In article 49ffc915.1207934406@localhost, Don Pearce
wrote:
On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:51:41 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:


My finding on this is that the sweet spot can be enlarged usefully if
you stop worrying about symmetry, but instead concentrate on creating
diffuse reflections rather than specular ones, particularly from the
walls beside the speakers. With that taken care of, pointing the
speakers a little straighter into the room rather than crossing
exactly at the seating position can make them cover three seats with
solid imaging.

My experience with that is that it also 'blurs out' the images for
specific instruments/voices. So you end up moving towards the old
'Sonab' experience where you got etherial noises from around you
wherever you went. They regarded that as 'stereo', but I don't.


That happens if you try to angle the speakers too far from crossing, but
if you just make it a few degree, so the beams hit the listening
position roughly midway between two listeners, all is well.

I was really referring to the first part of what you wrote above. I do
agree with the second part, but find it requires a larger room than I have.
:-)

You don't get a huge sweet spot, but certainly three people on one
settee is quite possible.

Never found that possible in the rooms of houses I've lived in TBH.

And it is dead easy to realign them properly when you are listening
alone, of course.

Again, I've not found that. It is easy enough to place the *speakers*
symmetrically wrt the listener. But the results do still depend on the
surroundings. These can be less easy to get optimised. My experience is
that it takes me a few weeks to get the system optimised if I setup in a
new room, even when the room is primarily dedicated to stereo listening.
But I may be ultra-fussy about this having found out just how good the
results can be in you are willing to work at it for that long, etc. :-)

Above said, I do find that you can get excellent results with the ESLs
quite quickly in many rooms. Given quick symmetry the results do tend to
beat cone-and-box speakers with ease, but I've found that continued
experiment generally provides improvements.

Slainte,

Jim

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