What is nearfield listening?

Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian = nearfield listening at its' best. Of course a little SET action in there will make it as toasty as their three recordings were meant to be. I always move my listening chair a couple of feet closer when these guys are on my rig.

I have tried many configurations in different rooms, and even though my room is 25 feet long and 17 feet wide, I prefer to sit with the speakers along the 17 foot wall, and I sit 9 feet from each speaker. This leaves a lot of space behind me, so there are minimal reflections off the back wall. Is this "nearfield"? It is to me because it takes much of the primary reflections out of the equation. It is easier to set up the speakers and requires little wall treatments at the first reflection. I am curious about the statement that recordings are mixed to "sound their best in a normal room", (implying a large room with reflections?). All of the studio mixing consoles I have seen are in the nearfield. They may be mixed to sound like a large room but the monitors are close to the sound engineer/mixer. How can this be?

Onh,

True the spatial cues are in the recording, but i'm pretty sure reflected sound and the proper time delays for reflected sound to reach your ears is needed to deliver a big 3-D soundstage from a stereo recording as opposed to just 1 dimension between the two speakers. The proof would be in hooking up a pair of speakers outside with no rear or side walls and see.

The time alignments required to make that happen are not possible imo because it would need a precise and particular room dimension, would it not? I think reflected sound is actually a hindrance. Sit outside on a really humid day with a big system(because that's what it would probably need) and you'd rock the house!

Csontos,

Proper distance to rear and side walls within certain parameters so that reflected sound does not arrive at your ears too soon, which results in early reflections that smear the sound, is the key.

The general guideline I've read and followed with excellent results is that reflected sound should travel at least 10- 12' further to reach your ears than the direct sound in order for 3-D spatial cues in the recording to be delivered constructively . Particular room dimensions are not required. Of course, there are many other aspects of room acoustics that can come into play as well, so the exact best position will vary based on other considerations from there.

My philosophy is that the 3-D sonic cues exist to various degree in most recordings (including mono recordings). TO not reproduce these correspondingly in a 3-D manner dduring playback represents a form of distortion in that what is in the recording is not reproduced as accurately as possible. Granted that it is a kind of distortion in playback that is not as offensive as certain other kinds most likely, but 1 dimensional stereo or monophonic sound is a distortion nonetheless, pretty much by definition, since sound is a 3-d natural phenomenon.