Why do I bother adding to these threads 3 months late???
To start the ball rolling on the wrong foot right from the start, I'm a Mapleshade dealer and friend of Pierre's. Although this might discount what I have to say for the cynically inclined, it puts me in a position of intimacy with his knowledge and what's behind it. As you know, forums like this are wonderful but full of opportunities for, among other things, wandering around, the blind leading the blind. Here's my set of blind spots:
I will start by pointing out that very few manufacturers would have the integrity and equanimity to repond to this question in any other way than was posted by Stearnsn. Furthermore, the engineer types are precisely the guys that come up with stuff that theoretically specs well but may or may not actually sound better subjectively. This is a famous audiophile conundrum and I'm surprised that you didn't recocgnize it since most of us spend alot of time on the other side of the measurements vs. sound argument.
It is a testimony to Pierre's humility and truly scientific approach that he is delighted to uproot even his own pet theories in the face of imperical evidence. There are specific and good reasons behind every one of his recommedations. Whether they are absolutely always true or not is another issue and I think that Pierre is possibly erroring slightly here and there, but relatively speaking, you can count on them being pretty darned true.
To speak to Zakesman's parallel thread:
(I'm sorry Z but it seems like you finally caught a sucker (me) with your needlessly sarcastic tone. Occasional caveats aside, you were out classed by your repondents kindness.)
Firstly, Mapleshade is driven by Pierre's passion to offer great sound, great value and facilitate great musicians getting their music out and getting fairly paid for it. His recording contracts are a model of simplicity and fairness to the musicians. I know this because I was one of them. He abhors over inflated pricing. He was forced into his more recent stratospheric pricing of his upper end Omega Mikro line by the unreal amounts of time he has in imperical experimentation. But he has put just as much time into developing budget products so the rest of us can benefit from his work. His products and educational catalogues are an expression of his truly generous nature and his penchant for cutting to the chase. There's never any right way for everyone. Pierre has his priorities. Mine happen to be similar. Yours may differ. Oh, and incidently, he quit his pentagon position because they were obviously more interested in padding the wallets of their contractors than implimenting his more-effective-in-real-life-(and death)-situations minimalist designs.
It is common knowledge that sitting closer gives a higher ratio of direct sound to reflected sound, the result being dramatically increased clarity. The extreme example of this is head phones. If you've never ABed your speakers vs. headphones you'd be shocked at what is lost.
Most speakers are severely compromised; time alignment being one very common example. Room interactions are also reduced by positioning the listener nearer to a room boundary, such as the floor or the back wall. This has the added advantage of supporting the bass as well. moving the speaker out into the room will automatically open up the soundstage, deepening it dramatically. Loss of bass support is then made up for by sitting near the back wall. This also removes bass reflections adn minimizes room nodes.
Putting speakers on the floor works with similar issues. Talk to Roy Allison about it.
The 8' speaker cable issue has to do with cable reflections/resonances issues interacting with the amplifier and is known to many cogniscenti other than Pierre. He found out through a customers imperical experience then coincidentally heard about the reason for it through a famous EE, whose name slips my mind at the moment, who made these contoversial claims over 40 years ago.
You can explore these questions further if you like by simply calling the Mapleshade tweek hotline and talking to the man himself. or not. your call.
