Quick Question

[Zealot125]

My PMUs sound great in close quarters, but RF-7s for example sound

awful up close but thousands of times better with some space. My

question is, what determines whether a speaker sounds good for near/far

field listening?

[DrWho]

It basically comes down to the polar response and the distance between drivers.

Speaker manufacturers are clever and realize that their speakers are

going in real rooms (not test chambers) so they will tweak the balance

of the speaker accordingly. Sometimes they even sacrifice on-axis

response to compensate for off-axis issues because the reflected sound

makes up about half of what you hear. There really are a lot of tricks

that can be done (shifting crossover points and changing slopes can

sacrifice vertical dispersion for changes in horizontal dispersion, the

alignment of drivers on the baffle, the size and shape of the baffle,

modifying dispersion patterns of the tweeters, changing the size of

drivers, etc etc...)

One great example of this is with the heresy...it was designed to be

put in the corner of the room where you have certain boosts in the low

end (aka, the speaker is using the "reflections" in the corner to boost

the bass response). So if you take the heresy out of the corner it

instantly sounds anemic / midrangy. If Klipsch had designed the speaker

to sound fine outside of the corner, then it would in turn sound boomy

when you put it in the corner.

So there is obviously some decision making going on to make a speaker

as room friendly as possible. But in reality, the best solution to the

problem would be to custom build speakers to the room or build the room

around the speakers (or ideally do both).