Sonus faber vs Marten

[johnathan500]

Hey guys ~ i am gonna get one these, but i am wounding which is the best , do anyone got some advice ? Thanks Buddy

1)Sonus faber AMATI
2)Marten Bird
3)Marten GETZ

[Ajani]

Considering that those speakers are all in the $20K to $30K price range, I'd suggest doing very careful auditioning of each one... Only your ears matter....

[Mr Peabody]

I have heard the Sonus Faber up to the $12k model, I think the Cremona and in my opinion they are bested by other brands in the same price. I have not heard Marten.

Have you heard Revel Studio or Dynaudio Confidence? That's where I'd be listening along with the Canton Reference series.

[RGA]

Sonus Faber makes fine speakers - it comes down to whether their darker nature appeals to you. They're never bright or fatiguing - I would be careful what gear you put in front of them to drive them.

I have only heard Marten at CES and I liked them but the same advice follows - with Cary it didn't quite have enough gusto. I much prefer Marten to Dynaudio Confidence or Revel Studio speakers. They have a different take on things which you may enjoy but if Sonus is your front runner (number 1) then you probably like that sort of presentation which means you probably won't like the Dynaudio and Revel house sound.

If this size and shape of speaker is appealing to you I would add two others - Usher Be 10 and Sony's new flagship SS - AR1loudspeaker. The Usher is one of the few speakers in this size and shape class that I like - has cohesion (rare in 3+ way designs) has bass that is in sync with the rest of the spectrum and is not overdone like most speakers. The new Sony (if you can get past the name brand) is also very good.

But if you've heard those and these are your finalists you really don't need us.

[Mr Peabody]

Dynaudio and Revel have distinctly different "house sounds", I mentioned both as I think both are fine speakers.

I recently heard a Sim Audio Evolution system with a Weiss front end, first driving the Cremona and then the new Dynaudio Focus at only $5k, The Cremona played lower and more punch but overall had me wonder why any one would pay $12k when the $5k set sounded better. I also heard the Sonus driven by Boulder, the speakers just don't do anything for me.

[RGA]

Mr. P

I'm not in disagreement on your taste with regards to the Sonus Faber line - to me the prices are too high for the sound you get but they do have a house sound people like - people also like the house sound of Vandersteen and Thiel and I never could understand either as they sound painfully "dull" and overly polite to me.

But people seem to respond to that sound - I kind of include Sonus Faber in that group of "staid" "polite" presentation. I felt that way about the M97xE cartridge that everyone raves about. On the flip side they rarely sound inoffensive or grating so that is a plus. The M97xE is $100 though - when spending many thousands I want more than "safe."

Usher seems a bit of a betweener - it has a lot of the get up and go of leaner speakers but also doesn't have any fatigue that I noticed - from a general design I'm not big on but it works.

Marten to me leaned on the warm side but it was connected to tube stereotype amps in Cary. I am not a big fan of Cary SET because the ones I hear tend to sound warm and fuzzy and play into the stereotype - some people love it though.

[frenchmon]

I've listened to a great extent, Cary driving a pair of Dali Helicon 400 MK2. Nothing week about the Cary that I could tell. The Cary/Dali sounded great! I've too listened to Sonus Fiber...speakers aren't bad, but are a tad polite...I thought the Toy stand mount sounded better than the Toy floor standers. The Cremona really did not wow me...but you really never know about a speaker until you get it in your system, in your room. Its hard to say what they really are like until you get them out of the store into a real home.... .Revels are great speakers....

[RGA]

Just a note - some stores are "real homes" and as such listening in store with professional set-up - often by the makers themselves - then it should sound "better" in such stores than you will ever get it to sound in your home.

This is one kind of store for example A house in the hills with several rooms each with a dedicated stereo system.

