I had a Kanto SYD/sub setup in my home office, while in another room there was a pair of Fluance Ai60 powereds. While neither could be complained about too, too much, I felt like there was room for improvement. I switched their locations and what do you know! The Fluances really like the smaller space, and the Kanto setup's sound blossomed when given room to breathe. Oh, and the WAF factor on the smaller footprint of the Kanto/sub was significant. Still like my Cambridge Audio/Axiom setup in the basement the best, though. BTW, the Fluances, are on stands and elevated by sitting on a couple of...yoga blocks.
The addition of a large isolation transformer that I plug my monoblocks into. It was a pay attention to this moment.
My unexpected improvement was high-res audio. For two decades I was playing with gear with gear that didn't allow me to hear the benefits of high-res over CD or even hear the benefits of lossless CD compared to mp3. I didn't have the gear and didn't have the listening experience. I kept doing listening tests to try to hear a difference between CD and high-res and also between lossy and lossless. I didn't hear a difference back then. So I assumed there was no difference. Then I got better gear and discovered I could hear a difference between CD and high-res and also between lossy and lossless. That was truly unexpected and forced me to do a reanalysis of how I do digital audio.
Rollerblocks. Seem similar. There’s a thread here about them. Including how to make your own. No doubt your Seismics sound great. But $1000.00 is a bit much for me.
When we say “toe out” are we talking about reducing the toe in or actually toeing the speakers OUT from straight front? Toeing the left to to the left. And the right to the right?
Moving extra speakers to another room. Had a surplus pair of Tannoy Ardens in the same room as my ATC SMC35. Moving them to another room greatly improved the bas respond. Their impact on the bas response was staggering. The bas was a muddy mess with both speakers in the same room
good lesson to learn. i cringe everytime i see a room with two or more sets of speakers in the same setup.
Not rollerblocks. Weird and unnerving seeing your speakers wobble, however I'd be more worried if they were on rollerblocks Haven't seen them in pieces but think they are metal springs inside rubber mounts. I'll have a pun around and see if there is a diagram around Dead cheap alternative would be the feet that go under washing machines and likely do at least 50% of the improvement The key is isolation My Townshends were 2nd hand and half price
Anything other than pointing straight ahead is either toed in (towards the listening position) or toed out (away from listening position.) Reducing the toe in, but not to the point where the speaker is firing straight ahead, is still toed in.
Toeing in and adjusting was a revelation for me with my TAD E1s as I'd been used to Linn Isobariks up against the wall for 30 odd years
Showrooms are just there to give you an idea whether or not a speaker would work with you. You can make rough decisions in the shop and then take the ones that might be of interest to you for a home audition. I would never buy speakers only auditioned in a showroom.
Most good, serious dealers will have a separate auditing room, but if it is a trusted dealer who suffers from a lack of space this is a good practice. After all shop space can be expensive indeed in built up areas. My dealer has this problem and they would come to my home in the evening to install some equipment for testing.
Dope man I'm super happy with my cheap saturn's..though I'm so hooked on this now I wanna buy some 8" - I'm not sure if I should go with 2-way 8" or with the 3-way 2x8" design...I kinda wanna stick to the one source/point though I worry about 8" or bigger being able to provide the detail in the mids that I need. I do need stereo subs, or to go up to an 8" or 2x 6.5"/2x8" to get the proper bass - these roll off around 100-60hz and fall off quite steep after around 60hz.. I don't get these kinds of comments. No one knows everything beforehand. If I for instance, had known and respected the fact that dual concentric = better stereo image, more detail etc. I'd have bought some 30 years ago. Mixing on some cheap 2way active Tannoy monitors at some poing in my yuth, didn't make it easier for me to "fall in love" with that company, from that day I thought Tannoy's where "crap" like a lot of stuff let's be honest, is. Little did I know, the same company patented one of the most ingenious design inventions to the loud speaker that modern times have witnessed. Yet we still have the majority of people populating the earth currently, who completely ignore this fact (seemingly, I don't have facts) and buy into the other 999999 different speakers that are out there (though they come from/start out as a sub-par design perspective from a physics and engineering standpoint). So you chase something down a rabbit hole, each manufacturer claiming to have finally found the golden crossover sweetspot, where their multiple drivers at multiple positions, don't somehow distort the image (which is physically impossible), but hey, you gotta sell product, right? So people choose this instead of honoring proper design, the laws of physics, properly engineered inventions etc. weird, right? Had I known just how well ultra dense treatment not only blocks sound, but also absorbs it, I would have bought acres of it decades ago, instead of buing into BS stories about foam, egg crates, spikes under speakers and other more or less benign yet overly talked about "improvements". Why would everyone not choose the dual-concentric magical invention ? Surely they must have known and know now, what kind of improvements to expect, and thus would choose to buy into that, and sell their faulty speakers, right? Why don't everybody run out and buy super dense rockwool ? In fact, why would anyone do anything to improve anything, since they'd already know what kind of improvements to expect, thus would have already done those improvements?
That is a valid point. In fact, I did not necessarily expect improvement with the change I made. I hoped for it, of course. When the result exceeded any expectations I might I have had, I entered the Unexpected Zone.
I know this is cheating in a 'sound' thread, but I bought an Arcam DV-139 purely for the DVD-A/SACD playback, where I couldn't really hear much benefit over my previous player. However the picture is stunning! Really didn't know there was more detail to squeeze out of SD-DVD but, it turns out, there is.
My biggest unexpected change was when I moved to a new house and the music system moved from the wall of an open floor plan living room with hardwood floors to a small dedicated room with carpeting. Of course it was going to sound better, in part because I could set the speakers up for proper stereo imaging, but I didn’t expect it to be that much better.
