Compact or Bookshelf speakers?

[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?