Determining Speaker Toe-In

[silentt29]

Are there any objective means of determining the degree of speaker toe-in, or is it best determined by ear? I feel it has something to do with horizontal directivity and beamwidth measurements, and possibly room measurements. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[DSJR]

From a subjective viewpoint, I'd suggest 'by ear' for many models with unknown dispersion characteristics.

Some nice speaker manfacturers do make suggestions for the best listening axis, for example from memory, my three way ATC's of old used the midrange driver axis and mid-tweeter drivers set on the inside of a stereo pair as best for setting height and toe in. 'BBC derivative' types seem to need the main tweeter axis and toed in to point at the listener. Popular PMC slim types seem to like the tweeter just above but the hf peak they introduce in means they balance best pointing straight ahead and the listener twenty or thirty degrees off axis.

The tests here can be an enormous help if one can learn to roughly interpret the dispersion graphs and in fact, I'd say it's the *vertical* dispersion and interference that could maybe be beneficially adjusted by tilting back or foward a little.

Of course, all my text above can be rendered null and void depending on the room you have and the reflections therein!!!

Just my thoughts...

 

[bigjacko]

In case no one mention it, there is already reverberation in the recordings, make further reverberation in room will be new content that was not in the recording. This will be what people call it bigger sound stage, but you can decide yourself if it is good or bad.

 

[Frgirard]

Are there any objective means of determining the degree of speaker toe-in, or is it best determined by ear? I feel it has something to do with horizontal directivity and beamwidth measurements, and possibly room measurements. Any help would be appreciated.

In studio, the rule is 25 30 degrees.

 

[audio2design]

When you accept that 2 channel audio as we do it is hopelessly flawed, then you accept that most of what we do is just trading off one bad thing for another. Toe-in can allow you to play with frequency response and direct / reflected energy and initial wavefront levels. It can also change the cross-talk response.

 

[audio2design]

In case no one mention it, there is already reverberation in the recordings, make further reverberation in room will be new content that was not in the recording. This will be what people call it bigger sound stage, but you can decide yourself if it is good or bad.

Except the reverberation was just as perceived with the listening setup used by whoever mixed/mastered it, and since your playback situation is much different are you getting less or more than they intended? The basic concept of reproduction as intended is a fairy tale we tell ourselves, since almost none of us are using the same listening setup as what was used during mixing/mastering and certainly not using the same ears/brain/mood.