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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 5 responses by deep_333

deep_333
1,782 posts
 
Skip trying to perfect a grossly inadequate number of speakers (i.e 2) for the ultimate music listening experience and go to 5.2.2 atmos setup powered by a good surround processor and amp. Some very smart guys declared that you need a lot more than 2 channels to make it work and they were not wrong.

My 15k multichannel setup beats the living daylights out of 100k+ 2 channel setups i have/had. 2 channel setups will have you chasing your tail forever. It's the very nature of 2 channel setups!
deep_333
1,782 posts
 
@mahgister, Huh? No boasting or fad on my side….Quit the blanket accusations, relax and try to think this through for a minute. All I did was share the results of a 20 year long exploration of what can be achieved with well made electronics and speakers. In fact, it is this 2 channel “purist” notion that is perpetuated in these circles that leads to constant disgruntlement and endless emptying of one’s wallet with vendors who are happy to take your cash.

After one spends an arm and a leg on the best 2 channel gear/speakers money can buy, he will realize that it is only trying to scratch the surface of what a multichannel setup can achieve at a fraction of the cost. This was my reason to throw some cost numbers out there

You can treat your room all day long and keep praying. But, if you want the orchestra to come right home, those 2 speakers are simply not going to cut it. A multichannel setup is also a lot more forgiving for mortals who don’t have the best rooms/treatments in place as well. SCIENCE and research will deliver you the ultimate music listening experience, not this notion of “purism” spread in these circles.

I hope this post save the wallets of some of the 2 channel tail chasing mortals out here. But, if you achieved some miracle with your God like homemade gear and your God like understanding of room acoustics (done the right way apparently!), more power to you. Good luck.
deep_333
1,782 posts
 
Here's a technical discussion that touches on how many speakers you really need, psychoaoustics and a few different things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cWPjvBx4H8
deep_333
1,782 posts
 
@rauliruegas As far the mastering apparatus is concerned, atmos/dts X/auro mastering suites offer the ability to accurately place all musicians in a 3D soundfield and get away from this 2 channel gimmickery. Unfortunately, as it is fairly new, not many mastering engineers are educated/have acquired the higher skill level to work with this mastering suite yet. Perhaps it’s harder to teach a old dog new tricks, but, i have more hope for the younger mastering engineers moving up in life. After these recordings start coming out en masse, all this 2 channel gimmickery is bound to look plain silly. Even when it’s not natively done, a majority of the 2 channel recordings that continue to come out right now are awful. Even in these instances, the intelligent algorithms built into upmixers tend to do a commendable salvage job and make it sound quite good.

This is not to be confused with quad and all the other failed attempts from the past decades, which is what more guys are familiar with. Entry level users watching movies with entry level receivers and crappy surround/in-ceiling speakers have further muddied the perception of what this platform is actually capable of. But, a serious atmos setup that means business does exactly what it was designed to do.

Before mag lev bullet trains came around, coal trains were king indeed. I am sure many guys would continue to ride a coal train for sweet nostalgic purposes with soot on their faces. I choose to move on.
deep_333
1,782 posts
 
@ieales   Every recording you ever listened to in life went through a whole lotta "processing" before you bought it. Any DAC you've got is "processing". Your turntable setup is immensely colored. If you don't like processing, forget multichannel gear, you should toss all your recordings/2 channel gear as well and go watch live unplugged performances in a good venue (or start singing by yourself like a lark). 
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