Can speakers sound 'distant' vs 'front row' or only headphones?

[cactus_farmer]

With headphones, some differences in build include the proximity of the drivers to your ears. For instance, AKG K702's and Grado SR325e's probably have near identical sounding drivers (both have relatively reduced bass and prominent mids and highs), but the former places 3 inches of foam between your ears and the driver and therefore sounds more 'distant' with a 'holographic soundstage' whereas the latter shoves the driver right up against your ear and therefore sounds more 'up front' and you feel 'in the middle of the band'.

However, with speakers, you can place them as far away or close to you as you like, therefore speaker manufacturers don't have this variable to play with, so, with identical distance from your ears, is it actually possible to have one pair of speakers sound 'distant' and the other one 'up front'?

To delve into this issue more I feel like the only way you'd achieve this with speakers is to alter the frequency response. For example, if you push up the bass and recess the mids and highs, the speaker will probably sound more distant whereas if you push up the mids and treble and recess the bass the speaker will probably sound more up front.

However, if you analyze the K701 and the SR325e, they have very similar frequency responses yet the former still manages to sound distant and the latter still manages to sound up front... I'm assuming the only way to achieve this is to alter the driver proximity to your ears? And since speakers cannot do this, is there any way 2 speakers with similar frequency responses would have different soundstage properties?

I'm guessing the underlying question I'm asking is; is soundstage an acoustic property that is secondary to frequency response, or it is a separate entity altogether? Actually, are there actually ANY sonic properties other than frequency response that are primary entities - or are all sonic properties secondary to frequency response?

 

[491838]

I think the only reason why K701 sound distant is that they have colored mids which enhance some parts of the vocal range leading to a more frontal presentation or rather further away from your forehead. Although, in all honesty, I don't think these AKGs have particularly good imaging. The little depth they do have is fake, enhanced by peaks in the mids and perhaps treble as well.

You seem to be talking about depth or front to back imaging. That's a lot harder to do on speakers and is highly song dependent too. One of the issues is aligning speakers perfectly to eliminate phase problems. The other is the acoustic space (i.e. your room) which hinders a speakers ability to image properly due to unwanted echoes. Speakers can do depth but mostly in ideal room conditions and speakers that are a bit more pricey than your mid-fi headphones.

 

[Audio Aficionado]

Some headphones (not all of them, in my opinion) are exceptional at retrieving depth from a recording, or when gaming or watching a movie you will notice it as an enhanced sense of space, like you are listening to a 5.1 speaker surround sound system. With good headphones you don't really have to deal with phase issues, whereas with hifi speakers you do. If you have plenty of money at your disposal, it should be easy,- just invest in a really well designed high-end source player (such as a CD Player or Network Streamer), high-end power amp (power amps are always better to use with speakers, compared to integrated amps, if you want the utmost sound quality) - and once you have a system like that, speaker choice should be easy,- any speakers upwards of $500 (U.S.D) will sound better than average connected to such a system. You would not need to worry too much about room acoustics as such a system would do half the work for you because of the exceptional imaging and depth capabilities.

Alternatively, if you want to save yourself allot of time, hassle and money, you could just buy a 5.1 speaker surround sound system for less than $300. It would obviously still not match the level of sound quality capable of the type of system I mentioned above, but it would give you a little taster of it.

 

[bagwell359]

I've owned and heard a number of speakers that have terrific front to back and side to side imaging - with very maximized rooms and equipment. The cheapest system I did it with was DQ-10's with ribbon and extensive xover upgrades, and an improved woofer with a bigger cabinet, Threshold Stasis 3, ARC SP-3, Delphi Oracle, FR-64, FR 1-3F - that was about $4.5k in 1985. No headphone can touch a system in that class or better WRT depth and soundstage. OTOH a nicely modded HE-500 can rival definition of systems that cost $30k+. The Voce with the woo amp - you're talking high $4's. Now I'd like to put that up against my two best historic systems. I'll get back to you in about six years with a review!