Jafant...while I appreciate your enthusiastic input in to this thread, I do find it frustrating that you keep saying things like this, especially to me:
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"a room size of 20x20, minimum, is the starting point for owning the CS 3.7 speaker. It throws that size of a sound stage."
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Why are you trying to tell me that when I actually have lived with the 3.7s for years now, and I’ve explained a number of times why it simply isn’t the case they need a room that large to sound superb?
I mean...you are you are saying that to an audiophile (me) who has had decades of experience tuning systems (I also work in professional sound for film). And, unlike you, I actually own the 3.7s and so can talk from direct experience as to how well they can sound in a smaller room, when proper care is taken.
I really think it does something of a disservice to keep repeating the idea that large speakers like the 3.7s inherently require a large room to sound excellent.
As anyone in this hobby should know, the final sound will always be a combination of factors, especially the speaker design, the placement in the room, and the room acoustics. The 3.7s are actually EASIER to set up in a smaller room than other large speakers, due to their exceedingly well damped bass region.
In my room with correct placement, the 3.7s are not activating any obvious room nodes, and go rumbling-under-the-feet deep when required, while room reflections are controlled meaning the sound is super low in added hash for extremely fine tonality and super precise imaging. Soundstaging-wise: the entire front of the room melts away with the biggest, deepest, most life-sized soundstage I’ve heard from a speaker anywhere near their size (and I’m not talking "heard in my room" but in anywhere, from a similar sized speaker). It’s like being wrapped in sound. Play the right orchestral piece and the back wall is "gone" with an almost life-sized sounding orchestra stretching side to side, off into the distance. I’m not compromising the soundstaging of the 3.7s - I’m deriving the level of soundstaging they are actually capable of!
My room was renovated in consultation with an acoustician, and so it is treated carefully (and I can modulate the level of reflectivity in the room). I’ve had many large floor standing speakers in there, some flat down to 20Hz and all have exhibited superb sound, with excellent bass - in every instance, better than the larger rooms in which I’d originally auditioned them - cleaner, more spacious, more in control, bigger, etc. Because...that’s what paying close attention to placement and room acoustics can do.
One of the best speaker experiences I ever had was at a reviewer’s house for The Absolute Sound. He had the big full range MBL 101D speakers in a hilariously tiny room - comically so. It felt like a closet. But...he’d treated the room well and finely tuned placement of the speakers. I’ve heard and auditioned the MBL 101s many, many times in many different room sizes. Nothing ever came close to the performance I heard in that guy’s tiny room.
I’ve had plenty of superb smaller speakers in that room - smaller floor standers, monitors of all types - the size of which you may have recommended over the 3.7s based on your assumptions, and I can tell you none came close to what a large floor stander like the 3.7 can do in the room.
I know you want to be helpful, but I do think you could update your thinking about speakers and acoustics, and take into consideration reported experiences like mine and others that doesn’t fit with your preconceptions - because you keep giving out confident-sounding advice that doesn’t seem very nuanced and thus can be misleading.
BTW, I think perhaps your reply mixed up the Joseph speakers I referenced? I said I was interested in the Perspectives not the larger Pearls. The Perspectives sounded beautiful when auditioned in my room, certainly better than in the larger store demo room.
