In this second installment of my SongTower mini-blog, I will cover two intertwined topics: speaker positioning and bass response.
My listening room is L-shaped and large (roughly 450 sq. feet) and. That’s a lot of air for two 5 in. mid-woofers to move.
Here’s a crude diagram of the room with relevant dimensions. The listening position is represented by a circle, and the two speakers are the 4-point stars. The SongTowers are spaced about 8 feet apart. They are toed-in to face the listening position. The inside back edge of each speaker is about 18 inches from the back wall. The left speaker is about 3 feet from the left side wall, while the right speaker has the large open space of the room on its right side. The room has wall-to-wall carpeting. The left wall is all glass, but is covered completely by window shades during critical listening. There are no acoustical treatments per se, although the large plush L-shaped sectional couch that that the listener sits on certainly affects the sound, so much that I think of it as a “component” in my audio system.
Some details about that system: the source is a Red Wine Audio modified Squeezebox 3 with a battery power supply. It feeds a Plinius 8100 integrated amplifier though VH Audio Pulsar interconnects. The Plinius generates 100 watts/channel into 8 ohms (140 watts/channel into 4 ohms), and is connected directly to the wall using a VH Audio Flavor Flavor 2 power cord. The Plinius drives the SongTowers through custom copper speaker cables made by Jim Salk.
Low bass reproduction to me is about two instruments: electric bass guitar and kick drum. These don’t plumb the ultimate depths of a speaker’s bottom end in the way that, say, pipe organ does. But I don’t have a strong passion for pipe organ music. What I do have a passion for is trip-hop, dub, and other downtempo beats that feature visceral bass and drum sounds.
I primarily use two tracks to evaluate bass performance. The first is “Certainly (Flipped It),” a chilled-down remix of “Certainly” from the album “Baduizm” by Erykah Badu.
The second track is “Karmacoma (Bumper Ball Dub)” a remix of “Karmacoma” from Massive Attack’s second album, “Protection”. The Mad Professor does the remixing:
In my room, a good low end appears to emanate from the floor. It’s as if the speakers are pouring a thick liquid of bass onto the floor and it rolls and bounces like the surface of a water bed. When the bass is right, it connects with the body in a down-going motion. The bass guitar is thick and round and voluminous, the notes appear to take up a lot of airspace; yet they remain distinct and well-defined. The kick drum is all tight impact, like a punch in the gut (but much less painful
).
So what is the “bottom” line on the SongTowers? How well do they live up to the ideals defined in the previous paragraph? Pretty darn well: they exceed expectations for what two 5” drivers can deliver in terms of bass response. They do that “pouring bass into the floor” thing very nicely, to my ears. The bass seems tonally accurate, I detect no significant peaks or valleys in frequency response in my room. On my two test tracks, I hear the impact, slam and power that I want to hear.
My main standard of comparison at the moment is my previous speakers: Von Schweikert VR-2s. These floorstanders feature larger drivers and a larger cabinet than the SongTowers, and they use a transmission-line bass loading (as do the SongTowers). If memory serves, the SongTowers do not deliver quite the bass impact of the VR-2s, but they come very close. So close, in fact, that I don’t find myself missing the small additional “oomph” of the VR-2s. Especially because the SongTowers better the VR-2s in other respects, which I will detail in upcoming installments.
The moral of this story is that with smart design, many things are possible. Jim and Dennis selected excellent SEAS mid-woofers for the SongTowers. They designed a cabinet and a crossover for these drivers that would maximize their ability to deliver deep and accurate bass reproduction. With my room, my system, and my music, the goals have found a happy realization.
