The hardest part of rotating the room was moving the Ushers - haha!!
But I am really glad they are still here. I have them behind the Quads so I can switch to them easily. I haven't heard them in a while so it will be fun to compare to the Quads tomorrow. Feel the thump again, and the more tangible dynamics, even on soft stuff.
WAF has been very good so far. She said she likes it better, because she can see me while I listen while she cooks for me. Is that a great wife, or what? The room looks and feels more balanced, symmetrical, better Feng Shui? It allows better speaker placement when sidewalls don't matter like on dipole. Shooting the sound out into the kitchen just to get screwedup and reflect back as noise is a dumb idea and is much improved. To me the room arrangement looks silly, speakers still dominating, but sounds good so I will keep quiet. It is still shared living space though, so the background noise continues to be a problem. Kids jumping off beds right above my head give me a heart attack in the middle of a soft gentle passage.
I wanna try moving the whole thing up to another room that is smaller but could work well with dipoles and have a few closed doors between me and the kids and refrigerator. I think the Quads would like being in a smaller room. Tube amps sound bad up there because the mains circuit is lousy. But the McIntosh doesn't seem to care if dedicated 20A or switched shared 15A, another plus for it.
In the first couple days I was concerned that the Quads were not quite dead-on with tone in a couple recordings. After moving them around to present spots far away from front wall that improved to solve a couple of the recordings, but not all. Today at Kens I heard the same "problem" on those recordings so those were not Quad's fault. I can hear the very slightest plasticish tone but it is so easy to sink into the music and it is so subtle that it is not worth mentioning. It is only noticable in contrast to paper full range single drivers which are delicious tone, but more distorted, in a good way! Quad is not delicious it is accurate. Big difference, but both are good.
(click)
I listened to this record today, some at Kens and the whole 5th at home. Super! Big ballsy, brassy, perfectly recorded Shosty manly-man symphonies. It could use another 10Hz on the bottom though, in both systems. Kens had a little lower louder bass but the Quads bass is cleaner. Oooh that mac is incredible. My tube religious faith is being tested. Carl you are a bad influence on tube devotees.
Some pics of the room now:
Today I was thinking how cool it would be to have a couple/few systems set up in different rooms for the meet. There's enough gear here to do it, so I will try. My wife will shit with 3 rooms dedicated to audio. "It's just for one day, dear..." "Yeah, but that day 2 weeks away!"
haha
Rich
