“Sweet Spot” Position
Dear Gary: Thanks for the excellent reading that I have enjoyed over the past few years. My question is pertaining to the listening position known as the “sweet spot.” Like most males, I have a wife. Fortunately, she is just as enthusiastic about our home theatre as I am. My setup has a chair in the sweet spot. It then has a chair right next to it. We were constantly fighting over who could sit in “the chair.” So, we rearranged the chairs so that they were room centered with the sweet spot now pointing on the inboard armrests of the two chairs. Well, now there is no sweat spot. What is the proper loudspeaker positioning in this scenario? If you had to shift two chairs in your holosonic lab so they were as room centered as possible, where would you point the loudspeakers? I figure there are three choices. 1. Leave the sweet spot in the room center. 2. Point the loudspeakers so they crisscross each other to the opposite side (Left loudspeaker aligned to Right side chair and vice versa). 3. Have the left loudspeaker align with the left chair and vice versa—creating a wider soundfield. We experimented with all three and we think that the third scenario is best. What do you think?
Phil Helbig, North Little Rock, Arkansas
Editor-In-Chief Gary Reber Comments:
From an audio perfectionist point of view scenario #1 is the ONLY choice. This is important to optimize the phantom imaging between left front and left back and right front and right back as well as between left back and right back. That is what “holosonic” is all about—360 degrees equidistant loudspeaker positioning with all channels of equal full range capability and amplification.
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