Audio Federation - Extreme high-end home audio - Hear Everything! (http://audiofederation.com/hifi/store/)

[frenchmon]

Just a note - some stores are "real homes" and as such listening in store with professional set-up - often by the makers themselves - then it should sound "better" in such stores than you will ever get it to sound in your home.

This is one kind of store for example A house in the hills with several rooms each with a dedicated stereo system.

Audio Federation - Extreme high-end home audio - Hear Everything! (http://audiofederation.com/hifi/store/)

Negative...its not your gear.

[RGA]

Negative...its not your gear.

Not sure I understand. The idea is to hear a given product at its best - not to hear it the way it may sounds on your system. The fact what you heard in the store blows your system away in your house should tell you that you need to fix your room or replace your gear.

The premise often sighted by some audiophiles is that stores are worse because they're stores and not homes - and yet they offer zero reason for this.

The maker did not build his speakers to operate ONLY in one customers home. They SHOULD be designed to work in a number of different environments or they are LOUSY speaker designers.

I want to hear the product at its best - and if I can't get that in my home then it's the fault of my room or system. Not what the product is capable of.

Obviously a speaker like the new top Sony is great under show conditions - I can't get that because I don't have the space for the speakers - so it won't be on my shopping list - but the speaker itself is terrific even if I can't get those results in my home.

[Feanor]

Not sure I understand. The idea is to hear a given product at its best - not to hear it the way it may sounds on your system. The fact what you heard in the store blows your system away in your house should tell you that you need to fix your room or replace your gear.

The premise often sighted by some audiophiles is that stores are worse because they're stores and not homes - and yet they offer zero reason for this.

The maker did not build his speakers to operate ONLY in one customers home. They SHOULD be designed to work in a number of different environments or they are LOUSY speaker designers.

I want to hear the product at its best - and if I can't get that in my home then it's the fault of my room or system. Not what the product is capable of.

Obviously a speaker like the new top Sony is great under show conditions - I can't get that because I don't have the space for the speakers - so it won't be on my shopping list - but the speaker itself is terrific even if I can't get those results in my home.
A really silly line of reasoning. OK if your first priority is to listen to speakers. But if your interested in listening to music in you home, it's nonsense.

In a given situation a lot might be done with room treatments but there are often limits to what treatements a person can implement. Treated or not, you have listen where you live and you need a speaker that sounds right there.

[manlystanley]

So, I can't avoid throwing in my 1.5 cents here. I am entirely different then most of you guys. You have rarefied tastes, and as such know exactly what you like. With me, sometimes I don't know what I like. So, I'm sure that a 20K system would not trip my trigger much more then the 2K system that I put together.

But, I do know, very broadly what I like. For example, I like:

-- Darker sounds.
-- Clear treble, but not bright.
-- Lots of dynamics. Maybe not accurate reproduction, but fun to listen to.

When I looking for new front speakers, I almost bought the Sonus faber liuto's cause I found a deal where they were selling for (the pair) $2,500. But, I just could not justify the expense, so I got my Jamo C809's for $1,200.

So, my very untrained/unrefined audio opinion would be, if your thinking about spending that kind of money. You really need to:

-- Make sure that you have a listening room that you can fully control. You need to spend lots of time/money to condition the room for the best room acoustics. If your putting these speakers into a family room where your wife determines the furniture and placement: then why bother spending that kind of money? I found that building 9 large (4 x 2 foot) sound absorbers and putting them into a dedicated listening room was a cheap way to make an ordinary system--sound incredibly better.

-- You don't mention anything about what is going to drive the speakers. Will it be a high end Denon AVR? Then again, why bother spending that kind of money on speakers?


Best regards,
Stan

[RGA]

Feanor:

No the silly line of reasoning is people who think that speaker X only sounds good in THEIR home. The dimwits who say - if it sounds bad in the store it is because the store's room is BAD and that you can't hope to hear how good it is until you take speaker X home.

