Compact or Bookshelf speakers?

[46minaudio]

In Yamaha 5740 receiver I can set the crossover freq. Also on the subwoofer the frequency can be set. So I can set on both 120hz....why not 100hz?

Thanks in advance

Because your speakers may be a 3+ dbs down at 100hz..So to be safe I would try 120..Also set the xover on the sub as high as it will go..It may have a bypass..Good luck and enjoy the system...

[Woochifer]

Driver integration has nothing to do with the room. Any speaker can be positioned and repositioned entirely by ear to sound right. If you need the measuring devices you need to listen more to live music. The measuring equiment is useful to solve room issues - unless you move your head 4 inches when it all changes.

The room is overly used as a cop out --- I understand for owners of certain speakers - I would want to blame the room a lot too.

How disappointing when you rehash the same "rooms are a copout" nonsense over and over. You can't grasp something as easily audible and verifiable as room acoustics, so you dismiss its validity. The only copout here is your oh so familiar response when presented with a technical concept you clearly don't understand -- "I have ears and I have Audio Notes" Yeah, I guess these are the same ears that told me how "homogenous and compressed" speakers funnel the voices into the middle, even if they weren't part of the original recording. I'm still waiting on an example where this mystical phenomenon occurs.

Well, guess what, a lot of others on this board have ears too, and we can easily pick up on how significant the room effects are. The difference though is that room effects are not only clearly audible, but verifiable as well using simple measurements. We don't take measurements just for fun. We do so because it establishes a consistent and replicatable reference point that the ears alone cannot establish. I might be able to note that the bass sounds boomy, but only thru measuring can I identify exactly which frequency is causing the audible problem, the magnitude of the problem, and its bandwidth. You think that yours ears can provide that kind of information? Funny that you're lecturing people about listening to music. The whole point of measuring is to more precisely setup a system so that it maximizes the enjoyment of music and movies. And good luck trying to setup a multichannel system by ear.

If you're so convinced that your magical Audio Notes are immune to the laws of physics, why don't you take some measurements next time you're at Soundhounds? If you say that they sound the same in all rooms, and that it's only "other" speakers that are affected by room acoustics, why don't you put that ironclad faith in your ears to the test? I get the impression that you really don't want to know what a SPL meter or RTA will tell you about how "accurate" your ears are.

And I haven't forgotten that the whole direction of this thread had to do with your presumption that you could find PERFECT driver integration over at CES. I've asked you a few times now WHO it is that's saying that subs are capable of PERFECT integration, and which speakers you've heard that have PERFECT integration. Once and for all, tell me where the PERFECT driver integration currently exists, and who's going around talking about PERFECT subwoofer integration. Otherwise, all that your pathetic challenge for the subwoofer designers headed to CES amounts to is nothing more than self-serving poseur bravado.

I simply noted that you're not going to be able to make note of anything in the acoustical environments as contrasting as what you'll encounter at CES. Everything from noisy convention halls to tiny hotel rooms. Are you telling me that the sound properties for those places are identical?

It's just amazing that you can identify all of these clearly identifiable differences between SS amplifiers, cables, and DACs, which have relatively small measurable differences, if that. Yet, room acoustics, which can have huge measured variations in their sound properties, are a "copout" in your world. And if Peter Q told you that cows fly and up is down, you'd believe that too?

[RGA]

No seamless integration is perfect integration - if you say it is seamless - then there is not hick-up which for all PRACTICAL purposes is PERFECT integration - I have never heard a seamless integration of a fsunbwoofer or anything even close - and I have not heard it from 3 way speakers either - hell most 2-ways speakers have a difficult time.

No the room is a cop out excuse - I am not saying that a room doesn't matter or that they do not have an impact on the sound...of course rooms play a significant role - but then that has ZERO to do with the speaker - the room is the room and the speakers have to go in it. Of curse you can make a room better which will improve the sound (or make it worse if you don;t do it right). This has NOTHING to do with the speakers - Speaker brand X and speaker brand Y have to be put in real world listening environments - the speaker that reproduces instruments properly will do it better in EVERY single room on earth(provided the room is appropriate size for the speaker).

"First we will discuss what i feel is the most important issue of all. That being tonal (and harmonic) balance and accuracy. If a reproduced trumpet does not have the same tonality and harmonic structure as a real one, then who cares if it is precisely imaged or how deep it is within the soundscape? It still does not sound close to that of a real trumpet" (Rochlin)

I agree and I agree with Peter Q on this - the entire game is lost if that;s done wrong or less well. No room on the planet can save it.

Idiots keep talking about frequency response all of the time - move your head four inches and you've blown whatever "perfection" you think you can get -- our ears are built with a smoothing process for frequency events - once you have the bass under control which for AN is simply a positioning in relation to walls - as it is for most loudspeakers.

And I notice that bass quality is never discussed outside of matching a frequency and depth. As for discussion on center funnelling and vocal nasality - well That is simply easily detected comparing the Paradigm and B&Ws and the AN K,J,E. Giving you a specific recording won't help without the speakers in question in the same room.

But the room is a copout - a trumpet and a violin and a piano don't moan and wine that oh gee the room mode made it sound like a tuba a cello and and an organ. BS. Yes there are lesser rooms and rooms with problems that can be fixed up to sound a lot better but unless you have bathroom slap echo - which is doubtful - blaming the room because the speaker sounds horrible is a joke - a good speaker and Audio Note speaker sounds good in ANY room built for its loading EVEN when it's in a room not recommended by the manufacturer they still do well by most accounts - even in in TERRIBLE rooms like the ones I linked.

I understand if I owned certain speakers I would be trying at all costs to make them sound something close to real life instruments so I would be buying EQ's and bass traps and room acoustics and I'd also take frequency test sweeps and run them through my computer. It's so much better to get a speaker that reproduces instruments correctly at the outset than trying to fix one that doesn't.

[LVMF]

15 years ago I paired a sub with KEF 102 Reference series bookshelves, and they sounded great until I got the bright idea I wanted surround sound HT, and essentially what I bought for HT made me give up listening to vinyl and cd's because it sounded terrible and the WF at the time...and I'm done with that mode (no, not divorced). The KEF speakers came with a tiny equalizer unit utilizing the tape input, it sounded ok...but not near as good as unplugging that and using the sub.

[LVMF]

...not meaning to step out of place, but Abe Lincoln once said, "..better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

[theaudiohobby]

Fast speakers require fast subs and so on.

Very good point.

[46minaudio]

No seamless integration is perfect integration .

RGA how can you have seamless intergration if the room causes a peak or dip in the FR..?

[RGA]

46 min

How can you have seamless integration of a guitar in a room that causes a peak or a dip? The best concert and opera houses on the planet will cause the perception of those instruments to differ from one seat to the next. Your room is still a room the instrument is still an instrument. Audio Note speakers I have found to "immitate" instruments far better than something like any Paradigm or B&W I have heard. The room plays a role but so does moving your head four inches - even with "good dispersing speakers like Audio Note or Paradigm."

The issue is that too many people put the entire ball game on the frequency response - which is why you get simplistic comments that attack DA converters because the differences in frequency is smaller - so what - moving to the right side of one's couch will have more of a frequency change than a DAC will (even tubed dacs). But the measurements were chosen for monetary reasons as much as anything else. Big companies would far rather sell volume crap and gear measurements to make it look excellent than actually build good sounding gear. And the only reason I came to this was simply to listen to a SET amp(which compared to SS measures badly in almost every way) Luckily my first audition was psuedo blind in that I didn't know it was a SET when I first heard it. While I could not afford it - that doesn't mean i'm going to slag them either - same for a DAC. The AN CD player surprised me because I had never heard that big of an improvement in CD sound - even in non AN systems.

At the end of the day if you were in my position you would be more open minded to believe in the guy that showed you in the results over the group that show you lots of paper but no results. And of course why AN takes a beating from non listeners all the time because if Peter is right then it means most of the rest of the industry is wrong. An uphill battle to be sure and in itself stirs up the bee hive. They post little information directly but if you dig you can find snippets here and there - like a puzzle - as to what is going on with most of the stuff they make. There is no reason to post it - since if they do they'll be like any other SET/Tube maker and get attacked by the SS measurements used.

My contention is that if the worst JVC player I ever heard is supposedly perfect in the measurements -- then it's the measurements that are missing vital pieces of information Of course if you're a billion dollar outfit you can make the speaker first and then invent the measuring tools to put in the best light)- Martin Colloms who started Monitor Audio and writes a lot of books on acoustics and speaker design obviously realizes that measurements are seriously lacking at telling us how good something sounds. The E measures very well - but so does a lot of stuff I have heard that would be better served as kindling.

The Audio Note Ongaku is widely considered (by engineer audiophiles who have heard it)the best integrated amplifier in the world - it measures worse than any competant SS amp.
People are too afraid to actually listen to stereo systems because they may conclude that they wasted a lot of money on magazines - I have about 60 that I blew my money on. Live and learn.

[46minaudio]

46 min

How can you have seamless integration of a guitar in a room that causes a peak or a dip? The best concert and opera houses on the planet will cause the perception of those instruments to differ from one seat to the next. Your room is still a room the instrument is still an instrument. Audio Note speakers I have found to "immitate" instruments far better than something like any Paradigm or B&W I have heard. The room plays a role but so does moving your head four inches - even with "good dispersing speakers like Audio Note or Paradigm."

The issue is that too many people put the entire ball game on the frequency response - which is why you get simplistic comments that attack DA converters because the differences in frequency is smaller - so what - moving to the right side of one's couch will have more of a frequency change than a DAC will (even tubed dacs). But the measurements were chosen for monetary reasons as much as anything else. Big companies would far rather sell volume crap and gear measurements to make it look excellent than actually build good sounding gear. And the only reason I came to this was simply to listen to a SET amp(which compared to SS measures badly in almost every way) Luckily my first audition was psuedo blind in that I didn't know it was a SET when I first heard it. While I could not afford it - that doesn't mean i'm going to slag them either - same for a DAC. The AN CD player surprised me because I had never heard that big of an improvement in CD sound - even in non AN systems.

