speakers for a large room

Topjetboy wrote: "I am looking for a bigger sweet spot (soundstage?), more presence to fill the room a little better without losing the clarity, the realism and the quick response (articulate?) of the maggies."

Interesting challenge!

My background includes owning five or six pairs of Maggies (depending on how you count ’em) and being a SoundLab dealer since 1999. I have been a speaker manufacturer for the past fifteen years.
In case you haven’t already, you might open the curtains as much as you can. One-half of the sound the Maggies put out -- the backwave - is destined for the reverberant field, and by aggressively absorbing the reflections you are taking some of the life out of the Maggies. I don’t expect this to make enough of a difference, but you might as well try it for the sake of gathering more data for your quest.

Much as I love SoundLabs, the smaller ones which fall within your price range are not going to "fill the space" significantly better than the Maggies, though the 90-degree-pattern versions will give you a wider sweet spot.

There is a little-known but effective technique for getting a wide sweet spot which may be applicable to your situation. First a bit of background:

The ear localizes sound sources by two mechanisms: Arrival time and intensity. When you are seated in the central sweet spot, arrival time and intensity is the same from both speakers, so you have a nice soundstage. When you listen from off to one side, the near speaker of course "wins" arrival time, but it also "wins" intensity, largely because you are now more on-axis of the near speaker and more off-axis of the far speaker. So the center vocalist actually shifts towards the near speaker even farther than you have!

If only there was some way to make the far speaker louder than the near speaker...

Well, there is. We start out with speakers that have a fairly narrow (perhaps 90 degrees) and very well-controlled radiation pattern, and toe them in severely (perhaps 45 degrees) such that their axes criss-cross in front of the central sweet spot. Here is what happens: For the off-centerline listener, the near speaker inevitably "wins" arrival time, but the far speaker "wins" intensity! These two localization mechanisms approximately balance out and you still get a good soundstage from well off to the side. Not as good as up and down the centerline of course, but still enjoyable.

At audio shows whenever possible I set up one chair along a side wall, to the outside of the nearest speaker. Sometimes when the room is full somebody will sit in that chair. When the song ends, I ask them if they could still hear a decent soundstage. They always say they can, and that the music was surprisingly enjoyable from that location.

Here is the secret: The output of the near speaker must fall off smoothly and rapidly as we move off-axis, at least in the upper midrange and treble regions where we get most of our localization cues. Most speakers can’t do this well because most speakers not only have wide radiation patterns, but those patterns are seldom smooth off-axis.

High-quality prosound drivers can give the desired radiation pattern characteristics for a wide sweet spot (assuming proper setup), with the added benefits of good clarity and good dynamic contrast. In my opinion it is even possible to preserve that sense of immersion you get when your Maggies are about five feet out into the room, but without taking up as much real estate as your Maggies require (the details of how to do this get into specifics which might be out of place here). Unfortunately most people have a negative impression of "prosound drivers" due to exposure to harsh PA systems which maximize decibels per dollar. The JBL M2 would be an example of a prosound-driver system which maximizes sound quality.

Topjetboy, I think there are solutions to your situation which may or may not involve something unorthodox. In an "orthodox" solution, the Revel Salon 2’s you mentioned are competitive. But imo there are other approaches which do a better job in some of the areas you mentioned.

Best of luck in your quest.

Duke

Good call, topjetboy! Thanks for posting that; I can see that you’re pretty hard-core. I agree with Matt’s analysis.

(Incidentally the time/intensity trading image that Matt is talking about when your link opens up at 17:02 has a mistake: The FAR speaker should be a little bit LOUDER because the rabbit is on-axis of that speaker but well off-axis of the near speaker. This is of course only true for frequencies where the speakers have the desired directional characteristics, but we get our imaging cues mostly from that range anyway so in practice with the right kind of speakers it works despite imperfections.)

I learned the cross-firing technique from Earl Geddes many years ago, and there’s a pretty good chance that Earl is Matt’s source as well.

Where I depart from Earl and Matt is this: I like to add a bit of relatively late-onset reverberant energy to supplement my highly-directional monopolar main arrays. In my experience the spectrally-correct backwave energy of dipoles can be highly beneficial. With correct set-up, imo that backwave energy does a very good job of presenting the spatial cues on the recording. You mentioned that your Maggies are out five feet - isn’t the spatial improvement you hear in going from two feet to five feet FAR GREATER than can be explained by a few more milliseconds delay? It’s not that your playback room seems marginally bigger; it’s that the spatial signature of the recording venue (whether real or engineered) is dominating over your playback room’s signature, given a good recording. Well, that’s what I’m trying to bring to the table, but in a somewhat more placement-friendly and amplifier-friendly package than Maggies and SoundLabs.

