1. Acoustics: How large was the room, and how damped? Sorry but I find these are critical issues, often confounding me.
2. Break-in: How much break-in did the speakers have? This alone could account for the problems. Seriously.
I was on a speaker merry go round for over a decade until I developed a break-in process which I will summarize below. The difference is shocking. For example, floor standing Spendors that were shrill became mellow with deep rich bass after this process.
I own LSA 1 standard editions and they are my favorite speakers that I've ever owned save for Silverlines and perhap a pair of Proac. I heard the Signature once at a show and was very impressed as well. I have never heard the Statement speakers that you describe.
Break in process: Place speakers face to face and CLOSE, almost touching. Reverse phase on ONE speaker (black to red; red to black). You will need a mono signal which you can achieve various ways such as finding a mono recording, or hitting "mono" button on source or amp, or tapping just one output and splitting it into both left and right inputs of amp. PRIOR to any of this, find a volume setting that is LOUD but will not damage the speakers. When you play that mono recording this way, you will find that the midrange and bass completely cancel out! All you hear is upper upper treble. I use blankets to drown out the upper treble. Give it 48 hours, set up the speakers again, voila, break-in equivalent to years of most people's normal home volume playback.
CAUTION: since you don't hear the signal, it is unfortunately easy to over drive the speakers and damage them. Therefore it is essential to test the recording playing back in normal mode to find the best volume setting.
This break-in process tends to alleviate precisely the issues you complain about. The difference is shocking.
I am surprised that speaker manufacturers don't do this prior to selling the speakers.
It PAINS me to think about how many speakers I've purchased and later sold, without EVER having heard them broken in.
BTW most speakers that I bought used turned out to be scarcely broken in!
Art
2. Break-in: How much break-in did the speakers have? This alone could account for the problems. Seriously.
I was on a speaker merry go round for over a decade until I developed a break-in process which I will summarize below. The difference is shocking. For example, floor standing Spendors that were shrill became mellow with deep rich bass after this process.
I own LSA 1 standard editions and they are my favorite speakers that I've ever owned save for Silverlines and perhap a pair of Proac. I heard the Signature once at a show and was very impressed as well. I have never heard the Statement speakers that you describe.
Break in process: Place speakers face to face and CLOSE, almost touching. Reverse phase on ONE speaker (black to red; red to black). You will need a mono signal which you can achieve various ways such as finding a mono recording, or hitting "mono" button on source or amp, or tapping just one output and splitting it into both left and right inputs of amp. PRIOR to any of this, find a volume setting that is LOUD but will not damage the speakers. When you play that mono recording this way, you will find that the midrange and bass completely cancel out! All you hear is upper upper treble. I use blankets to drown out the upper treble. Give it 48 hours, set up the speakers again, voila, break-in equivalent to years of most people's normal home volume playback.
CAUTION: since you don't hear the signal, it is unfortunately easy to over drive the speakers and damage them. Therefore it is essential to test the recording playing back in normal mode to find the best volume setting.
This break-in process tends to alleviate precisely the issues you complain about. The difference is shocking.
I am surprised that speaker manufacturers don't do this prior to selling the speakers.
It PAINS me to think about how many speakers I've purchased and later sold, without EVER having heard them broken in.
BTW most speakers that I bought used turned out to be scarcely broken in!
Art