What is the best listening distance in theory?

[Mile]

I recently came across this post by Ilkka Rissanen. Most of you are probably familiar with the Genelec tables for selecting the right listening distance based on speaker size and direct sound balance.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...nelec-main-monitor.65845/page-14#post-2412135


My question is: what listening distance should one actually aim for in a HiFi setup? Should I prefer a position with more direct sound, one where direct and reflected sound are roughly balanced, or even one with more contribution from the room?


It seems plausible that for mastering and mixing, having the direct sound dominate makes the most sense. But in a HiFi context, many listeners describe overly "dry" setups as not very enjoyable. Does this mean that a bit more room influence can be desirable for HiFi listening?


I would be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences on this.

My question is: what listening distance should one actually aim for in a HiFi setup? Should I prefer a position with more direct sound, one where direct and reflected sound are roughly balanced, or even one with more contribution from the room?


I would be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences on this.

 

[OCA]

According to Linkwitz at least 2.4 m (≈8 feet) is required between speakers for proper stereo separation and in a equilateral triangle set up this places LP about 2m away from the midpoint of left and right speakers.

 

[Ellebob]

This is it depends! No clear answer. I agree with Ilkka and the layout, acoustic treatments, etc. will all affect the sound.

 

[AnalogSteph]

I don't think there's a single right answer for this one. Each listener's personal experience alone is going to have a major influence on their preferences, notably whether they grew up before or after the proliferation of personal audio and headphones. Those brought up listening to cans a lot are likely to gravitate towards a drier presentation and will be able to tolerate substantially wider stereo triangles.

That being said, I don't think any of us would particularly enjoy listening in an anechoic chamber, or being there full stop. A bit of room ambiance is definitely welcome, as long as it's appropriately delayed and diffuse.

Side note, obviously it's also going to depend on the speakers. If they are big and highly directional, you can get away with a larger distance than with ones with very wide dispersion.

 

[Keith_W]

My question is: what listening distance should one actually aim for in a HiFi setup? Should I prefer a position with more direct sound, one where direct and reflected sound are roughly balanced, or even one with more contribution from the room?

That is a huge can of worms you are opening. About the only thing ASR members are likely to agree on is: if room reflections > direct sound, it's bad. But the exact proportion of direct to reflected? Well ... read this 88 page thread where lots of people got mad at each other and the thread ended up getting closed.

 

[dfuller]

My question is: what listening distance should one actually aim for in a HiFi setup?

Depends on the room and the speakers and your preference.

 

[JiiPee]

Sorry, but I think there are too many imponderables as Jeeves (from Jeeves and Wooster) would say. The directivity of the speakers, listening room acoustics, personal preferences etc... all make it futile to try to give any meaningful answer. For analytical listening, I think the near field monitoring is the most suitable approach, as it reduces the problems arising from room acoustics. The closest distance is dependent on the speakers, but with good speakers designed for near field monitoring (like Genelec 8331/8341) something like 1 - 1.5 meters works fine and provides decent stereo separation.

 

[respice finem]

According to Linkwitz at least 2.4 m (≈8 feet) is required between speakers for proper stereo separation and in a equilateral triangle set up this places LP about 2m away from the midpoint of left and right speakers.

Interesting. Do you have a verifiable source for this? I could find it only for dipoles:

Sound_field_control_for_stereo

If it were "universal", it would mean, my both setups can have no proper stereo separation, which I can't confirm, really...
And not just my setups, but any nearfield setup.

 

[OCA]

That is a huge can of worms you are opening. About the only thing ASR members are likely to agree on is: if room reflections > direct sound, it's bad. But the exact proportion of direct to reflected? Well ... read this 88 page thread where lots of people got mad at each other and the thread ended up getting closed.

But OP is asking for ideal LP distance from speakers which determines stereo separation. Reflections vs direct sound is dependent on speaker distance to walls and again according to Linkwitz (tip: he's not a plumber), these distances should be adjusted such that first reflections should arrive at least 6ms after direct sound.

Interesting. Do you have a verifiable source for this?

I don't have the original Linkwitz paper but someone calculated minimum required room size that can satisfy 2.4m distances between speakers and 6ms first reflection delay together and ended up with a minimum room size of 5.19m x 4.33m (17.03ft x 14.21ft)!!!

PS: These are listening room setups not studio setups

 

[respice finem]

This seems to imply, if I set up a smaller triangle, it will be OK in a smaller room, even more if it's a treated room.

 

[Heinrich]

Sorry, but I think there are too many imponderables as Jeeves (from Jeeves and Wooster) would say. The directivity of the speakers, listening room acoustics, personal preferences etc... all make it futile to try to give any meaningful answer. For analytical listening, I think the near field monitoring is the most suitable approach, as it reduces the problems arising from room acoustics. The closest distance is dependent on the speakers, but with good speakers designed for near field monitoring (like Genelec 8331/8341) something like 1 - 1.5 meters works fine and provides decent stereo separation.

