I certainly can hear stereo when I use two of them. But one is four feet from my left ear, and the other is four feet from my right ear.
I think some of the effect carries onto the dance floor, which is very small and starts three feet in front of me. It's maybe 20 x 20 feet.
After that, you wouldn't be able to pick out stereo placement, but the sound is full and the volume is even throughout the rest of the room. They are perfect for my situation. I generally use one extension on each side, so the top speakers are even with my ears, and about even with the dancers' ears, but over the head of the diners.
Of course by the time it reaches most of the diners, it is totally dispersed anyway.
In large venues, I use basically the same setup only the speakers are spread farther to my left and right, and angled slightly toward me, or more accurately, toward the center of the room. For 90 percent of the audience, the speaker placement matters very little, so I set them to optimize MY listening enjoyment. And it is really inspiring to be smack in the middle of that sound.
DonM

Perhaps it's just me, but are we really thinking about what some of us are saying, here? When was the last time anyone heard a stereo recording where sounds emanated from EITHER the left or right speakers..? Perhaps in stereo's earliest days, when complete separation (or as close to complete as LP's could achieve) was exploited as a gimmick, but it soon disappeared, and stereo got down to the task of recreating the WHOLE soundfield, not just the edges.

So the task of each speaker is not to just play what few sounds might get panned hard out, but primarily those within the soundfield. Plus, it's not JUST intended to give a detailed accurate sound 'picture' when one sits optimally in the 'sweet spot' (basically, an equilateral triangle with the speakers, which BTW indicates that the wider the speakers are placed, the bigger the 'sweet spot'), but anyone almost anywhere in the room other than right next to one speaker or another will get an enhanced feeling of spaciousness, as left and right speaker waves arrive at the ear at different times (not to mention bouncing off room surfaces at different times).

Stereo is FAR more complex than 'left out of the left speaker, right out of the right', and I suggest that, if any of this interests you, you do a FAR more detailed study of the technique before grand theories are put forward with little more than advertising hype and conjecture as basis... Maybe start with Wikipedia and move on from there. I'm pretty positive few if any here are capable of giving a knowledgeable discourse on the difference for stereo perception between a spherical and a planar wave

Couldn't tell you the difference between a spherical and a planar wave, and I am not young enough to know everything , but I do know what I heard, and so did several of my professional musician friends, some of who were so convinced by "hearing" Bose Compacts in stereo, bought a pair.

We musicians rely on our ears for our living...I know I depend on mine for it, and I don't part with hard earned money very easily....something like you, my friend.

Having said that, and after getting deep into a discussion I know very little about, technology wise, I have decided to forgo the Compacts and, instead, buy a pair of Bose L1's....I used them throughout the summer, and they were awesome, and I'd rather have more power than I'd need and hardly ever use it, than get to a gig, and find that my system does not have quite enough ooomph to do the job.

Plus, the system won't be working hard.

The Compacts are most definitely adequate for small jobs, but I'd rather invest my money in the L1's if I plan to use just one PA to cover all gigs.



[This message has been edited by ianmcnll (edited 10-20-2009).]

This discussion has gotten me interested in hearing/using a stereo Compact setup. Despite Diki's pontificating, I think a pair of Compacts might certainly emanate some sort of effectual sound, be it stereo or just something pleasingly different. I wouldn't expect to hear the Leslie sim (for example) move across the stereo plane, but I would think I would somehow hear and feel that movement. Would I hear top and bottom splits of a piano separately as I do out of my keyboard's speakers? Probably not, but I expect it would blend into a fuller sound somewhere, somehow. JMO

The Leslie sim thrives on stereo....big difference.

Damn, I'm confused, but I think I wanna be a DonM

Actually, Jim, there's nothing to be confused about...just try a pair of Compacts in stereo, and then decide if using two is worth it.

You'll know as soon as you hear them.

OK--Zaaaaap! You're Don Mason. Whoops! Missed it by that much.

Gary

I don't claim to be able to give that but there could lie the answer why some agree there's stereo and some don't. If it's a perfectly planar wave front (if you can make them) we won't hear any stereo effect at all. The conventional systems make spherical wave fronts and linear arrays such as BCs make nearly cylindrical wave fronts. Though relatively slowly, volume does drop even with Bose sticks (nearly cylindrical wave front, energy density drops roughly 1/r compared to 1/r^2 in spherical). Volume won't drop if it were a planar wave front (something like a laser beam but the sonic form).

So, we are somewhere in the middle (stereo as we have used to perceive with spherical wave fronts and planar where we won't have any stereo). Some tend to project it to one end and the others to the other end.

Theoretically, with Bose sticks, I find it hard to imagine there's no stereo at all or there's stereo as we've used to hear; we are somewhere in the middle with an expanded or blurred stereo effect. I wish I could afford two of them to try this, but I'm not one of those lucky people.

Shiral