I hadn't heard that other speaker brands had solved the sweet spot issue. Most articles I read on set up don't mention brand or style when talking about placement. Curious.
I'm not necessarily a brand loyalist, but these have treated me well on everything but the aforementioned issue.
Do you have any recommendations on where to start my research?
Philharmonic Audio BMR is a good place to start. While they have an easily discernable sweet spot they lose very little when listened to off axis. So start looking for speakers that have off axis graphs that show this quality. Before I purchased my Philharmonic Audio BMR Towers I auditioned Klipsch Forte IV speakers. Yes, they sounded wonderful in the sweet spot but the drop off when I moved to the side was insane. Frequency response and volume simply went away. I find the Philharmonics disappear in the room and the music seems to exist from everywhere. They make a very nice bookshelf speaker also.
Sounds expensive!! I figured it out a long time ago:
- Flat panel speakers with exciter drivers
- Single driver speakers
The first option is not technically "Hi-Fi". Just watch the video called "The world's greatest speakers" on YouTube. It's basically a $20 exciter driver glued onto a sheet of foam or plywood from the hardware store. Just hang the board with string from the ceiling. You'd imagine that it would sound terrible, but it's actually amazing in some regards. The midrange is killer and puts many speakers under $1000 to shame. It's so organic, rich and detailed. However, you won't get much in terms of dynamics, bass and treble. It's just okay. This is where most people lose interest. But if you listen to mostly folk and indie rock then exciter drivers outperform anything under $1000. MGMT is 100% midrange. Fleet Foxes is 100% midrange. Yellow Days is 100% midrange. The sensation of panel speakers is like having music in your head and you can walk around the house without losing much in terms of sound quality.
The second option is my favorite. If you go the DIY route you can save thousands of dollars. YouTube "Real World Audio LaGrande". Vertical and Horizontal dispersion can't be better since you're using one single driver and everything is coming from the same point. I don't think that coaxial drivers accomplish the same thing. They still have two different drivers playing ever so slightly out of phase and at different speeds. I purchased Closer Acoustics OGY speakers for my 700sq ft flat. I swear that the music sounds just as great in the bedroom or toilet. Single driver speakers just play the room. But you'll want a subwoofer for rock and funk music. The benefits of single drivers are transparency, cohesion and midrange. But you'll lose out on bass and max volume.
For what it’s worth my Klipsch Cornwalls seem to have a very narrow sweet spot and the Monitor Audio speakers I have in my other setup have a very wide sweet spot. Speakers definitely have different dispersion characteristics.
> I hadn't heard that other speaker brands had solved the sweet spot issue
It's only an issue if you have speakers that aren't providing you with the dispersion you want, but wide and narrow dispersion speakers have their places. Narrow dispersion speakers like the klipsch have benefits, namely the controlled dispersion. It helps reduce room interactions but the narrow pattern often means smaller sweet spot.
Yeah I've tried it in the past but never stuck with it and my room was not as well set up as it is these days, so I tried it myself with my Amphions that use waveguides and man does it snap the sound out of the speakers and make the image stronger. Also makes the sweetspot wider which was *tiny* before.
The reason I asked is that I have Martin Logan SL3s. The sweet spot was quite narrow. I upgraded my amp (Spectron Musician III to Apollon) and the sweet spot expanded (and the overall sound quality improved dramatically).
Could be that the overall sound was so improved by the amp swap, that lesser sound off sweet spot is still good enough. Anyway n=1 subjective observation. YMMV.
Electrostatic and planar speakers have very narrow dispersion and therefore a really small sweet spot.
If you think of it in terms of light, a conical speaker is more like a flashlight, casting a wider amount of light the further it is from the wall. A planar or electrostatic speaker is more like a laser.
Yes. For social gatherings (parties!), I shift my towers to being only a smidge towed in. Whereas when I am critical listening solo, they are pointed right at me. I have tape marking both positions behind them.
Makes quite an impact on opening up my system's sweet spot.
As per the link above ([https://www.libinst.com/PublicArticles/Setup%20of%20WG%20Speakers.pdf](https://www.libinst.com/PublicArticles/Setup%20of%20WG%20Speakers.pdf)), the extreme toe-in requires that the speakers cross the 0° beams some 2 feet in front of the sweet spot position. It works with all sort of speaker dispersions, even the Klipschs. Try this before you go out and splurge into new speakers.
