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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 3 responses by prof

prof
3,450 posts
 

I've always liked great soundstaging and a wide sweet spot in terms of tonality, so virtually all my speakers have had that feature (including of course the MBLs I owned until recently - and the Waveform Mach MC monitors I just sold were insanely good for not seeming to have a sweet spot tonally, and for imaging).


My current Thiel 2.7s with their concentric drivers and my Joseph Perspectives (steep crossover) both sound very even out of the sweet spot.


When the tone of a speaker changes obviously when I shift at all it bugs me somewhat.  It reminds me of LCD tvs and rear projection tvs, especially earlier ones, where the image shifted in contrast and color if you moved out from a central viewing point.  Hated that.  (Which is why I went plasma in the early flat screen days).


Still, I think I'm actually less dogmatic about demanding a wide sweet spot at this point.  Mainly because no matter how wide and even the dispersion, there's still only a narrow spot...really only one....where everything locks in and that's the one I'm going to sit in anyway.


I do have friends and guests who like to listen to the system when they come over, but I give them the sweet spot.

prof
3,450 posts
 
roadwhorerecords:

Personality, i think the self imposed title of "audiophile" is a narcissistic badge of fools.


Not sure how you get "narcissism" from someone saying he is an audiophile. It’s just descriptive.

It’s not like audiophiles are celebrated by society ;-)



How about the enjoyment of the music?



We all enjoy music. No need to virtue signal.
prof
3,450 posts
 

As they say "Teach a man to fish..."
Looks like someone taught you well erik.  Nice haul ;-)

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