At the end of the day if you were in my position you would be more open minded to believe in the guy that showed you in the results over the group that show you lots of paper but no results. And of course why AN takes a beating from non listeners all the time because if Peter is right then it means most of the rest of the industry is wrong. An uphill battle to be sure and in itself stirs up the bee hive. They post little information directly but if you dig you can find snippets here and there - like a puzzle - as to what is going on with most of the stuff they make. There is no reason to post it - since if they do they'll be like any other SET/Tube maker and get attacked by the SS measurements used.

My contention is that if the worst JVC player I ever heard is supposedly perfect in the measurements -- then it's the measurements that are missing vital pieces of information Of course if you're a billion dollar outfit you can make the speaker first and then invent the measuring tools to put in the best light)- Martin Colloms who started Monitor Audio and writes a lot of books on acoustics and speaker design obviously realizes that measurements are seriously lacking at telling us how good something sounds. The E measures very well - but so does a lot of stuff I have heard that would be better served as kindling.

The Audio Note Ongaku is widely considered (by engineer audiophiles who have heard it)the best integrated amplifier in the world - it measures worse than any competant SS amp.
People are too afraid to actually listen to stereo systems because they may conclude that they wasted a lot of money on magazines - I have about 60 that I blew my money on. Live and learn.

So when peter tells you to place the ANs in corner,is it because he feels the intergrate better there.He doesent want them placed ther for no good reason,or does he...

[RGA]

So when peter tells you to place the ANs in corner,is it because he feels the intergrate better there.He doesent want them placed ther for no good reason,or does he...

Well the main reason he does not state - except that he has calculated rear and side and floor bounce reflection into the design -- that does not mean that positioning will be identical for every room but in a relative window that corners are best - how far from the corners is depedant on a number of things not the least of which is the listeners tastes and what the walls ar emade out of. Mike Ranft notes that about his kit E and some of the design is discussed along with positioning. http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.pl?...70755&review=1 I met Mike by chance at Soundhounds two trips back - quite a nice fellow.

Peter Qvortrup described it a bit in a post years ago
"Dear Michael,
Let me illustrate this in two examples,

1.) One of the main differences between analogue and digital is that in digitally recorded material there is a severe mis-relationship between the frequency-amplitude information and pressure/energy in the recorded/stored signal, which is one of the main causes of our ears "objecting" to the digital formats.

The result of this "loss" of pressure information in the digital transfer is a sound which lacks body, articulation, low level information and dynamic contrast, an obsevation which I think correlates pretty well with most serious listeners digital listening experience.

2.) When real instruments play they create a sensation of physical presence which is very rarely achieved or experienced when listening to a recording through even a "good" hifi system, this is due to the fact that almost all audio components are designed exclusively to frequency/amplitude criteria, completely disregarding the energy components in the signal and as a result they either cannot or have been deliberately designed to not be able to reproduce the pressure energy information.

So to answer your question, retaining the pressure energy present in the original event is ultimately crucial to achieve a believable, authentic and credible reproduction, this is not a measurable "component" in the conventional sense, but that does not mean it is not there or that it is not affecting our senses when we listen, it is and it does.

Denying it is there is off course the easiest solution, just ask the conventionalists on this forum.

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup

"Dear Michael,
Certainly, regardless which format you are looking to reproduce, the speakers and the rest of the system should be designed to maintain this critical relationship.

It is not just a speaker-room interface issue, it also has to do with the way the drivers couple to the air across the frequency band they are covering, how the crossover distributes the energy between the drivers, the shape of the cabinet (wide and shallow is clearly superior in this regard), how the woofer pressurizes the internal cavity which again is impacted by internal damping, cabinet material choices, etc. etc.

None of this can be calculated to the n'th degree, but has to be developed empirically, which is both difficult, time consuming, inconvenient and testing on one's patience.

What I discovered in the process of working through the empirical development process was that when placing the speakers close to the room boundaries, AND designing them to work in that position, there was a quantitative improvement in the pressure environment in the room combined with a marked improvement in the consistency of sound between different rooms, this must be related and may help explain the problems most listeners have with speakers when placed away from the room boundaries.

Audio products are generally designed to conform to fairly simplistic frequency-distortion criteria, this "slant" in the design practices and the fact that there are no currently available meassurement techniques relating to accessing how a product performs in the pressure "department", means that this part of the signal will always be mis-represented by conventional products.

Amplitude is a measure of loudness, not true sound pressure, it will simulate some of the pressure information, especially at the lowest frequencies where frequency-loudness generate pressure to a greater extent, but as you go up in frequency this is not the case.

You allude to this fact yourself in your last sentence, where you rightly note that turning the volume up does in no way substitute the lost pressure information, when compared to what is experienced at the live event.

If you listen to early recordings, from the 1950's or 1960's, and especially to monos and 78's you will hear a far better representation of pressure to frequency content, what is interesting is that as we have developed products with wider and wider bandwidth the recording quality has become more and more inconsistent and lacking in realism, in my view this is also directly related.

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup"

[Woochifer]

No seamless integration is perfect integration - if you say it is seamless - then there is not hick-up which for all PRACTICAL purposes is PERFECT integration - I have never heard a seamless integration of a fsunbwoofer or anything even close - and I have not heard it from 3 way speakers either - hell most 2-ways speakers have a difficult time.

In other words, you admit that PERFECT integration does not exist, even among the best monitor and floorstanding speakers. Yet, you're going to CES in search of PERFECT integration with subs. Sounds to me like you're creating a new strawman. Look for perfection even when it doesn't exist elsewhere, and when you don't find it (and I ask again how can you make any meaningful observations in a noisy convention hall or small hotel room), use that finding as a platform for another endless stream of attacks on subwoofers.

I can just predict your rant next January -- "I went to CES, and even when setup by the designers themselves, I couldn't hear PERFECT integration! Therefore, subwoofers suck donkey balls!" Of course, you would fail to mention that the sub was demoed in a convention hall with an ambient noise level above 85 db, or inside of a dinky hotel room with cabin gain that starts above 60 Hz and creates standing waves at multiple frequencies. Hard to make any kind of meaningful conclusions about anything in environments like that.

Oh and you still haven't identified who represents the "some" who talk about PERFECT sub integration. I've never read anyone who claims sub integration was perfect. Could it be that you're just making crap up for argument's sake like those imaginary Sony movie critics? Oh ... of ... course ... not!

No the room is a cop out excuse - I am not saying that a room doesn't matter or that they do not have an impact on the sound...of course rooms play a significant role - but then that has ZERO to do with the speaker - the room is the room and the speakers have to go in it. Of curse you can make a room better which will improve the sound (or make it worse if you don;t do it right). This has NOTHING to do with the speakers - Speaker brand X and speaker brand Y have to be put in real world listening environments - the speaker that reproduces instruments properly will do it better in EVERY single room on earth(provided the room is appropriate size for the speaker).

ZERO to do with the speaker? Do you listen from inside an anecholic chamber? The room acoustics have EVERYTHING to do the speaker because the room interacts with what the speaker produces, and can severely alter their sound properties. You obsess about the box width of speakers as if that's a make or break one-to-one causal effect for every audible malady with speakers. Well, none of that amounts to anything if high reverberation creates time domain distortions, or if the standing waves create +20 db peaks.

I agree and I agree with Peter Q on this - the entire game is lost if that;s done wrong or less well. No room on the planet can save it.

Is there anything with Peter Q that you DON'T agree on? Doesn't matter how good you think your equipment is. If it's placed inside a bad room, you'll get bad sound. How difficult a concept is that to understand?

Idiots keep talking about frequency response all of the time - move your head four inches and you've blown whatever "perfection" you think you can get -- our ears are built with a smoothing process for frequency events - once you have the bass under control which for AN is simply a positioning in relation to walls - as it is for most loudspeakers.

And other "idiots" refer to nameless fictional people who talk about PERFECT sub integration. The tonal characteristics do not fundamentally change with a 4" shift. And the audible effects from standing waves depend on the direction from which the standing waves occur. Is it front-to-back? Or top-to-bottom? Or side-to-side? An EQ correction will apply for that entire axis.

And how do you propose to get the bass under control? Stick it in the corner like Peter Q says? Yeah, the very location with the maximum reinforcement and most unpredictable room interaction effect. Imaging must be PERFECT at that location too, or is that just wussy stuff for the "homogenous and compressed" crowd?

You short skirt the bass control issue because you KNOW that the room has a major influence over how the low frequencies behave.

And I notice that bass quality is never discussed outside of matching a frequency and depth. As for discussion on center funnelling and vocal nasality - well That is simply easily detected comparing the Paradigm and B&Ws and the AN K,J,E. Giving you a specific recording won't help without the speakers in question in the same room.

Nice try. But, you were talking about how "homoegenous and compressed" speakers funnel all sounds into the middle even if the aren't supposed to. And you were basically equating imaging to making everything seem like it's coming out of the center. This is news to me because I always thought that imaging was about creating a seamless soundfield that allows you to precisely place sounds from left-to-right (and in the case of a multicannel setup from front-to-back).

I own a set of Paradigms and I've NEVER encountered an instance where a sound that was supposed to emanate from the left got shifted to the center. You claim that certain speakers do something comparable to this and I asked you to cite an recorded example where I can hear this magical phenomenon for myself. Your spinning leads me to believe that you've made up some exaggerated nonsense for argument's sake. Oh heaven forbid!

And let's see, so "idiots" talk about frequency response, but more enlightened listeners like you are about "vocal nasality". Patent that one! I'm sure that the speaker designers can't wait to hear you explain the concept to them!

But the room is a copout - a trumpet and a violin and a piano don't moan and wine that oh gee the room mode made it sound like a tuba a cello and and an organ. BS. Yes there are lesser rooms and rooms with problems that can be fixed up to sound a lot better but unless you have bathroom slap echo - which is doubtful - blaming the room because the speaker sounds horrible is a joke - a good speaker and Audio Note speaker sounds good in ANY room built for its loading EVEN when it's in a room not recommended by the manufacturer they still do well by most accounts - even in in TERRIBLE rooms like the ones I linked.

Too funny.

So you're the authority over how real instruments sound. Lemme guess, they sound exactly the same in a concert hall as they do in an acoustically controlled studio? And all of these acousticians who are hired by symphony halls and recording studios are just liars and a waste of money? I used to play instruments, I attend live performances all the time, and I've sat in on studio recording sessions before. The sound properties on the instrument are heavily influenced by the room. How the audience perceives the sound changes from room to room. I don't know anyone who claims that a room turns a violin into a cello or a piano into an organ. If that's the depth of your understanding on the subject of room acoustics, or the best strawman argument you can come up with, then that's pretty shallow indeed.

