Subwoofers - Front Firing vs. Downward Firing

Ptmconsulting: Looking at your mid-fi home theater-based rig -- certainly not an audiophile-quality dedicated two-channel system -- I can see why you've come to that conclusion. You couldn't be more wrong about me, my occupation and my credentials. And I sincerely doubt that you know more than Richard Lord, founder of REL. And, yes, I own a REL Stadium III, which is quite a few notches above the Strata. Happy viewing, er, I mean listening!

9rw: Please put down your ruler and zip up.

Mdrummer01: Just keep cranking up your REL. You might consider adding three or four to your system. And try stacking them.

9rw, don't bother with the HT crowd, they live in their own world. One of them told me what my two REL Stadium subs sounded like, even tho he had never heard one. Logic told him. Another told me how high their distortion is. For a real laugh look at HT Shack, where they test subs intended to be woofer downward next to a wall [RELs] in a parking lot with the woofer pointing to the side. They are still living in the 70s when many thought you could tell something about sound from a spec sheet. One of them commended that while I was depending on my own experience and published tests my opponent was using the HT tests and spec sheets, which were obviously better. They seem determined to repeat every mistake that has been made in the last thirty years. One of them told me if I would step outside the "Audiophile" crowd I would realize that bi amping with 2 amps gave no advantage whatsoever over using one identical amp. There are 2 separate worlds on Audiogon and they intersect only marginally. As for myself, I chose to remain a member of the "Audiophile" [AKA Reality Based ] community.

For a real laugh look at HT Shack, where they test
subs intended to be woofer downward next to a wall [RELs] in a parking lot
with the woofer pointing to the side.

FWIW - Ilkka Rissanen, who conducted those "laughable" tests,
recently got a job working in the research department for
[url=http://www.genelecusa.com/products/]this[/url]pro audio
manufacturer. The bad thing is that working at Genelec gives him access to
a top notch research laboratory equipped with the very finest measuring
instruments in the industry (Klippel Analyzer, Audio Precision, MLSSA) and an
anechoic chamber. I suspect even Genelec still go outside from time to time
to make calibration measurements in a halfspace (parking lot) or suspend a
speaker from a crane and then repeat the measurement to get a calibration
for their chamber...just as Dr. Floyd Toole used to do at Canada's National
Research Council Laboratories before he got a VP job at Harman (since
retired).

Definitely a different crowd.