narrow and wide baffles and imaging

you can also take any small narrow point or even line source speaker and enlarge the baffle with a sheet of MDF, back your speakers up against the rear wall and get same effect plus more bass.... just basic math and physics...
also the large baffle will generate positive and negative cancellation which shows up as frequency response anomaly.....

these simple experiments in what and how younhear are agnostic to brand and speaker religion...and IMO help to further educate the avid listener...

I am deeply sorry IF my post offended any...

back to hearing Richard Thompsen sing about some redheaded girl...

Totems image best!

I don’t know the answer here, but simply on some personal experience:
The wider-baffle speakers that I’ve become acquainted with and auditioned - I’m thinking the larger Harbeth models, Devore and to some degree Audio Note - all have impressed me by "disappearing" and soundstaging much more than I would have expected given their looks, and given the usual audiophile ideas that narrow profile speakers image well/wide speakers don’t.

That said....

It’s also the case that while those speakers did surprising imaging/soundstaging/disappearing, they also weren’t near head of the class for those qualities. In each case I have found soundstage depth somewhat flattened, and a sense I can hear the speaker contributing to the sound (which as a hunch could be due to the thinner-cabinet-working-with-resonances approach also taken by those speakers).  Many narrow baffle speakers seem to disappear much "more" and with greater depth to the imaging.

narrow and wide baffles and imaging

narrow baffles are crucial to creating that so-desired pin-point imaging.

Yes the narrower the baffle the better, but also a similar thing to image destroying wide baffles is, so many "audiophiles" love to put all their equipment on racks in between their speakers. Just so they can gaze them it in wonderment while listening.

This is one of the biggest image and depth destroyers there is. Stop the "glitz gazing" and put that stuff over to the side/s and have nothing in between your speakers and beside them and behind them as far back as you can as well.

The late Neville Thiel (T/S speaker speaker design laws) told me to do this once many moons ago he called it the 3 x B’s, and I have never looked back and never had anything "between, beside and behind" the speakers. I have an image and depth heard and seen that makes you think you can get up and walk into it

Cheers George

Room acoustics matter a great deal, but I’ve read, and listened and I truly believe this:

Extra-wide baffle speakers are better able to convey a sense of the recording space compared to "normal" and "skinny" speakers in most rooms. My favorite example of this is the Sonus Faber Stradivari.

You can get more insight reading Troels Gravesen’s article on a "poor man’s strad" here:

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/PMS.htm

Besides that, one thing that bedevils a lot of speakers is baffle diffraction. This is not just the baffle width, but the height and the driver placement. For whatever reason, wide baffle speakers seem to cure a lot of it.