Buddha
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What is the sound of one speaker imaging?
Elk
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I suspect that one speaker was out of phase.

Love the title of the thread by the way!

ohfourohnine
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Elk got the answer to your friend's system's ability to eliminate imaging. Go back and swap the leads on either one of his speakers. What are friends for? He shouldn't feel all that bad, though. Hell, back in the days when Tweeter sold something other than television sets I had to explain to one of their sales people that the speakers he was demonstrating for me were out of phase with one another.

Now, if you actually want to hear the magic sound of one speaker imaging, run a copy of Coltrane's Lush Life (mono) through one speaker. When it's over, you'll clap with both your hands.

Yours does qualify for the all time best thread title. Thanks for the laugh.

Buddha
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Hi, guys!

I done did that. Even tried it in different combinations - no change.

Even out of phase, I've never heard imaging go away that completely.

If we're all ever here together, I'll take you over to his house. It's kind of amazing. Kind of like the "Mystery Spot" of Hi Fi!

______________________________
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Cheapskate!

One of my favorite audio experiences was hearing my first mono Klipschorn (cornerhorn) in a neighbor's system. Pure one channel, but his old recordings sounded as big as all get out!

I remember closing my eyes and trying to figure out where the musicians were. They were all in a group in a sphere around the speaker, and seemed life sized!

That old rig might be what first activated my Hi Fi gene. Either that, or my parents giant Magnavox console.

Cheers!

Elk
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Fascinating. You changed phase and it still provided no imaging? It doesn't even take that much high frequency response for imaging to start to occur.

I'm stumped.

And I agree, mono can be wonderful. One speaker, one mic and the sound can be stunning! It's humbling after all this work to put together a good stereo system.

absolutepitch
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This is probably not the answer, but the only time I've heard something like this occur was with the early Beatles recordings, with instruments in one channel and voice in the other. It sounded like near-zero crosstalk between the channels, so not much leaked between the L to R or vice-versa. Otherwise, need to think a lot more to find a suitable hypothesis for you to test.

Monty
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I can't help but wonder if the speakers were miswired internally.

absolutepitch
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Interesting idea, but I thought they tried reversing the wires already and should have heard a difference, even with only one driver miswired in one of the two speakers. The resulting phase reversal of the speaker cable on one speaker, I would expect, will put some images in the side or back (vague source location) and change even more as the wires are reversed in polarity, again and again.

showflash
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I have several opinions but your best bet is to look at the definition of imaging. For the speakers to not image they would have to be voicing differently and producing different sounds for any given electrical wattage/impedance at any given time.

Is it possible that he had different crossovers? If one speaker used first order slopes and the latter fourth order then the phase could be different for many frequencies. If the speakers were produced from different batches it is possible that the crossovers are different.

Assuming the path lengths for each speaker to your listening position is the same the timing may have been delayed in one of the speakers. A bad crossover may delay of one of the signals.

It is possible that one set of tweeter and midrange drivers were of a completely different batch and the Thiele-Small values were different enough so as to make the speakers not capable of imaging.

The drivers may not have been set perfectly in the cabinet, and one may have been higher, lower or angled differently so as to make the sound coming from the cabinets not follow the same path.

absolutepitch
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I think the definition of "imaging" is not clear, at least to me, with respect to "no image". I find it hard to get zero image if both speakers are playing, but slightly different in each. Maybe he should define it better, or provide some more details.

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