The post on low volume listening and the title (title only!) of the post 'How Close can I Get' reminded me that I had wanted to post about the practice of Near Field Listening.
I see references to this practice but other than the obvious notion of getting close to speakers, what exactly does this entail? What are the benefits? What is sacrificed? How does the gear setup differ from it's opposite (far-field listening?)?
As you have surmised, near field listening is just that. It comes from the recording industry and is a practice typically found in mixing studios where the monitor speakers sit atop the mixing console. This places the speakers in the "near field" of the board operator. Most often, dedicated studio monitors are designed with near field positioning in mind. This will usually mean a relatively small speaker that has driver placement situated to simulate a point source. While point source speakers exist in consumer audio, they are not as common in a market where larger, stand mounted and floor standing speakers are used to fill a more common "far field" listening situation.
The main advantage of near field listening is the ability to hear what is coming from the loudspeaker before it becomes corrupted by the space it occupies. You hear minimal room reflections in comparison with direct response from the speaker. Room sound is minimzed, both in good and bad ways, so a speaker with "flat" frequency response will benefit from near field positioning by not having additonal lumps and dips added by the room being heard by anyone in the near field position. Typically, details of the recording are available to the listener that normally get swamped by the room in far field set ups. What is sacrificed depends on the speakers and the room however, just as in consumer audio. More studio people understand and invest in room treatment than on the consumer audio side. Therefore, the studio is usually a more hospitable environment for monitor type speakers. On the whole, however, what the listener wants to hear, whether in the studio or the home environment, is a matter of taste. An obvious disadvantage of near field listening is the number of people who can be in the sweet spot of a near field position at any one time.
Set up of the electronics is not affected to any great extent by near field listening other than the need for isolation from external resonances might be mitigated to some extent. The main difference will be in placement of the speakers (closer together and often with more toe in) and the obvious placement of the listener. As in all things audio, all of the above are only the most typical situations and you can easily find an exception to any of the rules.