The presumption is that stores are bad and homes are somehow cure all solutions. That applies to "some" extent to audio shows. I never quite get why these people think they can set up speaker X in their home and achieve better sound than the speaker X head designer setting up a room at a dealer (which by the way is often the case).

Good speakers should be designed to operate in a variety of rooms. Hence why the "best" loudspeakers that I have heard sound very very similar (and also good to phenomenal) across a wide range of rooms sizes and shapes. And some speakers I don't like that much also sound strikingly similar in every room I have tried them in. This is why many people who audition a Sonus Faber hear Sonus Faber the same way. 50 different people auditioning it in 50 different rooms and in most cases all of them draw the exact same conclusion - generally - polite laid back loudspeaker. Your preference for polite or laidback could be valid but in general most people hear them the exact same way - dealer show room or at home.

And no one is mistaking a Quad for a B&W - regardless of the room or if it has bass traps or equalizers because both speakers may produce a 1khz frequency at X decibels and sound completely different due to the sonic signature of the actual driver - a metal tweeter versus a stat or a ribbon or silk dome or what have you.

The room can be worked - if the speaker is any good and it's designed to work in the room size then it will sound as good or damn close in your house as it does at a show or a dealer. If it sounds bad there then why would it suddenly get better at home?

Granted most dealers I have been to suck - maybe I am just lucky to have been to competent dealers who actually know stuff about music, electronics, set-up, and products - and can repair everything.

Lastly - also tired of forumers who blather on about bad dealers when all they do is buy stuff off the net fiddle with it at home and then declare that what I heard at a dealer is bad because the dealer room is bad when they've never walked into said dealer.

I pointed out that audiofederation is an example of a dealer that is in a REAL house for the purposes of being a real room that can be typically found in the region.

Maybe if just once you actually bothered to make a trip and hear a quality audio system just once in your life you would get the picture.

[RGA]

manlystanley

I agree - a room can improve the overall sound - but depending on the speakers the room is still secondary unless it is hugely problematic for some odd reason - like empty and has is made of plywood and has slap echoes that linger for many seconds (or the Gymnasium effect).

The room simply won't destroy a great system - it will still sound much better than a lesser system - room treatments or not. Take an audio show - most every high end stereo company - 100s of them - bring their wares to such a show. All of them have pretty much the exact same room to deal with. You can tell which ones sound better - a room that sounds truly terrible and the gear is suited for said room size is not going to be transformed from toad to prince merely by sticky a bass trap in the corners and putting foam on the walls. Not happening. You can tame this or that effect - bass boom and too much sparkle.

IME better gear sounds better. And after all - if you can improve the $1k speaker with treatments you can do the same with $10k speakers - either way a better speaker is still better and will achieve better sound. And they will do so in lesser rooms as well.

[Feanor]

....
The presumption is that stores are bad and homes are somehow cure all solutions. That applies to "some" extent to audio shows. I never quite get why these people think they can set up speaker X in their home and achieve better sound than the speaker X head designer setting up a room at a dealer (which by the way is often the case).

Good speakers should be designed to operate in a variety of rooms. Hence why the "best" loudspeakers that I have heard sound very very similar (and also good to phenomenal) across a wide range of rooms sizes and shapes. ....
There's no such presumption on my part. But ultimately speakers have to work in my room, not some hypothetically ideal room, whether be the maker's, the dealer's, a hotel room, John Atkninson's, or the NRC's anechoic facility.

People talk about component synergies: the most important is the speaker with the room.

[frenchmon]

Not sure I understand. The idea is to hear a given product at its best - not to hear it the way it may sounds on your system. The fact what you heard in the store blows your system away in your house should tell you that you need to fix your room or replace your gear.

Hahahaha! Oh brother!

Im done RGA

[RGA]

Frenchmon

So you are saying that speakers are not designed to work in many different rooms. Yes or No. If yes you agree with me - if no you're cluless.

