Review: Sumiko Speaker Set Speaker

Category: Speakers

Wow, I just accomplished the single most impressive step forward in my system after 40+years of audiophilia. I had my speakers set using the system developed my Sumiko so that its dealers can optimize the set up of speakers they sell.

Those that remember me please forgive me for repeating my background, but on a forum like this there are always newbies that don’t really know the reviewers’ points of view, so let me give a little background as to my music and audiophile experience. I’m a financial consultant by trade, with over thirty-nine year’s experience, but I have over fifty-years experience as a “serious” musician. I’ve played trumpet since I was nine and jazz guitar since I was forty-two. I write equipment reviews (amps, guitars and speaker cabinets) for Just Jazz Guitar, play rhythm guitar in a big band and play trumpet regularly in churches, regional symphonies, brass bands (cornet of course) and even did a multi-year stint as lead trumpet in a funk/rock/soul band in the Dallas area. I hear live music all the time in tons of different contexts. For instance, on Thanksgiving eve I played trumpet with a large choral group and then had the pleasure of sitting there right next to a harp/oboe/flute trio accompanying the same choir. I’ve been really blessed to play in some incredible groups, including just recently, the Colorado Brass Band, one of the premier bands of the genre in the USA. I’ve played orchestral trumpet sitting with my back against the wall hiding a 32-foot organ pipe that massaged my whole body as I played. So, I feel and hear the music regularly.

I’ve really been serious about audio since my college days, when I bought my first Garrard/Scott/Jensen system. I moved to Time Windows/Bryston in the 1970s and 1980s and replaced the DCMs with Celestions mini-monitors in the 1980s. I’m just now finishing the first major system update since the 1980s. I’ve gone back to serious analog, recently adding a Pro-ject RM10 with Sumiko Blackbird through a Pro-ject Tube Box phono pre-amp. (I’ll do a review of the RM10 baby soon, including DVD-Audio samples, but that’s in the works due to technical challenges that I’m working through). This August, the Celestion SL-6 speakers were replaced with 4 ohm, floor-standing Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grands. Most recently I replaced the Bryston with a Conrad-Johnson CA200 control amp (see review).

Back to the speaker set, my dealer is Soundings in Greenwood Village, CO, owned and operated by Rod Thomson. Rod has several decades of experience in the audio business and is a true music lover. He’s been a dealer for Sumiko for a number of years and attended a several-day course to learn their “Master Set” technique.

When you read reviews of Sumiko-distributed speakers (Vienna Acoustic, Sonus Faber, REL and Sequence) you’ll often see the reviewer mention that someone from Sumiko came out to optimally place the speakers within their listening space. Michael Fremer mention it in this review http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/506vienna/ The reviewer almost invariably will say something about how close the optimal placement was to what he would have used. Please remember that that comment is an ego thing, since it’s of interest to a reviewer to let the readers know that he knew all along how to set speakers.

Well, I’m humble enough to realize that I needed help. While my Baby Grands were breaking in I spent an hour or so every weekend moving them around, searching for a totally cohesive sound. Every other week I was tempted to move them back toward their rear wall, but every time I did it, I screwed up the all-important midrange. Not that the bass was always smooth. I’d get it sounding really good with “Ballad of the Runaway Horse” (same recording that Sumiko uses) but then I’d put on an orchestral piece and certain bass notes would pop out and overwhelm the music.

Still, the midrange was the most problematic to me. It seemed like when I got a really nice, deep, full bass that the mids would get congested and thick. Female voices would lose some of their character and the sound would seem to be thrown at me and be more piercing than I could enjoy. I found myself turning down the volume. Since I value accurate voice, accurate brass and imaging more than anything, I’d ultimately give up on the bass and move the speakers into the room until the bass stopped smearing things.

My self-derived set was actually very satisfying. Vocals were very coherent, full of nuanced timbre and the imaging had lots of depth and side-to-side accuracy. The Baby Grands had way more bass than my, now retired, Celestion SL6s, so I was pretty darn happy. Anyway, after I had a couple of hundred hours on the VAs it was time to call Rod for my Master Set. Generally, Sumiko dealers offer the set as part of the speaker purchase; however, as I understand it, not all dealers have the training. We’re lucky in Colorado, since Rod has the training and several years of hands-on experience implementing the technique.

By the way, skeptics are welcome. Rod told me he was a skeptic when Sumiko first came to his shop to show him. After decades in the business, he didn’t think there wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen or heard, yet he was floored by the impact. He does the set up for non-Sumiko customers for a fee. He told me of recently setting a pair of B&W 801 for a skeptic and the guy is now bringing in buddies from out of state to hear how amazing his system now sounds.

The process took about an hour and a half in my large room. Rod came in and longingly eyed the long wall with the fire place facing the Rocky Mountains. He said something like, “you could move this, move that and I guarantee you’ll be amazed with what your speakers do, OR I can put them along where you have them and get something less.” I thought about it. The WAF of the long wall was low, not because it wasn’t a good idea, but it wasn’t her idea. I thought, if I try my set up and fail, I’ll have to pay next time, but, what the hey, it’s only money. So I asked Rod to do his best with the placement that I preferred.

