The acoustic sweet spot

The acoustic sweet spot is defined as the listening position equidistant to each of the two front channels as they are from each other, so the arrival time of the sound is equal at your ears.

 

It was brought in the vogue of the public by the big bang theory where Sheldon cooper tries to find the sweet spot in a theater. 

 

Why is it important?

It is called the ‘sweet spot’ for a real good reason. 

In a motion picture, an image is considered to be ‘good’ if the location of the performers can be clearly located. This is known as stereo imaging and it adds realism to the image. 

The only person who hears this perfectly is the one who is in the sweet spot. ( no wonder Sheldon is obsessed with his spot! )

 

At this juncture, it is highly recommended that you check out the virtual barber shop to experience the acoustic sweet spot for yourself. 

The virtual barber shop places you in the sweet spot and abuses sound technology to bring you this high-quality audio realism. 

 

The precedence effect

The crazy thing about the sweet spot is that it is a psycho-acoustic phenomenon and it reveals itself only when the arrival time of the sound is equal to your ears.

To answer why every spot is not a sweet spot, we need to learn about the precedence effect:  

It is the psycho-acoustic phenomenon whereby an acoustic signal arriving first at the ears suppresses the ability to hear any other signals. 

As you move away from the acoustic sweet spot, the sound from the speaker nearest to us to take precedence ( since it’s arrival time is less ) and suppresses the sound from other speakers.

This kills the realism from the image since now, all that you are hearing is the sound from one speaker ( a consequence of the precedence effect ). 

And no! It’s not the fault of the speakers. It’s a natural survival skill that evolution has granted us with to hear danger and judge it’s proximity.