The tonal characteristics of a speaker can change drastically from room to room. It's easy to HEAR this and it's easy to MEASURE this. All you've got to go on is your flimsy and oft-repeated "I have ears and I have Audio Notes" argument. If the Audio Notes truly are unaffected by room acoustics, then it should be easy to verify the phenomenon using a SPL meter or RTA. Or are you now arguing that if drastic differences show up in the measurements that they are invalid because your ears know what real instruments sound like? Funny that you claim to hear huge differences where the measurements show small differences, yet the very room effects that generate huge measured differences you simply refer to as BS and a copout.

The only joke is the one that's been perpetrated on you by whoever's trying to get you to buy into all this nonsense and separate you from your college loan funds.

I understand if I owned certain speakers I would be trying at all costs to make them sound something close to real life instruments so I would be buying EQ's and bass traps and room acoustics and I'd also take frequency test sweeps and run them through my computer. It's so much better to get a speaker that reproduces instruments correctly at the outset than trying to fix one that doesn't.

Or in your case, by not understanding the benefit of room treatments, you instead chose to upgrade your speakers twice in a one-year period.

I haven't upgraded my speakers in three years and with some very simple room treatments, got substantial upgrades in sound quality. By reducing the reverberation, and by attenuating the room modes, I got audibly and measurably better performance out of what was already a very good sounding system. And the cost was under $200. In case this concept eludes you, room treatments are about maximizing the performance out of what you already have. I already had a system that I was happy with, and I simply wanted it to let it live up to its full potential. It's about minimizing the influence that the room has over what you hear, so that indeed it is the system that you hear. Or if you think the money pit approach is preferable, well if you want to keep dumping money into upgrades, that's your choice.

[RGA]

In other words, you admit that PERFECT integration does not exist, even among the best monitor and floorstanding speakers. Yet, you're going to CES in search of PERFECT integration with subs. Sounds to me like you're creating a new strawman. Look for perfection even when it doesn't exist elsewhere, and when you don't find it (and I ask again how can you make any meaningful observations in a noisy convention hall or small hotel room), use that finding as a platform for another endless stream of attacks on subwoofers.

Give it a rest - you are just posturing and taking everything the extreme literal - typical . Subs IMO Never seamlesslessly integrate and don;t think there are not a ton of people starting with your buddy skeptic who don't agree - People like you say they seamlessly integrate which is exactly the same thing as saying they perfectly integrate for the purposes of listening - I always hear the handoff. I am not asking the room not to create a standing wave or a bit of bloom or boom - I am tallking about the directional hick-up from passing to the subwoofer and making it sound as though it's all one instrument - that can be and SHOULD be attainable in most any room.

I can just predict your rant next January -- "I went to CES, and even when setup by the designers themselves, I couldn't hear PERFECT integration! Therefore, subwoofers suck donkey balls!" Of course, you would fail to mention that the sub was demoed in a convention hall with an ambient noise level above 85 db, or inside of a dinky hotel room with cabin gain that starts above 60 Hz and creates standing waves at multiple frequencies. Hard to make any kind of meaningful conclusions about anything in environments like that.

Well some people ordered up some Sogon speakers at over $120K - apparently some people can make meaningful determinations in the supposedly dinky rooms. Surely they can simply integrate the sub with the front speakers - this is the task I'm asking NOT that they perform miracles with the room. So far I have not heard that.

ZERO to do with the speaker? Do you listen from inside an anecholic chamber? The room acoustics have EVERYTHING to do the speaker because the room interacts with what the speaker produces, and can severely alter their sound properties. You obsess about the box width of speakers as if that's a make or break one-to-one causal effect for every audible malady with speakers. Well, none of that amounts to anything if high reverberation creates time domain distortions, or if the standing waves create +20 db peaks.

The room has these problems no matter what speaker is iin the room and will change with positioning "Think about it this way, if you take a musician with his chosen instrument in a bad room he still sounds OK, why should a speaker not be able to replicate the same?
This is why we recommend having the speakers close to the room boundaries, because it eeduces the room variants."(PQ)

Is there anything with Peter Q that you DON'T agree on? Doesn't matter how good you think your equipment is. If it's placed inside a bad room, you'll get bad sound. How difficult a concept is that to understand?

Well I could agree with people who think the Harman Paradigm approach is right - or a speaker maker that makes realistic sounding music - wonder which I'll pick?
No it is not the case becuase you don't listen you sinply believe what Most of the industry bashes over people's heads. No one and certainly not me has said you will get the IDENTICAL sound in every single room - you are obviously building a straw man to suggest that's what I'm saying.

And how do you propose to get the bass under control? Stick it in the corner like Peter Q says? Yeah, the very location with the maximum reinforcement and most unpredictable room interaction effect. Imaging must be PERFECT at that location too, or is that just wussy stuff for the "homogenous and compressed" crowd?

Well some manufacturers may not understand how to work a corner - he manages to make the unpredictable very predictable - but some are ignorant of the AN sound.

Nice try. But, you were talking about how "homoegenous and compressed" speakers funnel all sounds into the middle even if the aren't supposed to. And you were basically equating imaging to making everything seem like it's coming out of the center. This is news to me because I always thought that imaging was about creating a seamless soundfield that allows you to precisely place sounds from left-to-right (and in the case of a multicannel setup from front-to-back).

No I was talking about voices - duets or solos that get pushed to the middle instead of some that is slightly center left or center right. The soundstagings is smaller and often 2dimensional rather than 3d. Simply listening to your speaker in the same room as mine would tell you that. It's not always simple to put in words what is heard.

I own a set of Paradigms and I've NEVER encountered an instance where a sound that was supposed to emanate from the left got shifted to the center. You claim that certain speakers do something comparable to this and I asked you to cite an recorded example where I can hear this magical phenomenon for myself. Your spinning leads me to believe that you've made up some exaggerated nonsense for argument's sake. Oh heaven forbid!

How would you know where it was supposed to emanate from if the only speaker you're discussing is Paradigm. Read the comparison by contrast essay and try it - I have listed no one album because I can't remember every album I notice this on(But Leahy lakefield is one that would have me immediately cross the 100V3 off the list permanantly and buy the AN's if I must choose one) - The album is not the point - it will work with a selection of any music - but in order for you to see it in action you need access to AN speakers in the same room as the Paradigm speakers. My only concern is that the two speakers prefer different sorts of amplifiers so I would try both with one good amp that i did - the Complete by Audio Refinment. Then hook up the best SS amp of your choice to the Paradigms and the OTO PP or SE to the AN...and run the sessions again.

And !let's see, so "idiots" talk about frequency response, but more enlightened listeners like you are about "vocal nasality". Patent that one! I'm sure that the speaker designers can't wait to hear you explain the concept to them!!

Frequency response is not unimportant but it's not the whole nest-egg either. For some makers it's obviously the case they have limited their aspirations to a few computer models in the paint by number speaker designs because vocals are positively atrocious on the 100V3 compared to the AN's. Now most people on boards keep comparing the 100 to OTHER very very similarly designed speakers the the 603 or Energy C9. I was as guilty of that as anyone arguing my case for the B&W over the Paradigm etc - but live and learn.

The tonal characteristics of a speaker can change drastically from room to room. It's easy to HEAR this and it's easy to MEASURE this. All you've got to go on is your flimsy and oft-repeated "I have ears and I have Audio Notes" argument. If the Audio Notes truly are unaffected by room acoustics, then it should be easy to verify the phenomenon using a SPL meter or RTA. Or are you now arguing that if drastic differences show up in the measurements that they are invalid because your ears know what real instruments sound like? Funny that you claim to hear huge differences where the measurements show small differences, yet the very room effects that generate huge measured differences you simply refer to as BS and a copout.

No it does not change the fndamentals of an instrument - a C on a piano is a C period in any room - no room mode changes it to something else. Whoever said that the room plays no part? The only strawman is the one you created. I merely said the room is oftene blamed for bad speakers. The better speaker is a the better speaker in any room - provided the room meets the size needs of the speaker and that in AN's case there's a corner --- though like I have said even WITHOUT the designed for corner AN does pretty well and betters competitors anyway. That is more of a compliment in my view.

The room affects the sound - but it has to start right or it's game over - and that means at extremely low volume from the point of off to the very first hint of sound...and that is where far too much stuff out there fails.

The only joke is the one that's been perpetrated on you by whoever's trying to get you to buy into all this nonsense and separate you from your college loan funds.

Yes people do judge AN without hearing them...yes I can't audition two loudspeakers and discern what is better and neitehr can Paul Messenger Martim Colloms who has forgotten more than you'll ever know about this stuff. I should believe people with Paradigm Studio 40s and a Receiver for two channel audio advice on what represents lifelike music - that's the real joke.

Or in your case, by not understanding the benefit of room treatments, you instead chose to upgrade your speakers twice in a one-year period.

I chose to upgrade because of an opportunity to get a better loudspeaker at a significant saving. If the dealer had told me in the first place that they had J's at the price I would have bought them then. It was only because 923129(whatever) had mentioned to me how much the J's were going for that I made an inquiry. It had nothing to do with the K/Spe. (and in fact I later learned that they had sold an E/D between then that may have interested me) The dealer then gave me 100% of what I paid for a 6 month old speaker. (they were not originally going to do that and give me the used value - but they decided several days later via e-mail that because they didn't tell me about the J that they'd give me 100%. The J's are a better speaker...it's not the same but add a driver and get more bass like going from a 40- to the 60 or a 602 to a 603...heck with these it's not necessarily even an upgrade just adding more bass.

No I understand room treatments and have been looking into acquiring some because the room I have moved my system into has a small slap echo at the speaker end - which is not audible in the sense that I notice a problem on music replay - but since it exists then it can obviously be imporved but my room is already pretty dense with furnishing and I already use a difraction method along the back wall behind the listening position. Nevertheless the problems are relatively small compared to some.

I haven't upgraded my speakers in three years and with some very simple room treatments, got substantial upgrades in sound quality. By reducing the reverberation, and by attenuating the room modes, I got audibly and measurably better performance out of what was already a very good sounding system. And the cost was under $200. In case this concept eludes you, room treatments are about maximizing the performance out of what you already have. I already had a system that I was happy with, and I simply wanted it to let it live up to its full potential. It's about minimizing the influence that the room has over what you hear, so that indeed it is the system that you hear. Or if you think the money pit approach is preferable, well if you want to keep dumping money into upgrades, that's your choice.

