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If you don't have a wide sweet spot, are you really an audiophile?

Hi, it’s me, professional audio troll. I’ve been thinking about something as my new home listening room comes together:

The glory of having a wide sweet spot.

We focus far too much on the dentist chair type of listener experience. A sound which is truly superb only in one location. Then we try to optimize everything exactly in that virtual shoebox we keep our heads in. How many of us look for and optimize our listening experience to have a wide sweet spot instead?

I am reminded of listening to the Magico S1 Mk II speakers. While not flawless one thing they do exceptionally well is, in a good room, provide a very good, stable stereo image across almost any reasonable listening location. Revel’s also do this. There’s no sudden feeling of the image clicking when you are exactly equidistant from the two speakers. The image is good and very stable. Even directly in front of one speaker you can still get a sense of what is in the center and opposite sides. You don’t really notice a loss of focus when off axis like you can in so many setups.

Compare and contrast this with the opposite extreme, Sanders' ESL’s, which are OK off axis but when you are sitting in the right spot you suddenly feel like you are wearing headphones. The situation is very binary. You are either in the sweet spot or you are not.

From now on I’m declaring that I’m going all-in on wide-sweet spot listening. Being able to relax on one side of the couch or another, or meander around the house while enjoying great sounding music is a luxury we should all attempt to recreate.
erik_squires

Showing 2 responses by cleeds

cleeds
6,143 posts
 
audio2design
... just to be clear, stereo speakers attempting to reproduce timing can't place the image outside the speakers ...
You raised some excellent points but then get it so very wrong here. That can happen when you apply theory in absence of listening, and it's why things in this hobby are not always as black-and-white as they may appear.
cleeds
6,143 posts
 
audio2design
If you worked better on your reading comprehension and spent more time trying to understand what I wrote, and less time trying to prove me and others wrong ...
Ad hominem attacks are a basic logical fallacy. You are literally not making sense.

I am pretty sure that English is not @mahgister’s native language - yet his reading comprehension seems fine to me even if there’s an occasional stumble. I think he should be welcome here. Under the forum rules, he deserves to participate here without your attacks.
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