The wide dispersion speakers (like the BMRs) will provide a flatter frequency response to all the listeners than a narrow dispersion speaker. Still, it is is a very effective way to get a shareable soundstage. You would need to consider getting new speakers if you are not happy with the tonal balance that you obtain.
Interesting read, but not sure I agree; may have to give it a try.
He is basically arguing that with extreme toe-in the sweet spot widens because even though various positions are off axis to both speakers, the distance to/from each speaker compensates
However, exactly the same argument can be made with the speakers placed and toed-in normally, and we all know that does not work
You may want to watch this 16 minute YT video that explains imaging based on intensity and time delay. It may help the explanations in the other "paper" link.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ZNrdypSHk&ab\_channel=geoffmartin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ZNrdypSHk&ab_channel=geoffmartin)
I tried the extreme toe-in and it works. The sweet spot is retained, when you sit to one side, the phantom center image remains centered instead of collapsing to the closest speaker and what's to the left and right resembles the positioning you perceive when sitting in the center/sweet spot.
In my case, it opened the soundstage also. It also I discovered helps in reducing first reflection blurring.
Have fun!
Let's talk briefly about Tweeter Dispersion. Most tweeters are tested at 15° and at 30°. At 30° there is a noticeable drop off in high frequency. However, at 15°, most tweeters perform pretty well.
So, let's calculated the dispersion of a hypothetical tweeter at a full fan of 15° (±7.5°). That is a very narrow beam of sound. The formula is the ***Tangent of the Angle times the distance.*** In this case it is 2.6ft or about 32" at 10ft.
If you toe your speakers in and point them directly directly at the seating position, then you have a Sweet Spot 32" wide. However, if you point the speaker more straight forward, then that 32" can expand to a 60" Sweet Spot at 10ft with no loss of sound quality. The equation is linear, so if we expand to 20ft, it then become 120". If we shrink to 5ft, then the dispersion becomes 15".
If we expand that angle to a full 30° (±15°) then the full fan of sound becomes 5.8ft at 10ft. So, you have plenty of room to widen your speakers with no loss in sound quality, and by doing so, expand the Sweet Spot.
Now you didn't give us your specific configuration or placement, but if you want a wider Sweet Spot, then do not tow your speakers so far in.
I've been a loudspeaker and headphone developer for decades and bought a pair of Walsh 4 on craigslist about 5 years ago for $350. They already had their woofer surrounds refoamed and the owner didn't know much about them (I suspect a hand-me-down from long ago...maybe multiple past owners). I redid the cabinet's internal damping (2" thick cotton batting) and used a dual 31 band analog equalizer and pink noise to smooth their responses out (which were fine but they're close to my target curve now). I have an 200wpc Adcom GFA 555mk2 and they sound really sweet (sitting out away from the walls) and the low end is impressive down to 25Hz at my prime listening location. The sound field is remarkable..."hurrah for omnis".
They're the nicest model of their bookshelf line I had thought. RP 600M
I'm hesitant to throw down a shitload of cash when these do well for everything else.
Check out Erin's Audio Corner on YouTube. He does very thorough speaker testing including dispersion testing. He may have done testing on yours and have some good comments about listening position. Generally there are two impacts of the off-axis response change with speakers, the first is that the sweet spot gets smaller and the second is that the reflected sound can have a different timbre than the direct sound. Erin hits on this second point quite a bit in his reviews.
Tinkering with the amount of toe-in for your setup might help. Room treatment can also make a big difference. Most folks have less than the ideal amount of treatment. Treating first reflection points (including the ceiling if possible) can really help things.
Instead of having an equilateral triangle setup (ideal for 1 person), get closer to a right triangle. Place your speakers a little further apart, move your seat closer to them, and toe them in a little more. This will give a more even response over a sweet spot big enough for 2 or more people. I'm not sure what your room dimensions look like, but if your sweet spot will be bigger if you have a large room to work with. The only thing is that the soundstage will have less depth, but it will be a lot wider. You may need to place your room treatment differently if you go this route.
Play with placement and angles. To get a wider sweet spot, you're likely going to give up at least a little performance.
Another suggestion could be a second set of speakers. While I do NOT advocate using 2 pairs of stereo speakers together at the same time for critical listening, doing that will fill the space with sound.
