Here’s a pleasant video, something a bit different from the usual.
Nothing technical here!
I believe many of you will enjoy it. 
It touches on a lot of the things we often think about, without going into tedious or overly technical details.
It’s a fascinating conversation between a sound engineer and an audiophile; two experts in their own fields, brought together by a shared passion: listening.
The video is quite long, but it’s divided into short segments.
‘Audiophiles buy music to listen to their Hi Fi’ Alan Parsons
That’s a highly polarising topic!
But why polarising?
Well, because science very clearly contradicts “experience”.
So who’s right?
…
I’m in the middle of the Atlantic, on my little sailing boat.
All around me, right out to the horizon, the ocean is flat.
A straightforward observation: everything is flat as far as the eye can see.
Conclusion based on experience: the Earth is flat.
The problem is that the experience is biased.
Why? Precisely because I’m on the ocean.
Climbing up to Mont Blanc is sufficient to contradict my first experience.
The conclusions drawn from the sailor’s experience are all wrong, because the experience isn’t relevant for answering the original question: is the Earth flat?
And it’s exactly the same with the question in the title.
Enjoy the video :
Hi Thomas,
I just wanted to give you thanks for originally creating this thread and for the last couple of video links that you have posted. All good sources of information for informed debate and discussion.
Every day is a school day:- having watched the long video I listened to the Mariah Carey track ‘My All’. As a result of what I heard - and as an experiment - I have decided to remove some diffusion from my front wall to see if I can achieve superior consistency in the acoustic presentation of the particular recording referenced in the video. Thanks for posting the link!
Also, I want to thank @BBK for highlighting the typical 2 metre separation for loudspeakers used in studios. However, instead of experimenting with Roon or other DSP correction matrix tools, I did the simpler thing of … moving my loudspeakers slightly closer together. I also moved the listening position slightly to maintain the equilateral triangle for the loudspeakers and listening position. This small change produced a more pronounced perception of depth in the soundstage and as a great side effect, the Linn Space Optimisation software concluded it had less work to do.
Thanks to BBK for the detail postings on this thread.
2m, 3m, 4m… spacing depends of course on your listenng distance! In studios it might be less than in larger domestic lounges.
With my last speakers, I determined optimum positioning using theory refined with REW measurement, best listening position distance from front wall being pretty close to the theoretical 0.38 of room front-back distance, speakers each in front of the 3.6m wide window, IIRC about 2.7m between baffle dentres. Though heavy speakers were easy to move, ‘walking’ them to beyond the window sides to a resting position, OK for non-critical listening. When I changed to my current speakers, effectively immoveable, I didn’t want them in front of the window. Instead they are close to the previous speakers’ resting positions, baffle centres maybe about 4.2m apart, and best listening position 4.4 m from front wall = 0.62x dstance from front to rear walls ( - 0.38 from rear).
(All measurements from memory.)
Hi I_B,
I was certain I had the best position for my loudspeakers before I made my recent adjustment. It was practically an equilateral triangle to the listening position with a 2.3m separation instead of now 2m. The loudspeakers were 1.06m from the front wall as was the distance of listening position to back wall. This arrangement was necessary because the room is 4.52m long by 4.12m wide by 2.4m high and I need to accommodate the TV screen on a electric mount moving forwards and down for when we watch movies.
In this very cube like situation, the loudspeakers were stimulating the front-to-back axial mode of the media room more than I would have liked. Nevertheless, Linn SO figured this out and was providing appropriate (nulling) correction for the axial modes front-to-back (~37Hz) and left-to-right (~42Hz) and also second harmonics of these when interacting with the floor-to-ceiling axial mode (~72Hz), all in a spatial region very close to the listening position. It also sounded pretty good.
Now that I have moved the main loudspeakers and listening position - and also added the Titan Sub Bass (very close behind the listening position) - I have much more control of the room modes. Consequently Linn SO has decided it does not need to do anything apart from very small shallow null (of less than -1.8dB at 82Hz) to account for the different left and right pressure profiles at the listening position. I estimate that these differences are due to the windows in the right wall and the entry door at the back right of the room which has less deep acoustic treatment compared to the back left of the room. Now the room sounds even better - more depth to the soundstage, more ‘believable’ on recordings of live concerts.