[RGA]

There's no such presumption on my part. But ultimately speakers have to work in my room, not some hypothetically ideal room, whether be the maker's, the dealer's, a hotel room, John Atkninson's, or the NRC's anechoic facility.

People talk about component synergies: the most important is the speaker with the room.

I kind of agree but only in a general way. A speaker designed for a small apartment sized living room versus a speaker designed to work 15 feet apart and 8 feet into a room that is 40 X 30 with 30 foot ceilings - and yeah room/speaker synergy trumps all. It doesn't if the rooms are all 12 X16 to 18 X 28 Whether you have carpets and Fred has hardwood - good speakers from good designers take those into account.

The vast majority of speakers on the market for example are designed for the anechoic room (or no room) response and are meant to remove the room effect - hence away from all room boundaries auditioned in the nearfield so you don't get the room's sound.

The only way the room is going to have a negative effect to these speakers is if you can't position the speaker in said "away from walls nearfield triangle" position, or if the room is outrageously out of whack in terms of size for the loudspeaker. If you hear said system in the correct set-up in the correct sized room and you can set the speaker up in your home the same way and the room size is appropriate then you can be (and should be if the maker is competent) fully assured you will get the same or very very very close to the same sound you heard at the dealer or show or buddies house.

And as I said the PROOF is the fact that people describe most speakers the exact same way - and that is because said speakers sound the same no matter what room they're in. Play a violin in your living room, bathroom and kitchen - the instrument still sounds the same. Sure there will be some difference but you're not mistaking it for a violoncello or cello - And a better instrument will sound better in the bathroom than a lesser instrument despite being a horrible acoustic space.

Room treatments fix rooms - not loudspeakers. If the room is bad and you fix it - it will be fixed for ALL loudspeakers that go into said room - especially if said loudspeakers are designed in the same general way - narrow baffle box for free standing position. A room that has a gross slap echo - has a gross slap echo no matter what speaker you put in the room. Get rid of slap echo it's gone for all loudspeakers you put in that room.

A speaker that sounds much better than another speaker sounds much better no matter what room you put it in (with room size the factor).

[frenchmon]

Frenchmon

So you are saying that speakers are not designed to work in many different rooms. Yes or No. If yes you agree with me - if no you're cluless.

I never said I agreed with that nor disagreed with that...I never even addressed that all.

But what I found laughable was you statement "The idea is....... not to hear it the way it may sounds on your system. "

[RGA]

Frenchmon

And you conveniently left out "The idea is to hear a given product at its best."

If said product sound MUCH better someplace else then you know what that product is capable of doing - and if you can't replicate that in your room with your system then your room or your system is at fault NOT the product.

An example of this would be my view of some panel loudspeakers - I had a judgment of them based on a number of years of listening to them with highly regarded solid state amps - in almost every case all of them sounded like utter crap. I tried them for over a decade in many different rooms with many different amps and it was almost always very underwhelming.

Then big panel lover and owner morricab I noticed was running entirely "wrong" amplifiers with said panels. Wrong in the sense that it is not a pairing I would have considered based on the spec sheets of the speakers and amps (and the fact that most panlphiles keep blathering about kilowatt amps are needed). What do you know he was right - and now hearing such combinations it was not really the speakers I was having issues with it was the speakers letting me know how truly bad the SS amps sound. For those of us with HF hearing it is stunningly apparent - those without may not be aggravated by the bad HF sound.

But if I took these speakers home and ran them with SS gear I would not hear what the speakers were actually capable of - so I would BLAME the speakers because after all my SS amp has enough power and has good specs so it must be the speaker's fault. If however I heard what Morricab heard with better gear I would not draw that initial conclusion and rather than blame the speakers in my room - I would put the amp on A-Gon immediately and get something that sounds good.

This is why shows and dealers can be vastly better than home auditions - because at a show or a dealer you often hear "the manufacturer's intent" with a mix and match you almost never achieve any sense of synergy. Why? Because most people own a system - say an Arcam amp, Cambridge Audio CD player, Wharfedale speakers, and some sort of wire.

