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In Reply to: Two channel stereo sounds best when the left ear to left speaker distance equals the right ear to right speaker distance posted by Richard BassNut Greene on March 16, 2007 at 14:31:08:
Richard BN Greene, 4-16-2007 (to Duke): "Two channel stereo sounds best when the left ear to left speaker distance equals the right ear to right speaker distance. You seem to be a rare two-channel audiophile who doesn't agree. That would make you WRONG with a capital W."Duke, 4-15-2007: "Bob Rex noted that there is often a row of "sweet spots" along the centerline of the room were the speakers & listener form an isosocles triange. This has been my experience as well, and I've noticed that my chosen "sweet spot" is usually farther back along this centerline than that which most people would choose."
Argue against what I said, not what I didn't say.
You persist in making "straw man" arguments. This is a common internet tactic wherein a person attributes an extreme and/or ridiculous statement to his opponent, and then argues against that statement. It usually works well, unless the opponent calls him on it and points out that at best his argument is based on a fallacy, and at worst (if he realizes what he's doing) he is being dishonest.
This is the last time I give you the benefit of the doubt on this subject. Here, click on the link below and read up on the "straw man" fallacy. Learn to recognize it in yourself and in others.
Regarding your other statement, I often suggest listening from another room as a quick and effective way to evalutate the power response, or reverberant field response, of a loudspeaker system. This also is good for evaluating system dynamic contrast. It is not the only listening test I advocate. No point in doing this test unless the speaker sounds good from the sweet spot, but suppose you have several speakers that sound good from the sweet spot. Listening from another room will give you additional useful information that can help predict which speaker is the least likely to become fatiguing long-term. You don't alway have the hours necessary to find out at what point listening fatigue sets in. Also, in case you missed the poll, many people do care very much about how their speakers sound from outside the traditional sweet spot.
Once again, you misrepresented my position by making it sound like listening from another room is the only way I judge sound quality. It is one of several tests I use.
Please stick to arguing against what my position really is. And if you don't know what my position really is, just ask me.
Thanks,
Duke
Follow Ups:
Only to find out you are a very strange audiophile who DOES judge speakers by how they sound from another room!So here I am arguing that the bass quality in the sweet spot is much more important to a two-channel stereo owner than the bass in other room areas ... with a guy who judges speakers by how they sound from the next room!
You worded your poll so that ONLY an audiophile with absolutely zero percent concern about sound quality at non-sweet-spot locations could answer "YES".
Since two-channel audio system owners sometimes have people listen from non-sweet spot locations, it would make sense that they apply at least a little attention to those alternative seats.
The sweet spot seat(s) location is still most important for two-channel audio quality.
And you can't sit behind someone in the sweet spot and still get the same high sound quality sound he hears ... unless he is a midget.
I give up! You are judging speaker quality from the next room ... while I argue about how important the sweet spot is for two-channel stereo sound quality.
Do you judge concerts from the street outside the theater?
Saves money on tickets.
Or do you just love to argue.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
I think listening from another room makes it *far* easier to answer the most important questions that many people never really ask when auditioning.1. Is the sound natural?
2. Is the sound realistic?Many subjectively "good sounding" speakers don't sound anything like a real instrument playing in the next room, but really accurate/transparent ones do.
I don't see how Duke is the one being argumentative here. Sounds like he's being reasonable to me.
Thanks for letting me know you use it too.I've heard it called the L.I.A.R. test - stands for "listening in another room".
When giving a demo to a customer, I usually ask them to step into an adjacent room specifically so I can let them hear the reverberant sound thusly isolated. I explain why this test is a good predictor of long-term listening enjoyment, as outlined in my "not a good analogy" reply to Richard. No it's not the only thing that matters, but in my experience it's rare to find a speaker that sounds wrong from the next room but is still highly enjoyable long-term. I can only think of one offhand.
Unless you often listen to speakers from another room away from the primary listening room.Otherwise it is most likely a complete waste of time to audition speakers from a room that does not contain the speakers when you could have used the same time to listen from the primary listening room!
While I would guess if speaker A sounded better than speaker B in the primary listening room, then it's likely that speaker A would still sound better than speaker B when you listened from another room, but who cares?
Some audiophiles are pretty strange when it comes to logical thinking.
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Weight may or may not have anything to do with the sound quality. Listening in another room is throwing a spotlight on one of the more initially elusive but long-term significant factors.A speaker can sound initially impressive from the sweet spot but can become fatiguing over time. I can cite studies that show a correlation between radiation pattern and long-term listener preference. Briefly, a speaker with an irregular power response (which typically arises from radiation pattern issues) is more likely to generate listening fatigue over time.
Let me explain one reason why this can happen. The ear/brain system is constantly analyzing incoming sounds to see if they are new sounds or reflections of a recent sound (recent meaning like within the last 40 millisconds). The ear looks primarily at the spectral balance when deciding whether it's a new sound or an old one. With naturally-occuring sounds, the spectral balance of the reflections is very similar to that of the first-arrival sound. With loudspeakers, whose directional characteristics change with frequency, the spectral balance of the reverberant energy usually starts out skewed - there's more reverberant energy at frequencies where the radiation pattern is wide and less where the radiation pattern is narrow. The ear/brain system has to work harder to correctly classify these spectrally-skewed reflections, and over time the result can be a headache. I'm not saying this is the one and only source of listening fatigue, but I believe it's a fairly significant one in many cases.
Listening from another room is a quick way to hear what's going on with the reverberant field, and the reverberant field matters because most of the sound that reaches your ears in a normal home listening setup is reverberant sound. Note that live voices and instruments sound realistic from the next room, but few speakers do. If we're looking for speakers that do a good job of recreating a live music event, generating a natural-sounding reverberant field is part of that. Note that the choice is not between speakers that do or do not generate reverberant field energy - the choice is between speakers that do or do not get it right.
The little NHT 3-way speakers John Ashman believes in use a very intelligent spacing of driver diameters and crossover frequencies to minimize the spectral discrepancy between the direct and reverberant energy. I would bet that, if these speakers sound good from the next room (and since John uses that test I'm sure they do), they are also very non-fatiguing to listen to long-term. I have gone a different route in my own designs, but if I wasn't playing around other radiation pattern control techniques I'd be working on 3-ways or 4-ways philosophically very similar to the little NHTs.
And as John noted, there's something special about a speaker that can recreate the illusion of live music without any help from imaging and soundstaging. Nothing against imaging of course, but some people are less interested in where the musicians are on the stage than in why they are on the stage.
It's not THE way of judging a speaker, but it does give you an insight. I don't know why, but once you can't see the speaker and you've divorced yourself a bit from the room, the only question you can really ask yourself is "does it *sound* like someone's playing live or just a reproduction?" It takes imaging out of the question and substitutes tonality/reality. Don't know why that's such a hard concept. It's not an audiophile trick, it's a music lover's trick.
Listen to one speaker playng mono IN your listening room if you want to judge amplitude response without the distraction and comb filter cancellations from two stereo speakers.Old audiophile trick.
The DIY Altec Lansing Valancia "monster speakers" I built in 1971 sounded better from other rooms -- unfortunately sounded not so great while listening in the same room (my 150 square foot teenager bedroom.)
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
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