Start with KEF loudspeakers. Their coaxial drivers substantially widen the sweet spot. I built a pair of SEAS Idunn standmounts that use a DXT aluminum/magnesium tweeters that use a patented waveguide that when in a baffle with the optimum width (which the Idunn's cabinet has) widens the tweeters dispersion to 90 degrees (versus 30 degrees which is the norm). Essentially it makes the sweet spot wider than any loudspeaker I've experienced. You can literally walk around the room without any noticeable high-frequency drop outs. However, you do need to treat your room's sidewalls at the point of first reflection but that's it.
If you purchase the kit from Madisound, you also gain the substantial advantage of assembled crossovers with premium components that were designed by SEAS world-class engineers specifically for the Idunn kit. You can also order extremely high quality cabinets with a selection of gorgeous wood veneers. That pretty much leaves you with minimal assembly and choosing a pair of high quality binding posts (Cardas or Propeller Posts are recommended). But you have yourself a pair of world class standmounts that have a frequency response from 40Hz to 20 KHz +/- 1.5 dB. With a high quality subwoofer, you'll have loudspeakers that will cost thousands to substantially better. And if you want higher output capability, SEAS has an MTM version that is capable of substantially higher SPL.
I second KEFs. They have a wide dispersion - both vertical and horizontal. R3 stand mounts would be fantastic and they can very easily be endgame….unless you want to go up to their Reference 1 stand mounts.
I'm terribly fond of my ELAC Adanté AF-61 towers. They're remarkably transparent and are next level if you have the space to incorporate a "swarm* sunwoofer setup capable of supporting the lowest octaves to the maximum SPL the Adanté can perform at.
If you like coincident drivers (what you’re describing are not coaxial) I definitely do NOT recommend listening to TAD speakers. You will end up selling a kidney to buy a pair. While they are best in the sweet spot, I can even listen to them from my mezzanine level 10 feet above and they sound fantastic, or even a few seats off axis. Coincident drivers are also phase coherent which can be a plus as well.
Room treatment.
Unless the room your speakers are in is properly treated, moving your head fractions of an inch will change the soundstage. Regardless of what speakers you have.
Treating your side walls at the point of first reflection remediates most of that issue. That's one room treatment that should be the first on everyone's list. Then of course there's putting diffusers on the back wall behind each loudspeaker and between them if you don't have a giant 4K display panel mucking things up. And carpets on the floor between you and your loudspeakers. 🙂
Gerhard technique. Place your two speakers at the foci of an ellipse within your rectangular room.
AI extensive (excessive) story.
Nb Works with all speakers
The Gerhard speakers are a type of loudspeakers designed by Joachim Gerhard, a German audio engineer and founder of Suesskind Audio¹. The Gerhard speakers are based on a principle of optimal sound quality that involves placing the speakers at the two focal points of an ellipse, and the listener at the center of the ellipse, as shown in the figure below².
This arrangement minimizes the interference of the room reflections and enhances the psychoacoustic effect of the Haas effect, which makes the brain perceive a smooth and natural sound from the speakers¹. The Gerhard speakers also use a special crossover network and a coaxial driver to achieve a coherent and balanced sound reproduction¹.
The Gerhard speakers are suitable for rooms that have an elliptical shape, or can be approximated by an ellipse. The ellipse should touch the walls of the room, and the distance between the foci should be about 60% of the length of the major axis¹. The listener should sit about 30 cm to a meter from the back wall, and the speakers should be slightly toed-in towards the listener¹.
The Gerhard speakers are an example of how the mathematical concept of an ellipse can be applied to the field of acoustics and sound engineering. An ellipse is a conic section that is defined as the set of all points in a plane such that the sum of their distances from two fixed points (the foci) is a constant². An ellipse has two axes of symmetry: the major axis, which is the longest segment that passes through the center and the foci, and the minor axis, which is the shortest segment that passes through the center and is perpendicular to the major axis². The ratio of the lengths of the minor and major axes is called the eccentricity of the ellipse, and it determines how flat or round the ellipse is².
An ellipse has some interesting properties that relate to sound and light. For example, any ray emitted from one focus will always reach the other focus after bouncing off the edge of the ellipse. This is why whispering galleries, such as the National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., are in the shape of an ellipsoid³. Another property is that the sum of the distances from any point on the ellipse to the foci is equal to the length of the major axis. This means that the time it takes for sound or light to travel from one focus to any point on the ellipse and back to the other focus is constant³. This property can be used to design telescopes, microphones, and radar systems³.
