Is it possible to have Good Imaging close to wall

I am sorry Mapman but you are mistaken. As Onhwy61 is saying, you are confusing acoustic reflections contained in the recorded signal with those reflections produced by playback in a room.

To reproduce the spatial information recorded by the sound engineers it is not required to have reflections in the room. In fact the exact opposite is true, i.e. the less artefacts your room is inducing the better you will be able to hear the spatial information recorded on a disc.

I’ll make an analogy with the bass (which is also affected significantly by the room) to explain why you are wrong when you write:

So the reflected sound of teh room during playback is needed in order to attempt to best reproduce what might have been heard live rather than just what is in a 2 channel stereo recording.

Of course playback room acoustics will be different than what existed during recording, so the two may never be exactly the same, but can come pretty close when both are similar.

What you are saying is equivalent to saying that in order to have good bass one needs to excite the modes of his/her room, and in order to obtain the best bass performance one need to excite in his/her room the same modes that have been excited in the room where the recording was made. Of course, that is not true. To hear the most accurate bass possible in one’s room, one has to optimise the position of the speakers and listening chair so no major constructive and/or distractive interference occurs at the listening position. (Assuming that one’s speakers are capable to properly reproduce the bass on the recording, the best performance is achieved when one succeeds to completely eliminate the artefacts induced by the room - which of course is not really possible).

When it comes to soundstage and stereo image, the room induces even more artefacts than in the case of bass. For example it can: 1) make a bigger than life soundstage, 2) kill the soundstage completely, 3) make a 1-, 2- or 3-dimensional sound stage, 4) make the size of the instruments bigger than in the real life, 5) kill the stereo image, 6) shift the stereo image to the left or right, etc.

Clearly, very many things can go wrong because of the room and the best way to avoid all these problems is to try to "get rig" of the room. if possible try the following experiment:

First listen a recording with rich spatial information on a good pair of headphones. You will clearly hear a large soundstage and pinpoint stereo image. (You may like the same recording via your speakers better because it has a large sound stage but that is an artefact induced by the room. Of course, there is no problem with that, many people like the bass reinforcement caused by the room which can be beneficial sometimes.)

then listen the same recording via:

1) A pair of monitors in "near-field" mode with the monitors situated as far as possible far from any room boundaries. (This is what the Cardas method is trying to achieve.)

or

3) A pair of horns by sitting not too far from them, i.e. far enough that all drives are well integrated.

I am very sure you will end up with very similar results, i.e. a beautiful and well defined soundstage and stereo image that have been produced with no (or minimal) secondary reflections.

Finally, regarding your experience with the MBL system, I can imagine that under well controlled conditions and with the right recording they can create a wonderful effect as our ears like to hear (or better said are used to hear) reflections. However, I doubt very much that the MBLs are able to pull that trick or to sound “accurate” in every room with every recording and with every type of music.

Mapman, the size of the soundstage and the size of the instruments within
are determined mostly by the room and speaker placement. It really is very
similar with the bass, i.e. because of the room you can get a lot of bass or no
bass.

As I have mentioned in my previous post, I have no problem that people have
a preference, e.g. “exaggerated” sound-stages or too much bass. We all have
preferences. However, if one strives to hear the recording as close as it was
made by the sound engineer, then one needs to minimising the reflections in
his/her room. If when doing that one ends up with a minimal sound-stage
then that is because that is what the sound engineer intended. If however, the
recording has a huge sound-stage then that is what one will hear also when
minimising reflections. (Of course, I assume that the listener has optimised
the position of his/her listening chair.)

Companies like Ohm and MBL are targeting people who appreciate a large
soundstage. Omni-directional speakers will create much larger soundstage
because by design they increase the amount of reflections in one’s room.
However, in most cases this much larger sound-stage is achieved at the
expense of pin-point localisation of the voices and instruments within the
sound-stage.

Achieving a decent two dimensional sound-stage (with normal speakers) is
not very difficult and can be achieve also with inexpensive electronics. One
only need to make sure that the acoustic paths of the sound waves generated
by the two speakers are as similar as possible. That is, the reflections need not
be eliminated - they only need to be the same for the two speakers. Basically
if one succeeds to achieve in his room perfect symmetry with respect to
his/her listening position, he/she will have a solid two-dimensional sound
stage with well centred voices. (Unfortunately, very often perfect symmetry
between the left and right speakers is less beneficial for the bass response.)

Achieving (also with normal speakers) a three-dimensional sound stage
where all voices and instruments have a natural size is very difficult.
Parameters like the dispersion pattern of the speaker, and the relative phases
of different frequencies play crucial roles here. Not only most systems do not
allow one to change these parameter without changing components, but one
would really need to know what is doing when attempting to change these
parameters. The best way to achieve this is to use electronic room correction
softwares/devices. Experimenting with different speakers and different
amplifiers can further improve things as the crossover network in the speakers
and the ability of an amp to conserve the relative phases of the various
frequencies in an audio signal is very important. (Bo19172 is preaching about
these here on audiogon for a long time now about these things, which he
calls qualities. He simply lacks the technical jargon/knowledge/understanding
to convince people about this, plus the fact that he is a dealer who pushes the
brands he sell rather aggressively is not helping. However, while I do not
agree with his behaviour, I believe him when he is saying that he is able to
obtain a holographic three-dimensional sound stage.)

Also, since you have mentioned live music, I should say that when it comes to
live music I associate the concept of three dimensional sound stage mostly to
large orchestra, large big bands and choir ensembles. IMO unless one listens
to these music styles, the sound-stage concept is less important as it is an
artificial concept made by the sound engineers in the studio. As such, IMO in
most cases it is more important for a stereo to be able to produce accurately
the timber and the dynamic of the instruments/music. Good musicians play
their instruments dynamically, and they do that every time they play. The
place where a musician will be on a stage, on the other hand, many change
from one concert to the other depending on the dimensions of the stage.

