Toeing speakers in, whats the point?

[GranteedEV]

I find it interesting reading how much importance some people attribute to off-axis performance. Among the speakers I own, the ones that subjectively seem the most consistent on- and off-axis are among my worst sounding speakers. (The designers intended to have great off-axis performance, and thought that that was important in good speaker design. At least subjectively, they succeeded in achieving far off-axis sound that is very much like on-axis sound.)

Keep in mind that electrostats that you love are unique.

As dipole speakers, they have a somewhat figure 8 polar radiation pattern.

The well-off axis response is actually "canceled out", therefore it does not
reflect off of side walls and color the sound. In effect it sort of doubles as "a room treatment". If you sit at the sweet spot you get a great effect, but it won't be the widest sweet spot because as electrostats they essentially "beam" much of the sound.

On the other hand, with box speakers, the off axis response can make or break what you hear at the listening position. If it's similar, it adds to the realism. If it's dissimilar, it just colors the timbre. If it's too wide, the room can dominate depending on placement. If it's too narrow, the shift towards too wide as you go down in frequency causes an inconsistency. Well-controlled directivity is the key to getting good sound in an actual room without padding the first reflection points down with OC703. As you might know, too much absorption in a room can take away the feeling of a room being a real life place. Diffusion alone won't help you with a bad monopole speaker.

A dynamic dipole like a Perfect 8, NaO, or Linkwitz Orion, is of course, a marriage of the "best" of the two above sorts of speakers. The desired reflections contribute to realism, the sweet spot is wide, and the undesired reflections cancel out.

The tradeoff there is that you can't get the same output out of a dipole that you can out of a box speaker with the same drivers and amplification. Like any speaker, it's far from perfect. I would argue the biggest shortcoming is that there simply aren't really that many different choices on that front.

But you get my point. It's not so much the raw off axis response, but the polar behaviour and how it affects the room.

That's where horn loading probably also comes into play. Speakers like the Revel Salon2, Gedlee Summa, JBL Synthesis, and Behringer Truth use waveguides of sorts to control polar response while getting you the output of a monopole. Again, the goal is some level of CONTROl over directivity, not just the most dispersion.

 

[yepimonfire]

the room i have the speakers in has laminate flooring and of course all hard ceilings/walls. this is the only room ive had issues getting decent imaging and acoustics in. the room i had them in before was carpeted.

 

[j_garcia]

Get a rug to put in front of the speakers. Heck, you can put a rug or curtains on the wall too, to reduce some frequencies.

 

[yepimonfire]

well i have 8 bass traps on the ceiling wall conjunctions, this room sounded like a cave before i put them up. bass traps do a good job at taming reverb and echo at all frequencies, as for treating the spot behind me, there is a window behind the sofa and it literally covers the whole seating area, we'll see what my parents say when i try putting panels on the window i think treating the ceiling and walls behind the speakers as well as the side walls will help somewhat, the speakers are on the long wall because i get much better bass that way, firing long ways into the room i had nulls at all different frequencies, BAD nulls, like 70 hz was inaudible in certain areas of the room even with the volume at max. the rug in front of the speakers im sure will help. i have an idea of what to do with room treatments, i just have to save up some money to get them. by the way, my speakers have excellent horizontal dispersion, i can sit off to the side of them and get the same frequency response, they are vertical MTM's. the center is a horizontal MTM........go figure, but i dont have issues with the center, it's a center....how much stereo imaging can you get from it?


in the room i had them in before with carpet and the bass traps covering much more area due to it being a small bedroom, the speakers sounded almost like headphones when it came to imaging, one of the things i love about polk and one of the reasons i continue buying them is because of how they image. providing the room is treated well and has good acoustics, if you sit right in the middle of them you can hear sounds that appear to come from way outside of the speakers, it doesn't sound like it's coming from speakers at all so i honestly don't get what TLS is getting at with his criticisms. i am not a "fanboy" of anything, if some other company starts making speakers at this same price point that sound as good or better, then i'll start buying from them. i like infinity's speakers too, only reason i never snagged a pair is because they don't keep going for a steal on newegg like the polk's monitor series does both infinity and polk audio make speakers that sound better then speakers costing much more at a better price, actually infinity makes some of the most accurate speakers i've heard. ok i'm done ranting. thanks for all the good info guys.

 

[yepimonfire]

so a few observations about my "problem" the center image seems to drift depending on frequency, higher midrange such as the letter "S" seems to try and drift to the left of the stereo image, its not an issue with the speakers because not only did i swap them, i used different speakers to try and see if i could do something with it. no luck. certain frequencies seem to drift to the right of the stereo image. unfortunately there is a very large window behind the listening area, curtains are out of the options because the landlord won't allow them to be put up, only blinds (i know makes no sense but whatever) and the sofa is pushed up to it, so treating that is out of the question. i also noticed even with a center channel being used i get the same drifting at certain frequencies with voice locked into the center channel. things like snare drums will float in the center almost perfectly. i noticed if i slouch down in the sofa so that the back plush area of the sofa is behind my ears it centers perfectly. this is quite an awful room in the high frequency and mid frequeny areas. i will just have to live with it the only thing i can think of is using some sort of eq to try and tame the problem but this requires more money then i have (will have to get three two channel 32 band eq's and all seperate amplifiers). i guess i can be thankful i can get decent bass. nothing is more annoying then bloated bass or gaping nulls.