All I can say is WOW! Lots of good ideas and suggestions to work through. It's why I love these forums! So much to think about before you make a decision!. I will say this - the most intriguing idea (and I forget which responder/poster said it) that you can't reproduce what isn't there. Helluva observation! However, I thought that's why Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 were brought to market. Which then made me reconsider what I'm after. Thanks for the good debate!
Looking for the next level in imaging...
I enjoy my system every time I sit down and listen. But as we all do, we get the itch to seek improvement! I am intrigued by Omnidirectional speakers such as MBL’s, German Physiks etc. and breaking free from the head in a vice sweet spot to get better imaging throughout the room and better the imaging in the sweet spot! I believe changing the speaker will deliver on this quest! What speakers would you look at? Or would changing a component yield the result? Has anyone gone from the traditional dispersion speaker to an omnidirectional?
current speakers are Martin Logan Ethos
budget $20-30K...could stretch if something is exceptional
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Hello Mike. Thank you for your input. I think you are definitely correct about having a good balance. My point was if your room was going to be either over damped or under damped it seems like over damped is better. I have heard rooms with little to no treatment and my room sounds better to me. My room was designed by an acoustician and all the walls and ceiling are the ‘treatments’ if you will. There is no drywall inside the room. My room is on the small side and I think he did a great job with the design. If I had a bigger room I would no doubt approach it differently. Regards
Ron |
My two cents, Unless you can have your speakers at least 2.5-3 feet away from the front wall and at least 3’ from the side walls and your listening position is 5-8’ from the back wall, you are probably not going to get the best your speakers. All the Best. |
@patrickdowns Not to toot my own horn, but I have been doing this since 1958. @mikelavigne I look at it from a different perspective. I want to hear exactly what is in the recording. I do not want to hear any editorialization by the room. As far as reproduction is concerned, everything is important. Detail, dynamics, bass, and imaging. Bass and imaging are definitely the hardest to get right. Some systems are even hyper detailed, audiophiles tend to love this. If there is a question of balance it is with volume. Every recording has a correct volume, a volume at which it sounds best. This is because our ear's frequency response changes with volume. Funkadelic recordings sound like crap if you listen to them at casual volumes, but turn them up on a system with great bass and magic occurs. Listen to a string quartet at that volume and the violins will cut your throat. Joni Mitchell albums generally sound best at intermediate volumes. Much of this has to do with the volume the music was mixed at. Early Zappa records sounded compressed and muffled with poor bass. They were mixed at crazy high volumes on less than stellar equipment. You really had to crank them to get the most out of them. The re-releases were mixed on modern equipment at moderate levels and the difference is a major improvement. I might also add that like my room, your was expressly designed for music reproduction making it much easier to achieve decent control. I only had to add absorption directly behind the speakers. |
@mijostyn , points well taken. I was born in 1957, by the way! Got my first decent system (for me, as a teen) in HS (Bose 301s!), but had fallen in love with music reproduction long before then, lying on the living room floor listening to Dionne Warwick, The Association, and the Everly Brothers on my parents’ big console hi-fi. |
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