Then what are you arguing with me about? The room helps you get the most out of the speakers you have - yes I don't argue that at all...I choose to get the most speaker first then the most out of said speaker. I have had my Wharfedales for 14 years. I am not an upgrade happy person. I have had my cd player for about 8 years - I upgraded to a used Sugden from an Arcam but that was to put a mistake right...and I had the Arcam for 7 years. The Sugden is soon to be upgraded - I blame Soundhounds for carrying Audio Note because if it was not for them I would have my Wharfedales still as my main speakers and no amp on the way.

[Woochifer]

Give it a rest - you are just posturing and taking everything the extreme literal - typical . Subs IMO Never seamlesslessly integrate and don;t think there are not a ton of people starting with your buddy skeptic who don't agree - People like you say they seamlessly integrate which is exactly the same thing as saying they perfectly integrate for the purposes of listening - I always hear the handoff. I am not asking the room not to create a standing wave or a bit of bloom or boom - I am tallking about the directional hick-up from passing to the subwoofer and making it sound as though it's all one instrument - that can be and SHOULD be attainable in most any room.

No, I'm simply asking you to own up to the clear and obvious exaggerations that you throw around. YOU were the one who was claiming that "some" people make the claim of PERFECT sub integration, and I'm simply asking you to cite who has been making those kinds of ridiculous claims. All that your spinning and backtracking and endless cutting and pasting have proven is that you were making this up up all along. If you can't back up a nonsensical statement, then don't go making them.

Well some people ordered up some Sogon speakers at over $120K - apparently some people can make meaningful determinations in the supposedly dinky rooms. Surely they can simply integrate the sub with the front speakers - this is the task I'm asking NOT that they perform miracles with the room. So far I have not heard that.

Yeah, and some people can hear "night and day" differences from $10k interconnects as well. I prefer to work in the rhelm of reality where the effects of room gain and room modes can have detrimental effects in several areas, including the sub integration.

The room has these problems no matter what speaker is iin the room and will change with positioning "Think about it this way, if you take a musician with his chosen instrument in a bad room he still sounds OK, why should a speaker not be able to replicate the same?
This is why we recommend having the speakers close to the room boundaries, because it eeduces the room variants."(PQ)

And this is where the faulty logic begins. We're not talking about a room making a world class musician sound like a 4th grade beginning student, or a piano sounding like an organ, or a violin sound like a cello. Acoustics is about how long room decays create timing distortions, about how boundary effects create cancellations and peaks in the tonal response, about how the properties of wall materials reflect the sound at different amplitudes at different frequencies. Controlling the acoustical extremes of the room make music and movies more enjoyable, and they make the sound more realistic. These effects are easy to hear and easy to verify. Placing the speakers close to the boundaries creates all kinds of other other issues, namely with the imaging and unpredictability with the low frequency interactions.

If these kinds of idiotic analogies is all that Peter Q has to go on, then he's even more of a pathetic self-promoter than I thought.

Well I could agree with people who think the Harman Paradigm approach is right - or a speaker maker that makes realistic sounding music - wonder which I'll pick?
No it is not the case becuase you don't listen you sinply believe what Most of the industry bashes over people's heads. No one and certainly not me has said you will get the IDENTICAL sound in every single room - you are obviously building a straw man to suggest that's what I'm saying.

Gee, you mean what I've been hearing with my system is NOT realistic sounding music and my perspective is not based on listening? Interesting that you like to phrase your arguments in these kinds of ridiculous extremes and accusations, because it really just illustrates how thin your arguments are. You were the one who's talking about how rooms are a copout, and all you have to go on is your typical "I have ears and I have Audio Notes" argument. Sorry, but that's contrary to my experience where the rooms have a huge influence on the sound, and I have the LISTENINGS, measurements, AND the science to back up my assertions about the importance of the room acoustics.

You really think that I bought my speakers because Paradigm had the most impressive technical measurements or convincing brochures? This whole anti-industry delusion that you've bought into is blinding you to the simple fact that people buy what they buy because the products meet their needs and their preferences. Accusing people of prefering things because they're not listening is pretty pathetic copout on your part. You gotta come up with something better than that if you want to impugn someone's credibility. I bought my speakers after auditioning nearly 40 different models in my price range. And yes, these were primarily based on LISTENINGS!

No I was talking about voices - duets or solos that get pushed to the middle instead of some that is slightly center left or center right. The soundstagings is smaller and often 2dimensional rather than 3d. Simply listening to your speaker in the same room as mine would tell you that. It's not always simple to put in words what is heard.

Oh don't make me laugh! You are now spinning so hard, you can't even keep track of own exaggerations. "slight center left or center right" - that's a good one!

You keep talking about how "homogenous and compressed" speakers lop off the dynamics for sake of imaging and soundstage. Well, if these speakers are so undynamic because they focus on the imaging and soundstage, then shouldn't they be good at the imaging and the soundstaging? Or is their only flaw that they aren't Audio Notes, so they must just suck in every way?

How would you know where it was supposed to emanate from if the only speaker you're discussing is Paradigm. Read the comparison by contrast essay and try it - I have listed no one album because I can't remember every album I notice this on(But Leahy lakefield is one that would have me immediately cross the 100V3 off the list permanantly and buy the AN's if I must choose one) - The album is not the point - it will work with a selection of any music - but in order for you to see it in action you need access to AN speakers in the same room as the Paradigm speakers. My only concern is that the two speakers prefer different sorts of amplifiers so I would try both with one good amp that i did - the Complete by Audio Refinment. Then hook up the best SS amp of your choice to the Paradigms and the OTO PP or SE to the AN...and run the sessions again.

In other words, you're just making this crap up. If you're the only one that notices these things and can't provide a means by which others can try and verify the phenomenon for themselves, then

No it does not change the fndamentals of an instrument - a C on a piano is a C period in any room - no room mode changes it to something else. Whoever said that the room plays no part? The only strawman is the one you created. I merely said the room is oftene blamed for bad speakers. The better speaker is a the better speaker in any room - provided the room meets the size needs of the speaker and that in AN's case there's a corner --- though like I have said even WITHOUT the designed for corner AN does pretty well and betters competitors anyway. That is more of a compliment in my view.

The room affects the sound - but it has to start right or it's game over - and that means at extremely low volume from the point of off to the very first hint of sound...and that is where far too much stuff out there fails.

For all the spinning that you do, you jjust keep digging yourself in deeper. You're once again going with your "it does not change the instrument" strawman argument. I'm not the one that made up that argument, you are.

If a room has a long decay time, it will have a detrimental effect on any speaker. However, the detriment will VARY depending on the tonal characteristics of the speakers and how they interact with the differing absorptive and reflective properties of the room. And if people are comparing different speakers in different rooms, these detrimental effects can easily change how the speakers compare with one another. Even wthin the same room, it's quite easy for a particular speaker to sound worse than another one, again depending on how differently they interact with the room.

Yes people do judge AN without hearing them...yes I can't audition two loudspeakers and discern what is better and neitehr can Paul Messenger Martim Colloms who has forgotten more than you'll ever know about this stuff. I should believe people with Paradigm Studio 40s and a Receiver for two channel audio advice on what represents lifelike music - that's the real joke.

Once again your brand obsessiveness is blinding you to reality. I'm NOT judging the ANs, I have not heard them, so I have no opinion. But, this is not about my opinion of AN, it's about your assertions about the "copout" importance of room acoustics. Just because you own a more expensive system than I do, and just because you love AN and worship at the temple of Peter Q does not make you an expert or even a novice at room acoustics. Your pathetic attempt to impugn my credibility based on the system that I own is just another example of how fixated you get on brand identity. If someone owns Audio Note, then you'll believe everything that they tell you and regard them as an expert on all things audio including room acoustics? I wouldn't care if Alton Everest listens to his music on a transistor radio, he's still an acknowledged expert on room acoustics and on this subject I place a lot more credibility with his understanding of the subject than the guys that you cited. I don't think that his acoustics textbook would be nearly universal reading among theater installers, recording engineers, and other sound professionals if his writing didn't have some validity behind it.

Who really needs to know what system I own? I'm no expert on room acoustics, but I can speak to the subject because I have HANDS ON experience with room treatments. I have listened to the improvement that they make, I've done measurements, I've asked the questions, I've read articles and books on the subject. In other words, when others posed a similar assertion to me on the importance of room acoustics several years ago, rather than judge their credibility by the equipment that they own, I explored the subject for myself and came to my own conclusion. I don't care if you don't like my system. The people who introduced me to the importance of room acoustics had preferences that I didn't share either, but that did not make their advice any less correct than it was.

All these rants that you go into about subwoofers and room acoustics are not based on anything hands on that you've done, or on any kind of understanding of the subject. You just base it on stuff that you've extrapolated from sighted demo room listenings (where you've never checked the subwoofer settings) and what Peter Q tells you. You keep talking about how subs do not integrate with the mains, yet you've never done demonstrated any kind of understanding of how the crossover settings, room mode attenuation, and delay timing work in concert to make a sub more seamlessly integrate with the rest of the system. You talk about how room acoustics are a copout, yet you've never actually done a room measurement or tracked how a room treatment (whether absorpton or EQing) improves the sound quality of a particular piece of equipment. Tell me what's the bigger joke -- someone who buys the best system withint their budget, or someone who makes blanket generalizations about subjects where they have limited to no hands-on experience?

Then what are you arguing with me about? The room helps you get the most out of the speakers you have - yes I don't argue that at all...I choose to get the most speaker first then the most out of said speaker. I have had my Wharfedales for 14 years. I am not an upgrade happy person. I have had my cd player for about 8 years - I upgraded to a used Sugden from an Arcam but that was to put a mistake right...and I had the Arcam for 7 years. The Sugden is soon to be upgraded - I blame Soundhounds for carrying Audio Note because if it was not for them I would have my Wharfedales still as my main speakers and no amp on the way.

The issue with the room acoustics is the comparability from room to room. If you want to improve your room, great more power to you. I hope you learn a lot and see a huge gain in overall system performance. But, that still does not negate the point that room effects can and will have a detrimental effect on how a speaker sounds, AND decrease the comparability of in-room listenings. You wonder why so many people advise that speaker comparisons need to be done in the room where they will eventually be placed?

