Tim, this was a dedicated A/V room and set up as such. There is no excess clutter, acoustics were taken into consideration, the system was dialed in using their "in-house professional testing methods", etc...
The thing that i think REALLY killed the sound was the placement of the mains. Since they were using an overhead projector and were trying to make it look as "neat" as possible with no "clutter" on the floor, the mains, center channel and three subs were mounted in recesses on the front wall. All of the gear was built into a "closet" off to the side. The speakers and components were in turn covered with opening "hatches" or doors that were open framed with grill cloth covering them. As such, the speakers had to be tucked in somewhat behind the flat surface of the wall or they would have protruded, ruining the "clean appearance" that they were shooting for.
Besides the fact that there was NO imaging taking place (sheesh, i wonder why ??? ), the speakers that they had selected were of a mirror imaged vertical array or "D'Appolito" design. Starting from top to bottom, they had a woofer, a mid, a tweeter, a mid and then a woofer. As anyone that has used this type of design or knows anything about speaker dispersion characteristics, this type of array has very limited vertical dispersion while producing a very wide horizontal radiation pattern. The fact that they had the tweeters centered appr 2' - 3' over your head while in your seated listening position made NO sense to me at all. The mids and highs were simply beaming over your head. This is what probably accounted for the complete lack of "crispness" or "dry" and "boxy" characteristics in vocals and spoken word that i noticed.
I was told that they had to position the mains that high in order to fit a subwoofer underneath each main and provide isolation between the two different cabinets. Keep in mind that the speakers were by a well respected manufacturer and probably capable of quite good performance IF properly positioned. I didn't name any of the gear used here, as it is not the manufacturers fault that one of their dealers does not know what they are doing. As such, they should not receive "bad press" due to sales incompetence.
If i would have stood up while watching the movie clips or snippets of music, it might have sounded MUCH better. I'm sure that the person doing the "acoustic analysis" of the system probably was standing up and moving about, so it would look good during that type of test in terms of "specs". To me, it just goes to show that you can have all of the right components, know how to go through the motions of "proper testing procedures" and still screw things up due to lack of common sense. They trusted their test equipment without ever taking time to listen to what they were hearing.
Then again, the salespeople doing the demo's are always standing up, so they've probably never really noticed nor do they hear exactly what the seated customer hears. If they would have trusted their ears and used the system as an end user would, they would have known right away that this system was NOT very good. Regardless of what they spent or the brands used, it was a tremendous effort put forth that resulted in utter failure. Sean
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