|
Posts: 1050
Location: Central New Jersey
Joined: November 1, 2006
|
Okay. Where do I start. First, I agree with you that the search for better sound can be, and often is, obsessive from the point of view of the general public. Most middle class people will buy a $500 to $1500 system, place the speakers where they will fit and call it a day. They may believe that anyone who spends $5K, $10K, 20K or more, thinks that amplifiers, preamplifiers and CD players sound different from one another, and are willing to compromise the family room by moving furniture to accommodate the acoustics of a sound system, is obsessive. And they would be correct! We on this forum are obsessed to one degree or another with the goal of having a musically satisfying sound system. You are too, or you wouldn't be posting here. The road to sonic nirvana differs for all of us, and different people are prepared to go to different lengths to achieve it. Based upon your post you seem to have limits beyond which you will not venture, and that’s fine for you. Certainly, as you and others have pointed out, our sculls, ears and bodies are not symmetrical and the introduction of the position of your body and head are additional variables to be considered. When I listen my head does occasionally move, but when it does move more than a couple of inches left or right I can easily detect shifts in timbre and the sound field which I find annoying.
I have long believed that each and every sound system has an ideal sweet spot in a given room that will render the best sound at the seating position from a variety of recordings. Even in systems that are known for having wideer sweet spots, there is still a small optimum location where everything comes together. And when it does. WOW!
For years when setting up my speakers, whether they were boxes or planars, I was fairly careful about angles and rigidity and such, and the results paid off. It wasn’t until very recently that I upped the ante and started measuring tilt, both fore and aft, and left and right, toe-in, and distance to my ears with much more accuracy. The end result shocked me. And I don’t use that word lightly. I’ve been an audiophile for almost 40 years and I’m not easily impressed. It was as if a veil was lifted and everything was now more in focus. Musical timbers were improved, the sound stage was deeper and seemed wider as well. I was thinking of a visual analogy to this and it occurred to me that the old fashioned Stereopticon might do. This 19th century device used a card with two slightly offset photographic images of the same subject side by side and held in a viewing frame. The card could be moved closer to, or farther away from the binocular lenses the viewer looked through until the images were in correct alignment with the viewers eyes, and then magically, you could see the image in three dimensions. There was one, and only one, optimum location for each viewer. If one image could be moved closer than the other to the viewer, or placed at a slight angle, or moved higher or lower than the other, the illusion would be compromised or collapse altogether. While the propagation of sound from stereo speakers in a room may be more complex, the end result is similar. For each person in a given room, there is an optimum position in which the three dimensional illusion is strongest for them. Any other position is, to one degree or another, a compromise. While I do not suggest that everyone go to the trouble I have with regard to setup, I think for those interested enough, the results are worth it!
Maggies, because you can never be too thin!
Mark
|
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2009, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ Go Green ]
[ Take5 ]