Duke

@topjetboy wrote: " @Duke I never had the maggies 2 feet away. I tried it today but really did not like it. As it is now, they are back to 5 feet away from the back and 2 ft away from the side."

Well I admire your quest for knowledge in trying 2 feet! Yup, it sucks. Those additional 3 feet (to bring them out to 5 feet) make a huge improvement, because of the additional time delay they impose on the arrival of the backwave.

" When I cross them to 45 degrees, the ’sweet spot’ is broader but the image is blurred."

Maggies are NOT good candidates for the extreme toe-in that I suggested. Their radiation pattern is generally too wide, and the tonal balance changes at different horizontal angles due to the side-by-side driver configuration.

" Are you using dipoles (electrostatic, maggie, etc)? "

No, I’m using what might be called an "asymmetric bi-directional" configuration. The first-arrival sound comes from a fairly directional front-firing array, then the reverberant field is augmented by an up-and-back firing array, whose output bounces off at least one wall and then off the ceiling before arriving at the listening area. This long two-bounce path mimics the path length of a dipole speaker pulled at least 5 feet out into the room, but without requiring that much distance. The SPL and spectral balance of the up-and-back firing array is user-adjustable, for adaptation to different room acoustic situations.

The Part-Time Audiophile took some good photos at a show last summer. Note the aggressive toe-in, and the up-and-back firing coaxial speaker installed in the speaker stand:

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2019/06/17/new-gear-from-audiokinesis-and-resonessence-labs-t-h-e-sho...

Duke

"nice setup."

Thank you!

"I was looking for the mentioned ’space generator’. Is that something from another dimension?"

Yes and no. We interface the pandimensional locality field with a velocity zone, then rotate the phase such that the spacetime continuum is expanded instead of time-dilated. So space isn’t actually "generated", but our marketing department thought the name sounded cool.

Seriously, the "Space Generator" is that upwards-and-backwards firing coaxial. The madness behind the method goes something like this:

In our home audio listening rooms, there is a competition between the spatial cues on the recording (which are desirable, whether they be real or engineered) and the spatial cues of the playback room (which are undesirable). The ear/brain system can pick out the recording venue reverberation cues in the recording FROM the reflections in the playback room, even down into the noise floor, because it recognizes the harmonic patterns. And we WANT the reverberation in the recording to be presented from all around, so we don’t want the room to be overdamped. Unfortunately all too often, the playback room’s "small room signature" is stronger and therefore dominates our perception. We may we resort to aggressive absorption which can be a net improvement, but we lose much of those beneficial late-arrival reflections along the way so we never really achieve "envelopment".

Now it is the earliest in-room reflections which most strongly convey "small room signature", so THOSE are the ones we want really to minimize. We do this by using a directional front-firing array and aiming (toeing-in) to avoid early same-side-wall reflections. Then in order to effectively present the spatial cues on the recording, we add a bit of extra reverberant energy via the coaxial unit, aimed such that it takes at least 10 milliseconds longer than the direct sound to reach the listening area. This time gap in between the direct sound and the strong onset of reflections is the key.

With this set-up and a good recording, the venue cues dominate over the "small room signature" cues of the playback room. So it sounds like you are in a much bigger room... hence the name "Space Generator". Now in all fairness your ear/brain system is coming up with its "best guess" based on a poverty of cues, but this is still generally a significant improvement over conventional speakers. The tonality doesn’t change when you toggle the space generator off and on, but the spatial "feel" does. (The only time we have heard some detriment is when the Space Generators are turned up too loud, and then clarity starts to be degraded. So the "sweet spot" is just before that happens.)

That being said, you can accomplish essentially the same thing by pulling your Maggies five feet out into the room, like you’ve been doing. We’re able to fine-tune it a bit more to the specific room acoustic situation by having controls on the Space Generator section... for instance, we’ve found that the "optimum" relative loudness level of the Space Generator section is not as loud as the backwave of a dipole normally is.   The math that I use indicates your Maggies may sound even better about 7 or 8 feet out into the room, but that may not be practical. 

(The same psychoacoustic principles apply in concert halls. In locations where the ear can differentiate between the direct sound and the reverberant sound the listener experiences both clarity and envelopment at the same time, and these are the really good seats. Credit to David Griesinger for this insight.)

Hmmm. Maybe my first explanation made more sense!

Duke