Quote:
Originally Posted by chessman
Jim, it looks great, congrats. Now that the jewelry case issue is resolved, I wonder if you would mind negotiating peace in the Middle East?  |
:-) Thanks, Randy. But don't overpraise my negotiating skills (such as they are). Having heard me rattle on before about the baneful effects of direct reflections, my wife volunteered to move the cases without any prompting from me. And--also without any prompting--she said it was all right if I moved the 2'x3' framed poster (a Georgia O'Keeffe rendering done for the 1982 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival) that hung at front wall center to another room if it posed a problem (it did, and it's now hanging in the home office).
An anecdote that will put this all in perspective: When we started going together 36 years ago, she allowed me to drill holes through her living-room carpet and hardwood floor so I could run Fulton Gold speaker cable unseen from my DIY time-aligned KEF/Audax hybrids to the entry closet she vacated to permit me to install my audio equipment rack there. If you're at all familiar with Fulton Gold (I swear it's robust enough to hold up the Golden Gate Bridge at rush hour), you know that was a major "give" on her part, and I knew then and there that she was a keeper.
This time around, as she settled into the listening position for the first test of the "new bedroom decor"--and before I put any music on--she said after a few moments of conversation, "It's quieter in here." Yep. And after listening for a couple of minutes to a 16/44 rip of the Turtle Creek Chorale singing Lenny Bernstein's "Make Our Garden Grow" on Reference Recordings' "Testament", she noted the vocal articulation and ensemble layering discernible with the panels installed. "As soon as I can find a place for them, I'll take the jewel cases out."
Being able to use panels from the main system to test the bedroom configuration proved to be indispensable in at least one respect. It allowed me to compare the use of full-range 244's with their scatter-plated cousins at the rear corners. I wasn't sure I'd hear much, if any, difference, given my listening location about only four feet in front of the plane of the scatter plates. I tried the full-ranges first, then listened to the scatter-plate iterations, and then went through the whole this-first-then-that routine again with a variety of ripped and downloaded program material. With the full-range 244's it sounded good. With the scatter plates, the presentations sounded a touch more open and--where such information was embedded in the recording--"airier". There was nothing subjectively exaggerated about the latter characteristic, and, overall, the scatter-plate-configured presentation sounded a tad more "real". So that's why the scatter-plate 244's still hang there.
I've ordered the replacement traps in "cash-flow" stages. A new pair of full-range 244's constitute the first-reflection-point panels seen in the photos. A scatter-plated pair is due in this coming Thursday, and the final pair of full-range 244's should arrive a week from Monday. I'll follow up with the Monsters shortly thereafter. The sonic results render them more than well worth the investment.