You can try extreme toe-in so that the speakers cross well in front of your listening position. The person to your left will be closer to the left speaker, but, now that speaker's dominance is mitigated by that listener being way off axis to the left speaker and more on axis to the right speaker. This compensation helps with providing a more balanced image for the off axis listener.
Speaker set up for more than 1 person
I have my system set up perfectly for a single person sweet spot. Near field about 9 feet from my speakers. But if I move even slightly off center the soundstage moves and one of the speakers dominates. If I have a couple friends over how can I arrange my speakers so we can all get a good soundstage with centered imaging? Move my speakers closer together?
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I have a love seat with the left seat in the sweet spot. The right hand seat is for my dogs... but if there are two visitors they get the love seat and can switch back and forth. I sit off to the side. I have never tried to expand the sweet spot, since that is so carefully set up. The width of a sweet spot is speaker dependent.
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A lot of this depends on the speaker tech. The KEF Blade for example has a huge, sweet spot. I think coincident drivers tend to have a slightly bigger sweet spot, with the Blade being very special in this regard. I enjoyed the Magnepan LRS and Mini for not being so restrictive on the seating. I use the Mini in my office.
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What you are asking for is impossible. All your friends will never get good soundstage and centered imagine. The stereo format was not designed for this. That’s its main weakness. Look into multichannel music systems using more than a pair of speakers for that. It goes without saying that the music must be encoded in that particular format. With stereo, the best you can achieve is for two people sitting close together to get decent imaging. The speakers dispersion pattern will dictate how far you can go. DSP systems like BACCH might help. However, the main listening position (MLP) will always be the sweet spot. |
Its completely normal for the sweet spot to move with the listener in a properly set up speaker arrangement. Anything you do to accommodate additional listeners occupying the sofa will compromise the sweet spot for whoever is sitting there. Why not take turns listening when the fellas are over to play hi fi. Personally, I wouldn't want to have to smell them when you're all sitting elbow to elbow! |
It’s all about compromises with your system. I would adjust the toe-in or out and go with whichever sounds the best trying several listening positions. Then move back to where it sounds best when it’s just you. I put painters tape on the floor to mark the positions so it’s easy to move the speakers’ back and forth as needed. |
As others have said, it's physically impossible with a 2 channel system to have a sweet spot big enough for 2 people sitting normally. I would run a center channel when you have guests over or even for yourself on some music. This way you trade holographic (stereographic) imaging for pinpoint center, flat image. Soundstage can become overly grand but with the right music, the right mood, it's a fun time. EQ/DSP will almost surely be necessary. Here I would ignore tonality problems and prioritize an even bass response across the sofa |
My Sweet Spot is about + - 5 in. on X axis and 3 ft. Y axis. Speakers are Maggie 1.7i s so Y axis SS is much greater. Wife enjoys the sweet spot too, but is usually content sitting to the side out of the range. For her to best enjoy her favorite songs, my solution is for her to sit in LP and I sit in LP on floor with her legs on my shoulders. What can I say, it works for us. Of course this position wouldnt be best with friends, lol.
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Obviously, setups to widen the sweet spot will compromise the sound as compared to the ideal setup. I am not saying extreme toe-in will not hurt the sound, but, it would be the easiest temporary compromise for when you are entertaining a small group of listeners. I have helped with a number of audio show setups, and that is what is employed because the listening chairs are set up practically wall to wall with most listeners WAY outside anything resembling the sweet spot. If you can, put a low chair dead center between the speakers, and slightly taller chairs close together behind that center chair. This will deliver respectable, if not ideal, sound. Depending on how critical you are about what constitutes the sweet spot, that spot can be very small, as in only a few inches wide. This is the case with almost ANY speaker and room setup with the possible exception of omni-directional speakers (e.g., MBL speakers). The closest I've ever heard to a system that could deliver a decent stereo sweetspot for two listeners was a giant system (speakers 4.5 ft. wide and more than 8 ft. tall) in a dedicated listening room that was about 25 feet wide by 45 ft. long. |
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They have been here. ATC specifically has designed for wide dispersion as this is critical in larger studio control rooms where mutiple people are working on the recording (scoring recording) or you have a large console that has a lot of channels (for orchestra or a large production). In these cases you cannot have only one person hear the image, you’ll not build the right mix as it's a group effort. Nearfield evolved in studios to enable an engineer to sit close to the speakers and reduce the ratio between reflections and direct sound. Basic near field is two speaker set up in a very small triangle with the listener very close- maybe even a few feet apart. This is done to enable a mixer to work in different rooms and get a similar result as you reduce the rooms influence [note room influence cannot be completely eliminated only reduced or exaggerated]. This is what made studio near field speakers like Auratones or NS10 popular as they are so small. The near field technique works only when it's one person and he or she can sit close and reduce the triangle between left/right and listener. So to build a larger sweet spot you need very wide dispersion speakers with excellent off axis response and enough SPL capability to fill the larger space (since you still need to be far away from walls to reduce reflections, reducing reflected to direct sound ratio). So larger sweet spots also require special speakers, special set ups and larger spaces. Toe in reduces image size every time but some speakers need this as they are narrow dispersion (like horns) and you never get them to "meet" at your location unless you do significant toe in (depending on how far you sit from them). It’s extremely difficult in small spaces to find the right compromise especially since manufacturers really don’t share their off axis response with you so you may own narrow dispersion speaker and not know it. Narrow dispersion can sometimes be appealing in practice as with narrow HF, it reduces the first reflections (from side walls) in the room and can improve the image. The owners can think their speakers image better when they actually image worse BUT the tiny sweet spot works better in that specific space. |
