So as many of you know, I swapped some ideas around, then ended up swapping some speakers around and ended up putting my X-Statik's back in action. Over the weekend, listening to plenty of music of all types, reading many threads in this very forum about the X-Statik's, OB-5's, OB-7's and even planar and electrostat types, I've taken all of it in as far as speaker placement is concerned, as well as what Danny has told me.
Just a few days ago in another thread, I swore I had these speakers in the perfect spot because of the results I was getting. Well, through most of the day today I have been tweaking speaker placement a little bit at a time. They are now exactly 8' apart from the inner edges of the baffles, 10' 4" to my ears, toed in just a couple of degrees, and exactly 36" from the front wall to the backs of the midrange magnets. I did not make measurements as I was adjusting the positions. I just took those measurements now as I'm typing this.
What this has done to the sound is improve it way past what it was just a couple days ago when I thought it sounded great then. The phantom center image is locked in place and nearly life-sized. There's more space and air around the speakers and instruments. The sound stage has grown deeper and wider, pushing the front wall back another 5' or so it seems as well as spanning out 4' - 5' beyond the outside edges of the speakers.
Midrange and treble performance has become more unified and neutral. Then again, they are OB's, so they should be to start with, but the speaker placement has helped, getting those rear reflections a little later to the listening position so they're not smearing the original signal from the front wave. It's amazing what only a few inches of adjustment can do. There was also a little upper bass hump (maybe somewhere around 80-100Hz) that has now flattened out pretty much level with the rest of the bass range. Most likely from pulling the right speaker out of the corner since the left channel is right by the hallway.
Speaking of bass, I think the X-Statik's are a perfect match to my little Monarchy Audio SM-70 Pro amp. This amp only puts out 25 watts of Class A power, but it has the ability to grab the X-Statik's drivers by the balls and take total control of them no matter what the music playing through them calls for. Typically, this type of control causes a leanness in the bass, but not so with this amp/speaker combo. In fact, I don't ever recall these speakers digging this low in the bass register before, and definitely not this cleanly. Pipe organ sounds really good on them now. There's just a large amount of agility and articulation going on that makes for a very tuneful, natural, realistic bass with plenty of detail. It's a fast and vibrant bass with zest and power.
Everything I have listened to today from an upright bass (which I used to play) to drums to baritone vocals to pipe organ, all clearly exhibit the natural textures, body and weight of the instrument or voice. Plucked and slapped bass strings deliver that immediate percussive "pop". The impact of the mallet striking the skin of a drum delivers the same, only with the added texture of the skin. Of course, there's the upper bass impact and detail in spades that the X-Statik's have been known for since day one.
Now mind you, this is all with 5 year old, bone stock X-Statik's at low to moderate volume levels that you can only safely get by with in an apartment. I've powered these speakers with this amp before, but all of my gear was using their stock power cables and I was using a cheaper quality power conditioner for the system. I imagine having all of these somewhat recent upgrades upstream of the X-Statik's have drastically helped improve their overall performance. However, after all of the speaker placement tweaking that went on all day today certainly played a major roll in these improvements I've heard as well. All of those power cable upgrades provide a deeper, blacker background for the speakers and music to work off of, improving their performance that much more.
After
finally beginning to hear what these speakers are capable of after all these years, I'm definitely going to add crossover upgrades and No-Rez to the list of things to do to these X-Statik's to take things up a notch or two.
