How your monitors interact.

[wado1942]

I just uploaded this, for those of us using monitors to listen to audio.
YouTube - Wave Motion Interference

[Nordenstam]

Awesome old clip!

Here's a java aplet that does the same with user control: Ripple Tank Simulation

[KyleDiSanto]

Very Cool!

[equallyscrewed]

We done that experiment in high school physics years ago. The highlight of my high school education was when the teacher pulls out one of the dippers and proclaims "This is my vibrator and you're about to see what it can do"

ahh fond memories.

[lerone]

Brilliant! Loving the 'BBC' English.

[wado1942]

Well this is basically an anechoic chamber so even under those conditions, there's drastic differences in sound depending on position whenever you use more than 1 monitor. The center channel on 5.1 systems make a lot more sense to me after watching that film.

This is also a demo with a non complex waveform so the entire space in your room
will be a flux of "minimum and maximum wave motions" across the spectrum and this is before
it even interacts with the room itself.

Correct. They only used basically 1 tone for the demostration. The information can be extrapolated to complex tones very easily. The interference between sources is a function of the distance between the 2, based on wavelength.

Actually if I get this right it means that there will be potentially more
min/max boundaries if your monitors are further apart from each other, just do not get what that
might mean for monitoring.

The idea is that when the monitors are far enough apart, the interference lines are SO close together, that they become negligable for most wavelengths. If 80Hz has a wavelength of 14'......

Of course, you notice the dead center between the probes is always a point of maximum constructive interference so if you sit THERE, then spacing issues will be reduced.

[Nordenstam]

Originally Posted by wado1942

Of course, you notice the dead center between the probes is always a point of maximum constructive interference so if you sit THERE, then spacing issues will be reduced.

The dead center is why speakers should have vertically stacked drivers and midpoint between woofer and tweeter at ear height. If an extended sweet spot is desired in the horisontal plane.

Snapshot from the 3D wave box:

[Gutbucket]

Thank you Lupo. I was searching for that site with the demonstration applets for someone just last week. Very informative to play around with.