You are spot on with room treatment it’s a must its just take time to understand what you need to do with your listening room but worth the journey.
It’s a rather dreary day here and my work is done so I’m just sitting and listening to the just-released hi-res version of The Final Cut.
We’re not totally moved in; the mantle is pretty bare and the records are in boxes (my new rack hasn’t arrived yet and no art up on the walls yet. And not sure what we’re doing about window treatments; don’t really want to block any of the views of the trees.
Will eventually trade these A3’s for something a little bigger. If only they’d announce an update to the S-series soon. But it’s a lovely soundstage and black monoliths suit us ok.
Lovely room Bart, congratulations. Great that you have plenty space to get the speaker positioning right. Interested to see what direction you take with your speaker change…
Would fit perfectly with a Statement system.
My local dealer has convinced me to try their S5MkII demo pair in home. I have to hire 2 men and a truck, but so be it. (They weigh 100kg each, not including the wooden crates.) For the cost of that I can figure out if they are “too big” or not.
Wow, that’s good news Bart!
Take some pictures
Did you build the house, or did you buy it as it is?
You could have included some acoustic treatment in the walls.
Invisible to the eye and nice at taming the inevitable issues.
Great changes here too.
I’ll order the Soulution 760/711 tomorrow and the M2 a few months later.
We built it (well the builder/general contractor did, but mostly to our specifications). There were just so many details that acoustic room treatment couldn’t be addressed. I worked for a while on getting speaker cable conduits run in the walls, but it turned out that for the left speaker the run was 20 meters…so the cables still sit on the floor and those conduits are empty.
I look forward to hearing how you like the Soulution. That’s a pretty nice 2-box “solution!”
Buying a house and providing all the needed specifications and requests takes a lot of time and energy. I’ve been there.
We couldn’t buy the building lot as we expected, but I had already done most of the design of the house and many other time-consuming details. The new system will be, in a way, a compensation for all the work done
We’ll move, but it’ll be in a few years.
In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the new system.
Indeed, a compact yet extremely capable system. I’ll be able to compare it, side by side, to the full 500DR system as I’ll have both during some time.
Why not an S3 MkII?
Would it be too small?
Because he just sold his pair Otherwise I’d probably have started there. I’ve told him that bass is a ‘desire’ and he thinks that the S5’s will be quite a bit more bass than our A3’s. If they are too big they can go back.
No doubt the S5 MkII will outperform the S3 MkII in terms of low end. And you might have a better low end at lower volumes. The S5 MkII might well be the best option.
Would be funny if you bought the S5 speakers.
Will the M2s provide adequate bass in your room especially considering your interest in full orchestral music?
I compared the M2 and S3 MkII side by side, literally.
With the same electronics, same room, same music and same day.
The room was a lot bigger than mine. If you Google for “Sound Loft Zurich” you’ll find my dealers’ website and some pictures of the setups and the listening room(s).
In terms of impact, they are pretty much the same.
Symphonic pieces are presented with the same “presence” or “fullness”.
But the M2 do a much better job in terms of stereo image, separation and details. They are simply much better speakers.
I didn’t listen to electronic or rock music. But I believe that, in bigger rooms like at my dealers’, the M6 would do a better job at rendering the intensity of some rock or electronics tracks.
My room is 38 m2; the M2 will be more than enough, especially when driven by the Soulution 711 (which is capable of delivering huge amounts of current).
Well I was going for S5 and you mentioned the new A5 which I bought.