Solved: FM3 sounded muffled until I positioned my studio monitors appropriately

[Rex]

Different frequencies have different amounts of directionality due to wavelength . You can put a sub most anywhere in the room and it sounds pretty much the same, position isn’t too important; tweeters sound totally different if they aren’t facing your ears because the highs are more directional and sound different off axis.

Contrary to popular opinion, low frequencies are just as “directional” as high frequencies. It’s just that human hearing has a hard time determining the direction of a low-frequency sound source.

Tweeters sound totally different if they aren’t facing your ears for the reasons stated above in post 119.

 

[Smilzo]

Notice the difference in directional response at different frequencies. At 45° off axis, response is 12 dB down at 8 KHz. But at 500 Hz, response is only 2 dB down. That’s the directional nature of the speaker itself, with no room and no Fletcher-Munson involved.

Yes. The directional nature of the speaker. It's not the wave that has "directionality". It all about phasing issue, due to absorb/reflect of the material (air included). 500 Hz is about 0,7 m wavelength, almost no phase issue. At 1kHz we see a 210/150° phasing issue. I don't know the dimension of the woofer, probably less that 0,35m to have that response.

 

[Smilzo]

Contrary to popular opinion, low frequencies are just as “directional” as high frequencies. It’s just that human hearing has a hard time determining the direction of a low-frequency sound source.

Yes, the higher the freq the higher the air/floor/walls absorb: our hears detect both phase and level difference, and calculate distance. Low freq with lower absorption reach each ear at almost same level/time!

 

[Rex]

Yes, the higher the freq the higher the air/floor/walls absorb: our hears detect both phase and level difference, and calculate distance. Low freq with lower absorption reach each ear at almost same level/time!

It's not attenuation, though, that causes us difficulty when trying to locate the source of a low-frequency sound — it's phase differences. At low frequecies, the wavelength is long — much longer than the distance between our ears. The phase arriving at your left ear is so similar to the phase arriving at your other ear that they're almost identical, and we can't hear the difference. Thus, we can't tell where the sound is coming from.