[46minaudio]

I should believe people with Paradigm Studio 40s and a Receiver for two channel audio advice on what represents lifelike music - that's the real joke.

What the ****.So now you are so high on your snob wagon you feel facts (real facts not this unproven bs peter fills your head with)about room correction should be dismissed because of the speakers and amplification one owns.RGA that remark is the dumbest you have ever made.Trust me youve made some dumb ones but this beats them all..Now go head get the last word in on how you can justify this remark.

[RGA]

No, I'm simply asking you to own up to the clear and obvious exaggerations that you throw around. YOU were the one who was claiming that "some" people make the claim of PERFECT sub integration, and I'm simply asking you to cite who has been making those kinds of ridiculous claims. All that your spinning and backtracking and endless cutting and pasting have proven is that you were making this up up all along. If you can't back up a nonsensical statement, then don't go making them.

I say that subs don't integrate perfectly that I hear a lack of seamlessness - a separation --- people like you immediately say well it's not the sub and make excuses - which implies my statement is false - You have said they seamlessly integrate did you say perfect I don;t know - there's no difference seamless is perfect -- if it were not then it would not be seamless which means you should not have said that it was the room or lack of equalization that was the culprit or the dealers or all the other sub excuses you come up with for them.

Yeah, and some people can hear "night and day" differences from $10k interconnects as well. I prefer to work in the rhelm of reality where the effects of room gain and room modes can have detrimental effects in several areas, including the sub integration..

Post where I have ever said I can hear night and day differences in $10k cables --- This is clearly an attempt by you to put me into the camp where "some people" live.

And this is where the faulty logic begins. We're not talking about a room making a world class musician sound like a 4th grade beginning student, or a piano sounding like an organ, or a violin sound like a cello. Acoustics is about how long room decays create timing distortions, about how boundary effects create cancellations and peaks in the tonal response, about how the properties of wall materials reflect the sound at different amplitudes at different frequencies. Controlling the acoustical extremes of the room make music and movies more enjoyable, and they make the sound more realistic. These effects are easy to hear and easy to verify. Placing the speakers close to the boundaries creates all kinds of other other issues, namely with the imaging and unpredictability with the low frequency interactions.

But why are you bringing this up -- I already addressed it so you now want to bring up the same arguemnt that I already addressed - I"M NOT SAYING THE ROOM DOES NOT HAVE THESE AFFECTS. Who the hell ever said the room doesn't have an effect. I'm not talking about the F-ing room I'm talking about the speaker. The room isn;t going to convert a $4.00 Yorx speaker into Paradigm Studio100V2 no matter what F-ing room treatment parametric EQ you use....do you understand that a speaker is important to achieving quality sound - you must or you would not have listen to over 40 speakers. Audio Note has written more extensively on close to room boundries and why they get very consistant results --- of course one can hear it in action at Soundhounds at least partially in that they have four entirely different rooms. That does not mean they can be positioned EXACTLY in the same position and it does not mean they will sound EXACTLY the same but then who said that? I said they get fairly consistant results in different rooms even bad rooms for them they seem to do very well. The AN E is often used in the blind listening sessions at Hi-Fi Choice when testing amplifier or CD players etc --- and in a room not conducive to the speaker.

How many times have I already said and agreed on the point that a "GOOD" room gets the most of the speaker --yes! --- This is why I find it odd that at a dealer who at least in Vancouver have professionally acoustically treated rooms and pay people a $100k a year to do home installs to set these rooms up for rich folk and then - have people like you argue you should take the speaker home to audition where most people would be in a disaster of a room with no bass traps no acosutic treatments, NOTHING, but it's better to know how the speaker performs at home? ie how the speaker performs in a BAD room. Now the rooms at my delaer don;t have 14 speakers on a wall - they're called high end dealers where there is one system only one system in the room at a time. Yes I understand that one wants to make sure the speaker will not be overly boomy at home blah blah blah --- but if we're going to judge the SPEAKER and only the speaker I'd rather judge it in a good environment - I like to know what the speaker is capable of which is why I try and audition it with excellent gear of varying kinds and not a $45.00 heavil distorting Sanyo amp.

If these kinds of idiotic analogies is all that Peter Q has to go on, then he's even more of a pathetic self-promoter than I thought.

Yes he really self-promotes - it's not like he came to this thread or advertises. People are welcome to do that for him - people who like his stuff usually.

Gee, you mean what I've been hearing with my system is NOT realistic sounding music and my perspective is not based on listening?

Now I never said that did I? like I said if all you hear is a ford stock stereo for 5 years and you hear a Bose the Bose will sound like musical nirvanna in comparison and the Ford Stock radio will sound pretty bad --- even though you enjoyed ithe ford stereo for a long time. I can hear 40 speakers and pick the best one for me too and next year hear something that will remove my previous best.

Interesting that you like to phrase your arguments in these kinds of ridiculous extremes and accusations, because it really just illustrates how thin your arguments are. You were the one who's talking about how rooms are a copout, and all you have to go on is your typical "I have ears and I have Audio Notes" argument. Sorry, but that's contrary to my experience where the rooms have a huge influence on the sound, and I have the LISTENINGS, measurements, AND the science to back up my assertions about the importance of the room acoustics.

Again who the hell is sayingthat the room doesn't matter. It's not like I'm saying one should go listen to speaker #1 in store A and speaker #2 in store B because the room doesn't matter. Not so Speaker 1 and 2 in the same room the room is going to either be a good or a bad room so what? How does the speaker sound --- chances are for MOST people the bad room is going to be closer to what they have at home --- besides this is a moot point anyway because you can take the AN and the Paradigm or whatever home if you wish. And if your contention without ever hearing them is correct then any free standing speaker will outperform the corner loading of the AN's --- Peter doesn't mind the challenge.

You really think that I bought my speakers because Paradigm had the most impressive technical measurements or convincing brochures? This whole anti-industry delusion that you've bought into is blinding you to the simple fact that people buy what they buy because the products meet their needs and their preferences. Accusing people of prefering things because they're not listening is pretty pathetic copout on your part.

Again so what? Most people are buying Bose - most peope apparently vote for George Bush, most people in many states support the death penalty - most people are against for abortion, most people as a percentage of the overall vote voted for Hitler but the popular vote isn't always the right vote. Yes a speaker isn't a as important and B most people don;t really care - which is why there are more Future Shps peddling garbage than High end stores - which by the way often have products just as inexpensive as Future Shop. Most people don;t listen I have asked every dealer here for the buying habits of most people and it's under 1/2 hour in the vast majority of cases and usually only between two speakers -- sometimes only the same brand. i don;t necessarily have a problem it's a busy world most people work Monday to Friday and only have weekend - weekends are busy the sales guy isn;t going to spend all day with ONE person looking at $300.00-$600.00 speakers.

You keep talking about how "homogenous and compressed" speakers lop off the dynamics for sake of imaging and soundstage. Well, if these speakers are so undynamic because they focus on the imaging and soundstage, then shouldn't they be good at the imaging and the soundstaging? Or is their only flaw that they aren't Audio Notes, so they must just suck in every way?

In other words, you're just making this crap up. If you're the only one that notices these things and can't provide a means by which others can try and verify the phenomenon for themselves

No sacrificing the forrest for the trees is at issue. If I notice the imaging and soundstaging then I'm taken out of the music period. I gave you a recording and I'm also confident that it will apply to most any recordings pick ten decent ones of any genre - so verify away.

For all the spinning that you do, you jjust keep digging yourself in deeper. You're once again going with your "it does not change the instrument" strawman argument. I'm not the one that made up that argument, you are.

This is the argument I made - the room doesn't change the instrument recreated by the speaker. Therefore, to blame the room for a bad speaker is a copout. If you're not addressing this specifically then you have created an argument where none should be for no other reason that to bother me and waste bandwith.

if a room has a long decay time, it will have a detrimental effect on any speaker. However, the detriment will VARY depending on the tonal characteristics of the speakers and how they interact with the differing absorptive and reflective properties of the room. And if people are comparing different speakers in different rooms, these detrimental effects can easily change how the speakers compare with one another. Even wthin the same room, it's quite easy for a particular speaker to sound worse than another one, again depending on how differently they interact with the room.

Well I want a speaker designed to be listened to in rooms - no one is saying the room doesn't affect the sound - in the SAME room properly positioned the better speaker will sound better. Wow so we should just get a good suitable room for Bose - why buy Paradigm because in the right room Bose can sound better than any other speaker in that room BS.

Once again your brand obsessiveness is blinding you to reality. I'm NOT judging the ANs, I have not heard them, so I have no opinion. But, this is not about my opinion of AN, it's about your assertions about the "copout" importance of room acoustics.

Again I never said that room acoustics were not important.

Just because you own a more expensive system than I do, and just because you love AN and worship at the temple of Peter Q does not make you an expert or even a novice at room acoustics.

Hmm I never claimed to be an expert on room acoustics.

Your pathetic attempt to impugn my credibility based on the system that I own is just another example of how fixated you get on brand identity. If someone owns Audio Note, then you'll believe everything that they tell you and regard them as an expert on all things audio including room acoustics? I wouldn't care if Alton Everest listens to his music on a transistor radio, he's still an acknowledged expert on room acoustics and on this subject I place a lot more credibility with his understanding of the subject than the guys that you cited. I don't think that his acoustics textbook would be nearly universal reading among theater installers, recording engineers, and other sound professionals if his writing didn't have some validity behind it.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Saying that room acoustics is a copout and that that room acoustics is not important is NOT THE SAME THING. Gee kinda like perfect and seamless maybe. You're awfully picky on when you want to be anal retentive over language usage.

Who really needs to know what system I own? I'm no expert on room acoustics, but I can speak to the subject because I have HANDS ON experience with room treatments. I have listened to the improvement that they make, I've done measurements, I've asked the questions, I've read articles and books on the subject. In other words, when others posed a similar assertion to me on the importance of room acoustics several years ago, rather than judge their credibility by the equipment that they own, I explored the subject for myself and came to my own conclusion. I don't care if you don't like my system. The people who introduced me to the importance of room acoustics had preferences that I didn't share either, but that did not make their advice any less correct than it was.

