Speakers positionning

@geoffkait wrote:

"Most speakers will produce the best soundstage, frequency response, dynamics when pointing straight ahead, with no toe in or very little toe in."

Agreed, for "most speakers". Well I’m not sure it makes much difference in dynamics.

However if good soundstaging over a wide listening area is a high priority, that’s something you won’t get with little or no toe-in. Ime speakers designed from the outset with a lot of toe-in mind, and then set up accordingly, do a much better job of giving good soundstaging over a wide listening area, and perceived tonal balance is theoretically improved as well. Again, not sure it makes much difference in dynamics.

Duke

I use 45 degrees of toe-in regularly, with speakers that are designed for it. The speaker axes criss-cross in front of the sweet spot.  Ime several advantage accrue, including a wider sweet spot, deeper soundstage, reduced coloration, and more consistent total balance throughout the room. It looks weird but works well.

Duke

dealer/manufacturer

@geoffkait wrote: "the best soundstage along with everything else can ONLY be achieved using a foolproof method... The better the room is treated for acoustic anomalies the better success you will have."

Do you think it makes sense to design speakers that deliberately minimize room-interaction acoustic anomalies?   Or do "foolproof" setup methods take the speaker's characteristics out of the equation? 

Duke

Suppose we have hotel room + no room treament + extreme (45 degrees) toe-in. Recipe for disaster, especially when it comes to imaging and soundstaging, right?

Here are some online comments about such rooms.

From RMAF 2013: “Just amazing. This feels like a real performance. I haven’t heard such a focused soundstage at this show period [written late on the last day of the show]. Absolutely phenomenal. Easily a contender for best in show.”

“This room had the most locked in-soundstage and imaging I have ever heard bar none with dynamics to match. The sweetspot is just an incredible experience and really musical top to bottom. And, amazingly, they did it with zero room treatments."

“Listening to these guys in wildly suboptimal positioning was exhilarating. The sound stage was huge, I mean really wide, with good detail and killer dynamics.”

From Newport Beach 2014: "...musical, with a warm, full sound; focused images in spite of abundant room sound; and a remarkable dynamic ease."

“The way the speakers threw images way high, as well as their amazing three-dimensionality, was quite impressive. “

From Axpona 2016: “With the right audio gear [this recording] successfully renders the essence of (IMO) one of the greatest 3 or 4 concert halls on earth, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. I’ve heard music there, and there’s truly a sense of sound being present in the air around you. The multichannel rendering gets this aspect right; so did the [speakers toed-in 45 degrees], nearly to the same degree, despite the presence of only two channels... what I heard was the unique acoustic signature of the Concertgebouw.”

From RMAF 2018: “Best Sound Cost No Object AND Best Value in Show. A beautiful, rich, better than life tonality combined with incredible speed, transparency, soundstaging and precision. Along with best-in-class room-integration.”

So, why didn’t these overly-toed-in speakers totally suck (especially at soundstaging) in untreated hotel rooms? The answer is very simple: They were designed to be used that way, and thus they reaped the benefits @erik_squires describes above without any appreciable downside.

Incidentally the reviewer who said "This room had the most locked in-soundstage and imaging I have ever heard bar none" has been described as an "imaging and detail freak", and the one who said "Best Sound Cost No Object AND Best Value in Show" claims to be "a tonality freak." So the set-ups weren’t making significant trade-offs between different attributes.

Duke

@rvpiano wrote: "I was just at the New York Hifi show, and perhaps because of the size of the rooms, all speakers were toed in, most severely. The result was very little precise imaging. Everything tended to come from one central spot between the speakers."

And,

"All I can say is, that [what Duke posted about] wasn’t my experience at this show."

And I don’t doubt you one bit! I have no problem accepting that "very little precise imaging" is commonly the result in hotel rooms at audio shows, regardless of how much toe-in is or is not used.

But suppose somebody out there fairly consistently gets significantly different results in crappy little hotel rooms at audio shows, without using acoustic treatment. Maybe there are important principles which are either unknown to, or ignored by, "the herd".

Giving credit where it’s due, just about everything I know on this subject came from Earl Geddes. And in the midst of "the herd" is not where you will find him.

Duke