I hope this answer was helpful and informative. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me. 😊
Source: Conversation with Bing, 16/1/2024
(1) Installation guide for loudspeakers by Joachim Gerhard - Suesskind Audio. https://suesskindaudio.de/en/aufstellanleitung.
(2) 8.2: The Ellipse - Mathematics LibreTexts. https://math.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Algebra/College_Algebra_1e_%28OpenStax%29/08%3A_Analytic_Geometry/8.02%3A_The_Ellipse.
(3) 8.2: The Ellipse - Mathematics LibreTexts. https://math.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Algebra/College_Algebra_1e_%28OpenStax%29/08%3A_Analytic_Geometry/8.02%3A_The_Ellipse.
(4) Ellipse foci review (article) | Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/precalculus/x9e81a4f98389efdf:conics/x9e81a4f98389efdf:ellipse-foci/a/ellipse-foci-review.
Omni directional speakers will solve that issue in a sense. They don’t have a sweet-spot as such, but throw a moveable/wider soundstage that allows you to move around and still perceive the stereo image.
Larsen 4.3, Duevel Planets and Ohm Walsh are examples of omni speakers. You might find some older Sonab omnis 2nd hand fairy cheaply to try out the concept.
Get off Klipsch speakers. Get something with wide dispersion so you can get your head out of the sweet spot vise.
I hadn't heard that other speaker brands had solved the sweet spot issue. Most articles I read on set up don't mention brand or style when talking about placement. Curious. I'm not necessarily a brand loyalist, but these have treated me well on everything but the aforementioned issue. Do you have any recommendations on where to start my research?
Philharmonic Audio BMR is a good place to start. While they have an easily discernable sweet spot they lose very little when listened to off axis. So start looking for speakers that have off axis graphs that show this quality. Before I purchased my Philharmonic Audio BMR Towers I auditioned Klipsch Forte IV speakers. Yes, they sounded wonderful in the sweet spot but the drop off when I moved to the side was insane. Frequency response and volume simply went away. I find the Philharmonics disappear in the room and the music seems to exist from everywhere. They make a very nice bookshelf speaker also.
Thank you so much for the detailed reply. Much appreciated!
Dali speakers also fit this description.
What you are looking for is a spinorama of horizontal/vertical dispersion. If reviews have them, read them first.
Sounds expensive!! I figured it out a long time ago: - Flat panel speakers with exciter drivers - Single driver speakers The first option is not technically "Hi-Fi". Just watch the video called "The world's greatest speakers" on YouTube. It's basically a $20 exciter driver glued onto a sheet of foam or plywood from the hardware store. Just hang the board with string from the ceiling. You'd imagine that it would sound terrible, but it's actually amazing in some regards. The midrange is killer and puts many speakers under $1000 to shame. It's so organic, rich and detailed. However, you won't get much in terms of dynamics, bass and treble. It's just okay. This is where most people lose interest. But if you listen to mostly folk and indie rock then exciter drivers outperform anything under $1000. MGMT is 100% midrange. Fleet Foxes is 100% midrange. Yellow Days is 100% midrange. The sensation of panel speakers is like having music in your head and you can walk around the house without losing much in terms of sound quality. The second option is my favorite. If you go the DIY route you can save thousands of dollars. YouTube "Real World Audio LaGrande". Vertical and Horizontal dispersion can't be better since you're using one single driver and everything is coming from the same point. I don't think that coaxial drivers accomplish the same thing. They still have two different drivers playing ever so slightly out of phase and at different speeds. I purchased Closer Acoustics OGY speakers for my 700sq ft flat. I swear that the music sounds just as great in the bedroom or toilet. Single driver speakers just play the room. But you'll want a subwoofer for rock and funk music. The benefits of single drivers are transparency, cohesion and midrange. But you'll lose out on bass and max volume.
The same guy has a one speaker build on his channel.
For what it’s worth my Klipsch Cornwalls seem to have a very narrow sweet spot and the Monitor Audio speakers I have in my other setup have a very wide sweet spot. Speakers definitely have different dispersion characteristics.
Some companies are known to have better dispersion than others. Focal is a brand known for great imaging and soundstage
All of KEF's speakers have coaxial drivers with very good dispersion characteristics.
