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.
Mahgister: with all due respect, I didn’t ask you to explain the normal meaning of timbre, with which I am familiar.
I asked you to explain in simple terms how you were using this common musical term in this context. I actually think you may be on to something, but I still have no idea what that is.
I apologize for my first answer to you first...Here there are many useless arguing and personal attack then sometimes i react too speedily or too rudely.... I am sorry....
Second- i am not a "scientist" especially not an acoustician...
Third- i only wanted to use my audio system at his best....Some years ago and with no big money in my pocket then upgrading cannot do for me what it did for many in the chasing tail race...
Four-I discovered in an incremental sets of listening experiments 2 years ago that "tuning" a system could be way more important than the system itself or his price...I called that improving by controls the 3 working embeddings dimensions of any system... I created this concept to clarify a situation obscured by electronic market engineering and by "tweaks" as secondary addition ONLY to a system and often equated to snake oil or placebos... It may be the case for many but not for all.... And my listening methods use anyway homemade devices at low cost, then i dont sell or recommend any product.... I recommend instead to pay attention to these 3 working dimensions...
Five- The benchmmark ears test for listening experiments is voice or instrumental naturalness of timbre.... Why? because it is by far the more complex factor to recreate.... Why?
There is 2 reasons, the first is that you can recreate imaging in a relatively good manner with playing with acoustical factors .... But you cannot recreate timbre with only playing with acoustical factors linked to acoustic noise floor and timing only in many cases...You must also play with tools to decrease the mechanical and electrical noise floor also of the room/house/ gear...
And the acoustical factors needed to be put in place for the recreation of the timbre experience are more complex than in the case of imaging.... And also this is the second reason, the conceptual mathematical modelling of the timbre constituting factors are way more acoustically complex than for example imaging comcept... In audio and in acoustic ....
Six- i discover the complexity of the experience of timbre and the necessary multudisciplinary approach ne cessary to define it through recent articles and books...In audio thread it seems people, except pro musician dont even understand the concept sometimes...
Seven- any acoustician will do a better job than me to define conceptually "timbre".... The musician frogman here send posts that illustrate to me that ANY musician must perceive timbre correctly and be conscious of the complexities linked to the conditions that make possible this perception...This is for sure... Why then audiophile ignore it and others players?
My take for a partial answer to this question is this :
I used the timbre experience concept here when i realized that many people erroneously underestimated the role that acoustic settings and controls plays in audiophile experience, hypnotised by other useless debate like tube/S.S., vinyl/ digital , branded name high quality product/versus mid fi quality product, etc all debates motivated by engineeriong design market not by acoustic nor science anyway....
Then people talks about anything except the fundamental question:
Is my audio system able to give a natural timbre experience in my specific room with these specific pieces of gear? If not, why?
My answers to this was given with my listening experiments in my own room with my gear and are about the controls of the 3 working embedding dimensions related to any audio system potential optimal working anyway...
My solutions are NOT always practical for everyone nor esthetically attractive.... But my goal was not selling products, my goal was achieving Hi FI experience at very low cost for me first, and after that suggesting here some idea and concepts which may be useful or not in some case...
The most important asset for my audiophile experience was not the quality of my gear, which is only average and good tough, it was the fact that i was able to enjoy the luxury of owning a room that could be only dedicated to my audio experiments...
I realized that i have not answer really your question... What is timbre? Timbre is the factor that make each of us able to distinguish with the same musical tone the playing of any different instruments very precisely.... If you listen a brass orchestra if your audio system is not good all hues and colors linked to the microdynamics of the playing gesture of the musician will be lost.... Lost also the distinctive tonal voice of each instrument related to his physical and materials properties constitution and his own vibrating microdynamics...
This is why tonal timbre perception is key to audiophile experience...
I will not enter to the details of the mathematical modelling of timbre in acoustic science but they are very complex....I beging only to read about that weeks ago because of heated debate here where i realized some people undersetimated totally the timbre experience in music. audio and acoustic in general... These 3 fields are different fields completely by the way and each has his own perspective about the timbre concept...
Mahgister: with all due respect, I didn’t ask you to explain the normal meaning of timbre, with which I am familiar.
I asked you to explain in simple terms how you were using this common musical term in this context. I actually think you may be on to something, but I still have no idea what that is.
(The reason I ask is that I have spent most of my life reading and writing articles on specialized topics of no interest to anyone here and of no real import generally; but I did learn during those decades, that the only arguments, however banal or abstruse, that have any validity are those that can be explained or summarized in ordinary language. I do not consider it a moral failing not to be an electrical engineer or not to be an expert in any other field.)