Again nothing to do with it because I have not said room acoustics don't matter - I already agreed last post to clear up that if it was a confusion that the room can be treated to get the best out of the system - why beat the dead horse.

The issue with the room acoustics is the comparability from room to room. If you want to improve your room, great more power to you. I hope you learn a lot and see a huge gain in overall system performance. But, that still does not negate the point that room effects can and will have a detrimental effect on how a speaker sounds, AND decrease the comparability of in-room listenings. You wonder why so many people advise that speaker comparisons need to be done in the room where they will eventually be placed?

Well that doesn't help if you move does it? So now we can't listen to speakers and fairly review them, because the reviewer's listening room is the culprit - No a speaker should perform well in a variety of listening environments including ones where the designer really doesn't want them placed like the AN E at Hi-fi choice and it should still sound pretty good. Pretty good enough to beat the other speakers in the blind listening sessions. anyway.

[Woochifer]

I say that subs don't integrate perfectly that I hear a lack of seamlessness - a separation --- people like you immediately say well it's not the sub and make excuses - which implies my statement is false - You have said they seamlessly integrate did you say perfect I don;t know - there's no difference seamless is perfect -- if it were not then it would not be seamless which means you should not have said that it was the room or lack of equalization that was the culprit or the dealers or all the other sub excuses you come up with for them.

Blah blah blah You still haven't stated who's talking about PERFECT sub integration. Either state who you're referring to, or fess up to that fact that you made an idiotic exaggeration that you can't back up.

All that I have said is that I've heard sub rigs that integrate as well as the best full range speakers I've heard. Never have I mentioned anything about perfection, whether you're talking about full range speakers or sub combos. Since you were talking about going to CES in search of perfect sub interation, I presume then that you have heard PERFECT driver integration before in a full range speaker. That would be news to me since I've never heard it before. Then again, I've never heard a perfect speaker before either.

Contrary to what you write, room modes CAN create major integration problems with a subwoofer because from the subwoofer location, the room mode will likely occur at a different frequency than with the main speaker. With a bass trap, you reduce the magnitude of the room mode with both the speaker and the subwoofer. With equalization, you attenuate the peaks at the frequencies where they occur. Smoothing out the in-room response curve improves the integration dramatically. That's how the room effects influence the sub integration. You think this is an excuse? Why don't you try it out for yourself sometime? It's pretty laughable that you keep talking about excuses when you obviously don't even know, or even want to learn, how to properly set up a subwoofer in the first place.

Post where I have ever said I can hear night and day differences in $10k cables --- This is clearly an attempt by you to put me into the camp where "some people" live.

Oh brother, making up yet more crap for argument's sake. You said that people were buying $120k systems based on hotel room listenings, as if their decisions to do so supported your contention about room acoustics. I'm simply citing it as another example of a wasteful decision that people can make. If you take that personally or read into it that I'm accusing you of that, then you really need to chill out.

But why are you bringing this up -- I already addressed it so you now want to bring up the same arguemnt that I already addressed - I"M NOT SAYING THE ROOM DOES NOT HAVE THESE AFFECTS. Who the hell ever said the room doesn't have an effect. I'm not talking about the F-ing room I'm talking about the speaker. The room isn;t going to convert a $4.00 Yorx speaker into Paradigm Studio100V2 no matter what F-ing room treatment parametric EQ you use....do you understand that a speaker is important to achieving quality sound - you must or you would not have listen to over 40 speakers. Audio Note has written more extensively on close to room boundries and why they get very consistant results --- of course one can hear it in action at Soundhounds at least partially in that they have four entirely different rooms. That does not mean they can be positioned EXACTLY in the same position and it does not mean they will sound EXACTLY the same but then who said that? I said they get fairly consistant results in different rooms even bad rooms for them they seem to do very well. The AN E is often used in the blind listening sessions at Hi-Fi Choice when testing amplifier or CD players etc --- and in a room not conducive to the speaker.

You can spin this all you want. What you are saying is plain and simple -- you are denying the importance of the room acoustics when it comes to speaker comparisons. And I'm telling you that kind of statement is ridiculous bull****. You clearly don't understand the topic, and have zero hands on experience with identifying the audible effects of room treatments. Just how you mangle the terminology and mix your words around indicates to me that you've never tried it, you've never read up on it, you've never done listenings to account for the room effects, you've never measured the effects, and you've never done any corrections yourself. Yet, here you are telling everyone that rooms are a copout. You say that it's a copout, why don't you demonstrate why? Oh don't bother, I already know the response -- "I have ears and I have Audio Notes."

And room acoustics is not all about the boundary effects. The boundary effects have the biggest influence in the low frequencies. When you get into the highs and the midrange, it's the reflectivity and absorption characteristics and how they impact on the room delay that have the biggest audible effect.

I don't care if Audio Note has written extensively on boundary effects, and if they claim to have consistent results. I've never heard a speaker that does not shift its tonal characteristics, especially in the lows, when you move it between rooms. Just because Peter Q says so doesn't make your contention about the "copout" influence of room acoustics any less ridiculous than it is.

How many times have I already said and agreed on the point that a "GOOD" room gets the most of the speaker --yes! --- This is why I find it odd that at a dealer who at least in Vancouver have professionally acoustically treated rooms and pay people a $100k a year to do home installs to set these rooms up for rich folk and then - have people like you argue you should take the speaker home to audition where most people would be in a disaster of a room with no bass traps no acosutic treatments, NOTHING, but it's better to know how the speaker performs at home? ie how the speaker performs in a BAD room. Now the rooms at my delaer don;t have 14 speakers on a wall - they're called high end dealers where there is one system only one system in the room at a time. Yes I understand that one wants to make sure the speaker will not be overly boomy at home blah blah blah --- but if we're going to judge the SPEAKER and only the speaker I'd rather judge it in a good environment - I like to know what the speaker is capable of which is why I try and audition it with excellent gear of varying kinds and not a $45.00 heavil distorting Sanyo amp.

Of course it's better to do the comparison at home. EVERY room will influence the speaker reproduction differently. Why would you not want to hear how your own room influences the sound? It was through this process that I identified the boundary effects of my room.

You keep trying to shift the topic back to the speakers because that's really all that you can speak on based on any kind of experience. The room acoustics are not a copout because each room influences the playback differently. If you're doing speaker comparisons based on listenings in different demo rooms (which most people do), then the comparability is very limited.

And I find it interesting that you bring up the "$45 heavil [sp] distorting Sanyo amp" because in other threads you've railed over and over about how a receiver, any receiver, can ruin the sound of a speaker, and make a good speaker sound like crap, even though the measured differences might be minor at best. Funny that you deny how the room, which has far bigger measureable and perceptible variations, might influence someone's perception of a speaker.

Yes he really self-promotes - it's not like he came to this thread or advertises. People are welcome to do that for him - people who like his stuff usually.

You mean all this self-serving propaganda that you're quoting with him taking shots at "conventionalists"? From what I've been reading, he's all about marginalizing the approaches that he disagrees with. Seems that others have taken to that approach as well. Being different does not mean that approach is therefore the only correct one.

Now I never said that did I? like I said if all you hear is a ford stock stereo for 5 years and you hear a Bose the Bose will sound like musical nirvanna in comparison and the Ford Stock radio will sound pretty bad --- even though you enjoyed ithe ford stereo for a long time. I can hear 40 speakers and pick the best one for me too and next year hear something that will remove my previous best.

Well I could agree with people who think the Harman Paradigm approach is right - or a speaker maker that makes realistic sounding music - wonder which I'll pick?

A statement like that is pretty self-explanatory, no? You're implying that the "Harman Paradigm" approach is not about "realistic sounding music".

Your example of a Ford system and a Bose system is pretty pointless. I know that you think my receiver-based system is crap because it's a receiver, but you ignore the fact that I've done a lot more listening than that. I auditioned close to 40 speakers in my price range when choosing my system, but I've listened to far more than that over the last 20+ years. Funny that you can't argue the points based on your knowledge of room acoustics, so you attack people based on what they own or what you imply that they listen to.

Again who the hell is sayingthat the room doesn't matter. It's not like I'm saying one should go listen to speaker #1 in store A and speaker #2 in store B because the room doesn't matter. Not so Speaker 1 and 2 in the same room the room is going to either be a good or a bad room so what? How does the speaker sound --- chances are for MOST people the bad room is going to be closer to what they have at home --- besides this is a moot point anyway because you can take the AN and the Paradigm or whatever home if you wish. And if your contention without ever hearing them is correct then any free standing speaker will outperform the corner loading of the AN's --- Peter doesn't mind the challenge.

You just don't get it, do you? When you say that a "bad room" is closer to what most people will have at home, that ignores that the cabin gain and the room modes depend on the room dimensions. That has nothing to do with bad room versus good room, it's simply the normal variation that room dimensions create in the low frequencies. The reflectivity characteristics of the room can indeed make for a "bad room" but simply referring to a "bad room" and saying that it's closer to what people have at home is an oversimplification.

And it doesn't matter how you speculate an AN and Paradigm would compare, the simple fact is that the room will make the comparison different from room to room. The bass characteristics alone can differ drastically.

Again so what? Most people are buying Bose - most peope apparently vote for George Bush, most people in many states support the death penalty - most people are against for abortion, most people as a percentage of the overall vote voted for Hitler but the popular vote isn't always the right vote. Yes a speaker isn't a as important and B most people don;t really care - which is why there are more Future Shps peddling garbage than High end stores - which by the way often have products just as inexpensive as Future Shop. Most people don;t listen I have asked every dealer here for the buying habits of most people and it's under 1/2 hour in the vast majority of cases and usually only between two speakers -- sometimes only the same brand. i don;t necessarily have a problem it's a busy world most people work Monday to Friday and only have weekend - weekends are busy the sales guy isn;t going to spend all day with ONE person looking at $300.00-$600.00 speakers.

Nice of you to equate buying Paradigms to voting for Hitler or supporting the death penalty. I take it all back. Your posts are always very well reasoned and level headed, you NEVER exaggerate or make stuff up.

Once again, you ignore the point that I'm making. People make buying decisions based on THEIR preferences and THEIR listenings. You just can't bring yourself to acknowledge that other people can make intelligent decisions that differ from your values. You think I or the majority of people who decided on Paradigm did so because of their brochures and bought them without listening to them first or comparing to other brands?

