Paul Barton said some interesting things on this subject, about 50:00-55:00 minutes into this video:
You are talking about speaker auditioning under familiar conditions, if not one's home then some other very familiar location. What is worthless is trying to judge a speaker (or most any other component) in a hotel room at an audio show. Well, according to Paul Barton, it only takes about 20...
audiosciencereview.com
This has been my experience too. Tough to get right though, but once you get there, it may be very audible/tangible. Most people like to think that speaker cabinets do not vibrate/transfer any energy to the floor and adjacent solids, but this isn't always true...
Thanks, I listened to that section. Paul's description of feeling the bass, the kick drum etc, with speakers coupled to the floor "resonates" with my experience
That's why I abandoned spring-based footers after trying them. They so fully decoupled the sound from the floor I no longer felt those waves of bass through my floor/sofa
during orchestral climaxes, or anything with deep bass, and also there was just a general lack of "room feel" and less solidity. Even though the bass did tighten, the speakers took on more of an electrostatic presentation.
That's why I undertook a fun little project of experimenting - I wanted to find the right amount of coupling so I didn't lose the palpability of bass etc, with just the right amount
of absorption/decoupling, to also tighten up the bass and have the speakers disappear even more. My current combination seems to have hit that mark as well as I
have heard: tight bass, but still dense and palpable and punchy, and a total disappearing act for the speakers bottom to top.
The speakers are looking great, new shoes always look sharp.
Also, not a new thing but I like the way you’ve shamelessly pulled them into the room.
Heh. That's a case where necessity happily coincided with preference!
I'd always shamelessly pulled the speakers forward of the rear wall in that listening room, for the smoothest sound. But for most of the history of the room, the speaker/listening sofa position were 180 degrees from what they are in the photo. All my speakers through the years used to be where the sofa is, bay windows behind them, pulled somewhat in to the room, equipment/amps between them. In that photo, my projection screen is on the wall behind the speakers, which is where my listening sofa used to reside.
Once I decided to add a projection screen, the only available wall was where my listening sofa sat. Before the reno, I initially did some testing, switching my seating to the bay window side of the room (as it is now), with the speakers on the other side (as they are now). And to my dismay the acoustics went to crap! The speakers just did not sound good any more (some weird suck-outs etc). That was a depressing sign, so I made sure to hire an acoustician when I renovated the room. The end result was a much better sounding room than I'd ever had, and any speakers seem to sound fantastic.
As to the current speaker position you see in the photo: necessity entails that I pull them out that far because my home theater speakers are already taking up the space on either side of the projection screen. So even if I wanted to, I could not put those Joseph Audio speakers against the back wall. And since they have to be pulled out, I have to pull them out enough so that there is ample space to move in and out of the room (or they'd block the entrance to the room). But that works perfectly because they are exactly where I would want to place them, relative to my listening position, even if I didn't face that ergonomic problem. I've always liked a closer listening position for more envelopment. Plus, I do have some leeway in moving the speakers back a bit, but I have a bunch more leeway with my sofa too: My sofa is on big furniture sliders making it very easy to move back and forth a couple of feet. So whenever I want a further listening distance (tends to focus the sound more, and get more "live" sounding), I just slide my sofa back a bit.
In an ideal world I'd love to try some bigger horn speakers for fun, or some of the old school bigger box designs, but aesthetically and ergonomically they won't work for my room. Even the modest sized Harbeth SuperHL5+ speakers seemed a poor fit. Slender, smaller speakers like the Joseph Perspectives are great because they take up very little visual width, so it doesn't intrude on the projection screen behind them, plus they sound far bigger and more ballsy than they look.