To illustrate my point from my last posts here about "imaging" and the link between imaging and room acoustic....I copy some text from a book of Toole and some paper research from japan scientists who wrote something very interesting in 2008 about The law of the first wave front and the early and late reflections in room and the way a listener live the experience of localization of a source or the experience of being surround by sound...
You will remark that it is not question here of the speakers drivers type and characteristic but ONLY of acoustical elementary law...The reason is simple imaging is fundamentally an acoustic phenomenon not a speakers driver phenomenon, even if drivers types can play a part for sure...And it is not the recording technique and concepts that make us able to recreate imaging, it is basic acoustical law. Period. It is the acoustician field not the recording engineer field first....
That was my point from the start....Time and timing between ears and the speakers/room acoustic relation are fundamental in the experience of imaging...
Give me any speakers i will make it imaging well modulo the right acoustic controls of the room... I will use passive materials treatment but also ACTIVE Helmholtz pressurized tubes and pipes, different resonators and others devices i will not name to start a new debate.... All that will also modify the relation of the frequencies waves intensities or amplitudes in the room...
I am not a scientist at all.... But i know what i did in my room for gaining imaging at my 2 listening positions.......And natural timbre perception....The second experience is way more difficult to recreate and encompass than the first one...
Forget branded name speakers company concentrate on live acoustic law if you want to understand imaging.....
And there is no reflexion about BITS recording technique here in these text nor DRIVERS speakers debate names naming in these texts...... 😁
And to conclude i will repeat here that the TIMBRE experience is more difficult to recreate in a small room than only some imaging.....Timbre experience is the benchmark test to know if an audio system is good or not.... Not imaging....Not bass perception... Tonal instrumental or voice TIMBRE perception.....
In audio in the past, the terms Haas effect and law of the first wavefront were used to identify this effect, but current scientifi c work has settled on the other original term, precedence effect. Whatever it is called, it describes the well-known phenomenon wherein the fi rst arrived sound, normally the direct sound from a source, dominates our impression of where sound is coming from. Within a time interval often called the “fusion zone,” we are not aware of reflected sounds that arrive from other directions as separate spatial events. All of the sound appears to come from the direction of the first arrival. Sounds that arrive later than the fusion interval may be perceived as spatially separated auditory images, coexisting with the direct sound, but the direct sound is still perceptually dominant. At very long delays, the secondary images are perceived as echoes, separated in time as well as direction. The literature is not consistent in language, with the word echo often being used to describe a delayed sound that is not perceived as being separate in either direction or time.Haas was not the first person to observe the primacy of the first arrivedsound so far as localization in rooms is concerned.
Sound Reproduction The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms Floyd Toole Chap.6 P.73
In 1989, Morimoto and Maekawa demonstrated that spatial impression comprises at least two components and that a listener can discriminate between them [1]. One is auditory source width (ASW) which is defined as the width of a sound image fused temporally and spatially with direct sound image, and the other is listener envelopment (LEV) which is defined as the degree of fullness of sound images around the listener, excluding a sound image composing ASW.
In the field of room acoustics, it is popular belief that the early and late reflections contribute to auditory source width (ASW) and listener envelopment (LEV), respectively. However, some papers have demonstrated results not necessarily in agreement with the belief. In this paper, a hypothesis is proposed to clarify the essentials of ASW and LEV from point of view of the auditory phenomenon. The hypothesis is that the components of reflections under and beyond the upper limit of validity for the law of the first wavefront contribute to ASW and LEV, respectively. Two experiments were performed to evaluate the hypothesis. In the first experiment, the results showed directly that the components of reflections under the upper limit of validity for the law contribute to ASW. In the second experiment, four kinds of threshold were measured to evaluate the relation between the effect and LEV: image-splitting which corresponds to the upper limit of validity for the law, LEV, reverberation perception, and reverberation disturbance. The results showed that the threshold of image-splitting coincides with the that of LEV. This suggests that the components of reflections beyond the upper limit of validity for the law contribute to LEV. In conclusion, it seems that the results of experiments shown in this paper favor the hypothesis.
and you obviously have never figured out where those “ quiet “ tympani are......you spend wayyyyyyy to much time in multi track land.....like i said, flavors you or the producer like....it ain’t moving the ball forward....cat chasing its own tail....
imaging champions is I believe the quote, you are welcome to build something better and bring the over to Poverty Bay Sound mastering, we use Vandersteens, the amps and 7 mk2. bring the torso along, i assume it likes a nice Pinot. We serve SeaSmoke Ten. of course i have a head transfer function setup, like the Acony recordings, it yields fantastic and frustrating results....
like i said, get off the web and do something.....i will eat crow when you best Vandersteens, but ya best show up with real hardware..not BS
I'm with Toole and the papers cited here. I've heard Vandersteen and Thiel and I could not really tell you they were better in any respect which was outstanding compared to other speakers which did not pay attention to perfect phase response.
