My experience with speakers I owned both box and open baffle, they all benefited from being at least 3 feet from the wall. And there’s an area that the box speakers sounded best and a couple feet further out where the open baffle sound best. I don’t think it’s my imagination, but possible partly so.
Plus they all needed room treatments to bring out the imaging potential.
Hi,
did you maintain listening distance? If you keep your listening seat stationary and move only speakers closer to front wall, they are now farther from you. What happened here is not only front wall early reflections changed but you increased SPL of all early reflections and their delay got shorter in relation to direct sound, which kind of makes things worse regardless of speaker radiation type. What you'd actually want to do, to get better depth, is to reduce listening distance! This will lower SPL of early reflections relative to direct sound, put the early reflections to higher off-axis angle and likely further attenuating them, as well as increase path lengths of the reflections, the delays. This would reduce local room sound effect on perception so there is better chance depth baked into the recorded sound comes through to perception.
I claim that it's more important to care about distance between listener and speakers, than distance of speakers to wall(s), although that is also important. I could almost bet that notion of the proper distance of speakers from front wall has actually more to do with the listening distance reducing, than what the actual front wall does to the sound, because people tend to sit where their sofa happens to be (practical listening position) and only think about the speakers but not their own position.
In this sense, depth, and proper stereo image is not property of the speakers, or the room, but also your own auditory system, and especially your own auditory system. When speakers and the room align (with appropriate positioning regarding directivity and acoustics) so that your auditory system pays attention to direct sound, it will suppress the local room effects from perception and you'll perceive mostly what's on the recording. I bet this is achievable almost regardless of speakers and room acoustics, just use appropriately small listening triangle and utilize toe-in as necessary.
Of course there is a lot of detail and nyance to all this, like stereo crosstalk between ears affecting, particulars with the perception that could be optimized with toe-in, some speakers are too big to be listened close enough, head shadowing, actually not that well implemented speaker making it all seem lifeless, and so on. The thing is to acknowledge there is no one single thing that makes perception this or that but it's always combination of multiple things, and when speakers or listener moves it's never just one thing changing.
Also my text here lifting the listening distance to a pedestal is kind of simplified in grand scheme, but it's still a good basis to get good sound. Listening distance is one of the critical things often overlooked when people sit on their couch and just move the speakers, when it would be more effective to move the listener instead! Changing listening distance is very effective, as it does multiple things to early reflections, delay attenuate and change angle. And it's easy, much easier to change your own location than location of two speakers.
Similar message for OP, I think dipole is not flawed, you just have to understand strengths and weaknesses of dipole and position them correctly. Whether that suits the particular situation or not is question one should think about before buying dipoles. Ideal dipole has quite narrow pattern both vertical and horizontal direction, which enables great attenuation toward first specular reflections, if you just position and toe-in things proper, but the proper positioning might not be practical!
So, again, it's not feature only of speakers but everything, the speakers need to be positioned in room so that everything aligns so that your auditory system pays attention to direct sound, and provides your conscious perception a good illusion embedded in to the recording. Heck, some times we don't even want that, but relaxing sound instead, so the listening distance ought to be different, but no worry it's easy to change just move yourself bit further from the speakers. It's not about perfect speakers, or perfect this and that one thing, it's all a system including your own audio processor inside the head. What good sound needs is ability to make the whole system aligned to provide what you want to perceive, and that doesn't need to be static but you could change the perception at will by moving a little.
Also what is it actually what makes nice depth perception? Everything seemingly behind speakers? What's the difference having everything in front of speakers, or between? It is things being both close and far, and anything between, right? Since I have only very little experience on dipoles here is serious question, can dipoles do both close and far or is it just the far? Why not, it should, right?
What one needs to be asking is how to make best out of a situation? Basically, one can always reduce listening triangle size to small enough, and play with it, doesn't have to be static. You can go and do that right now with what you have there in your room, change the perception by moving yourself closer to speakers. Toe the speakers in for proper tonal balance if you need to. If situation with directivity and acoustics is bad, listening triangle might get really small and here is the real generic problem: Proper speakers, proper positioning in relation to the acoustic environment and you might get good sound all the way to practical listening distance.
Perception of depth can get mixed cues from the room, like floor reflection, and is also reduced by stereo crosstalk so ideally you'd had one speaker at the center (as well). Search for member
@j_j posts about this topic.
northwardacoustics.com
tapeop.com
www.tapatalk.com
Where did you hear them if I may ask?
