Nearfield listening - once more

Testing nearfield listening in my main system.

First, I drag and push my heavy listener chair much closer to the speakers than I am used to. I then change the position from very close, to medium close, to not so close.

The test deserves one of my best LPs, The Beatles Magical mystery tour, Hørzu edition with true stereo. So I play Hello goodbye, a track I know by heart.

Result: from very close, it sounds disjointed, not fully coherent.  Medium is better, and not so close is best.

The test confirms the need for some distance to get the best coherence, soundstage and depth.

This preliminary result is very interesting.... more to follow...

With close and medium distance I can feel that the band is around me. Pushing the chair further back is like changing the position from the stage, towards the front seats in the concert hall, and then further backwards. I think this says something about good speakers. 

Testing some more with the Audiokinesis Dream Maker floorstanders. They stand ca 5.5 feet from the wall, and 5 from the side walls, toed in ca 40 degrees. They stand 6.7 feet apart, measured from the center of the drivers. My conventional listening position has been ca 8 feet from the middle of the front plane of the speakers. Now, I tried 2 feet away, 3 feet etc in small increments. Large impact on the sound. I found that 2-3 feet was too close. 4-5 was better, more coherent, and with some space and depth also. Although maybe, all in all, 7-8 was best. Not sure yet. Although I don't end up very nearfield, it may be that my listening chair should be closer to the speakers than I have thought.

My last visit to the shop the large Dali Epikore 11 were around 12' apart with the sofa about 6' back, the speaker toe in was extreme to the point that there was only 1 spot to sit, dead center between the 2, but results were special. I agree with a previous poster that nearfield with toe in does reduce boundary effects, but also think individual speaker design will divide results as much as moving speakers from the long wall to the short wall.

The idea that you cannot hear where the sub sound comes from below 120 or something herz is PLAIN WRONG to my ears

The 'magic' frequency is more like 80Hz. To that end, the subs must not make anything above that or they will attract attention to themselves. If you set the crossover to 60Hz the sub will still make some energy above 80Hz. So you have to be careful.

The classic nearfield speaker was the BBC Rogers LS35a. There are a number of manufacturers that have reproduced this speaker and done enhancements- get the 16 Ohm version if you can.