narrow and wide baffles and imaging

The Devore O/93's do a strange thing in my room-with the right cabling and placement they throw out a wide wall of sound way beyond and above the confines of the boxes-when the recording has it. But what they don't do is provide pin-point placement anywhere within the wall of sound. I don't expect a single person who reads this thread to be familiar with Shakey Graves or his latest release "Can't Wake Up" but I can't think of a single recording that better reflects this weird dichotomy. It is not at all unusual for me to look around in my listening room thinking that someone must be calling me from behind because a sound I am not familiar with comes from "out of nowhere" as I get accustomed to this new recording, but if I play, for example, the excellently recorded Madeleine Peyroux "Careless Love", I don't "see" her singing in front of me the way my old B&W 805 standmounts would have defined her. If I play the old chestnut "The ARC Choir" from Mapleshade through my digital rig, the choir is wide and high but the individual singers are not defined with the specificity that I know is there in the recording. I am happy with them, but they have their trade-offs. 

@prof I had become accustomed and enamored with the pinpoint imaging of the Focals (which may be a bit much for some) and I found the Devores to be less pinpoint. I mostly listen to rock, folk rock and funk. The albums I demo’ed that I was quite familiar with were less satisfying than I had hoped for from the O96’s. I really wanted to like them but we didn’t click. 

fsonicsmith,


I know Shakey Graves.  (Not exactly a fan, but he got on my radar due to some recommendation).


As I've mentioned, I found the 0/96 and 0/93 imaging pretty good, even if not pin-point.   I also really got yet another reminder of the importance of speaker positioning.  As you know the Devores generally have a big, rich sound.   But at one point while moving them around during my audition the dealer had them closer together, and really toed in heavily.  At that point that richness and image size practically disappeared into a small, squeezed sound!  Once we spread them out enough again, and aimed them right, then they did that Devore thing with big rich images and weight.


tangramca,


Yeah, if you are wedded to the most pin-point imaging the Devores are the wrong direction.  That said, I'm still surprised they didn't turn your crank at all, given the genres you mentioned are particularly suited to the Devores IMO. 

Duke is science based ..love that....even the dark arts of HOW we hear..
anyway....the big baffle also honks up frequency response....period...