This took said audiophile 5 years to build. He goes out and reads a magazine that Musical Fidelity is good - so he replaces the arcam amp with the MF. It's great he says and buys it. And then 3 months later something else is bugging him. And so the endless rotation of gear begins.

It is far better to actually know what the best sound is first - to actually know what a company sounds like. One eway is the complete system approach like Linn, Audio Note, Rega, Krell, Roksan, Grant Fidelity, and a number of other companies.

You have a baseline sound - you know what they're going for. You have no clue with most companies who don't make systems. The exception to this are those with common partners - Dynaudio with Octave amplifiers, Bryston and PMC and Bryston Magnepan, ARC/Wilson, Acapella/Einstein, Magico/Technical Brain, Boulder/JM Labs.

When you hear the best of these and you like one as your favorite then you have a baseline to get that sound in your house. It may mean buying the smaller version of the speaker but same house sound.

It is entirely logical to start here. This is not to say that down the road you may discover a better preamp from someone else but it makes more sense to start with an out of the box synergistic stereo system than playing the rotate the gear guesswork.

People on forums who give a list of three integrated amps they want to buy - all had good reviews which one should I buy. The Krell owner will say Krell - the NAD owner will say NAD, the Bryston owner will say Bryston - it's a joke since in almost every case - the person has never heard the amp with the OP's speaker and certainly not heard the OP's speaker with all three amplifiers.

Where I agree with you is if you have a SS system of Bryston lets say, and you listen to my speakers on tubes and love it then you may question whether it will still sound good in your room with SS amps - so you would want to try it at home to see how much worse it will sound (and it will sound so much worse on SS gear). So if this is your case it makes sense - but my case would be that the reason it sounds so much worse is because of the SS gear and not your room being slightly different than the show room.

So I do get your argument that if you are going to buy a product you want to hear how it plays well with your stereo system - I suppose I am looking at a bigger picture approach (which I admit is less financially feasible). My approach is saying to buy a complete stereo system - which is a large outlay of cash compared to buying a new CD player and 2 years later an amp (which is what most of us can only afford to do).

Still if you own B&W and Bryston and you love Dynaudio and Octave and your plan is to buy Dynaudio/Octave but you can only do one first - THEN I would agree with your point. You would have to take the Octave home first to see if the 40 watts will play with the B&Ws better - or would it be better to bring the Danes home first and run the Brystons. But the end goal is still the Dane/Octave you loved - and it will very likely sound very much the same as if you heard it in the showroom floor that is comparably sized to your home's living room.

[frenchmon]

Frenchmon

And you conveniently left out "The idea is to hear a given product at its best."

If said product sound MUCH better someplace else then you know what that product is capable of doing - and if you can't replicate that in your room with your system then your room or your system is at fault NOT the product.

An example of this would be my view of some panel loudspeakers - I had a judgment of them based on a number of years of listening to them with highly regarded solid state amps - in almost every case all of them sounded like utter crap. I tried them for over a decade in many different rooms with many different amps and it was almost always very underwhelming.

Then big panel lover and owner morricab I noticed was running entirely "wrong" amplifiers with said panels. Wrong in the sense that it is not a pairing I would have considered based on the spec sheets of the speakers and amps (and the fact that most panlphiles keep blathering about kilowatt amps are needed). What do you know he was right - and now hearing such combinations it was not really the speakers I was having issues with it was the speakers letting me know how truly bad the SS amps sound. For those of us with HF hearing it is stunningly apparent - those without may not be aggravated by the bad HF sound.

But if I took these speakers home and ran them with SS gear I would not hear what the speakers were actually capable of - so I would BLAME the speakers because after all my SS amp has enough power and has good specs so it must be the speaker's fault. If however I heard what Morricab heard with better gear I would not draw that initial conclusion and rather than blame the speakers in my room - I would put the amp on A-Gon immediately and get something that sounds good.

