[jqp]

I must have the golden listening room for getting bass out of the 9.0s. And it isn't a bad room on paper. I have a cement slab floor, thick carpet pad with carpet wall to wall ( I am thinking of putting tile down in some lage sections). The room size would be 25x25, except that there is a bathroom back to back with  a laundry room, and a closet under some stairs that bisects half the room. There is also a wet bar with a six foot bar counter. I listen in about the middle of the room, with the 9.0s about 12-18" from the wall on the marble stands. And I get much better bass with the 9.0s than listening to headphones   . Tyson have you forgotten?  Depending on what I play I can feel the bass in my chest or even in my toes! If I go into the bathroom in the far corner of the room, the structure of the room is definitely excited, again depending on what I play.

But from what I understand "bass slam" was not a design goal for the Marble 9.0s. To me "bass slam" is (to be somewhat fecitious) more of a modern studio rock concept, and it applies to teenage boys and the recording industry desperation. It is probably the only thing that keeps the mobile stereo industry alive judgin from a trip to my local Best Buy. I associate it with Synthetic bass i.e. synthesizers and bass guitar processors as well, Industrial Rock, Rap, and yes, annoying drivers of cars with vibrating trunks I can hear through the walls of my house occaisionally. When recordings are made primarily to generate bass which will in turn generate  the purchase of subwoofers and sub amps for cars, I will probably not be as interested in those recordings. Even though the 9.0s powered by Le Amps would do better than 95% of those systems... Now, I enjoy synthetic bass as much as the next guy in moderation. I love Steely Dan, and I love to listen to Fat Boy Slim from time to time. You should hear Funk Soul Brother on my system! I would bet that his speakers in his studio were not better than my 9.0s ( maybe I will lose that bet?)

I do like bass and lots of it where it is theoretically 'appropriate'. Anyone can have as much bass as they want in their system. I just prefer it to be a more "natutural" bass, that comes from real instruments or real explosions and thunder.    I will say that I want to get subwoofers to go along with my 9.0s someday. I am not arguing that the 9.0s are the speakers to use for bass slam in the modern recording studio, just that THEY WORK AS ADVERTISED!

[Tyson]

True, acoustically, my room is HUGE, so I can get nice, even bass to just about any speakers low frequency tuning.  But, that is a LOT of air to pressurize, and small drivers just cannot move enough air to give that type of physical sensation in my room.  I could clearly hear the bass, but could not feel it like I can w/the four 10" woofers I have now.  Of course, with the nOrh subs, I could hear and feel the bass, but the nOrh subs were a bit volume limited too. . .

[nathanm]

Cool, JQP must've gotten a lucky room!  

I think it's safe to say that the drums are more sensitive than most to room setup and may not work properly in all rooms.  So perhaps you could call it a 'great speaker, but fussy' or something similar.

I would disagree with his definition of "bass slam" though.  I don't think it has anything to do with those horrible boom cars - that's muddy, boomy, distorted bass if anything.  When one of those dude pulls up next to me at a light the last phrase I would think of to describe the bass is "slam"!  "Slam" is clean and powerful.  Punchy.  Not bloated and overdone.  How about a wrestling analogy?  If a guy gets "slammed" onto the ring it's that sound of a big membrane stretched very tightly getting hit hard.  Now let's say that guy gets thrown down into a vat of pudding, that would be more like the ghetto bass sound.

I'd be interested to know how Norh measures their speakers and how they arrive at the figures given on the site.

[HarleyMYK]

In MotorHead circles, there is an expression:

"There is no replacement for displacement".

I think that is true for bass in speakers as well.  While some monitors get great bass for their size, size does matter and a floor-stander will normally give more perception of deep bass.  I listened to “The Weight” on Belly of The Sun by Cassandra Wilson last night where there is a loose bass drum or tom-tom.  The RM 1 floor-stander reproduces this with a depth not matched by the mini 9s, great as they may be.  On the other hand, the RM 1s wouldn’t fit well in my bedroom.