Finally, regarding the MBL speakers, I have listen quite a few times MBL
systems (starting from their smallest system and ending with their top of the
line system). Like any other stereo system, depending on room and set up
they can sound wonderful or terrible. I agree with the (positive) comments
made above about MBL. However, to make them reproduce realistically the
dynamic of a orchestra one would needs to power them with a nuclear reactor

Psag, if with your eyes close you can tell when listening to music that you are in a small room, than that is because of the secondary reflections. If there will be no secondary reflections you will not be able to tell whether the room is large or small.

Note that there are also reports (also from reviewers) mentioning that the walls of a (small) room have simply disappeared and what was left was a beautiful large stage. This happens when the amount of secondary reflection is minimal and this is exactly the point that I am making.

No reflections at all is weird for the brain. However the brain does not care from where those reflections are coming (i.e. from our room or from the recording). The brain only associate spatial information to the music we are listening once it has detected secondary reflections.

Like Mapman was saying, it is a matter of taste and one has to play with speaker positioning and speaker types in order to determine what he/she prefers. Nothing is written in stones.

O_holter, it was certainly not my intension to criticise Mapman. Regarding
your comment about great speaker, it is a matter of setting up properly the
speakers in the room - the room will always "sing" along with any speakers
irrespectively whether it is a good or a bad speaker. We have all heard great
speakers sounding like crap.

Mapman, I am sorry if as suggested by O_holter, my post sounded like
criticism. I merely wanted to explain why you interpretation of what you have
read about secondary reflection is not correct. I was not the first one to point
this out. I have hoped that by making an analogy with the more known effects
induced by the room on the bass, it will be easier for people to follow my
argument. Obviously, as O_Holter message above indicates, I was wrong. I’ll
give it another try and I’ll be as succinct as possible.

Of course I agree/know that secondary reflections provide informations to our
brains about the surroundings - because of them we know immediately
whether we are in a small room or in a large room. Therefore, it is logical that
one needs secondary reflections to create a three-dimensional sound stage.
However, the key point is that on recordings that have a good sound-stage
the secondary reflections that give information to our brain about the venue
where the recording was made have been captured by the microphone during
the recording process. Consequently, my point is that in order to clearly hear
the secondary reflections that have occurred in the recording room/venue, we
need to minimise the reflections in our room. We talk about delicate details
which may be masked by the secondary reflections that occur in our rooms. I,
for one, am trying to hear the venue where the recording was made and not
my room.

Of course one can make use of the reflections in his/her room to
increase/decrease the soundstage to his/her liking. But, like in the case of
bass, the results may not always be beneficial/accurate. There is a reason why
so many MBL shows (organised by MBL personal) go wrong. I agree that when
properly set up MBL speakers can sound mesmerising (maybe not 100%
accurate but 100% accuracy is not my goal anyway.)

Bo, the reality is that people are misinformed and ill advised everywhere not just
in audio.

People with less

Sounds like a great motto for all audiophiles. We all are missing something, e.g.
a deeper sound-stage, or a wider sound-stage, or deep bass, or money to buy
more equipment, most likely also some parts of the brain, etc. The list is pretty
pretty long.

You give me a good laugh Bo.

Mapman and Audiokinesis, thank you for the stimulating discussion.

I’ll start by citing Audiokinesis:

Reflections done right are beneficial from the
standpoint of envelopment and spaciousness and a sense of immersion,
timbre, clarity, and liveliness. They can preserve the three-dimensionality of
the recording, something that reflections done wrong will degrade.

Obviously, there are two extreme possibility: “Reflections done right” and
“reflections done wrong”.

Mapman talks about the benefits associated with the first one, i.e. “Reflections
done right”, while I warn people to be cautious as “reflections done wrong”
can be very detrimental. There is a reason why MBL speakers only on
occasions sound breathtaking while very often they are unable to image
properly or sound good. If MBL representatives (who are supposed to be
experts in setting up MBL speakers) often can’t do it, then one can not expect
the average audiophile or sell person to do it.

Consequently, my take is that if one wants to have a good sound-stage with
realistic sizes for the instrument and voices, than his/her best bet is to
minimise the first order reflections and create a symmetric listening
environment. I did not argue that one needs to completely suppress all
reflections (which is a task impossible to achieve in one’s room anyway). What
I argue is that beside altering the spectral balance, too many reflections are
also likely to give an unrealistic sound-stage, e.g. singer/voices having
unnatural sizes (30 inch or more). As such I feel it is better to minimise
reflections rather than to maximise them. There is a reason why recordings
are mixed in near-filed.

In the end it is a matter of preference (also because the “ideal"
reverberation time depends on the type of music one listens) and in this
regard me and Mapman have very different preferences. I own Avantgarde
horns (i.e. speakers that control the directivity of sound and thus minimise
reflections) whereas Mapman owns Ohm speakers (i.e. speakers which try to
maximise the reflections).

For what it is worth Mapman, I have a PhD in theoretical/computational
physics and I am doing research in university in the field of vibrational
spectroscopy for almost 15 years now.

Avantgarde speakers is another example of speakers that very often sound bad
at shows. One would not expect this to be the case, as by design the sound they
produce should be affected less by the room (unlike in the MBLs). However,
audio dealers are "resourceful" (at least in the Netherlands) and they
manage to find so many ways to screw up the sound of a system.

With the right settings for the crossover and when driven with appropriate
electronics they will put out a large and realistic sound-stage. This even when
placed right against the wall. If, however, one is driving them with Bryston
power amps (like the dutch importer does) that tends to happen less often.