audiophiles I want my cake and eat it too! I want transparency/accuracy/dynamics as well as a wide and deep soundstage that doesn't depend on a 12" on-axis listening/positioning limitation. Are there any designs that meet these qualifications?
- ...
- 20 posts total
- 20 posts total