Most commercial speakers are not meant to be pointed directly at one's head, so they do sound better with little or no toe in for a wide variety of listening positions. Generally there are 2 schools of thought. One, to use more directional speakers pointed into the room. This way as you get closer to one side you hear it less. I understand the theory but have never heard it used successfully. The other approach is to make speakers with wide and even dispersion, and point them forward instead of in. I personally have heard this and like it. Magico and Revel are excellent examples of speakers that give a wide sweet spot with little toe-in. |
Thank you all for very informative and hilarious replies. My speakers are very directional and semi-horny so I'm guessing I'm already at a disadvantage there. They absolutely disappear in the sweet spot. I'll probably end up doing the one in the sweet spot and 2 seats directly behind if the super toe-in method doesn't work. |
@maprik , A couple of us are meeting at each other's place soon. The way we are going to do the sessions are - have 2 more chairs and switch the places with the center sweet spot. Reasoning: 365 Days = 100%, Listen together Days = 5 (just a number), which is 1.4%. Is it really worth "getting a sofa/love seat/change speaker positions/etc" for such a small % number? You call. |
You have to change the toe-in, there is no single arrangement 'great' for either centered or slightly off center. It’s very doable if you are able to easily alter Toe-In for DBX Crossfield Setup when you have a guest. "DBX Cross Dispersion Method (developed for home theater front speakers): unique shape/angle of dispersion/multiple tweeters: set up once. speaker your side: closer thus more volume, but, direct dispersion from opposite side speaker increases it’s volume, i.e. a trade-off creating wide imaging. Note: their speakers were designed to provide this without altering their toe-in" //////////////////////////// note: Either way, aimed at center best for single, or DBX aimed opposite side for two listeners sounds terrific from center, it’s just not as wide a soundstage if you leave them in DBX Crossfield and sit in the middle. |
Completely agree with you except that I would change slightly to hugely! For decades I used Quad Electrostatic loudspeakers (ESL-63 and ESL 2905) which emulate a point source of sound about a foot behind the flat panel. The soundstage, imaging and sweetspot are huge. I recently added KEF Reference 1 speakers (more reliable) and they have much the same characteristic. With speakers like these you can stand up and walk around a holographic-like soundstage. The comparison with conventional multi-drive speakers is astounding - no need to use a vice to lock your head into a narrow horizontal plane and precise distances from each speaker. The physics is to do with cancellation and reinforcement where separate drivers and their reflections interfere with each other. The ear/brain system quite quickly adjusts to the 'cleanliness' of apparent point sources and their coherence. The corollary is that going back to conventional speakers is difficult. When auditioning speakers I always move around a lot! |
The term near field listening position is a recording engineering term that defines speaker placement between 3 to 5 feet from the engineer at his mixing console. At 9 feet, your listening position is not near field and probably at the median of most members without dedicated listening rooms or that have small room set-ups. Reviews I read of your previous model indicated the listening position was 7.5 feet from the speakers. I recommend you experiment with moving your listening position closer with adjusting toe in proportionately. Your room at 20x30x10 is larger than most. While your speakers are published to excel at imaging, that is a large volume to pressurize and to create dense images. Moving the listening position closer with appropriate toe in may increase perceived pressurization and image density, and improve the sweet spot. What I am trying to articulate is that the sweet spot may seem ok on axis due to image density but because you are far from the speaker, the density may reduce off axis. I do not have the benefit of off axis response measurements, or direct experience with your speakers, so this is only a guess. Your speaker design with the vibrating tongue has the design intent of increasing center fill, providing an upfront wide stage, and reducing depth. The literature I read states this was a specific engineering design intent. I cannot comment on how the up front image placement affects the sweet spot. It should by design give you a decent sweet spot. +1 with @erik_squires regarding toe in. My speaker manual recommends drastic toe in with the drivers crossing slightly in front of the listening position. However, experimentation proved to my ears the best staging, imaging, and sweet spot was with a toe in only a few degrees in from straight forward. So reducing toe in in my case increased the sweet spot. I would experiment with listening position and speaker placement, including toe in. Good luck. |
I would not say getting center imaging in two seats is impossible because I have done it though it was a great deal of effort in sound quality car stereo system. Doing it in a listening room would be entirely different and someone might of figured it out, just have to dig in and find out if so, that is how I learned to do it in can mobile system and it was still a great deal of effort but quite worth it.
