For a couple of years now I've been optimizing the living room stereo for listening at at the center back of the room. I created a new EQ for this called the "Movie EQ." By necessity it had to be very different from the "Hotseat EQ" for listening closer to the speakers. The Hotseat EQ sounds very boomy in the back of the room. The periphery of the room magnifies the room modes, whereas the center position tend to cancel them out too much.
During this time I haven't bothered to sit at the old hotseat position. I've loathed the idea of dragging my full back recliner back into the center position, especially since I try to show at least one movie a week. I also feared all my optimizing for the back of the room had messed up the sound at the old hotseat, though I retained the original Hotseat EQ for the subs as a separate memory (which can be quickly loaded at pushbutton through my Insteon/Universal Devices home control system). But I have no separate EQ for the midrange which has gone through a lot of changes too, and changes I made to the speaker angling cannot be easily reversed.
I bought a new lightweight low back folding chair for the hotseat position, but hadn't gotten around to trying it yet until the weekend just past. I feared the hotseat position would be all messed up now. But I started trying it on Saturday and then on Sunday found a truly wonderful position, about further 6 inches back from the original hotseat position with the recliner. The new position is probably required because I changed the speaker angling to solidify the center image when listening in the back. The speakers are less canted inwards, which is necessary to get a stable center image at all in the back of the room.
Listening to Citizen Steely Dan Disc 3, in this new hotseat position with a lowback chair, with the hotseat EQ selected, the imaging was Spooky Good. It seemed like Donald Fagan and all the other musicians were right there in front of me. Nothing I've heard elsewhere for a long time has given me that same feeling.
The back of the room "Movie" listening position simply does not and cannot compare with this. A much wider angle between the speakers is required, and there may be other advantages of being close up to the speakers. There is much more direct sound from the speakers. Some have described this as being like "Giant Electrostatic Headphones," even when both speakers are still in front. (There are problems with trying to put both speakers exactly on the sides for stereo, though it can be interesting to play with.)
I do really need to use the hotseat position and EQ for serious listening, which I should do more often.
At the new hotseat, the speakers are about 45 degrees to my left and right on either side. I'm about 5 feet from the plane of the speakers, and they are 5 feet apart. But where to measure this is tricky. If I measured from the middle of the speakers they would be over 6 feet apart, making the angle greater than 45 degrees. But I now believe what is most important is the angle to the closest part of the active membrane, which is only about 2 inches inwards from the outer edge of the speaker towers. That angle is somewhat less than, but still close to 45 degrees. I would guess it is about 40 degrees.
I think the relative speaker position and angling is the number one most important thing in getting Spooky Good Imaging.
It was my friend Tim who originally told me, over 15 years ago, that I should experiment with sitting close to the speakers at a very wide angle, greater than the 30 degrees often suggested. He was right.
He also said the exact position of the speakers and angling might not be the same for every person, because our outer ears are not the same.
If you keep the speakers at a fixed position, you move forwards along the center image to find the place where the center image disappears. That means the angle is too wide and you are too close to the speakers. So then you move backwards until the center image reappears. Around where the center image reappears is the best possible position (or angle between the speakers). Further back, and you get proportionally less direct sound, and the image becomes more diffuse.
That was essentially what I did on Saturday to find the new listening position.
Alternatively, if the listening position is fixed, you could move the speakers in and out from the wall, but for me and my speakers that would be exceedingly challenging for both physical and technical reasons. I have the sub to panel delays dialed in precisely, for one thing, and changing the panel positions would mess that up.
Even if you ultimately end up moving the speakers, it's far easier to experiment by moving yourself closer and farther from them.
In the new position, the center is so perfect and well focused it's clear that my optimizing the speaker position, angling, and delays for the back has not messed them up for the hotseat. If anything, it's far better than it was before now.
I purposefully did not angle the speakers outwards as much for the back as might have been beneficial there, hoping it would not mess them up for the hotseat, and my compromise for the back has indeed worked out perfectly for the front while being "good enough" for the back.
I think having a lowback chair is good too. When you are sitting in a high back chair, you get near reflections from the back of the chair in your ears. These reflections matter more for imaging than for frequency response, but the frequency response is affected too, as I noticed when doing measurements. I generally have always done my measurements with the chair in place because that is that is what you do when listening.
There's a long story here. When I bought the current chair around 2008 I intended to take it to a furniture repair place and see if I could have the back shortened. I knew this would be expensive but I figured it would be worth it. I never got around to doing that.
The cheap folding chair I bought, which has flexible and ventilated plastic seat and back, is adequate but not as comfortable as I would like. I think I will explore other options, like a director's style chair I already have, or others
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