I do know what ’timbre’ means in music, but I confess I have absolutely no clue what that word means in the context it’s being used here.
Serious question: could someone explain it in such a way that a normal listener can understand what it means here?
Thanks.
Try wiki read it 2 times.... You will at least understand the complexity of the acoustical mathematical modeling of the problem and understand why without acoustic right settings in a room timbre sound perception is degraded...
I haven't built anything so I'm not really sure if this is addressing the same issue of phase as applied to the discussion but Floyd Toole in his
summary of research at the NRC into loudspeaker performance that is described in two classic 1986 papers [32, 33], concluded thusly: "The advocates of accurate waveform reproduction, implying both accurate amplitude and phase responses, are in a particularly awkward situation. In spite of the considerable engineering appeal of this concept, practical tests have yielded little evidence of listener sensitivity to this factor...the limited results lend support for the popular view that the effects of phase are clearly subordinate to amplitude response."
Speakers play a role, their internal design for sure....Their relative electrical audio synchronisation also...
But take relatively good speakers and the imaging will magically appear with the right acoustical settings, location in the room et their relative positions...Decreasing electrical noise and mechanical noise will help also but will be secondary to acoustic settings...
We NEVER hear the sound directly from the speakers ONLY and MAINLY we listen to the speakers/room....EVEN in near listening....In ANY small room....
It was my experience with imaging in my room which is now very good in my 2 listening locations....Not so at all before acoustical controls...My speakers are averagely good, it was not their superlative precise design that was creating imaging here.... But the room/speakers link and interactions did ALL my work....
For sure i am NOT at all competent nor an engineer....An attentive listener.....
I'm not an expert in the field, but I believe the research into head related transfer functions (HRTF) can teach us is that we localize sounds based on the complicated comb filtering caused by the shape of our heads, body, ear and even our hair styles.
It's not phase, it's amplitude that seems to matter here.
I built stuff for professional recording studios as well. Not one offs either, but production equipment. I have done this in the commercial world, and in the academic world, under proper controlled conditions and with the equipment to know exactly what was happening.
also, let’s be very clear, your credentials relative to Vandersteen are zip. Since 1977 building time and phase correct speakers that are well reviewed AND widely accepted in the global market. Quarter million model 2 sold and an improved variant still in production, supported by a dealer network, factory parts and service.
the problem w time and phase and the very related pistonic motion is that it is difficult engineering and requires precise execution, few can do it, take the time to do it.
the ear brain can localize to stay alive, a few years of television, bad audio and know it all’s on the web can’t erase x years of evolution.
for those interested in what just a few well placed microphones can do, listen to the classic RCA Red Seal work done w Fritz and Chicago.....
IF you want “stero” everywhere I will sell you my old pair of Bose 901’s very cheap. That is the only thing they do well is sound the same anywhere you are in a room.
The only arrival time that matters is differential arrival time, i.e. the time difference between the time a sound reaches each ear.
Arrival time is how we localize sound in the world.
Phase coherence is how we tell if it's live or Memorex.
Unfortunately, many tests are performed on the unwashed. Just as some can't tell if a piano is in tune, some can tell you how much it's out, how much it's stretched and the reference A.
If time delay is inaudible, why would manufacturers bother? Spica, Vandersteen, Wilson. Marketing hype? Methinks not.
Today, it's trivial to use DSP to remove displacement delay in multi-amplifier systems. One can model up the analog crossover, make direct driver connections and calculate the driver offset. Next create two presets with and without offset compensation. Switch between them. Let us know.
TIME is arrival time. Ignoring Xover phase, a flat baffle box with a 8" woofer and dome tweeter has a driver arrival delta of about 500µS or about 2kHz. In a 2 way system, the kick beater will arrive ahead of the fundamental. In a multi woofer system, the direct arrival is at multiple times, PLUS first reflections varying in both time and intensity. Imaging suffers.
PHASE is the synchronicity between fundamental and harmonics. If harmonics arrive asynchronously to fundamental, imaging suffers.
