Quote: Originally Posted by
turbocad6 
ok, but attenuation is going to do nothing as far as the left reaching your ear slightly ahead of the right, this will give the perception of the right being further, & that should put a center at close to the left windshield pillar. as you delay the left speaker, you adjust that pinpoint center over towards the center of the windshield where it belongs, but then the passenger has the oposite results.
I'm always shooting for a center image in the center of the windshield, I'm wondering if when you put the drivers up that close to you, if your now getting a center image that's more in front of you than centered in the car? I guess that would sound good at each indevidual side really, this is the only way I can see it working.
if that's the case though, if you had 2 people in the front seat, both with eyes closed, a vocal in dead center, & asked each ocupant to point at where they thought the vocal was located, would they each point to a different spot? each slightly more in front of them than center of the windshield? with equal pathlengths both ocupants would point to the exact same spot, center of the windshield... how could that be acheived with the opposite driver 3-4X the distance from you?
The sounds don't need to reach your ear at the same time. We know that a louder speaker will always draw your focus over a quieter one and a sound reaching your ear first will draw your focus over one arriving later. There is a trading effect going on, hence the term "time/intenisity trading". Intensity being the loudness of course. If you have the further side louder (through the speaker mounting angle, not the balance knob) then your brain will balance them out and put the image in front of you (or where you want it).
In my car the image is not centered in the exact center of the dash, but that is OK. Each front listener hears the center image slightly closer to them. From my drivers seat I hear the center image not at 12 o'clock, nor at 1 o'clock (center of dash), but more at 12:30. Just a bit closer to me and I prefer it that way. The passenger will hear the center image at the 11:30 position. This is actually the best I could do image wise using the stock mid locations in the door and the tweets in the A-pillars. With a custom door panel that would let me re-angle the mids I might get the center image in the center of the dash for both listeners, but it would be a lot of work, plus I might not like the results. I really like the imaging as is, so that's why I haven't tried to change it.