Originally Posted by
4313B
I might be arrogant to state such, but Stanford is obviously wrong:
"... near field, mid field, and far field.
These terms refer to the listener’s relative perception of the direct to
reflected sound ratio."
From here it starts to become a bit crazy ...
"Near field monitors are desirable in part because their sound is largely
independent of the room, ..."
The contrary is true. Near field monitors have a wide, not in every case regular directivity. The sound is swamped all over the place, and hence reverberated much. From that to stay within the near field is a must to mute the noise against the preferable direct field.
"Mid field monitors are designed to be heard from a longer distance, where the reflected sound and direct sound are about equal."
What for?
"Far-field speakers are designed to “throw” the sound a longer distance from the speaker, where the reverberant field may be stronger than the directly radiated sound."
Ah! What they try to say is: Far field monitors are used because of their narrow directivity pattern. In situations where a near field speaker otherwise would cause to much reverberation. That is the case if the listening position is farther away.
Ain't easy. A good source whilst starting to deal with the tropic of sonic excellence may be Dr. Earl Geddes, "Summa", "Home Theatre":
www.gedlee.com