A system with TIME wrong cannot get PHASE coherent.
Most systems make no attempt to get TIME or PHASE coherent.
Imaging is NOT level (volume). Imaging is when the speakers disappear and one can walk into the stage! Most systems fail miserably. Ditto rooms.
Very clear and very right....Thank you for the post....
Timbre recording technique induce a trade-off that exclude perfect reproduction, and ask for some acoustic room conditions also for his recreation....It was more difficult in my experience to create acoustic condition for naturalness of timbre envelope perception in my room than some imaging...But if someone enjoy very natural timbre perception in his room i am sure that his imaging will be very good....i am not a scientist, i speak only by my experience and wait to be corrected if this is the case....
Imaging is NOT level (volume). Imaging is when the speakers disappear and one can walk into the stage! Most systems fail miserably. Ditto rooms.
I am happy to say that i enjoy this phenomena in my room...
But i must add that if some systems fails miserably, it is probably most of the time, with relatively good design audio system and speakers, it is i said probably most of the times because the acoustical settings of the room is not adequate and in synergy with the acoustical properties of the speakers....It was my case ....
on this one, I am afraid I am siding with @mahgister. Time and polarity coherence at a minimum, ideally also phase coherence is of the essence and the reason why point source, single driver speakers have a following. At least with regard to parity, audio engineers are at a minimum careless and the audio industry at least indifferent, to wit: a significant part of all recordings are out of polarity as a simple polarity switch in the digital domain will easily establish. To claim indifference or worse better knowledge isn’t really helpful.
This is totally not true. Timing is true in the live music world, but for playback, most of our imaging with the exception of specific dual microphone setups rarely used, imaging is primarily volume, and phase does not play into it, not even one little bit as long as the phase response is consistent on each channel.
TIME is arrival time. Ignoring Xover phase, a flat baffle box with a 8" woofer and dome tweeter has a driver arrival delta of about 500µS or about 2kHz. In a 2 way system, the kick beater will arrive ahead of the fundamental. In a multi woofer system, the direct arrival is at multiple times, PLUS first reflections varying in both time and intensity. Imaging suffers.
PHASE is the synchronicity between fundamental and harmonics. If harmonics arrive asynchronously to fundamental, imaging suffers.
A system with TIME wrong cannot get PHASE coherent.
Most systems make no attempt to get TIME or PHASE coherent.
Imaging is NOT level (volume). Imaging is when the speakers disappear and one can walk into the stage! Most systems fail miserably. Ditto rooms.
Great topic. I would never consider very directional speakers. I am fortunate to own KEFs which although sound best in a nice large area, they sound very good anywhere in direct listening range except in back or equal to them in the middle, which is understandable.
My last speakers, Alons, even sounded ok in that position I suspect because the tweeter and midrange were outside and on top of the cabinet.
Since most people are not always stationary In Dedicated listening rooms, I am surprised this feature/topic does not get more emphasis and more speakers are not designed with this in mind.
Yep, and a good sounding room will often gets people off the merry go round of gear buying and trading.
It is what happened to me....Any upgrade, even some good one i dream about, seems to me now a bit ridiculous like useless spending of money for some improvement, yes, but no more comparable to what my acoustics controls and treatment were, huge S.Q. increase, then....
Most well chosen good gear, the right speakers for the right room for sure, will create miracles only with acoustical embeddings treatment and controls.... Not so much without any in most room..... I am with you about that 100%....
Acoustic controls could often be, or generally, more powerful impact than the upgrade of any piece of gear
Yep, and a good sounding room will often gets people off the merry go round of gear buying and trading. "What kind of cables will fix the boomy bass? My speakers are too bright so what kind of power conditioner do I need" all sorts of issues audiophiles go chasing vanish.
pretty much all my field recordings are simple two microphone gigs, piano the exception. Multi track in the studio, well those are not references, just flavors we like. i am not going to play your argument game, too many neat acoustic musical events to enjoy in reverberant space.....
I'd like to push back a little bit against the idea of a speaker with a wide sweet spot not being great in the middle.
Let's take 3 common models, the Magico S1 Mk II, Revels and modern Wilsons.
They all have great imaging in the center spot, but the Wilson's dont do as well off axis. I think this blows out the idea that you can only get a great sweet spot with a narrow one.
With my Pioneer S-1ex I can move them further away and wider apart for a wider sweet spot. Out into the room and closer together and sounds like wearing high end head phones but the sweet spot narrows considerably. I prefer the latter.
