Verity Audio speakers

I agree. Real world speaker positioning and ideal speaker position is all about compromise. Verity with their optional forward or rear firing bass module provides greater room placement flexibility than most traditional speakers.

The reason I posted about Verity’s room placement was not to discourage potential buyers into thinking that the rule of 1/3 only applied to Verity.

A lot of what attracted me to the Parsifals initially is that they seemed EASIER to place in a challenging room. More flexible (front or rear firing woofers), generally considered somewhat "beamy" in the midrange (which makes 1st order reflections off of side-walls less pronounced), and, for all that's packed in there, a really small footprint. But, of course, placement matters. A lot. But doesn’t it always? Oh, and they do sound wonderful – seems like regardless of what you throw at them. The ones I have are, I think, fairly described as 1/2 Ovation 1/2 Encore. The monitors are effectively upgradable (although they don't call it that) to Ovation specs. Mine were (before I got them). The bass cabinets on the Ovation/Encore versions are different sizes, however, and thus it's one or the other, and that’s that. Running mine with relatively modest Rowland gear, and 250wpc SS monoblocks are more than enough. Have also heard them (same ones) on Atmasphere monoblocks. Nice, but I really don’t have the patience for tubes any more, personally. No – unless I stumble into unlimited funds to build an secret room from the ground up designed around something cringe-inducingly, self-indulgently, and obscenely huge – don’t expect I’ll ever consider getting rid of the Parsifals.

Smoffat, as for anchoring, your “environment” (dedicated room on a concrete floor) is about as different as possible from mine (main living space on a saggy, 160-year-old, suspended wooden floor) – so I don’t expect the same solution would apply. At all. I need to move mine all the time (from where the sound good, to where they “belong”). And also need to isolate them from that damn floor as much as possible. At first, I had the stock spikes on granite slabs on magic sliders. Effective-ish. Then I tried replacing the stock spikes with the Stillpoints SS Ultras. Like it. Generally, the effect was to sound cleaner and more precise, without losing any of the signature warmth and fullness. Then I swapped out all of the sorbothane pucks (between the cabinets and the aluminum block between them) with Herbies fat black dots as well as replacing the “magic sliders” under the granite with the Herbies slider-plus-“dot” deal. Again, the cumulative (subjective) effect was to firm up and de-muddy the soundstage and presentation (and a lot more cost-effectively than the Stillpoints….). Anyway, may well have over done it, but that’s the current pile for what it’s worth.

I’ve also heard the new(er) Amadis (I think a step above the Parsifals in the price range) running on the new VAC Statement anti-earthquake, pile of amplification and glass (at the audio show in NYC earlier this year, where the engineer actually kicked the thing to demonstrate how impressively anti-earthquake it was, and it was impressive). Meh, didn’t love it. Impossible to say what or why or how much attributable to any given element with a show presentation, but didn’t find the arbitrary whole all that engaging at the time. Mileage guaranteed to vary.

Seems like the 1/3 rule depends a lot on design:

Eggleston and Montana, I believe, say to start tuning placement 18" out. Audionote loadsw in corners, and the bass in Northcreek's near wall designs optimizes at 9" or less.

John

John, it also depends on the room’s size. It is not always practical to have the speakers placed 1/3 into the room. Some manufacture realize this and offer starting distances at a multiple of 1/3 i.e. 1/6 or 1/12.

As you have noted, some speakers are designed to utilize room boundaries to their advantage, most notable, corner loaded horns. Verity’s represent a typical bass reflex design, which is one of the most common designs.

You can take what the speaker’s marketing department says about room placement and easily substantiate their claim with a few easy measurements.

I've owned P/Es for over 10 years. A few observations, FWIW:

IMHO, this is a very fine speaker, but there is a noticeable hump in the octave below 100hz (exactly where is room dependent) and gently falling FR thru the mids and treble region - with the exception of a "plateau" thru the presence region that probably contributes to the speaker's striking dynamic impact. I suspect that the overall falling FR is why some say "dark" while others say "musical". For any given listener, that distinction might well end up being source, room, and system dependent.

Close to wall placement may further emphasize the bloom in the bass, so I'd personally suggest that you get 'em away from the boundaries. Also, warmer sounding tube amps can be problematic, per several posts above. I agree that ARC works well, as does quality solid state amplification.

This is a moderately tough load, so low output SETs and OTLs need not apply. I'd also note that there's limited bottom octave output with any amp, so real bass freaks can probably do better for the $.

If you get all the other stuff (room, system, etc) right, and you don't need the pipe organ / HT option, IME the P/E sounds really, really good with a broader range of source material than most other speakers that I know.

Marty