Zu Omen or Tekton Lore

Zman, I suppose I would be a casual listener by your definition. I have found a positioning of the Lores in my room that does not have bloated bass at all, has just as articulate of bass as when the speakers were a little farther out into the room, but it goes down to the full 30 hz. Now, as for soundstage, I'm sure you're right that I'm sacrificing soundstage depth. I guess that's a compromise of having the system in my living room. That said, I'm a bachelor, living alone, and have the ability to make of my living room what I want. In this case, I do have quite a lot of room treatment (including absorption panels in front of TV when not watching it), and furniture is comfortably arranged in ways that make it a nice lounge as well as decent sound. Is it fully fully optimized, no, probably not. It's not been compromised for the needs of a family, though!

Also, I totally agree with you about a subwoofer being an excellent tool. In fact, before I had the Lores, I had Hornshoppe Horns, which needed subwoofer support all the way up to probably the 80-100hz range. In that case, I was using a subwoofer along with an active EQ customized for the sweet spot. With the Lores well positioned for quality bass response, I don't feel like I'm lacking anything until I'm sub-30hz without a subwoofer. I'd say that's pretty good, but it does make me curious about the Pendragons, and I wonder if you could get away with less wall reinforcement in the bass area with them.

Ok, that's it for my ranting response.

Zman did get me thinking and motivated to further explore positioning. I did a lot of positioning work a while ago to get the right room reinforcement for quality and quantity bass. Yesterday I gave up the bass quest entirely and embarked on a quest for soundstage depth. I moved the speakers out into the room about 2 feet more and about a foot further from the sidewalls. Indeed, the soundstage depth expanded greatly, and the bass suffered. I think I'll keep it in this configuration for a while, as I have the space with my current setup. It's not as nice and tidy as when the speakers were closer to the corners, but I do like the much much greater soundstage depth. It's helping a lot with both my high quality recordings as well as the lower quality ones - the music has more room to "breath", so the layers of the music aren't compressed on top of each other nearly so much.

As a result, I have re-engaged my subwoofer with room EQ, and while the bass isn't as coherent and will take me a while to tweak until it's just right, it's there in the right quantity to keep the system full-range. I'm not having much trouble with the speakers disappearing for the most part, although I bet some high quality monitors may do a better job of that. I do intend to do the cabinet and driver resonance tweaks, which I am told should reduce the sound of the cabinets and help them to disappear even more.

I used a bag of lead and sand on top of the Lore's to eliminate cabinet resonance. The imaging was much improved over not having the bags on.
Just a thought until you can do the cabinet tweek.

Genjamon, I knew there was a serious listener in there.8;)

Question: have Lore or Omen owners ever paired these FRD speakers with low-powered solid state amps? I'm thinking specifically about a 40-watt Peachtree idecco. My father-in-law (not an audiophile, but audio-curious) asked me to put together a $2K 2-channel system that works with all his sources including the cable box, Blu-ray player, and his ipod. The idecco seems a great match for his sources and lifestyle, but clearly its MOSFET amp section is not the finest to to found. I'm thinking that we could make the most of it, though, by pairing it with an efficient FRD. The fact that Peachtree chose to exhibit its Nova (80 watts) with Zu Essences at a show a couple of years ago makes me think that the idecco and Lore combo might not suck (given all the compromises we're making to provide functionality and meet budget.)

Whaddya think?

Cymbop. I have had the exact same question. Will the idecco be enough to drive the Lore's at a high volume?