AudioAficionado.org - Would adding two Aperture IIs...

to this...

https://www.audioaficionado.org/pict...pictureid=5592

in order to produce this...

https://www.audioaficionado.org/pict...pictureid=5591

make an audible difference worth writing home--or, for that matter, anywhere--about?

When Ivan posted an announcement in December of an imminent Stillpoints price increase, I told my forlorn piggy bank that it would have to suck it up one more time because I'd decided to pop for a pair of Aperture IIs. Doing so would follow a time-honored tradition of piece-mealing the treatment of my bedroom system's front wall and first-refection points, two Apertures at a time as budget permitted. Getting the newest pair would complete the cycle. I just wondered, given the great results achieved with what you see in Photo #1 (plus one at each of the first-reflection points), how much performance bump, if any, I'd get out of the last two, each of which would be placed above the Aperture immediately behind the left and right speakers.

For context, my listening space is an 11'x13'x7'8" bedroom furnished as such, and I listen nearfield with the foot of the bed as my listening "chair." As such, the environment, not least furniture positioning and the practical foot traffic patterns involved, is far from ideal in achieving optimum speaker placement and freedom from speaker boundary interference (you get some idea of the problem from the photos). Nonetheless, acoustic treatment of the space has ameliorated much of its limitations, and the multi-function Apertures have proved by far to be the most effective front-wall and first-reflection treatment devices I've tried.

So...did going vertical with the latest two Apertures achieve anything? Yes. And it wasn't incremental. I had thought that the previous configuration had blown out the wall behind the speakers. And to a large degree, it had. But I wasn't aware of just how much of the wall was still there until I "heard" the rest of it (and what was left of the speakers' physical presence) "disappear" with the two new Apertures in place. Large ensembles, whether vocal or instrumental, now inhabit a much larger space, and everything "large" or "small," if decently recorded, exhibits more detail, more granular soundstage placement and three-dimensionality, more mid-to-upper-bass foundation, a touch more dynamic punch, and more in-the-room presence.

Saint Mrs., though extremely tolerant of my audio excesses, has never really been a fan of having what looks like a mixing studio for a bedroom. After an hour-long audition of mostly operatic and choral works with the new Apertures in place, she rendered her succinct judgment: "It looks like hell, but sounds really good. The best I've ever heard." I disagree with her, of course, on the esthetics. But, sonically, she nailed it. It's quite evident that the bare wall above the single Aperture behind each speaker needed company.

Installation of both supplemental Apertures to fit as they do, by the way, took no more than 10 minutes. I measured 18-1/4" from the middle of the top of the already-installed lower Aperture and drilled a hole for the collared mounting screw.