@draaglah said, "I'm a sucker for soundstaging, so trying out different models to find better and bigger sound is often a pastime - though it seems to sometimes be at the cost of detail for some reason."
My experience has been that late-onset reflections are generally beneficial to both timbre and soundstage (assuming they have a similar spectral balance to the first-arrival sound). Early reflection are likely to degrade clarity, and though they can still enhance timbre and soundstage. So if you are getting loss of detail, it might be caused by unwanted early reflections.
As an example of this phenomenon, consider the experience of Maggie owners: They find a significant improvement in pretty much all areas when they are able to pull their speakers far enough out in front of the wall, preferably 5 feet or more, corresponding to a path-length-induced delay on the backwave reflection of at least 10 milliseconds. This is enough of a delay that the spectrally-correct backwave energy does not degrade clarity, but it still enhances timbre, soundstage depth, and a sense of being enveloped in the acoustic space of the recording.
Studies of what makes the difference between a good seat and a bad seat in a concert hall support this line of thinking. In a good seat, there is a clear time-domain separation between the first-arrival sound and the onset of reflections. In a poor seat, there is no significant demarcation between the first-arrival sound and the onset of reflections because the reflections start arriving too early. This degrades clarity.
It's not always possible to effectively minimize early reflections in a home audio setup, especially if the speakers have very wide radiation patterns. Wide radiation patterns are generally pleasing overall (they do wind up becoming beneficial late reflections after a couple of bounces), but they are to a certain extent a two-edged sword. If minimizing early reflections happens to be feasible in your situation, might be worth a try.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer
