"Jim Lesurf" wrote


Yes, makes sense. Getting them setup in a room can be a real trial, and
may
never work out in some rooms. So some people might try them for weeks
before deciding to try summat else. However I fell in love with the way
they allowed me to forget I was listening via loudspeakers.


I like it when the sound is 'outside the box' which it has been for me, ever
since I have been using horns. No-one (including Plowie's milkman) has any
idea which of three pairs of speakers is working at any time without going
right up to see!! (Lowthers don't move much - 1.5mm max? :-)


You mention 'imaging' and the 'sweet spot fussiness' - this is possibly
the most important requirement for me, along with detail/clarity and is
why I tend to prefer 'horns. With horns I find 'depth' (vastness, 3D
qualities) in a sound isn't lost in the right music even when I'm all
the way across the house listening to music!

Alas, the kind of imaging I'm referring to tends in my experience to
require very carefully symmetry in the listening layout, and speakers
like the Quads with a defined directional behaviour. Hence the need
to have a small sweet spot in a small room.


Imaging for me isn't anything to do with a layout of sounds - that is
academic as far as I'm concerned; it is to do with the sounds having a
realistic 'depth' - ie true 'stereo' with 3D locatability. A 'small sound'
like windchimes, for example, could almost be 'held in the hand'!


Anyway, this disc really presented a superbly natural-sounding
perspective in terms of how the voices are laid out in front of
you within the recorded acoustic. If I stand up and move sideways
the general sound is still good, but the image of how the people
singing are arranged in space vanishes.


That's a good description - it is possibly to move past the image with my
'horns' and the image doesn't falter when you approach the plane of the
speakers.


I can listen to cone-and-box speakers. Use a pair of LS35As for
'background
listening'. But they don't give me the same impression of reality that I
get from ESLs. Just a pleasing sound.


Exactly what I find - small 'domestic monitors' do a very good job with
'radio' speech and music when it is primarily background sound.