In a room that’s roughly 16’ X 40’ I was asking him to set the speakers on a 7’ wall, with a hall on one side and large, odd shaped entry on the other and a 40” armoire in the middle. The ceiling is 10’, BTW. The building is concrete, high rise construction with 10” slab floor and ceiling.

Anyway, Rod accepted the challenge and “The Ballad of the Runaway Horse” soon filled the room. I could attempt to reveal the whole process, but that would be futile. I witnessed the whole thing, start to finish, and actually helped a time or two and I couldn’t replicate it in a new speaker positions. I will say that he started with the bass, beginning with the speakers just a couple of inches from the rear wall and then moving them out an back while listening to the nodes. He worked the left speaker first, and then the right, focusing on getting the bass balanced between the two speakers, but with no nasty nodes in the midrange. Toe-in and rake angle were critical to the midrange and balance, but I think that getting the bass right and avoiding the midrange nodes was the single most important factors. Still, it’s a comprehensive system that you’re not going to be able to read about and then do. Listening and hearing the nodes takes some training. I was amazed to hear MAJOR changes with just ¼” of movement.

Bottom line, speaker placement is very sensitive to distance to the wall, speaker distance from each other and surrounding walls, speaker rake, speaker plumb (levelness) and toe-in. In certain circumstances the smallest movement can destroy the whole thing. On the right side of my setup there’s a wall angle that juts out at about a 45-degree angle. The smallest movement around that can screw up my set up.

Here’s one phenomenon that amazed me, the apparent volume of the system is about 1/3 lower. It’s not because the system has less sound energy, but because the harshness and phase anomalies are removed and it’s pleasant to listen at much higher levels. My C-J CA200 has a step-attenuator with 99 steps of .7 dB. I’ve never listened at 90 before yesterday. Stuff I listened to at 55 before is now at 70. Right now I’m listening in the background at 40 and that’s very coherent, but it’s low because people are asleep. Rod and I were actually carrying on a conversation as I had something on at 70 on the CA200’s LEDs.

The bass that I gained is mind boggling. I’ve listening to orchestral stuff and string bass stuff and I’m just blown away by the extension and clarity of the bass. My VAs ended up about a foot out from the wall, with about 3” of toe-in and 56” between the front toes. The image covers the whole wall. When I go into another room, the sound stays coherent and is actually louder at lower levels than before. Yes, a paradox. Up close, it sounds softer at a given level, but that sound travels further through the apartment. I suspect it’s because all inter-speaker cancellation has been eliminated, or at least minimized.

Now for the BIG PAYOFF, the mids are better than ever. I hear every little thing, in balance. My daughter put on a Brazilian CD that must have had 16 percussion instruments going, along with vocals and guitar. She couldn’t believe how much more she was hearing. I was hearing it for the first time and asked, “what’s that thing that sounds like a cross between a dulcimer, guitar and drum?” She’d seen a DVD of the group and said, “It’s something that looks like a cross between a dulcimer, guitar and drum.” The Brazilians apparently haven’t stopped making new instruments. Anyway, this recording was very dense, but with instruments spread all over the place. I “got it” 8 measures in.

This set up make light work of sparse studio recordings, like you might hear with Nora Jones. You hear each smack of her lovely lips, her Texas twang and incredible instrumental sounds. I loved the snare on one song, with the drum head a little lose and the snares a little tight. Wow, it sounded like one of my buddies playing snare at the end of my room. The voices in harmony separate into their individual pieces, yet you also hear the blend of the multiple voices.

Vinyl still sounds better than average digital, but I’m finding myself listening to more CDs on my poor little Oppo HD981. I think the removal of the distortions caused by the speakers made the digital distortions much more palatable. The midrange just falls effortlessly out of the speakers now. There’s no edge, beaming or other distractions (refractions?).

How do I measure this improvement? It was at least as good as going from the Celestions to the Baby Grands. Now I’ve got the bass extension of ported, three-way speakers combined with the imaging of sealed mini-monitors up on three-foot stands, pulled into the room. I’ve heard much larger speakers that don’t have the bass extension that I now have. It’s like I doubled the size of my speakers. I mentioned that the image covers the wall where the speakers are placed. The depth that I had with the speakers pulled out is still there and rock-steady.

What will it cost you if you don’t own Sumiko distributed speakers bought from a trained Master Set dealer. I don’t know. Sumiko doesn’t even mention it on their site. It’s better than if I’d spent thousands of dollars on equipment. It takes a couple of hours. I’ve paid lawyers with much less skill and training $250 an hour, so I wouldn’t flinch to pay $500 if I moved to another home and needed Rod’s help again. Think of this as another component purchase. Would you pay $500 for a good phono pre-amp? If yes, then this’ll give you several orders of magnitude more in system improvement.

Dave

Associated gear
Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grand
Conrad Johnson CA200
Pro-ject RM10
Sumiko Blackbird
Oppo HD981

Similar products
Self alignment