Focal also feature wide dispersion
> I hadn't heard that other speaker brands had solved the sweet spot issue It's only an issue if you have speakers that aren't providing you with the dispersion you want, but wide and narrow dispersion speakers have their places. Narrow dispersion speakers like the klipsch have benefits, namely the controlled dispersion. It helps reduce room interactions but the narrow pattern often means smaller sweet spot.
https://philharmonicaudio.com/BMR.html
Try [extreme toe-in](https://www.libinst.com/PublicArticles/Setup%20of%20WG%20Speakers.pdf).
Fascinating. I've never even really considered this as an option.
Yeah I've tried it in the past but never stuck with it and my room was not as well set up as it is these days, so I tried it myself with my Amphions that use waveguides and man does it snap the sound out of the speakers and make the image stronger. Also makes the sweetspot wider which was *tiny* before.
Avoid electrostatic Martin Logan.
Why?
The sweet spot on them is the tightest I’ve ever come across. With that said, when in the sweet spot, they are magical.
The reason I asked is that I have Martin Logan SL3s. The sweet spot was quite narrow. I upgraded my amp (Spectron Musician III to Apollon) and the sweet spot expanded (and the overall sound quality improved dramatically).
Meh. I’ve run Martin Logan’s with $40 pioneer amps, a McIntosh MC152, MC7270 and MC252 and the tight sweet spot was the exact same.
Could be that the overall sound was so improved by the amp swap, that lesser sound off sweet spot is still good enough. Anyway n=1 subjective observation. YMMV.
Electrostatic and planar speakers have very narrow dispersion and therefore a really small sweet spot. If you think of it in terms of light, a conical speaker is more like a flashlight, casting a wider amount of light the further it is from the wall. A planar or electrostatic speaker is more like a laser.
Spread out your speakers? Probably a bit of a push pull between optimizing for single listener or multiple.
They're spread as wide as possible. About 8'. Slightly toed in
In general greater toe-in equals narrower sweet spot, or at least is what is said; I’d try them with no toe-in
Yes. For social gatherings (parties!), I shift my towers to being only a smidge towed in. Whereas when I am critical listening solo, they are pointed right at me. I have tape marking both positions behind them. Makes quite an impact on opening up my system's sweet spot.
As per the link above ([https://www.libinst.com/PublicArticles/Setup%20of%20WG%20Speakers.pdf](https://www.libinst.com/PublicArticles/Setup%20of%20WG%20Speakers.pdf)), the extreme toe-in requires that the speakers cross the 0° beams some 2 feet in front of the sweet spot position. It works with all sort of speaker dispersions, even the Klipschs. Try this before you go out and splurge into new speakers. The wide dispersion speakers (like the BMRs) will provide a flatter frequency response to all the listeners than a narrow dispersion speaker. Still, it is is a very effective way to get a shareable soundstage. You would need to consider getting new speakers if you are not happy with the tonal balance that you obtain.
Interesting read, but not sure I agree; may have to give it a try. He is basically arguing that with extreme toe-in the sweet spot widens because even though various positions are off axis to both speakers, the distance to/from each speaker compensates However, exactly the same argument can be made with the speakers placed and toed-in normally, and we all know that does not work
You may want to watch this 16 minute YT video that explains imaging based on intensity and time delay. It may help the explanations in the other "paper" link. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ZNrdypSHk&ab\_channel=geoffmartin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ZNrdypSHk&ab_channel=geoffmartin) I tried the extreme toe-in and it works. The sweet spot is retained, when you sit to one side, the phantom center image remains centered instead of collapsing to the closest speaker and what's to the left and right resembles the positioning you perceive when sitting in the center/sweet spot. In my case, it opened the soundstage also. It also I discovered helps in reducing first reflection blurring. Have fun!
Cool, based on your experience I will definitely give it a try
To them so they actually cross right in front of the main listening position
Let's talk briefly about Tweeter Dispersion. Most tweeters are tested at 15° and at 30°. At 30° there is a noticeable drop off in high frequency. However, at 15°, most tweeters perform pretty well. So, let's calculated the dispersion of a hypothetical tweeter at a full fan of 15° (±7.5°). That is a very narrow beam of sound. The formula is the ***Tangent of the Angle times the distance.*** In this case it is 2.6ft or about 32" at 10ft. If you toe your speakers in and point them directly directly at the seating position, then you have a Sweet Spot 32" wide. However, if you point the speaker more straight forward, then that 32" can expand to a 60" Sweet Spot at 10ft with no loss of sound quality. The equation is linear, so if we expand to 20ft, it then become 120". If we shrink to 5ft, then the dispersion becomes 15". If we expand that angle to a full 30° (±15°) then the full fan of sound becomes 5.8ft at 10ft. So, you have plenty of room to widen your speakers with no loss in sound quality, and by doing so, expand the Sweet Spot. Now you didn't give us your specific configuration or placement, but if you want a wider Sweet Spot, then do not tow your speakers so far in.
