My speaker system has WMTMW design which seems to work as well or better than the top down approach. The think execution of the design may play a bigger part in what you hear rather than the baffle layout itself.
Height information can be captured successfully, and given high fidelity reproduction of the original information can be experienced in your listening
room. If this aspect of the listening experience is missing or lackluster in performance something is amiss in the reproduction chain.
Scotty
Hi Scotty, It isn't so much that I don't experience vertical imaging ... I do and in a wide range of systems. I'm sure quite a few of us experience some degree of vertical imaging with mono tracks. I just tend to think that this effect is recreated in my head based on expectations of how instruments and performances are supposed to sound. A thought experiment: a piano suspended upside down from a ceiling is recorded by an M+S or X+Y stereo microphone configuration centered vertically in a large room. I'd wager $10 that, played back on a proper hifi, it would sound like it was right-side up to an unknowing listener if the left-right channels were reversed. Well, assuming the piano mechanism even works upside down
.
A few months ago, I recorded two acoustic guitars using XY stereo, and then recorded a second vocal track, having them sing close-mic'd to the same XY pair. I've done this a few times with different configurations, and the result is always that I (and everyone else) sense the vocals being a few feet above the guitars. Considering my absolute inattention to detail, I can only attribute this effect to listener expectations of how the performance
should sound.
I did take the time to listen again with ears on-axis with the tweeter... ignoring the music, I find that my soundstage does have vertical extension but it is symmetrical above and below the plane of the tweeters (like looking at an island in still water). Focusing on the musical performance, I clearly perceive vertical placement, however. Still, above the tweeter, the soundstage projects upwards... If I listen below the plane of the tweeters, the soundstage appears upside-down to me. In normal listening, as long as I am above or at the plane of the tweeters, my brain easily fills in the rest.
I guess, in summary, my (possibly-weak) hypothesis is that, barring speaker array or room asymmetry, vertical imaging should be entirely a psycho-acoustic effect, which is probably learned over a lifetime of experience with real sounds. I doubt that an artificial sound (i.e., synthesized, rather than a common musical instrument) could be engineered to be moved unambiguously upwards or downwards in the soundstage simply by messing with phase, and without at least showing the listener a picture of a vertically moving object. I'd love to be proven wrong.