This is why shows and dealers can be vastly better than home auditions - because at a show or a dealer you often hear "the manufacturer's intent" with a mix and match you almost never achieve any sense of synergy. Why? Because most people own a system - say an Arcam amp, Cambridge Audio CD player, Wharfedale speakers, and some sort of wire.

This took said audiophile 5 years to build. He goes out and reads a magazine that Musical Fidelity is good - so he replaces the arcam amp with the MF. It's great he says and buys it. And then 3 months later something else is bugging him. And so the endless rotation of gear begins.

It is far better to actually know what the best sound is first - to actually know what a company sounds like. One eway is the complete system approach like Linn, Audio Note, Rega, Krell, Roksan, Grant Fidelity, and a number of other companies.

You have a baseline sound - you know what they're going for. You have no clue with most companies who don't make systems. The exception to this are those with common partners - Dynaudio with Octave amplifiers, Bryston and PMC and Bryston Magnepan, ARC/Wilson, Acapella/Einstein, Magico/Technical Brain, Boulder/JM Labs.

When you hear the best of these and you like one as your favorite then you have a baseline to get that sound in your house. It may mean buying the smaller version of the speaker but same house sound.

It is entirely logical to start here. This is not to say that down the road you may discover a better preamp from someone else but it makes more sense to start with an out of the box synergistic stereo system than playing the rotate the gear guesswork.

People on forums who give a list of three integrated amps they want to buy - all had good reviews which one should I buy. The Krell owner will say Krell - the NAD owner will say NAD, the Bryston owner will say Bryston - it's a joke since in almost every case - the person has never heard the amp with the OP's speaker and certainly not heard the OP's speaker with all three amplifiers.

Where I agree with you is if you have a SS system of Bryston lets say, and you listen to my speakers on tubes and love it then you may question whether it will still sound good in your room with SS amps - so you would want to try it at home to see how much worse it will sound (and it will sound so much worse on SS gear). So if this is your case it makes sense - but my case would be that the reason it sounds so much worse is because of the SS gear and not your room being slightly different than the show room.

So I do get your argument that if you are going to buy a product you want to hear how it plays well with your stereo system - I suppose I am looking at a bigger picture approach (which I admit is less financially feasible). My approach is saying to buy a complete stereo system - which is a large outlay of cash compared to buying a new CD player and 2 years later an amp (which is what most of us can only afford to do).

Still if you own B&W and Bryston and you love Dynaudio and Octave and your plan is to buy Dynaudio/Octave but you can only do one first - THEN I would agree with your point. You would have to take the Octave home first to see if the 40 watts will play with the B&Ws better - or would it be better to bring the Danes home first and run the Brystons. But the end goal is still the Dane/Octave you loved - and it will very likely sound very much the same as if you heard it in the showroom floor that is comparably sized to your home's living room.

Yeah that was my point....And I have had a good listen to the Octave tube gear...incredible!

[Ajani]

I "somewhat" agree with RGA.... I agree that best way to audition is to listen to entire systems rather than trying to mix and match individual components. I also agree that a auditioning a full system in an "appropriate" dealer's listening room can give you a good idea of how that system will sound in your own home.

However, I think for most persons it is not usually practical or possible to do so.

To this day, the setup I most enjoyed listening to was at a dealer in Toronto. It was a typical 14 x 12 ft room... Speakers and electronics on the long wall. A typical couch on the other wall facing them and carpet on the floor... That's it... no load of magic room treatments etc... the back of the speakers were about 1 to 1.5 ft from the front wall... So essentially the kind of layout many audiophiles will have in a second bedroom... The equipment (all discontinued now): Monitor Audio GS20 Towers, Musical Fidelity X-T100 50 Watt Hybrid Integrated Amp & Musical Fidelity X-Ray V8 CD Player. I thought that was the ideal dealer setup for many audiophiles... A realistic listening room with appropriately priced and sized gear... And the music sounded so sweet IMO... I sat intoxicated for over an hour listening to my CDs (the second time I auditioned that system)...

