Zu Omen or Tekton Lore

Well guys, I have some minor apologizing to do. I've been playing around with Lore placement all afternoon. I had done some significant placement experimentation in the first couple weeks and thought I had a good idea of what was going on. A few of you had recommended trying them very close to the front wall as well as others recommended toe-in so they cross well in front of the listening position.

I had previously resisted placement close to front wall due to issues with TV stand placement as well as subwoofers. I had concerns these things would obstruct Lore drivers, requiring me to move around a good amount of other stuff in the room in order to try this Lore placement. Today I finally had the time and room availability to work on this. I was able to get cables and other stuff out of the way to push the other "furniture" back about five inches toward the front wall. This allowed me enough flexibility to move the Lore's as close as 6" from the front wall.

Well, my goodness. Turned off that subwoofer, and lo and behold, there's plenty of "Shelter" song on his first album, the bass is peaky in one of the bass notes. I can confirm that that's the actual signal and not a room mode of mine. Something about their recording process on that album must have had a resonance at about 40 or 50hz, because bass notes at that frequency really spike in the signal. And this is how it sounds to my ears as well. Reproduce this approach in all the songs I'm listening to, especially while optimizing bass, and I have a pretty good idea what stuff is just part of the signal and what is due to speakers and/or room.

Ok, with that said, low bass comes through adequately on the Lores now that I have them placed closer to front walls, enough that there is no need for subwoofer for most music. I will need to go back and redo my EQ on the subwoofer so it's crossed over around 35-40hz or so and only supports sub-35hz. There's no need for it above that range.

I ended up with the rear of the Lores 15" from my front wall, and same distance from sidewalls as before (18" or so), with mild toe-in. I didn't like the aggressive toe
-in. It collapsed the soundstage too much and also cause some smearing in imaging and instrument separation.

This is only about 5" closer to the front wall than previously - very surprising to me that these few inches would make such a huge difference in bass response.

Anyway, sorry guys for not fully exploring placement before coming to my previous bass response conclusions. Cwazz, if you haven't yet played around aggressively with speaker placement, I would really recommend it.

Ok, my damned EEE netbook likes to randomly delete stuff sometimes. A good chunk of the third paragraph in my last post is missing. The missing chunk describes how my Behringer EQ has a real-time spectrum analyzer, and signal is fed in parallel with the speakers - direct from the amp. Basically, the point is that I have a graphical display showing me the signal the speakers are seeing. This means I can compare what I'm hearing with what the signal looks like. I can tell if a peaky note is actually that loud, or if the signal has it the same as other notes in the song. This allows me to know whether the sounds I'm hearing are from speakers/room or if they're from the signal itself. It's a very handy thing, removing one of the most important variables, whether the system sounds like what the signal says or not.

Of course, it's fairly crude in that it depends on my perception of audible loudness of different sounds compared to what I'm seeing on the display. Still, it gets me much closer to the truth than without it.

I then introduced an example. Ray Lamontagne's "Shelter" song off of his first album. From that reference onward, the rest of my post is what I intended.

Hey that's good news Genjamon.
I tried the "cross in front of you" toe in and didn't like it much either. But I'm not surprised about the difference in bass by moving only a few inches. Bass can be very finicky indeed. In my room I have the opposite problem in that bass can be boomy/heavy if it's not set up right. I have the advantage of a dedicated room so I can pretty much move around as I like.

I do understand the boomy/heavy issue as well. As I said, I ended up with the Lores about 15 inches from front wall. I started the experimentation at 6 inches. I moved them out a couple inches at a time, and in each case the bass became more balanced, defined, and less boomy. I was quite surprised that bass weight didn't change all that much between 6 inches and 15 inches. That's about 10 inches! The new position is only 5 inches from before experimentation, and there are light years of difference in bass response! Very strange... At least now I have found the right balance of definition and weight for my room, making the subwoofer optional at this point for when I want to be a bass freak.

Genjamon - with the Lores that close to the back wall, are you compromising 3D image and depth with that placement? Just curious...
when I had my Lores, the back of the speaker was at least 3 full FT off the back wall. Usually with front ported designs, the bass doesn't change as much when moving closer to a back wall... this is interesting findings but obviously every one has its own character.

Sebrof is in a smaller room so that explains why the Lores can overload the room easier.