Are Wilson Sophia 2's lean in the midbass?

I own these Speakers and have used them with Amplifiers from BAT, McIntosh, Krell & PASS and they have always sounded full-bodied and awesome - never lean - not even close.

Tusa - not to offroad the thread - but what amps did you find sound best with them? I have have them sounding fantastic on a sim amp with a hovland pre.

Lean? Uh, NO! In fact, they are one of the fullest most dynamicaly alive speakers around. My room has a suckout so I had to take my time and move the speakers about a 1/2" at a time forward and back playing known material with the appropriate frquency range reproduced. Less than an inch can be the difference between OK sound and absolute bliss:O)

It doesn't look like something you should do if accuracy and lifelike sound are your goals.

LOL. I suppose they are trying to make everything inaccurate and as lifeless as possible in places like the
Cello Studios Sunset Blvd Hollywood (all three principal control rooms have soffit mounted main monitors)

Here is a link to an acoustic architecture website who design rooms for high profile musicians and producers (check the private installation client list from Steve Hackett to Ron Wood to David Gilmour you'll find some familiar names). There are some fun pics too - you'll find a good portion of main monitors (full ranger speakers) built into studio walls for the reasons explained in the Genelec link I gave above and to improve imaging too (but it is mainly for bass response).

Shadorne,

Could you explain what you mean by soffit mount? I think of a soffit as a projection between a ceiling and adjoining wall. In kitchens, cabinets are often hung from soffits.

db

Soffit means the speaker is mounted in a wall with the baffle flush to the wall. It means that the speaker radiates only into half-space - 180 instead of 360 degrees.

It improves the bass response (which is omnidirectional below 600 Hz) by removing the reflection of the speakers from the wall behind the speakers.

In simple layman terms - imagine the wall behind your speakers as a mirror. Now you see FOUR speakers from your listening position and that is exactly what you are listening to in a normal free standing speaker setup: two real speakers and two "image" speakers that are reflected by the wall directly behind them (what you actually hear is called a "comb filter" or a series of sharp suckouts in frequency response gradually decreasing up to around 600 Hz, at which point the speaker only radiates forwards and the problem goes away).

Now imagine the speaker baffle is built flush into the surface of the mirror just like these are flush with the wall Soffit Mount - now you hear only TWO speakers as there is no reflection.

Now you should have an inkling why as little as 6 INCHES of speaker movement in a free standing speaker setup makes a HUGE difference in the bass - this is because the reflected speakers move position and this changes how they reinforce or diminish the sound coming from the real speakers - in essence the teeth of the comb filter move around as you change speaker position. The important point to observe is that is does not matter where you sit - the interference from the reflected speaker will affect the bass response over the ENTIRE ROOM. All you can do is try to mitigate this effect by employing other reflections that are also occurring in the room to try and even things out a little. The comb filter suckout effect is made worse in that it is harmonically related which can really kill certain notes moving the fundamental AND the partials....