Newbie with $1500 and a wife pushing for Bose

This problem requires a multi-step approach, some patience, and faith. (1) Spend the entire $1500 on a subwoofer. (2)Spend an entire weekend trying to wire it to your boombox. (3)Give up, and let the subwoofer (hopefully a whopping huge one) sit there in the room doing nothing. You need to allow for at least 4 weeks of staring at $1500 dollars worth of useless equipment, whereupon, one evening she will ask "What else do you need to make that thing work?" Then, you win, and you become an audiogon legend.

Can we look at this logically without people getting upset with me for doing so?

Do you folks recommending the Def Tech ProCinema 60 realize how big this room is? Not only is it 16 x 20, it also has an 18+ foot ceiling. There's quite a few cubic feet there.

Do you realize that you're recommending the use of five 3.5" "woofers" with one 8" "sub-woofer" to try and pressurize this much space? It just ain't gonna do it. At least not very well or very low in frequency.

Do you realize that these speakers are nominally rated at 88 dB's and "somewhere" between 4 to 8 ohm loads according to the manufacturer? For most receivers, lower impedances are NOT an "easy load". Top it off with lower sensitivity and you'll have to drive the receiver even harder.

I'm not knocking this system as it might sound quite nice for what it is, i just don't think that it is a suitable candidate for this size room / specific type of installation.

For sake of comparison and so that you know where i'm coming from, the BIC Venturi system that i recommended has six 6" woofers with bigger cabinets for more extended bass, a more powerful 10" sub in a larger cabinet for more powerful bass, the system is rated at 90 dB's, which is measurably more sensitive and has an 8 ohm nominal impedance, making it an easier load.

Even though these speakers retail for over $1300, they can be bought for less money via the net than what the Def Tech's would be available for. If you're wondering why you can get SO much more speaker for less money ( larger 6.1 system vs smaller 5.1 system ), open up an audio or HT magazine and take a look. Somebody has to pay for those expensive two page ads that Def Tech runs.

If you bought the BIC system as it is, it would run circles around the Def Tech system in a situation like this. If you did the aforementioned mods that i recommended to it for about $25, i think that you would be amazed at how good it sounded. For the money, these speakers in this quantity are going to be hard to beat. While i don't have much faith in reviewers, read the reviews on their website. Sean
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Sean I totally agree with your assessment on room size and speaker/driver size. That is why I mention in my previous post the volume of the room and why I also mention that Athena system because of its 6.5 inch driver in the bookshelves and the 10 inch subwoofer. We are on the same page.
Regards,
Rich

Sean,

dont want to start a pissing match or anything, but i have a co-worker who bought that Definitive Technology's ProCinema 60, it is in a room of similar size but the ceiling is only about 15 foot, and those little deftech's do a good job of filling up that kinda space.

people dont give those speakers they credit they deserve..

I respect your arguement however, and im sure the speakers you mentioned are great, but dont sell short on the definitive technology's cause the company does well enough to to dump a good amount into marketing.

Slappy: Due to the laws of physics, the harder that you drive a speaker, the higher its' cut-off frequency becomes. Given that you're working with a 3.5" woofer in the "mains", how low do you think it will go with one watt fed into it? Now how low will it go with several watts fed into it? Same thing goes for a single 8" driver.

Maybe they do sound "good". Maybe they will play "loud enough". Maybe they will offer "deep" bass extension. The laws of physics dictate that there has to be a compromise somewhere and it comes into play when you want that type of system to do all of the above at the same time. Given that most movies introduce deep bass at the point of peak output, obtaining extension with spl and retaining a cohesive presentation over the rest of the band starts looking harder and harder. That is, unless someone has found a way to break the laws of physics.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm NOT trying to start a pissing match or attack the product(s) that you or anyone else recommended. What i am trying to do is to help folks better understand "the big picture" involved with building a system. The lack of taking room acoustics and size into consideration is a major problem with most installations that i see. That is, some people have good sized tower speakers spread 7' apart and they have a foot on each side of them. Or they have those same speakers tucked up against their "big screen". The next system is in a room that is 20' wide and they are running speakers that fit into the palm of your hand. Obviously, all of those situations are FAR from optimum. These are people that will never know how much better their systems could sound or what they are missing if nobody takes the time to explain the how's, what's and where's to them.

You have to pick speakers that will work with your specific room and listening arrangement. If you don't, anything else that you do will be based on trying to band-aid the speaker / room interphase.

If you want "impact", you have to have surface area and / or sensitivity. If you want to keep things cohesive without sounding "strained" or actually straining the driver or amp to get that impact, you have to have high sensitivity. After all, lower sensitivity not only works the amp harder, it pushes the speaker harder. As previously mentioned, the harder we push the speaker, the higher the cut-off frequency, so extension is lost. All of this is not to mention that the more excursion that the driver has to take from being pushed harder to obtain the output while rolling off even higher, the more distortion it creates and the less cohesive the presentation is. It is a VERY vicious circle.

Having said that, there are PLENTY of systems out there that work "good enough". If we ever want to get beyond people shopping at Best Buy and Circuit City, we have to offer REAL solutions at affordable prices that are BETTER than "good enough". Until we can do that, the average consumer will never know that "good enough" really isn't "good" at all. Sean
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