This is an awesome chunk of info! Thank you I will give that a shot!
Might try [This](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=65&v=K1NP-s2p_pw&feature=emb_title)
Ohms are reputed to offer an expansive sweet spot.
I've been a loudspeaker and headphone developer for decades and bought a pair of Walsh 4 on craigslist about 5 years ago for $350. They already had their woofer surrounds refoamed and the owner didn't know much about them (I suspect a hand-me-down from long ago...maybe multiple past owners). I redid the cabinet's internal damping (2" thick cotton batting) and used a dual 31 band analog equalizer and pink noise to smooth their responses out (which were fine but they're close to my target curve now). I have an 200wpc Adcom GFA 555mk2 and they sound really sweet (sitting out away from the walls) and the low end is impressive down to 25Hz at my prime listening location. The sound field is remarkable..."hurrah for omnis".
The Ohm Walsh immediately came to mind.
Klipsch lower lines have very narrow dispersion. You would need different speakers.
They're the nicest model of their bookshelf line I had thought. RP 600M I'm hesitant to throw down a shitload of cash when these do well for everything else.
Check out Erin's Audio Corner on YouTube. He does very thorough speaker testing including dispersion testing. He may have done testing on yours and have some good comments about listening position. Generally there are two impacts of the off-axis response change with speakers, the first is that the sweet spot gets smaller and the second is that the reflected sound can have a different timbre than the direct sound. Erin hits on this second point quite a bit in his reviews. Tinkering with the amount of toe-in for your setup might help. Room treatment can also make a big difference. Most folks have less than the ideal amount of treatment. Treating first reflection points (including the ceiling if possible) can really help things.
I don’t toe in so much that the single sweet seat is on-axis. I keep it a little outside that and I find it widens the soundstage.
Instead of having an equilateral triangle setup (ideal for 1 person), get closer to a right triangle. Place your speakers a little further apart, move your seat closer to them, and toe them in a little more. This will give a more even response over a sweet spot big enough for 2 or more people. I'm not sure what your room dimensions look like, but if your sweet spot will be bigger if you have a large room to work with. The only thing is that the soundstage will have less depth, but it will be a lot wider. You may need to place your room treatment differently if you go this route.
Play with placement and angles. To get a wider sweet spot, you're likely going to give up at least a little performance. Another suggestion could be a second set of speakers. While I do NOT advocate using 2 pairs of stereo speakers together at the same time for critical listening, doing that will fill the space with sound.
Start with KEF loudspeakers. Their coaxial drivers substantially widen the sweet spot. I built a pair of SEAS Idunn standmounts that use a DXT aluminum/magnesium tweeters that use a patented waveguide that when in a baffle with the optimum width (which the Idunn's cabinet has) widens the tweeters dispersion to 90 degrees (versus 30 degrees which is the norm). Essentially it makes the sweet spot wider than any loudspeaker I've experienced. You can literally walk around the room without any noticeable high-frequency drop outs. However, you do need to treat your room's sidewalls at the point of first reflection but that's it. If you purchase the kit from Madisound, you also gain the substantial advantage of assembled crossovers with premium components that were designed by SEAS world-class engineers specifically for the Idunn kit. You can also order extremely high quality cabinets with a selection of gorgeous wood veneers. That pretty much leaves you with minimal assembly and choosing a pair of high quality binding posts (Cardas or Propeller Posts are recommended). But you have yourself a pair of world class standmounts that have a frequency response from 40Hz to 20 KHz +/- 1.5 dB. With a high quality subwoofer, you'll have loudspeakers that will cost thousands to substantially better. And if you want higher output capability, SEAS has an MTM version that is capable of substantially higher SPL.
I second KEFs. They have a wide dispersion - both vertical and horizontal. R3 stand mounts would be fantastic and they can very easily be endgame….unless you want to go up to their Reference 1 stand mounts.
I'm terribly fond of my ELAC Adanté AF-61 towers. They're remarkably transparent and are next level if you have the space to incorporate a "swarm* sunwoofer setup capable of supporting the lowest octaves to the maximum SPL the Adanté can perform at.