You were saying that most people in Vancouver buy what they buy without listening? Hmmm, maybe Canadian consumers aren't as smart as I thought they were. People I know in AV sales around Cali complain about customers who take up their time listening to product after product without buying anything. These sales guys would LOVE it if the majority of their customers would just walk in and buy something in less than 1/2 an hour. Maybe they should move to Vancouver, might make a better living selling to the customers that you describe.

No sacrificing the forrest for the trees is at issue. If I notice the imaging and soundstaging then I'm taken out of the music period. I gave you a recording and I'm also confident that it will apply to most any recordings pick ten decent ones of any genre - so verify away.

Sorry, but you gave me nothing but excuses and spin. If you notice the imaging and the soundstaging, then that means that you're more immersed in the music because the illusion that the musicians are in the room with you has been created. If the imaging and soundstaging are not there, then I'm listening to two point sources. Are you saying that something with poor imaging and soundstaging will sound "more like music"?

Like I said, you made note that "homogenous and compressed" speakers that focus on imaging and soundstaging lop off the dynamics. If that's the case, then how do they create that center funneling effect, which runs contrary to the very concept of imaging? Telling me to "pick ten decent ones of any genre" means that this center funneling phenomenon that you touted is bull****. I can pick 10 or 100 or 1,000 recordings out of my collection and I'll tell you that it's bull**** because I've never observed it in my system. Well, unless you're now saying that Paradigm is not one of those "homogenous and compressed" speakers you constantly deride.

This is the argument I made - the room doesn't change the instrument recreated by the speaker. Therefore, to blame the room for a bad speaker is a copout. If you're not addressing this specifically then you have created an argument where none should be for no other reason that to bother me and waste bandwith.

Well I want a speaker designed to be listened to in rooms - no one is saying the room doesn't affect the sound - in the SAME room properly positioned the better speaker will sound better. Wow so we should just get a good suitable room for Bose - why buy Paradigm because in the right room Bose can sound better than any other speaker in that room BS.

I didn't know that there was such a thing as speakers NOT designed to be listened to in rooms! Who knows, in certain rooms, it very well might be possible for a Bose speaker to sound better. And you are aware that "better" is a subjective assessment, aren't you? You may not like Bose, I may not like Bose, but that doesn't constitute the universe now does it?

Hmm I never claimed to be an expert on room acoustics.

Oh, but you're enough of an expert to KNOW that anytime someone observes that speakers compare differently in different rooms that it's a copout.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Saying that room acoustics is a copout and that that room acoustics is not important is NOT THE SAME THING. Gee kinda like perfect and seamless maybe. You're awfully picky on when you want to be anal retentive over language usage.

Your little sematic spins are oh so amusing. Now, it's MY anal retentiveness over language usage that's at issue. And I thought you wanted to discuss room acoustics. I guess if you can't discuss the subject substantively, you gotta switch subjects.

Well that doesn't help if you move does it? So now we can't listen to speakers and fairly review them, because the reviewer's listening room is the culprit - No a speaker should perform well in a variety of listening environments including ones where the designer really doesn't want them placed like the AN E at Hi-fi choice and it should still sound pretty good. Pretty good enough to beat the other speakers in the blind listening sessions. anyway.

Well that does help if you move does it?

Truer words of inexperience have never been spoken. If you move, then the sound will change. That's just how it is. At that point, you figure out if the altered sound properties are still acceptable for your listening enjoyment. If you've already figured out how to measure the room effects and apply room treatments, then you simply do that process over at the new place. When I moved my rig to a different room, I made a new set of measurements, replaced the acoustical panels, and recalibrated my settings.

Just because your Audio Notes do well at Hi-Fi Choice (what happened to reviews being worthless and biased?), does not mean that the results will be consistent from room to room. Yeah, a speaker should perform well in a variety of rooms, but wishful thinking does not make it so.

[RGA]

Woochifer

You like to clutter the issue of room acoustics. I could not care less where you do the auditions so long as it's the same room - if one wants to do this at home so be it - but if speakers are built for a viariety of rooms - which they should be - then I want one that will perform in a variety of rooms fairly consistantly without the need of liberal room treatments. In normal carpeted rooms with average furnishings you SHOULD get reasonably good sound.

You imply that one speaker will do better than another speaker and it's all room dependant. So a Paradigm Studio 100 will be better than a $40.00 Yorx, but gee if you get the room right the $40.00 Yorx will beat the Studio 100 - please enlighten me where you got that notion - yes substitute Bose for Yorx if you wish. Makes me wonder why anyone would spend more than $200.00 on a ludspeaker if you can convert any speaker into the Dynaudio Evidence master by simply running a frequency sweep and a parametric eq - who cares if the De Capo has a 5db dip you can just morph that up to flat anyway.

If you can just move your speakers to any room like you did and adjust the room treatments to follow suit - then you can and should be able to do that for any speaker (assuming the speaker is designed for the room size). Yes if there is a sliding scale of potentiality where you can maximize a given speaker's best sound and such a scale is out of 100 where one room only gets 35% of the speaker's ability while using treatments or chaniging rooms or both can get 98% of the speaker's best I am not arguing. The room has an influence on the end resulting sound that hits your ears but it is not the actual tonality of what is being played -- a C on a piano is not affected to change it to some other note when it gets to the ear - you get room induced effects yes changing the characteristics of fundamental instruments no. And my contention is that it is here as to why my auditions led me to Audio Note over the B&W and Paradigm models.

Moving my speakers 2 inches will change the way the room acts upon the ending sound and that goes for many if not all speakers out there...but it's not to such a degree in any room i've been in auditioning as to adversely detract from getting a good idea of what the speaker can do. Our ears are quite forgiving over 1/3 octave bands and on frequency anomolies. Frequency response is changed at every listening position in the room at that position --- if you are one meter away dead center or 8 meters away and 5 feet over to the left - These can be HUGE differences no matter what the hell you do to the room you are not covering all your positions because a bass trap and other treatment that works at 1 meter may ruin the other position.

Granted these are extreme examples but it is true from one side of your head to the other to some degree. If Richard Green is correct then the Rat Shack SPL is also largely innacurate above 2khz. If we're talking about bass it can be done by ear. I found my speaker at one position had a frequency dip at 50hz and more prominant at 40hz - I could tell that by listening(well not the specific frequency but I could tell that there was something not quite right - running my frequency sweep several times and re-positioning one can easily "dial" in audibly what is sounding correct while also alternating with Piano recordings since we should know the piano reasonably well. Then run the frequency sweep again and deterimine audibly if it sounds right. Most speakers in vogue right now are positioned in a very very similar location with similar instructions ~2-3 feet from all walls toe in as desired blah blah blah.

Surely you're not saying the room is so disasterous that you ccannot assess any loudspeakers without the need for extensive room treatments and run computer programs to achieve a flat response at the listening position. Please

As for receivers - they affect what initially comes out of a speaker The room cannot fix it if it's ruined from note one. More to the game than just frequency response.

You say sub integration is seamless - you want me to retract the word perfect fine if it makes you happy consider it retracted --- so you say it's seamless have said its seamless and now say it's as seamless as the best 3 way speakers you've heard. I suppose that depends on what you've heard - I suppose I could agree that some subs I have heard integrate about as well as a number of speakers as well (the Snell B-Minor comes to mind) - that doesn't say much in itself however.

[Pat D]

Woochifer

You like to clutter the issue of room acoustics. I could not care less where you do the auditions so long as it's the same room - if one wants to do this at home so be it - but if speakers are built for a viariety of rooms - which they should be - then I want one that will perform in a variety of rooms fairly consistantly without the need of liberal room treatments. In normal carpeted rooms with average furnishings you SHOULD get reasonably good sound.

You imply that one speaker will do better than another speaker and it's all room dependant. So a Paradigm Studio 100 will be better than a $40.00 Yorx, but gee if you get the room right the $40.00 Yorx will beat the Studio 100 - please enlighten me where you got that notion - yes substitute Bose for Yorx if you wish. Makes me wonder why anyone would spend more than $200.00 on a ludspeaker if you can convert any speaker into the Dynaudio Evidence master by simply running a frequency sweep and a parametric eq - who cares if the De Capo has a 5db dip you can just morph that up to flat anyway.

If you can just move your speakers to any room like you did and adjust the room treatments to follow suit - then you can and should be able to do that for any speaker (assuming the speaker is designed for the room size). Yes if there is a sliding scale of potentiality where you can maximize a given speaker's best sound and such a scale is out of 100 where one room only gets 35% of the speaker's ability while using treatments or chaniging rooms or both can get 98% of the speaker's best I am not arguing. The room has an influence on the end resulting sound that hits your ears but it is not the actual tonality of what is being played -- a C on a piano is not affected to change it to some other note when it gets to the ear - you get room induced effects yes changing the characteristics of fundamental instruments no. And my contention is that it is here as to why my auditions led me to Audio Note over the B&W and Paradigm models.

Moving my speakers 2 inches will change the way the room acts upon the ending sound and that goes for many if not all speakers out there...but it's not to such a degree in any room i've been in auditioning as to adversely detract from getting a good idea of what the speaker can do. Our ears are quite forgiving over 1/3 octave bands and on frequency anomolies. Frequency response is changed at every listening position in the room at that position --- if you are one meter away dead center or 8 meters away and 5 feet over to the left - These can be HUGE differences no matter what the hell you do to the room you are not covering all your positions because a bass trap and other treatment that works at 1 meter may ruin the other position.

Granted these are extreme examples but it is true from one side of your head to the other to some degree. If Richard Green is correct then the Rat Shack SPL is also largely innacurate above 2khz. If we're talking about bass it can be done by ear. I found my speaker at one position had a frequency dip at 50hz and more prominant at 40hz - I could tell that by listening(well not the specific frequency but I could tell that there was something not quite right - running my frequency sweep several times and re-positioning one can easily "dial" in audibly what is sounding correct while also alternating with Piano recordings since we should know the piano reasonably well. Then run the frequency sweep again and deterimine audibly if it sounds right. Most speakers in vogue right now are positioned in a very very similar location with similar instructions ~2-3 feet from all walls toe in as desired blah blah blah.

Surely you're not saying the room is so disasterous that you ccannot assess any loudspeakers without the need for extensive room treatments and run computer programs to achieve a flat response at the listening position. Please

As for receivers - they affect what initially comes out of a speaker The room cannot fix it if it's ruined from note one. More to the game than just frequency response.

