« Nearfield » listening with floorstanders – anyone else ended up closer than “normal”?

Hi-Fi Corner
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Hi all,

I wanted to share a bit of my experience and open a discussion, as I suspect I’m not the only one in this situation.

My current system is a Naim 282 / HiCap DR / 250 DR into Sonus faber Sonetto V.
For the source, I use an ND5 XS2 as a transport into a Chord Qutest DAC powered by an Sbooster. I should add that I’ve experienced very similar behaviour when using a Naim nDAC as well, so this doesn’t seem specific to the Chord DAC.

The room is a living space of about 35 m² (377 square feet) not a dedicated listening room. The speakers are spaced about 2.3 m apart and placed roughly 1 m from the rear wall.

What surprised me over the last few weeks is that, after a lot of experimentation, I consistently get more depth, immersion and emotional engagement when I radically reduce my listening distance. I now tend to listen at around 1.1–1.3 m from the speakers (almost noe toe-in), which is clearly closer than the “classic” equilateral triangle usually recommended for floorstanders.

At this distance, the presentation becomes more immersive, more precise and nuanced, rhythmically stronger, with a much clearer sense of front-to-back depth. It sounds coherent and emotionally engaging. When I move back to a more “normal” listening position (equilateral triangle or close to it), the soundstage feels flatter and I lose that sense of being inside the music. I doesn’t always sound « right ».

This raised a few questions, and I’d be very interested to hear other members’ experiences:

  • Have some of you noticed a major improvement by significantly reducing listening distance, even with floorstanders?

  • Were you eventually able to recover a more conventional listening position (equilateral triangle), for example through room treatment or setup changes?

  • Or did you conclude that nearfield listening, and possibly headphones, was simply the best overall solution in your case?

One additional element that may be relevant: I’ve listened to music mostly using headphones since childhood, so my perception of immersion, depth and intimacy may be naturally biased toward a high ratio of direct sound versus room sound.

I’m not looking to criticise room acoustics or chase upgrades blindly, just trying to understand whether this is mainly down to listening history, room interaction, or something others here have also discovered over time.

Looking forward to your thoughts and experiences.

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This is not surprising at all and is mainly a result of room reflections. As you approach the speakers, the % of sound reaching your ear canal that is coming directly from the drivers increases. I also value that sense of being inside the music, and it takes a lot to achieve this from a regular listening position. A lot. Think room treatments, including bass treatments for absorbing nulls, accurate speaker positioning, power filtering, digital frontend noise reduction, etc. A good start would be to aggressively treat the primary reflection points if possible.

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This aligns with my system testing at various HiFi shops over the years. Normally a small sofa within 2m of the speakers. Always sounds great but also allows you to hear better differences between components as these are changed out. The differences are not always better or worse - just different.

At the end of the month I will reposition our system and try out new listening position between 2m and 5m from the speakers. 2m would require repositioning of seating and approval from the boss.

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Nearfield listening is s good way to minimise room effects.

In my present room, overall about 7m long and similar wide, but 6-sided not square, best speaker position is close to front wall, with associated listening position about 2.8m from front wall (close to the theoretical 0.38x room length). Near equilateral triangle put centre of my then PMC EV1i speaker baffles about 2.2m apart. Current speakers aren’t moveable so wider apart to not obscure window, and I sit close to the 0.38 from back wall position

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I’m in my snug now

It’s a small room approx 4m wide x 3.6m deep

I’ve PMC P5 2.2m apart and I’m 2.1m from front baffle

Driven by EXA100 the sound is immersive and massively enjoyable.

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I’d chose nearfield every time for that immersive experience. You could downsize to monitors, I’ve done nearfield with floorstanders but find high quality stand mount monitors a better tool for the job. They disappear better and you’ll likely get even more of what you found enjoyable.

I often consider my nearfield set up closer to headphone listening, but done in a way that gives me the stereo imaging headphones could never quite pull off,

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Or upsize to full size monitors!

It depends on course on whether the bottom end is important to you, and whether they work well with your room - but at 35m2 your room has a large area (though what matters in acoustics is actual dimensions rather than area), and thd sounc level at which you play can be significant.