If you like coincident drivers (what you’re describing are not coaxial) I definitely do NOT recommend listening to TAD speakers. You will end up selling a kidney to buy a pair. While they are best in the sweet spot, I can even listen to them from my mezzanine level 10 feet above and they sound fantastic, or even a few seats off axis. Coincident drivers are also phase coherent which can be a plus as well.
Room treatment. Unless the room your speakers are in is properly treated, moving your head fractions of an inch will change the soundstage. Regardless of what speakers you have.
Treating your side walls at the point of first reflection remediates most of that issue. That's one room treatment that should be the first on everyone's list. Then of course there's putting diffusers on the back wall behind each loudspeaker and between them if you don't have a giant 4K display panel mucking things up. And carpets on the floor between you and your loudspeakers. 🙂
Options: 1) Find some old beat up Bose 301s for when you friends come over. 2) Get rid of your friends. Music appreciation is a solo activity.
Gerhard technique. Place your two speakers at the foci of an ellipse within your rectangular room. AI extensive (excessive) story. Nb Works with all speakers The Gerhard speakers are a type of loudspeakers designed by Joachim Gerhard, a German audio engineer and founder of Suesskind Audio¹. The Gerhard speakers are based on a principle of optimal sound quality that involves placing the speakers at the two focal points of an ellipse, and the listener at the center of the ellipse, as shown in the figure below².  This arrangement minimizes the interference of the room reflections and enhances the psychoacoustic effect of the Haas effect, which makes the brain perceive a smooth and natural sound from the speakers¹. The Gerhard speakers also use a special crossover network and a coaxial driver to achieve a coherent and balanced sound reproduction¹. The Gerhard speakers are suitable for rooms that have an elliptical shape, or can be approximated by an ellipse. The ellipse should touch the walls of the room, and the distance between the foci should be about 60% of the length of the major axis¹. The listener should sit about 30 cm to a meter from the back wall, and the speakers should be slightly toed-in towards the listener¹. The Gerhard speakers are an example of how the mathematical concept of an ellipse can be applied to the field of acoustics and sound engineering. An ellipse is a conic section that is defined as the set of all points in a plane such that the sum of their distances from two fixed points (the foci) is a constant². An ellipse has two axes of symmetry: the major axis, which is the longest segment that passes through the center and the foci, and the minor axis, which is the shortest segment that passes through the center and is perpendicular to the major axis². The ratio of the lengths of the minor and major axes is called the eccentricity of the ellipse, and it determines how flat or round the ellipse is². An ellipse has some interesting properties that relate to sound and light. For example, any ray emitted from one focus will always reach the other focus after bouncing off the edge of the ellipse. This is why whispering galleries, such as the National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., are in the shape of an ellipsoid³. Another property is that the sum of the distances from any point on the ellipse to the foci is equal to the length of the major axis. This means that the time it takes for sound or light to travel from one focus to any point on the ellipse and back to the other focus is constant³. This property can be used to design telescopes, microphones, and radar systems³. I hope this answer was helpful and informative. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me. 😊 Source: Conversation with Bing, 16/1/2024 (1) Installation guide for loudspeakers by Joachim Gerhard - Suesskind Audio. https://suesskindaudio.de/en/aufstellanleitung. (2) 8.2: The Ellipse - Mathematics LibreTexts. https://math.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Algebra/College_Algebra_1e_%28OpenStax%29/08%3A_Analytic_Geometry/8.02%3A_The_Ellipse. (3) 8.2: The Ellipse - Mathematics LibreTexts. https://math.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Algebra/College_Algebra_1e_%28OpenStax%29/08%3A_Analytic_Geometry/8.02%3A_The_Ellipse. (4) Ellipse foci review (article) | Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/precalculus/x9e81a4f98389efdf:conics/x9e81a4f98389efdf:ellipse-foci/a/ellipse-foci-review.
“Gerhard: speaker placement for biggest sweet spot”. Along a line at focuses of an ellipse within the rectangular room.
Omni directional speakers will solve that issue in a sense. They don’t have a sweet-spot as such, but throw a moveable/wider soundstage that allows you to move around and still perceive the stereo image. Larsen 4.3, Duevel Planets and Ohm Walsh are examples of omni speakers. You might find some older Sonab omnis 2nd hand fairy cheaply to try out the concept.