Quote Originally Posted by kexodusc
RGA,buddy...give your head a shake. Let me give you a perfect example of how room interactions can and do matter BIG TIME. I recently had an opportunity to spend a day with some Focus Audio speakers. Two different setups. The FS-888's were in the room with the B&W Nautilus 800's. Let me say that I loved both speakers, though I'm not a fan of B&W's price tag. The room was rectangular, I'm guessing 12 ft by 22 or so.
In position A, the 4 speakers were lined up along the narrow wall (12 feet), in position B along the wide wall, which was probably about 20 feet or so. You probably know where I'm going with this.

The Focus Audio FS-888's, when played along the wide wall, me sitting about 8 feet back, were absolutely incredible, and presented a much wider soundstage with more depth, realizm, and fantastic imaging, simply outperforming the B&W Naut 800's in every aspect IMO. These are among my favorite speakers. However, along the narrow wall, the FS-888's only had about 2 feet or so to breath on either side of the speaker, and it became immediately obvious that the extremely wide soundstage was being choked off. The B&W's, while still not sounding as pleasing to me in terms of the way it handled voices compared to the FS-888, managed to present a smaller soundstage along the smaller wall, and still maintaint the accuracy of imaging individual instruments...But yes, the B&W sounded better along the wide wall too.

This is a real phenomenon, that was instantly recognized by myself and the salesperson. In fact, they had just rearranged the room along the shortwall and when he started listening, he knew right away something was wrong when he popped in his demo CD and didn't get the results he was expecting to show me.
But I already said that you need a room well suited for the speaker - if these companies had any clue they would tell you that in the instruction manual - my Wharfedales and AN's say it and so did my B&W's. SOme will provide a square foot effective rating, how far apart minimum and maximum they should be from one another 10 feet maximum for my Wharfedales which also happens to be the ideal, postion X feet from side and real walls geenrally within a range etc. If you follow their directions you SHOULD be close to the ideal spot - if the room has the distances and room size you SHOULD have zero problem getting them to sound their best in that room.

Of course the room is important for getting the best results - but the better speaker will sound better IT SHOULD in any room provided the room meets the criteria of the speaker maker. If I am listening in a typical 14X18 room at my dealer with a 12 foot ceiling and the speakers can handle that sized room - well mate the speaker is deisgned to operate in typical homes or IT SHOULD BE and that's a typical room.

It's always a cop out - it sounds bad because of the room? BS!. Gee every room then must be bad - how many rooms and equipment do i need to try the 705 in for them to sound good - i'm up to four now and they've actually been consistant in them - consistantly not good but consistant...and this is the speaker that won European Loudspeaker of the year.