My ideal would be to buy a full system like that...

However, I must note that having visited around a dozen HiFi dealers in Toronto, that that one dealer (Audio Excellence in Yorkville - only a web presence now) was the ONLY dealer with such a setup. The others generally had large listening rooms, often with a single chair in the middle of the room and speakers miles from the wall. Or had no real listening room and had tons of systems lining the wall of the store with a few stools available for you to plop down in front of a system and listen...

[Feanor]

...
However, I must note that having visited around a dozen HiFi dealers in Toronto, that that one dealer (Audio Excellence in Yorkville - only a web presence now) was the ONLY dealer with such a setup. ..
BTW, Audio Excellence, (presumable the orignal co. or sucessor), has a store front on Bayview north of the 401 highway; see HERE (http://www.audioexcellence.ca/).

I bought my Magneplanars from them. I drove from London, ON, to pick them up.

[Ajani]

BTW, Audio Excellence, (presumable the orignal co. or sucessor), has a store front on Bayview north of the 401 highway; see HERE (http://www.audioexcellence.ca/).

I bought my Magneplanars from them. I drove from London, ON, to pick them up.

Actually, If I'm not mistaken those 2 stores are unrelated (or were related a very long time ago). I believe (though my memory could be wrong) that I asked the owner of the Yorkville store about it.

Ironically, the store North of the 401 is where I had the worst audition of my life with a pair of Magnepan MG12s... It's also where I first heard and fell in love with Revel speakers...

[Mr Peabody]

RGA, in an attempt to make a point you entered into some big generalizations. There are too many variables to say a speaker will sound the same in any environment. I think as much as the room, folks want to bring the speakers home to hear if they have synergy with their system. As you said not many go into a store and buy a complete system.

When I first heard Dynaudio's Evidence I was impressed, the same store had the speaker again in a new building and I was wondering what was wrong. Both locations had the individual room motif. So I can't buy your theory. Just as your beloved Audio Note speakers aren't going to sound the same in every room Especially if the room had lack of wall enforcement. Or, panels wouldn't be good in my more narrow room.

[RGA]

MR. P

I never said they would sound the "same" in "any environment."

But this is a product that is meant to enjoy music on - and they should and most are designed to work in a "typical" room environment.

Using an example because I have a pair - The AN E and J are meant to be corner loaded in a given square region. This is the ideal position to sound their best. It is not a requirement however to get good sound from them. Hi-Fi choice has had both speakers continuously win every blind panel listening session they've been in (liking them so much they bought two sets over the last 20 years to be used as their reference) - and their room has no corners. So this is a speaker placed in the least best way you can place them and they like them over other speakers placed in their ideal free standing position. A dealer in HK has them set up free standing and the sound is "elite." despite being free standing and having no toe in.

The bass is deep enough free standing for the vast majority of music so even not corner loaded there is enough dynamics weight and heft to the sound to be full bodied which is why Hi-Fi Choice noted that the AN J (without corners) still beat the floorstanding speakers it was up against for bass.

This is because the sound of the actual speaker doesn't fundamentally change. What changes in rooms is frequency response - but so what - the ear is known to be a huge compensation filter for frequency response. After a few minutes to adjust it really doesn't matter much if a part of the band is a few db down (really depends where it is). The bigger problem tends to be bass boom which is why I try not to judge such aspects of the sound at a show or a dealer because usually you can compensate for that with positioning. You can't compensate for poor driver integration - no room can fix it - nor can a sluggish sounding long throw woofer design - they sound that way no matter the room they're in.

There are many other factors involved - the equipment - the mood of the listener - the type of music you heard in one place versus the other place - and of course room and set-up.

