You bet! Somewhere I wrote a long history of this debacle. Maybe a search will retrieve it. In short, my room is quite dead, with placement requiremnents creating a 7.5' triangle 8 feet out from the front wall (Steinway B back there). I demoed Fidelios originally (rear-firing only), and was surprised at the anemic bass compared to my home-grown 6.5" two-way monitors. Quickly realized hat 7" woofers aimed back there weren't going to cut it, so demo'd Encores, with results better, of course, but with missing upper bass. Indeed when the top-half monitors were run direct the results were superior! Several telcons with Julien Pelchat at VA, faxed floorplans, etc. later I twisted the bases around, and voila...an incredible difference! VA noted (2 1/2 years ago) that only 20% of the Encore users required front-firing bases, but this recommendation is clearly a function of room boundary reinforcement, especially off the front wall. They felt that rear-firing was the way to go up to about 4-5' clearance. In my case (8') the front-firing geometry is the solution. Since the cross to the bases is at a lowish 150Hz, and the woofers are SO quick, VA obviously prefers to try to get away with indirect-firing if possible, as with their smaller models. (It's got to be a huge problem with the Fidelio, I'd think. I hear they've "encored" it, too.) As a further aside, VA STRONGLY discouraged me from changing the distances between the woofer and: the floor (stands), the midrange (using cones on the granite slab, etc.) as these inter-driver and vertical boundary dimensions are carefully accomodated in the spectral response. Interestingly, tilting the whole Encore forward or backward small amounts will move the stage fore and aft...but in opposite direction than you'd think. Try it for fun, but only about two degrees or so.
Happy Holidays. Ern
