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Von Schweikert "rear ambiance driver" revisited

After about 3 months of messing with this, I have found that the best setting for my very small room is a little over 1 on my Von Schweikert VR4 jr. From what I gathered, since there isn't much guidance out there is that any setting over 2 for even a large room can introduce brightness or too much treble (mainly from my dealer and a few others who have talked to me about it). You get the pinpoint accuracy and impression of more detail (due to reinforced high frequencies) when the "rear ambiance driver" it is turned up, but you soon notice that everything is bright or top end loaded.

Agree, disagree?

I just think there should be more guidance on what to listen for since it can sound great at a high setting but not as natural or as tonally(is that a word?) accurate as it should.

Rob
robm321
tvad
9,467 posts
 
Tpsonic, my impression of the addition of rear tweeter ambience is that of grounding the performer in a place, rather than the performer floating ungrounded in space.

Kind of like when kids learn in art class to draw a line at the feet of the person in their painting. Suddenly, the person in the painting occupies a specific place and becomes more "real".

In my system, adding rear tweeter ambience doesn't really unfocus the image as much as it brings the performer into the room.
tpsonic
1,092 posts
 
I may be speaking of excessive rear tweeter augmentation.The VR-6s were satusfying with no augmentation.But,they had an electrostatic sound with the rear tweeter properly adjusted.This is dependent on distance from the rear wall and the material covering that wall.
robm321 OP
932 posts
 
tpsonic - gotcha

I actually agree with you and tvad. I notice that with the ambiance driver engaged it tends to be less focused because it increases the depth of the soundstage.

So, it is a trade off of focus and stage depth.

However, like tvad pointed out the top end, especially with the driver turned up high will cause drum wacks especially to be incredibly real, at the expense, in my case brightness that makes sense.

-- I ended up placing Auralex foam pads on my backwall including behind the ambiance driver. This may sound strange , but it kills the brightness and still does what it is supposed to.

Thanks for all inputs on the thread! Rob
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