Nearfield listening - once more

@o_holter Every speaker whether it is small or or large has a critical listening distance independent of the electronics or room. For an example, speakers with first order crossovers require one to sit at least 8 ft from the center of the two speakers. Why? because the output from three drivers (tweeter, mid-range, and woofer) needs that distance to merge. Now Horn speakers and monitors may not need 8 ft for the sound from different drivers to merge.

So near-filed and far-field are basically relative to the speaker design, but they all have a minimum critical distance to the sweet spot. Impact of "early-reflections" and "reverberations" from the room can be minimal for so called near-field listening. This is one advantage and may be the reason why it is appealing to certain listeners. For those who sits 8 ft or more form the speakers need room treatment to control "early reflections" and "reverberations." Essentially near-field listening gives you a listening experience similar to that of headphones, but with imaging and perhaps sound-stage.

One thing to keep in mind is that smaller speakers are limited to frequencies 45-55 Hz and above. Big floor standers will give you the bottom octave, but you need to sit away from the speakers. For an example double bass can go low as 30 Hz, and the piano down to 27 Hz. You will miss this kind of information with smaller speakers with near-field listening. Laws of physics dictate what you can get from small speakers versus large speakers and critical listening distance, etc.

@hiphiphan I understand what Paul is saying about near-field subwoofers, but he also point out piratical implementation of this is challenging. Subwoofer reproduce bass by bouncing the sound from walls, roof, etc. Assumption is one cannot localize the frequencies below 120 Hz. You can hear deep bass from car stereos. My discussion was about reproduction of the lowest octave in a time/phase coherent manner with the rest of bandwidth in spite of not being able to localize below 120 Hz.

If you do the math, largest dimension of the room should be at least 26 ft to "accurately" reproduce 20 Hz frequency signal at the sea-level!  If one lives at high altitude (say 5,280 ft from sea level, aka mile-high), sound travels bit slower and largest dimension can be less than 26 ft. One can hear good bass in near-field listening as @o_holter pointed out with his floor standing speakers from 4 ft. Room modes play a big role for this kind of effect. But I cannot comment on this since I don't know his speakers nor about his listening room. If room modes rocks your boat and you think that is how it should "sound," then who am I to question that (LOL)?

I get better bass for tabla and double bass about 2 ft from my speakers. But I have listened to these enough to know that is NOT how they sound in real life without any amplification. In my case, I know room modes are the culprit. In my room, I need to sit ~12 ft from the speakers to get the optimum sound. There is lot more involve in sound reproduction than just words and technical phrases.

@mahgister I didn't imply that room treatments aren't necessary for near-field listening. I said the impact from the room is minimal since you get the more direct sound than indirect sound. Also I cannot comment on "soundstage" from near-field listening since it is depends on other factors.