bizyz wrote:

In the new issue of Stereophile,Thomas Norton states in his review of the Monitor Audio Gold floor standing speaker that he is not a big believer of imaging outside the boundaries of the left and right speakers.Would not anyone auditioning speakers want not only good imaging in depth and height but a broad from left to right sound stage that extends well beyond the speakers themselves?

With a pair of perfect loudspeakers, the stereo image will only extends beyond the physical positions of the speakers when there is anti-phase content in a recording. If the stage is wider than the speaker locations when there is no out-of-phase content, this will probably be due to strong reflections from the sidewalls.

For a detailed analysis of stereo imaging, see my 1981 articles on the subject at www.stereophile.com/content/stereo-image.

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

Hi John -
it's not really on this particular topic, but while you're here, I hope I can catch you...

In the measurements of speakers, in addition to the freq resp @ 1W/2.83V, I think it would be helpful to see plots @ 3 or 4 dB levels ie. 85, 90, 95, 100dB as this relates more to how you listen and would also indicate the speaker's linearity - which I think is important - and also show when it begins to break up and/or run out of steam (most likely at the low end), unless it is generally known (to all but me) that all speakers are generally very linear already...

Also, a similar set of measurements of distortion and/or the waterfall plots may also give insight to how the speaker behaves at listening levels.

Thanks for your valuable time,
Jim