Doing some experimenting at home this week on speaker positioning. Encouraged by the advice in the owners manual of my ML Summits I jacked up the rears quite substantially, to get the ESL panels positioned vertically rather than canted-back as they usually are. I found that I definitely preferred the overall tonality and presentation by doing that - certainly it suits my hearing profile anyway.
That's not my main point however, but it did lead on to my "sudden" realisation of something else that has had a profound effect on my listening. I can't say with any certainty if this has always been the case for me in my room or not, but I was suddenly aware that if I kept the same listening position but simply dropped my head (let's say I was navel-gazing!) then the overall balance of the sound changed, with a quite significant increase in upper midrange and top-end, and improved clarity to boot. I can't over-emphasise that this really was a massive difference for me - like cleaning grubby windows. Suddenly I was aware of hearing all sorts of detail in the music that I had not noticed before, it just sprang to life and became far more involving. I generally don't believe in this "night and day" stuff - most changes I find are quite subtle in the grand scheme of things, but this was far from subtle.
I also noticed (through rather random experimentation) that I can achieve pretty much the same result by very slightly bending down or forward the top part of my pinnae (no smirking at the back!). It's different to just cupping hands behind my ears - that makes a huge difference too but more in the midrange rather than the upper frequencies I find.
I just wondered if anyone else has noticed the same phenomenon of change through looking down while listening, rather than looking ahead? I wondered if it was something specific to ESL / planar type speakers rather than conventional dynamic drivers. Be interested to hear anyone's findings. It's also got me to thinking how I could preserve this change, whilst avoiding me getting neckache by staring at my feet all night!
That's not my main point however, but it did lead on to my "sudden" realisation of something else that has had a profound effect on my listening. I can't say with any certainty if this has always been the case for me in my room or not, but I was suddenly aware that if I kept the same listening position but simply dropped my head (let's say I was navel-gazing!) then the overall balance of the sound changed, with a quite significant increase in upper midrange and top-end, and improved clarity to boot. I can't over-emphasise that this really was a massive difference for me - like cleaning grubby windows. Suddenly I was aware of hearing all sorts of detail in the music that I had not noticed before, it just sprang to life and became far more involving. I generally don't believe in this "night and day" stuff - most changes I find are quite subtle in the grand scheme of things, but this was far from subtle.
I also noticed (through rather random experimentation) that I can achieve pretty much the same result by very slightly bending down or forward the top part of my pinnae (no smirking at the back!). It's different to just cupping hands behind my ears - that makes a huge difference too but more in the midrange rather than the upper frequencies I find.
I just wondered if anyone else has noticed the same phenomenon of change through looking down while listening, rather than looking ahead? I wondered if it was something specific to ESL / planar type speakers rather than conventional dynamic drivers. Be interested to hear anyone's findings. It's also got me to thinking how I could preserve this change, whilst avoiding me getting neckache by staring at my feet all night!