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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: Re: I'm not certain we really ave agreementdef… posted by David Aiken on October 15, 2005 at 23:59:11:
Agreed -- speaker positioning is the key and you will get most speaker soundstaging and imaging well pretty much no matter what speaker you purchase so long as it is considered a half ways decent loudspeaker. Sure maybe the Cerwin Vega D9 you are not going to get to pinpoint image but then again who knows until someone bothers to try.This is why it puzzles me that press goes on endlessly about these two issues which is really one issue when your room is going to be different anyway and so will your positioning (and this always will shift the speaker's sound in this regard). I have heard the AN E about 5 feet apart firing directly straight ahead they have a wonky sound when it comes to imaging - you have to sit in a vice to not have everythiong shift with your seating position. At home in the proper corner placement 12 or so feet apart with the required toe in and boom everything is presented in their locations and you can sit pretty much anywhere in the room and get it.
Since most people are auditioning at showrooms with the "hopes" the dealer has both a good room and bothered to position them carefully then chances are when people say speaker X has poor imaging I always think BS - because if you spent the time with the speaker to set it up chances are staggerringly high that they will present the stage you're wanting.
Interestingly and to those disbelievers as there are many - amplifiers do in fact havce a say in this as well. With the Paradigm Studio 100V2 I bought a Sugden A48b amplifier based on the audition. I compared it directly against a MF A300. The latter amp created a bigger stage right to left and more AIR while the Sugden was a little softer smaller and even veiled (describes as a valve-like presentation - it also sounded deeper in bass with more weight and smoother in the midrange. But the point is that soundstage (and the speakers were not moved) different substantially.
This also occurred with a listening shootout at another audiophiles house nearby - He had AN K/Spe and Gershman Acoustics X1-Sub1 running and we switched out several amps. His Big Oddysey mono blocks versus a Sim Audio Celeste was startling in this regard with the Oddysey sounding big and wide the Celeste small and heavey (not to my liking at all) and the MF power amp was punded by the Sonic Impact $20.00 Class T digital amp (at least driving the K's).
I have heard many speakers that claim great imaging in press and I have heard them at showrooms which "seem" to have been set-up well and I listen and am often unimpressed. The speaker manual will say 3-4 feet from a back wall and away from side walls and X distance apart and the dealer has done all that. I listen and hear well yes the voice is in the middle but I hear sound from the speaker's tweeter (ie I hear the tweeter) or the space from the singer in the center to the actual left and right speaker forms a gap where there is nothing and then sound from the speaker again - this from major Stereophile beloved slim line speakers with mmetal tweeters.
One reason I tend to not talk about imaging is because most of the so called good ones to me tend not to do it very well and why I try and listen in at least two different dealers or two different rooms. I figure that most likely this will be able to be fixed at home largely or the magazines are deliberately touting lousy imaging speakers as being great so that the buyer in 2 years will look to upgrade and of course by some more Stereophile magazines to get more bad advice -- but nah a magazine would not deliberately do that to get people to buy more magazines now would they?
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Follow Ups
- Re: I'm not certain we really ave agreementdef… - RGA 13:51:03 10/16/05 (1)
- Why the regular anti-Stereophile comments? - David Aiken 17:40:15 10/16/05 (1)
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