Hearing Height
I once recall a legend in the car audio community lecturing me when I was 19 years old about how humans are "unable to hear height". I was puzzled by what Howard Doctor said to me that day as I rifled through speaker parts strewn across his workbench in Richmond, BC. I probably didn't understand what he meant, and kept on with my agenda that day of quizzing him about enclosure parameters and physics theory --of which he was truly expert.
I dont know where Howard is now (California, from when I heard last), but sometime between then and completing medical school at the University of BC, I think I figured out what he meant about being unable to hear "height".
Our ears and brain are designed to process differences in arrival time of signals (initially soundwaves, eventually converted to nerve impulses) in order to determine position of the sound source. Localizing these sounds are dependent upon a multitude of parameters like the frequency and amplitude of the soundwave, and the relative position of our head to the source. If our heads were static and immovable, determining position in the left/right horizontal plane would be possible because our ears have a fixed distance from each other and the brain processes the rest...
Height determination is a bit more subtle, theoretically, as a head tilt or rotation relative to the sound source is required.
Luckily, most of us don't have to listen to obscure point sources of sound in a fixed-head state, thus we are able to easily localize kick panel transducers versus a-pillar highs and mids while we audition cars. The sensible approach for me was to position the highs (and mids, in a 3 way front stage setup) higher up to conform to the level of the ears/upper head region in order to achieve the 'holy grail' of an image approximately a few inches below the level of the rearview mirror. Laser sights were employed to target the speakers exactly. Utilizing the stunning Dominations CFS4 2-way component system from Indonesia was an absolute treat. After auditioning several offerings from all the higher-end SQ component speaker manufacturers, I was happiest with the performance of the CFS4 system. The tweeter component of this system comes with a transducer that comes in its own specially tuned housing that makes it a no-brainer for amateurs such as myself looking to get optimized performance right out of the box. The added benefit of the speaker's ability to be crossed over at a significantly lower frequency facilitates the illusion of a higher soundstage -- a difficult feat in a 2-way component system.
I dont know where Howard is now (California, from when I heard last), but sometime between then and completing medical school at the University of BC, I think I figured out what he meant about being unable to hear "height".
Our ears and brain are designed to process differences in arrival time of signals (initially soundwaves, eventually converted to nerve impulses) in order to determine position of the sound source. Localizing these sounds are dependent upon a multitude of parameters like the frequency and amplitude of the soundwave, and the relative position of our head to the source. If our heads were static and immovable, determining position in the left/right horizontal plane would be possible because our ears have a fixed distance from each other and the brain processes the rest...
Height determination is a bit more subtle, theoretically, as a head tilt or rotation relative to the sound source is required.
Luckily, most of us don't have to listen to obscure point sources of sound in a fixed-head state, thus we are able to easily localize kick panel transducers versus a-pillar highs and mids while we audition cars. The sensible approach for me was to position the highs (and mids, in a 3 way front stage setup) higher up to conform to the level of the ears/upper head region in order to achieve the 'holy grail' of an image approximately a few inches below the level of the rearview mirror. Laser sights were employed to target the speakers exactly. Utilizing the stunning Dominations CFS4 2-way component system from Indonesia was an absolute treat. After auditioning several offerings from all the higher-end SQ component speaker manufacturers, I was happiest with the performance of the CFS4 system. The tweeter component of this system comes with a transducer that comes in its own specially tuned housing that makes it a no-brainer for amateurs such as myself looking to get optimized performance right out of the box. The added benefit of the speaker's ability to be crossed over at a significantly lower frequency facilitates the illusion of a higher soundstage -- a difficult feat in a 2-way component system.