Stereo equipment manufacturers have stepped right through the looking glass and are beckoning those with bulging wallets to follow them into the land of the mirror image. In their newest wonderland they have improved illusions to offer; so discard that antiquated stereo system you bought last year and prepare yourself for the latest reflections on the state of the art.

Recorded and reproduced sound, especially in stereo, is an audio illusion. REO Speedwagon aren’t really playing live in your living room (I hope), it just sounds like it because of a collection of electro-mechanical gizmo's relating to the two ears you hear with. Stereo sound depends on your two ears, and the fact that your brain associates certain distances and dimensions to particular sounds as they beat on your ear drums. Like the motion in TV and movies, the collective effect of the sound is an illusion that is quite convincing.

Since Edison wound up his first cylinder, the research and development teams chained up in the manufacturer’s backrooms have sought to improve on the quality of the illusion of reproduced sound. They have had many breakthroughs: magnetic tape, noise reduction, stereo, digital processing, and the like. But in the past 75 years, they’ve remained unsatisfied with the final result. No matter how many improvements they’ve offered, the final reproduced sound coming out of the speakers hasn’t been exactly the same as the original sound they hoped to record.

There are some schools of thought that suggest that the perfect recording and reproduction of sound is either impossible or unnecessary. But this hasn’t stopped the well-meaning research teams from attempting the impossible.

One recent development is the concept of the mirror image speaker. Until someone came across this idea, hi-fi speakers, while sold in pairs, were made individually. This meant that while the left and right speaker in a stereo system were identical, no allowance was made for the fact that one would be used on the left of the listener and one on the right. So if the designer put certain of the speaker components to left or right of center behind the grill cloth, the result would be a component that in the right stereo speaker was at a different place and distance from the listener than it was in the left stereo speaker.

The result of this lack of symmetry (which exists in most stereo systems) is a less perfect audio illusion. So the researchers informed the front office and the front office got the press agents to work heralding this bit of elementary logic as a big breakthrough called mirror image speakers.

Mirror image speakers come in pairs, one set of speaker components exactly imaging the other set of components. If the tweeters are just to the left of center on the right speaker then they are just to the right of center on the left speaker. The resulting symmetry is not only aesthetically pleasing, but theoretically provides a much more convincing stereo image.

One such set of mirror image speakers are Osawa’s Heco Lab Series Models 2 and 3 tower-type speakers. The manufacturer describes the advantages of the mirror image matched pair by noting that they “are mirror imaged for optimum sound reproduction.”

My own experience with mirror imaged speaker pairs confirms that there is a difference between this design and the conventional two speaker system. Some box speakers where the components (tweeter, midrange, and woofer speakers) are in a straight line down the center axis of the front of the box are essentially mirror image to begin with. But other speakers, among them panel speakers and tower speakers, have their components spread across the face of the box and do sound better when the components have been rearranged to mirror each other in relation to the listener.

There are further perplexities to be solved, even with mirror image speaker sets. For once a set of image speakers are in place, it becomes necessary to decide which speaker should be the left speaker, which the right. I opt for a set-up where the tweeter (high treble sounds) are furthest left and right and the woofers (bass sounds) are closest to the center. But I’m sure there are a half dozen mirror image aficionados who would give me an argument about that.