Well guys, I have some minor apologizing to do. I've been playing around with Lore placement all afternoon. I had done some significant placement experimentation in the first couple weeks and thought I had a good idea of what was going on. A few of you had recommended trying them very close to the front wall as well as others recommended toe-in so they cross well in front of the listening position.
I had previously resisted placement close to front wall due to issues with TV stand placement as well as subwoofers. I had concerns these things would obstruct Lore drivers, requiring me to move around a good amount of other stuff in the room in order to try this Lore placement. Today I finally had the time and room availability to work on this. I was able to get cables and other stuff out of the way to push the other "furniture" back about five inches toward the front wall. This allowed me enough flexibility to move the Lore's as close as 6" from the front wall.
Well, my goodness. Turned off that subwoofer, and lo and behold, there's plenty of "Shelter" song on his first album, the bass is peaky in one of the bass notes. I can confirm that that's the actual signal and not a room mode of mine. Something about their recording process on that album must have had a resonance at about 40 or 50hz, because bass notes at that frequency really spike in the signal. And this is how it sounds to my ears as well. Reproduce this approach in all the songs I'm listening to, especially while optimizing bass, and I have a pretty good idea what stuff is just part of the signal and what is due to speakers and/or room.
Ok, with that said, low bass comes through adequately on the Lores now that I have them placed closer to front walls, enough that there is no need for subwoofer for most music. I will need to go back and redo my EQ on the subwoofer so it's crossed over around 35-40hz or so and only supports sub-35hz. There's no need for it above that range.
I ended up with the rear of the Lores 15" from my front wall, and same distance from sidewalls as before (18" or so), with mild toe-in. I didn't like the aggressive toe
-in. It collapsed the soundstage too much and also cause some smearing in imaging and instrument separation.
This is only about 5" closer to the front wall than previously - very surprising to me that these few inches would make such a huge difference in bass response.
Anyway, sorry guys for not fully exploring placement before coming to my previous bass response conclusions. Cwazz, if you haven't yet played around aggressively with speaker placement, I would really recommend it.
