Quote:


Cons:
1)More sidewall reflections due to narrow room possibly reducing wide soundstage.

Anyone else have any input as to the benefits of each?

My room is 23' wide and 18' deep. I think the wide room allows a much wider sound image by minimizing the crossed reflections.



Hi cygnusx1,

You've made a number of good points. Certainly by using the wider dimension of the room you can put your main front speakers farther apart, thus achieving a wider soundstage.

But your #1 comment under "Cons" contradicts much of the evidence that we've discovered during listening tests and measurements of loudspeakers' lateral dispersion. In fact, the 1st and 2nd sets of sidewall reflections from the walls to each side of a speaker set up in conventional fashion in a rectangular room actually enhance the soundstage and sense of "spaciousness" perceived by listeners.

Speakers that we tested whose off-axis dispersion measured reasonably smooth and which mirrored the on-axis frequency response were always ranked higher and more spacious sounding than models with poor or choppy off-axis dispersion.

You could argue, of course, that every room setup is so unique that other factors of a given room may overpower or dominate the perceived soundfield.

Alan Lofft,
Axiom Resident Expert (Retired)