I completely agree with your experience listening to a speaker and getting totally different results - of course this happens and has to me. The 1.7 with Audio Note Soro and AN CD 2.1 sounded wonderful - so much better than hearing same speakers with Bryston 28B and a computer digital source (which sounded rather obnoxious). Same speakers - very different sound - but in fact with the AN gear - the room was considerably WORSE than the room connected to the Brystons. The room was not the problem or a help.

And with my own AN K speakers a number of years back - I had them in a 13 X16 closed room (in corners with big toe in) with Sugden and I enjoyed them - but a fellow audiophile who didn't much care for the AN K had them 3 feet into the room and 8 feet from side walls in a big livng room less than 3 inches beside another set of loudspeakers running 200 Watts power amps from Odyssey (Stratos). He claimed they were bright - he put special speaker dampening pucks on top of them.

I am sure you know a little about Audio Note speakers in that the last thing they're about is being damped. So this guy is putting dampening pucks on them and that may be fine for a Dynaudio, Totem or Paradigm (maybe) designed for that but it runs completely counter to the manufacturer's intent. Then he's running 200 Watt high damping factor amplifiers (which the speaker manufacturer would think is the worst sound in the world) in a room 3 times the size the speaker was designed to operate in. I heard them in his room and yup if I heard that stereo I would not walk out wanting to buy those loudspeakers. So I am in 100% agreement on the room matters and the gear matters and the set-up matters.

What I was saying was that if you get the basics right - you set the speakers up according to manufacturer recommended set-up - you run gear that is noted to be a good match (in other words something the manufacturer would run), and you set it up in the room size the speaker is meant for - not an evidence master in a 10X 9 bedroom or a Totem Model one in a 40 X 78 room then you should get fairly uniform sound.

The other factor is music played. At Audio Shows most rooms play a series of a few CD's of known repute. Or music that puts their speakers in the best light. It is far easier in a sense to judge those rooms because if you are playing a great recording the sound should be great or perhaps it's the system's fault. What do you do with room like Audio Note or Trenner and Freidl when you walk in and they are playing music regardless of the quality of the recording.

A system can't transform a frog into a prince - maybe a nicer looking frog but still a frog. And the opposite of that are room like Magnepan that choose all the music to be played on them and choose the volume setting as well. They get to select a very narrow selection of what the speakers can do well. The owner and dealer of Soundhounds admitted they prefer doing the same thing with these speakers. They want to control the "what" gets played and the how loud it gets played.

Time being short at an Audio Show - it is very easy to walk in and jump to conclusions about soundstage, bass, treble fatigue factor etc of a loudspeaker playing a few cuts from bad recordings and compare it to another room playing immaculate recordings of a different genre.

Because I listen to a wide enough ray of music I can throw highly compressed pop and generally poor recordings (Madonna Hard Candy) to very good recordings of the same artist and genre (Madonna "Immaculate Collection) and I can bring my Oboe pieces, my Beethoven and Vivaldi and Sophie Milmans etc.

Even the rooms that sounded terrific sometimes won't let you listen to your own music the Pass Labs/Sony flagship speakers / Emm Labs were only playing music they made (Iso-Mike) and the room sounded terrific - don't get me wrong - but at the same time the music is completely unfamiliar and since I don't own the album I can't make a comparison to system B. Further if system B plays it back differently - does it mean system B is wrong - perhaps it is actually being more truthful to recording.

So ultimately - I am not saying it will work in any room - but it should work very very close to the same if general room size parameters are met and position is to manufacturer recommendation using similar gear.

[Ajani]

So ultimately - I am not saying it will work in any room - but it should work very very close to the same if general room size parameters are met and position is to manufacturer recommendation using similar gear.

That's quite a disclaimer: It is essentially why so many persons insist on auditioning gear in their own system... Unless you plan to buy (or already own) similar gear and have a similar room, then there are no guarantees that you will get similar performance if you buy the speakers you auditioned at the store or the show...