Speaker positioning: why do audiophiles neglect this so much?

Mental illness i dont know....

i will repeat here that what i speak about was recommendations which are the results of my experiments in my dedicated audio room : a laboratory...These photos dont give an idea they are old...The actual room contain a grid of 100 Helmholtz tubes resonators AND diffusers with a double screen in wood with many acoustic devices on it for example... And i dont describe it all here...

Then yes i look like "madness" way more than what you think... 😁😊😎

My dedicated room is an acoustical laboratory...Not a living room..Then spare me insult...

 

But who is mad or perhaps "deluded"?

A man with a 500 bucks system whose sound quality rival system costing 100 times more created by his own low cost homemade devices ?

 

Or a conditioned consumer who buy and plug many costly brand name gear in the wall and called it hi-fi ? Your own virtual system in an empty room is a "buy and plug" one then...I prefer my " madness" and acoustic research to your laziness sorry ...

 

 

By the way if you want to insult me speak it clearly with my NAME spelled, not indirectly and with hypocrisy with an old photo from my virtual system page...

i prefer discussion to be frank....When people cannot argue about acoustic they chose insults, the first to act like that was the bullying boss of an audio company who sell costly devices here who never answered my inconvenients arguments and resorted to sarcasm about my old room ...

Is it clear?

 

My wife puts up with acoustic panels on walls and I have autonomy in speaker and listening position - but don’t think I’d get away with the experimental room tuning you’ve got going on:

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8221 I like a good tweak like the next guy. But those photos make me think someone is teetering on the line of mental illness.

 

By the way describing an acoustic distortion to mock my system and attributing it to my system/room is not a fair description...

i listen to a quartet like you did, but the sound is not between the speakers plane at all but in front of the speakers in the case of Auryn Quartet playing Haydn for example .... The soundscape is relative to the recordings the sound is around the room,outside speakers in many cases, but ALWAYS reach to my ears like in an headphone and better than in an headphone filling the space between the speakers and my listening position with an intimacy like in headphone because the soundscape INCLUDE ME...

In psycho-acoustic science it is described by the LISTENER ENVELOPEMENT factor or LEV. / SOURCE WIDTH factor or ASW. it is a RATIO to be acoustically controlled...I bet you have no idea of what i spoke about nor the way to control it at all... Then sarcasm is your way to chase away your ignorance and scapegoating my room at distance to do so .... It is not the first time ...

Then spare me post that describe your own fantasy projected onto an other room you never listen to ....

I read acoustic book not audio magazine fantasy reviews publicity ...

 

 

I would find it disconcerting if, when listening to a string quartet, the first violin appeared to be sitting fifteen feet away from the cello.

@sonic79 

Thanks

 

 

I guess there are folks who are audiophiles and have the luxury of having a great space for their systems and a wife or significant other or maybe they are solo so there is no "wife factor" involved. They are the lucky ones concerning setting the listening and speaker positions up well along with all the sound treatments their rooms need. I believe this is a small group of people. Then I believe the majority of the rest fall into the category of trying to scratch out a space for their systems, too many duel purpose spaces or given a tiny space off in a corner or repurposing a bedroom but the furniture must stay, going into an attic space with all sorts of weird ceiling configurations or a basement with great dimensions for width and length but that column sure is in the wrong spot and a 6’-8" ceiling is kinda low isn’t it? The bottom line, I believe most audiophiles realize how important the room is and the acoustics of the room along with the positioning and only wish they could hit all the tics correctly but have to be satisfied with the areas they have control over, which might not be many. They do have nice speakers and great equipment that they spent way too much on with lots of tweaks and expensive cables and conditioners but just can’t get it to sound great. No where near what they heard in that fancy showroom. Oh well, we live with what we have.

Oh well, we live with what we have.

Wise post!

But most people spend money on costly tweaks and costly upgrades BECAUSE they dont understand basic acoustic power...

The wife factor and a living room for most people cannot distract us to spelling the truth here in audio forums because it is an INCONVENIENT truth for most...

Acoustic treatment and mechanical control is the key not the price tag....

Even with a wife and in a living room we need the truth not the market conditioning of our consumer habits....

I guess there are folks who are audiophiles and have the luxury of having a great space for their systems and a wife or significant other or maybe they are solo so there is no "wife factor" involved. They are the lucky ones concerning setting the listening and speaker positions up well along with all the sound treatments their rooms need. I believe this is a small group of people. Then I believe the majority of the rest fall into the category of trying to scratch out a space for their systems, too many duel purpose spaces or given a tiny space off in a corner or repurposing a bedroom but the furniture must stay, going into an attic space with all sorts of weird ceiling configurations or a basement with great dimensions for width and length but that column sure is in the wrong spot and a 6’-8" ceiling is kinda low isn’t it? The bottom line, I believe most audiophiles realize how important the room is and the acoustics of the room along with the positioning and only wish they could hit all the tics correctly but have to be satisfied with the areas they have control over, which might not be many. They do have nice speakers and great equipment that they spent way too much on with lots of tweaks and expensive cables and conditioners but just can’t get it to sound great. No where near what they heard in that fancy showroom. Oh well, we live with what we have.

Good to have this discussion and all the responses. A few responders have mentioned that they do not have dedicated rooms, with a bit of lament. A dedicated room is not necessary, but dedicated music listening is. In other words you need to just listen to the music and not do anything else.  As I have mentioned a couple times, for background listening, nothing really matters in the speaker positioning.

If you are set up in a multipurpose room, it's best to not move the furnishings around. Everything in the room affects the sound. And if you move things around you need to adjust the a speaker setting to get back to the optimum sound. The Sumiko/Master Set method that I referenced in my first post is said to work with any speaker in any room. And thus it can be tried in a multipurpose room, some times quite successfully

As to "Optimum Sound", there is likely a few definitions of that and with a lot of divergence. I will only say that optimum sound is the perfect summation of the two speakers to be as if they were one speaker.

A good way to check for that is to listen to a mono recording, and mono recording will do. By definition there is equal music in each channel and each speaker. The two speakers will automatically sum together to give sound perfectly between the speakers, no matter where you sit in the room. If you do this with your speaker set and go to one side and the sound also goes to that side then you are getting more sound from the speaker on that side. That should not be and you do not have the speakers set for optimum sound. This is a good check because the mono recording can be a reference as to what you are trying to do with the speakers.