I agree that if you arrange the speaker and room to obtain a wide area with some stereo imaging, you will compromise the imaging at the ideal spot in that area. If you utilize the extreme toe-in described above to trade off cues for loudness against early and late timing of arrival, you are presenting the ear/brain with conflicting cues that may may create a hazy picture or maybe fatiguing to resolve. Also, location is not merely determined by timing and intensity of the signal. When sound arrives at your head it hits both ears, and with some of the sound hitting one side diffracting around the head to also hit the other side. This changes timing, phase and the spectral content (frequency response) and these are also cues that the brain detects.
You can get a Chesky Test CD that has some very interesting computer generated signals that exploit these properties to create a signal that seems to create images that both extend beyond the speaker position and appear to rise up from the speaker and move forward until the image is almost overhead. The illusion is hurt by nearby reflections, so these signals (scratching sounds) are used to help you locate trouble with room interactions. They also don’t work very well when one is not in the extremely narrow, ideal, sweet spot.
Thanks this is very well said and explain my point about the necessary acoustical settings in the imaging perception....This is also my exact experience in setting my room for imaging...
I will only add here what i said before, reaching better timbre perception ask for more precise or complex tuning than just imaging... The timbre"envelope" is a complex experience to recreate...It is the reason why i think audiophile must put their attention on the "timbre" perception...It is also more difficult to assess the presence of naturalness of "timbre" than just passing a test to assess the presence of imaging.... For imaging the test is about spatial experience, not for timbre perception... Then in my experience,one encompass the other in the sets of acousticals precise controls and treatment we must set in place...
By the way i succeeded to create a good imaging for 2 spots in my room.... The better for imaging is near field at 3 feet from speakers... The better for timbre perception is regular listening in my room at 8 feet from speakers...But the 2 locations are very good even if very different from one another, very good on imaging and timbre account...I cannot chose one over the other.... 😊 In nearfield it is so good imaging with a good timbre, i trash my 7 headphones in a drawer....In regular position the timbre is so natural with a good imaging, i decide to use no more any headphones....
Nearfield best any headphone experience i had; regular position of listening is more akin to a lived event and exceed my headphones possibilities....
I begin my audio journey 7 years ago with headphones including 2 Stax,one hybrid, 2 magneplanars, 2 dynamics one, because the speakers gear was not on par at all with them....Even my actual speakers bought before my 2 years acoustical room settings journey weere not at all so refine like they are now......Then it was acoustical controls the key not my choice of speakers..... I was prefering hedphones 2 years ago, it is the complete opposite now....😁😊😎😊
Acoustic controls could often be, or generally, more powerful impact than the upgrade of any piece of gear....Imagine the controls over the 3 embeddings working dimensions together....
I agree that if you arrange the speaker and room to obtain a wide area with some stereo imaging, you will compromise the imaging at the ideal spot in that area. If you utilize the extreme toe-in described above to trade off cues for loudness against early and late timing of arrival, you are presenting the ear/brain with conflicting cues that may may create a hazy picture or maybe fatiguing to resolve. Also, location is not merely determined by timing and intensity of the signal. When sound arrives at your head it hits both ears, and with some of the sound hitting one side diffracting around the head to also hit the other side. This changes timing, phase and the spectral content (frequency response) and these are also cues that the brain detects.
You can get a Chesky Test CD that has some very interesting computer generated signals that exploit these properties to create a signal that seems to create images that both extend beyond the speaker position and appear to rise up from the speaker and move forward until the image is almost overhead. The illusion is hurt by nearby reflections, so these signals (scratching sounds) are used to help you locate trouble with room interactions. They also don't work very well when one is not in the extremely narrow, ideal, sweet spot.
I was guessing you are right, guessing that changing my room controls will give me a timbre and imaging experience....
My guess was right i have them now without changing the gear nor buying any tweaks... It is my my guess about the way i could install a better noise controls in the mechanical,electrical and acoustical working embeddings dimensions of my system that gives me my imaging and timbre experience...
But for the "latching onto one thing" remember that i only suggest after my guessing experiments and experience that a better perception of timbre or imaging ask for more than optimal recording tecnique.... I own the same files than you....If not the same i can buy them.... But to be able to enjoy natural timbre perception and imaging i needed way more than only a good source.... My guessing was that i need an optimal noise controls especially in the acoustic dimensions...
I dont pretend to anything....But you have never proved me wrong and when some pro musician was approving me about timbre concept you called him a liar...
I just this evening read your post where you called another engineer wrong...About phase and time...
