Localization

Localizing, it sounds like what new neighbors should be doing upon move in. But in our case I refer to the opposite of what we spoke of yesterday, divorcing sound from the speakers. So many people I speak with scratch their heads when it comes to having their speakers disappear. Here's what's interesting. It is perhaps more difficult to have the opposite of disappearing speakers, where sound is localized with pinpoint accuracy. Let me share with you an example from an earlier post, the walls and rooms of speakers. In the early days of hi fi retailing there were walls of speakers at stereo shops. These speaker walls contained ten, sometimes twenty or more pairs of speakers, and potential buyers could select the pair they wanted to audition with the push of a button. Each button press connected the main power amplifier to the speaker and you could hear how they sounded. The switch boxes that retail shops used weren't just simple switches. Each selection adjusted volume so no speaker stood out more than others. Note: some less than honorable retailers would utz the volume a little higher on selected models to make them stand out more. But that's another story. Speaker pairs were setup with different distances between left and right channel, sometimes very far apart - it was a real hodge podge of sound, but the system served first time stereo buyers well enough. It launched an entire industry to the mass market. I watched with great fascination as customer after customer chose one sound over another and could not point to the pair playing. In fact, clever retailers placed small speakers they wanted to sell next to bigger ones they knew didn't sound as good. When customers selected the smaller speakers and were asked to tell the salesman which they thought was playing, inevitably they chose the bigger box. Makes sense, right? To their surprise it was the smaller box and customers, suitably impressed, took the smaller pair home. The point of all this is simple. Most well designed loudspeakers, those without glaring frequency aberrations, will disappear on their own. In fact, it is more difficult at times to localize the source of sound than it is to hide the source. Speaker disappear naturally. If yours do not, then room and setup are to blame. Let's tackle some of those issues tomorrow.