You say sub integration is seamless - you want me to retract the word perfect fine if it makes you happy consider it retracted --- so you say it's seamless have said its seamless and now say it's as seamless as the best 3 way speakers you've heard. I suppose that depends on what you've heard - I suppose I could agree that some subs I have heard integrate about as well as a number of speakers as well (the Snell B-Minor comes to mind) - that doesn't say much in itself however.

You don't know what you are talking about, RGA. Just because speakers sound good in the store (or elsewhere) doesn't guarantee they will sound as good at home. It is quite possible to find several speakers that sound great in the store (or a friend's house, etc.) and get them home and find some of them don't sound as good at home whereas some others may sound even better. That's just the way it is whether you like it or not.

BTW, you had better read Doctor Richard's pescriptions for the bass region again as you have the figures wrong . . .

It's hardly our fault if you, and apparently your dealer, don't have the skills to get good results with subwoofers.

[Woochifer]

Woochifer

You like to clutter the issue of room acoustics. I could not care less where you do the auditions so long as it's the same room - if one wants to do this at home so be it - but if speakers are built for a viariety of rooms - which they should be - then I want one that will perform in a variety of rooms fairly consistantly without the need of liberal room treatments. In normal carpeted rooms with average furnishings you SHOULD get reasonably good sound.

Clutter the issue of room acoustics? How would you know given that you've never demonstrated any kind of understanding of the topic in the first place? Your persistent attempts to bring the topic back to the specific brands of speakers is only indicative that you can't coherently discuss the topic of room acoustics and how it relates to what you hear.

You imply that one speaker will do better than another speaker and it's all room dependant. So a Paradigm Studio 100 will be better than a $40.00 Yorx, but gee if you get the room right the $40.00 Yorx will beat the Studio 100 - please enlighten me where you got that notion - yes substitute Bose for Yorx if you wish. Makes me wonder why anyone would spend more than $200.00 on a ludspeaker if you can convert any speaker into the Dynaudio Evidence master by simply running a frequency sweep and a parametric eq - who cares if the De Capo has a 5db dip you can just morph that up to flat anyway.

Resorting to your usual tactics when confronted with a topic that you can't talk your way out of -- exaggerate,attack, conjure up inneuendo -- yup, pretty familiar.

You seem to forget that "better" or "beat" is a subjective evaluation. When do I ever suggest that "it's all room dependant [sp]"? Yup, another strawman argument so you can bring it all back to brand identity. All that I've ever noted is that the room acoustics can make a huge impact on the overall performance of a speaker. Depending on the characteristics of a speaker and how it interacts with a room, it can easily shift how one compares different speakers.

If you really think that I'm saying that a room and a frequency sweep and parametric EQ will transform a $200 speaker into a Dynaudio Evidence Master, you REALLY need to take a step back and get back to reality. I'm not the one who makes reckless exaggerations, and attributing an idiotic statement like that to the points that I'm making is really stretching things. With a properly treated room, you will more assuredly figure out why that one speaker is at the $200 price point, and why the other one goes for $80,000.

If you can just move your speakers to any room like you did and adjust the room treatments to follow suit - then you can and should be able to do that for any speaker (assuming the speaker is designed for the room size). Yes if there is a sliding scale of potentiality where you can maximize a given speaker's best sound and such a scale is out of 100 where one room only gets 35% of the speaker's ability while using treatments or chaniging rooms or both can get 98% of the speaker's best I am not arguing. The room has an influence on the end resulting sound that hits your ears but it is not the actual tonality of what is being played -- a C on a piano is not affected to change it to some other note when it gets to the ear - you get room induced effects yes changing the characteristics of fundamental instruments no. And my contention is that it is here as to why my auditions led me to Audio Note over the B&W and Paradigm models.

I have no idea why you keep bringing up the instruments argument. The room has nothing to do with the actual note and I've never even implied as such, but it has everything to do with how the REPRODUCTION of that note compares from location to location.

If you prefer the sound of your Audio Notes, fine. Just don't go trying to impose that those speakers are somehow immune to room effects, especially when discussing the low frequencies.

Moving my speakers 2 inches will change the way the room acts upon the ending sound and that goes for many if not all speakers out there...but it's not to such a degree in any room i've been in auditioning as to adversely detract from getting a good idea of what the speaker can do. Our ears are quite forgiving over 1/3 octave bands and on frequency anomolies. Frequency response is changed at every listening position in the room at that position --- if you are one meter away dead center or 8 meters away and 5 feet over to the left - These can be HUGE differences no matter what the hell you do to the room you are not covering all your positions because a bass trap and other treatment that works at 1 meter may ruin the other position.

And your 2" or 4" argument further illustrates what you don't know about room acoustics. Absorption and diffracting treatments work across a wide spectrum because they reduce the decay time with the reflected sound waves. Bass traps can prevent standing waves from forming in the first place or substantially reduce their impact by not giving the sound reflections a chance to interact with one another at close to full amplitude. A bass trap will not "ruin" the sound at another position because their whole purpose is to even out the bass response throughout the room. (Well, unless peaky boomy bass is your preference or you got a very inaccurate speaker, in which case bass traps will "ruin" your listening) The effect of a parametric EQ is the only one that is closely tied to the position, but even there, the variation only occurs along the same axis as the modal frequency.

The wall, floor, and ceiling materials reflect and absorb sound differently at different frequencies. Wall panels can help to smooth out the frequency response by making the reflectivity and absorption more consistent throughout the room. And they reduce the time domain distortions by reducing the decay time in the room.

Rather than perpetuate false arguments that you don't fully understand, why don't you do something constructive like actually try learning about the effects of the room acoustics, and do some hands-on experimenting for yourself. For all the brain matter that you waste trying to conjure up new inneuendo to marginalize valid technical points about room acoustics, you could actually learn something and make a bottomline improvement to the sound quality of your system in the process.

Granted these are extreme examples but it is true from one side of your head to the other to some degree. If Richard Green is correct then the Rat Shack SPL is also largely innacurate above 2khz. If we're talking about bass it can be done by ear. I found my speaker at one position had a frequency dip at 50hz and more prominant at 40hz - I could tell that by listening(well not the specific frequency but I could tell that there was something not quite right - running my frequency sweep several times and re-positioning one can easily "dial" in audibly what is sounding correct while also alternating with Piano recordings since we should know the piano reasonably well. Then run the frequency sweep again and deterimine audibly if it sounds right. Most speakers in vogue right now are positioned in a very very similar location with similar instructions ~2-3 feet from all walls toe in as desired blah blah blah.

The Radio Shack SPL meter has two weighting positions. The A weighting constrains the frequency range to the midrange, while the C weighting is full range. The inaccuracies of the SPL meter are mostly below 60 Hz, but that's easy to get around by using the many adjustment charts that people have created by comparing the Radio Shack SPL meter with calibrated instruments. Rives Audio also produces a test disc that includes a set of test tones calibrated to the Radio Shack SPL meter. And if you really want to be a stickler for accuracy, the SPL meter can also accept an external mic.

Bass corrections are the one area that CANNOT be accurately done by ear. For starters, the human ear's sensitivity iprogressively decreases as the frequency goes lower. Also, you talk about 50 Hz and 40 Hz, but how do you actually know that those indeed are the frequencies that you're observing? A simple sweep test will identify that you got issues, but using just your ears it will not tell you precisely how big the problem is, or how wide or how narrow the frequency range that it affects is.

The three prominent low frequency peaks on my system not only vary by frequency, but in amplitude and bandwidth as well. The peak that occurs at 32 Hz is less than 1/6 octave wide. You talk about how the human ear smooths over differences, but a +10 db peak at 32 Hz is not one of them. You can do all of the repositioning you want, but in a small/medium sized room, the odds are that you won't get the bass right through repostioning alone because the room effects are what they are. With bass traps, you can reduce the room effects across the whole bass range. With the parametric EQ, you fine tune it for any remaining problem frequencies, or you can just use that as the primary room correction device. Furthermore, the best positioning for bass response does not necessarily match up with the best positioning for imaging coherency.

The option of the parametric EQ and the many more placement options IMO are the strongest argument in favor of a subwoofer. I subjectively test bass with a disc heavy on acoustic bass, and almost every speaker that I've heard will play back specific notes on that disc at way different levels than others. With just my rudimentary setup (I don't have a variable crossover frequency, variable slope, or timing correction available through my older receiver), the sound with the acoustic bass is more even and consistent than with just about every other speaker/room combination I've ever tried. That's what the parametric EQ brings to the table.

As for receivers - they affect what initially comes out of a speaker The room cannot fix it if it's ruined from note one. More to the game than just frequency response.

So you're saying that receivers make a bigger difference than rooms do? Sorry, but that notion is simply laughable. Very interesting that you always like to berate receivers saying that they "ruin" the sound, yet you're all too willing to ignore the room effects, which have far bigger variations in how they impact on the sound. Keep in mind that the speaker and the room are both part of the same acoustical mechanism. If you like to view the speaker and the room as completely separate entities that have little to do with one another, then you might as well regard the drivers and the enclosure/port as separate as well.

Room acoustics are also about a lot more than just frequency response, but the variations in the frequency response that they produce are the most clearly audible and verifiable effects. And the frequency response variation that a room can produce is huge. How much variation do receivers singlehandedly create? Oh, that's right, receivers create big enough differences to "ruin" music, but rooms are a copout.

You say sub integration is seamless - you want me to retract the word perfect fine if it makes you happy consider it retracted --- so you say it's seamless have said its seamless and now say it's as seamless as the best 3 way speakers you've heard. I suppose that depends on what you've heard - I suppose I could agree that some subs I have heard integrate about as well as a number of speakers as well (the Snell B-Minor comes to mind) - that doesn't say much in itself however.

You keep making these little semantic distinctions, yet you never answer my question. Who is talking about PERFECT sub integration? Those are your words! You claim that "some" people talk about PERFECT sub integration? Certainly isn't me, and I don't know of anyone on this board who talks about that. Either own up to that, or feel free to continue your pointless sematic exercises.

And you can do better than to try putting words in my mouth. When have I ever described sub integration as seamless in the absolute sense? You're accusing me of that, so I assume that you know what you're talking about. I use that term a lot in center speaker discussions, and I have used it to describe surround setups, but not in absolute terms with subs.