I am not competent you are right to judge and give the final answer... But being arrogant with you like you are with others , i replied and give my guessing experience born from my own experiments in my own room... Phase and time of sound waves in a room matters for imaging perception not only the bits in the source sorry...
I apologize to be arrogant with you .... I will wait for your own apology to others....
By the way it is the sum total of my homemade "toys" that give me my Hi-Fi experience, not any costly upgrade nor anything sold like tweaks...
Then how in the world is it possible?
my answer was controls in mechanical electrical and acoustical embeddings...I listen with my ears open....
I was arrogant with you yes but perhaps not completely nuts...
Ok i give you something.... I am not competent for sure.... I am only an audiophile experimenting.... But explain to me how in the world we dont need a room?
Nevermind the recording technique used we need A ROOM not only a source...
Do you think we dont need timing and phase also for the acoustical waves in the room to optimize image and timbre perception also ?
With the same gear, the same source, i never had imaging and timbre....NEVER .... I worked the acoustical settings for months and the other noise sources and now i have plenty of the 2.... Then......
The room acoustic is central in audio and it is not a sum of bits....
I am perhaps totally wrong i will admit it ..... Explain that to me.....
And about my arrogance remember that my arrogance was an answering to your own about turntable users and other audiophiles....I admit my arrogance with you for sure you are right about that.... Admit your own arrogance....i will not name all the others you call liars or wrong....
By the way the question is not only about the way spatial positioning is recorded but also about HOW we recreate it in the room .... Even if the information of the spatial positioning is recorded rightfully in the source how can we enjoy it in a BAD room? I never enjoy it like i said BEFORE i installed my acoustic controls; same gear but different acoustical setting in my room and i now have natural timbre and imaging why?
It is not the BITS in the source that has changed, it the the timing and phase of the sound waves in my room that has changed (the electrical and mechanical noise were also decreased)...
Mahgister you don’t appear to have any idea of how recording works, or how spatial positioning is communicated in recorded music
As a recording engineer I am blown away you would claim this. This is totally not true. Timing is true in the live music world, but for playback, most of our imaging with the exception of specific dual microphone setups rarely used, imaging is primarily volume, and phase does not play into it, not even one little bit as long as the phase response is consistent on each channel.
It is incredible that you make the same mistake about imaging than about the timbre concept not knowing that it is necessary to take into account the acoustical settings of the room to recreate the timbre "envelope" perception rightfully...
For imaging, the distance between 2 speakers must be optimal at a precise critical point, and their location in the room will also play a role, to create a center image ... Then this distance between the speakers would need some precise room acoustic settings to work optimally in timing and phase....
You cannot replace acoustic....By a better files or recording technology....With an A.I. we will be able but it is not the actual matter of this thread....
What we hears dont come from the speakers, it come from the speakers modified by the room acoustical settings.....All information in the world in a digital files or on some vinyl cannot be recreated in a bad room.... Even if all the information of the source could be perfect...And it is never neither perfect nor complete anyway....We need acoustic not only bits....
Imaging is not a phenomenon reducible entirely to recording technique it is also for the listener a live musical event, then an event where acoustic play his part....It is the result of the acoustic sum of the room and the system....It is the same conditions for the timbre experience recreation for the listener , it is the result of the sum of the room and the system...No recording technique can REPRODUCE perfectly the original timbre event...we need the settings of the room acoustic to recreate it optimally...
Ok i am not an engineer only an average audiophile....But it is my experience and experiments....
Frequency response beyond a certain point is irrelevant. Imaging is about PHASE and TIME. Most systems are appalling on those parameters.
It is not my gear and his "superiority" over other brand that give me my imaging.... It is my acoustic settings and controls in my room...With also some controls over electrical grid noise and over mechanical noise... But the main cause is acoustical controls...
I bet hardly any Audiogon commenters set things up with DSP and bi or tri amping and have no clue.
Audio thread are filled with electronic design market mythology, not by acoustical laws and subtleties....
People not knowing acoustic use partial electronic solutions that could be useful as tool if they were not used replacing acoustic itself by limited programs...
A room is not a passive set of walls nor for the speakers neither for the ears.....
I am not a scientist just an average guy able to give to himself at low cost audiophile experience without buying anything....The opposite experience to all audio thread mythology.....
The question is not to know if your system is good or the best.... The question is how do we install our actual system optimally in his 3 working embeddings dimensions... The most important one being the acoustical one....No upgrade are most of the times necessary.....Contrary to all audio market conditioning...
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