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@mlsstl @mapman |
Speakers set up for more than 1 person…and near field Yamaha were the leaders in studio monitors in American recording mixing rooms with their HS series of small speakers. Many photos will show them high up above the mixing consoles. The white cones were the trademark look.
I still use the original mk1 model today (the ultimate version) with stereo Rel T9i subs 40 years on. Contenders have come and gone but these just go on. Other speakers have been auditioned but l just keep on going back to them. A success story for me. “Speakers set up for 1 person” maybe the original post here, but for me, these speakers are the only ones. |
It was the NS series Yamahas not HS. And at the time (70s, 80s), Auratone was the king along with a wide variety of other speakers depending on budget. Tannoy was probably the king of fidelity, Auspurger the king of rock and roll in walls. Today Auspurgers are still popular, but in hip hop. Auratones are making a bit of come back. NS10s are mostly retired now. The AE 1 never caught on over here. Now the cmpany has changed hands a few times and is not the same.
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Time/intensity trading (speaker axes criss-crossing in front of the listening area) has been described and/or alluded to several times in this thread. I have been building speakers deliberately designed to be compatible with a time/intensity trading configuration for more than two decades. Ime there are certain characteristics speakers need to have on order for a time/intensity trading configuration to work well. The speakers need to have a fairly narrow and uniform radiation pattern down to at least 1.5 kHz. The radiation pattern widths I have found to work well have been between 60 degrees and 100 degrees (-6 dB at 30 to 50 degrees off-axis), though I suspect well-behaved coverage out as far as 120 degrees would still work well (this based on commentary about the JBL M2). I have found some trial-and-error is usually called for to get the toe-in angles right, with 45 degrees being a good starting point. In general, the narrower coverage angles work better with a bit less toe-in. At audio shows I always have a least one chair to the outside of the speakers, WELL off-centerline, and whenever someone takes that chair because the room is too crowded I always ask them how the imaging was from that location when the song ends. They are always pleasantly surprised and say it was enjoyable. With appropriate speakers and set-up, ime time/intensity trading results in a good soundstage even well off-centerline. Some off-centerline locations will be better than others but ime pretty much all practical off-centerline listening locations will have better soundstaging than with wide-pattern conventional speakers. Unfortunately relatively few speakers meet the criteria described in the second paragraph above, and I have yet to encounter a successful time/energy trading configuration using "conventional" speakers. So it is seldom a realistic option. Duke |
Yes, as I have said above, the toe-in approach is, at best, a compromise, but, there are few things that can be done for what the OP is hoping to accomplish--it is crazy to suggest buying different speakers, for example. I recall that there was one commercial model of speaker specifically designed for the time/intensity tradeoff to widen the stereo sweet spot. It was a speaker made by Leslie, the same people that made organ speakers that spun to create interesting effects. There home audio speaker line was not a commercial success. |
Yammies Yes l got it wrong from memory…NS8 and NS10 were the boys. Tannoys were great speakers and l remember the Lancasters were as big as radiators. I never heard a really decent sound from their smaller models, but even those were not really small enclosures.
l agree with your Acoustic Energy history. The company earned its reputation on the back of this model and has tried to emulate the AE1 Mk1s initial success. It is not the same company as it was back then, but their active speaker has had very good reviews. The AE1s have to be heard to appreciate what was achieved. The sound from such a small speaker less than one foot high and 8 inches wide was previously thought not possible in the 80s. It was no surprise they made it into many recording mixing rooms in the UK 🇬🇧
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If you were to be honest about 3 comfortable legit sweetspots that are not compromised......Multichannel - 3 concentric driver TAD standmounts for example, where one serves as a substantial center channel. Or there are some high end pro audio speakers like Meyer Sound that have design tricks w.r.t phase characteristics, etc (if you were to try and stick with stereo)... You will need to fine tune side wall treatment, etc. In summary, it probably won’t be cheap, any additional sweetspot can get expensive.
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