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I love the soundstage of my nearfield setup. Speakers approximately 3m apart, 1.5 from rear wall, 2m away from me and toed in so the point straight to me. I’ve had this setup with various speakers over the years, but none have worked as well as my current single driver speakers. I think it’s all due to the sound coming from the same point which really helps the soundstage.

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After the optimising outlined below

I ended up with a near field system. David is a strong believer in near field giving the closest approximation to what the music sounded like in the studio and hence what it was designed to sound like.

.sjb

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When starting to read this post, my initial reaction was the same as a number have posted above, listening near field helps remove the room, which in many cases will have a significant impact on sound quality. For those without any room treatments, this is a great way to improve your sound or probably also a good way if you want to get an idea of just how much your room is potentially negatively impacting your sound.

My current speakers like to be positioned about 20% wider then listening distance which leaves me in a somewhat nearfield listening position. Because of this my speakers have significant toe in as they’re pointed straight at me. If memory serves, I’m about 6’ from the back of the speaker to the front wall, ~8’ from tweeter to tweeter & about 6.5’ listening distance.

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My room is difficult to say the least. Plaster, concrete and cinder block. Unequal side walls. Opens into a dining area. Narrow room I had all manner of rugs including wall hanging ones. I had so much acoustic treatments that our living room looked like stone hedge. The space ceased to be a living room. I tried near field, far field. You name it I tried it. We finally took out all the treatment. We kept just one tight weave rug in front of the speakers. Less was more. We optimized our sofa placement for our living room, to take advantage of our NYC skyline view, rather then for our speakers

We selected speakers, based on our dealer advice he felt were most likely to interact favorably with our difficult room. At one time our dealer lived in our apartment complex and was very familiar with its acoustic properties. He even lived in the apartment with the same layout as us.

The dealer’s tech placed our speakers where he felt they performed best. I know him and trusted his work and left him alone to do his job. I have not thought about optimizing speaker placement or room effects for quite a while.

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I agree. Floorstanders usually require more than nearfield listening distances, to allow their typically more widely spaced drivers to integrate properly, before the sound reaches your ears. (Of course, there are exceptions, like with “point-source” designs)

So the OP might be trading off some coherence for the immersion being experienced by sitting nearfield.

BTW, I very much enjoy both my desktop, nearfield system and my main, non-nearfield system. The former utilizes small, single-driver, crossover-less speakers (Audience The Ones), and is driven by a NAIT 50, with an NDS as the source (plus dual BK XLS200-DF subwoofers). The driver to ear distance is approximately 80-90cm or 32-36".

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Is this classed as nearfield listening in a room 19ft long, 9ft wide but with ATC SCM11 rather than floor standing speakers -

Rear of speaker to wall 5 inches or 0.13m

Tweeter to wall 19 inches or 0.48m

Distance between speakers 58 inches or 1.47m

Seating distance from speakers 76 inches or 1.93m

The speakers are on a long wall.

Interested to see comments, if any.

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I would say so

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What is unclear in that, is whether your distance between speakers is between the centre of the baffles (normal convention) or between their nearest edges. Also is your distance from the speakers the direct path distance, or the distance from centre point of the plane of the speaker baffles (or their centres if angled)?

My understanding of “nearfield ” is mainly that the sounds from the direct path from the speakers is very dominant, relative to any sound reflected from room surfaces, though I believe that in some quarterit has taken us very close, perhaps only speakers 3 to 4 feetand similar distance from each speaker to the listeners head, or less. The latter I suspect would only work and be appropriate with speakers having either only one driver or if multiple drivers then very tightly clustered together, and possibly precludes large bass drivers unless with concentric high frequency drivers.

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I would think anything 2m or less. Others would say speakers on a desk a 1 -2 feet.

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Distance is between centre of baffle and distance from head to centre of baffle.

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They are already treated with heavy and thick curtains, but it’s not enough…

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What speakers are you using? In my experience speaker toe in gives a brighter sound.

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I would love to have this kind of service in France.