What exactly is analytical listening? With the other I‘m perfectly in agreement. But the ever so often mentioned analytical, or worse, critical listening remains a mystery to me.
Which part of the technology is put to the stress test, and does it matter? If it does, please teach me on the connection

 

[JiiPee]

What exactly is analytical listening? With the other I‘m perfectly in agreement. But the ever so often mentioned analytical, or worse, critical listening remains a mystery to me.
Which part of the technology is put to the stress test, and does it matter? If it does, please teach me on the connection

The way I understand it, it means exactly what it says i.e. the main goal is to analyze the sound instead of just enjoying what you hear. It is important to understand that this does not mean that a system that is good for analytical listening could not be also good for enjoyment of the music (which is something the subjective audiophool camp often claims). In practice it seems to correspond closely with objectively well performing system with good measured performance.

Typical examples of analytical listening include mixing and mastering tasks in studios.

 

[gorman]

Well ... read this 88 page thread where lots of people got mad at each other and the thread ended up getting closed.

I don't have anything meaningful to contribute to this discussion. I usually come here just to find best practices for similar questions.
But you genuinely made me laugh with the above...

 

[Heinrich]

The way I understand it, it means exactly what it says i.e. the main goal is to analyze the sound instead of just enjoying what you hear. It is important to understand that this does not mean that a system that is good for analytical listening could not be also good for enjoyment of the music (which is something the subjective audiophool camp often claims). In practice it seems to correspond closely with objectively well performing system with good measured performance.

Typical examples of analytical listening include mixing and mastering tasks in studios.

Got it … when in the studio, the right positioning of the ears relative to speakers should be part of the personnel‘s education. From management, which delegates the set-up to technicians up to the guru at the meter bridge, who will have their own secret tricks.
When at home, the positioning might be in question. For analytical aka studio like the best is, as said, a secret of individuals, the authorities at the controls. But what could be gained from listening critical? Frustration or delight—my choice would be delight w/ my preference. Preference, which one one might ask. That‘s something to be found individually, no prescriptions, not even guidelines, no standard. Do as u like, hard enough it seems.(Expectations too high, stereo is no virtual reality, no replica.)

 

[Keith_W]

I don't have anything meaningful to contribute to this discussion. I usually come here just to find best practices for similar questions.
But you genuinely made me laugh with the above...

Fighting is funny if you are a bystander Hence my suggestion for ASR's new logo:

 

[NotInYourHead]

Fighting is funny if you are a bystander Hence my suggestion for ASR's new logo:

View attachment 480578

Pink Panther really looks like he doesn't want to be there

 

[Arindal]

As rooms and their reflection pattern as well as reverb are pretty different, there is no serious way of predicting or predefining an ideal listening distance. Such thing does not exist, and cannot even be determined by measurements, as in practice you will always be surprised when trying to find the optimum. I would always look for achieving a level close to ideal when it comes to localization precision and stability, as well as delivering an amount of envelopment/ambience and depth-of-field from acoustic recording.

I always do this without looking at any measurements, just by testing recordings which I am very familiar with, and altering the listening distance while keeping an equidistant stereo triangle.

As a result, you usually get a certain distance which just gives perfectly stable localization, meaning a mono source sounds like mono, a phantom source stays where it is supposed to stay. That is a good starting point, and with many rooms and speakers this happens at surprisingly close proximity between listener and speaker.

Should I prefer a position with more direct sound, one where direct and reflected sound are roughly balanced, or even one with more contribution from the room?

My personal opinion is that it depends not only on the room´s reflection pattern and level, but also on the directivity of the speaker, both in terms of how much energy you can expect to have in the room, and its tonal balance.

Rooms with a nicely diffuse reflection pattern and speakers with more or less constant directivity over the localizable frequency bands, easily make a good match and you have a vast range in which you can alter the listening distance without noticing substantial change both in terms of ambience and localization. A good sign is getting reverb tonality being consistent over different listening distances, until you reach the point of subjectively dominant reverb, when everything just sounds too distant and reverberant.

Noticing a deterioration of localization stability as a result of increasing listening distance, as well as coloration of reverb, or reverb changing its character and perceived angle/attachment to the phantom sources, usually means you have a big problem. The former is often the case with speakers offering very uneven yet broad directivity pattern, as it usually comes with discrete reflections and deterioration of localization. The latter two are a bit more subtle and are commonly experienced with speakers offering continouesly increasing directivity, as too much of diffuse energy in the room from the lower bands chlorates the reverb and signals our brain that reverb is dull and not coming in from the same angle as phantom sources.

Interestingly, some people who are claiming to prefer neutral speakers (on-axis), on the other hand regard increasing directivity and resulting colorated reverb as an ideal. Never really understood the point. Despite from colorated reverb and dull ambience, the result in many cases is also frontal phantom sources ´in a vacuum´ instead of being embedded in the reverb.

 

[Heinrich]

Fighting is funny if you are a bystander Hence my suggestion for ASR's new logo:

View attachment 480578

Thank‘s! No fighting, though. Please, it‘s illusionary to expect stereo to be an illusion. The listener is invited to impose imagination onto the playback. A cosy seat might be more effective than the next more elaborated set of speakers, or following (non existent) rules.

 

[dasherzx]

in a totally untreated domestic space i prefer nearfield for more direct sound. but why not just do both and have multiple good speakers...
occasionally i drop by audio conventions to hear "treated sound"

 

[Karlinamillion]

In my humble it's equidistant between the band, the bar and the bogs (bathroom to our American friends)