A friend of mine (my audio Yoda) had told me that if I ever wanted to get the very best out of speaker X, I needed to live with speaker Y for a while to understand what it was doing in comparison. He said by learning what speaker Y had to teach me I would better understand what X was lacking and possibly how to achieve that out of them as well. I ignored doing that for quite a while, as I have often done only to later find that this fellow did in fact did know exactly what he was talking about. I guess that sometimes we just need to learn things on our own.
Speaker X was my Infinity RS1bs and speaker Y was the Martin Logan CLS1. Both systems were dipoles, but that dipole effect was different for each one. I crossed over the CLS1s at 140 Hz, the same as the Infinities and used their bass towers to augment. The small 8" drivers were able to keep up just fine. Also important is that the electronics upstream appeared ideal for each.
What I learned from the CLS was how seamless a single driver speaker could sound. There was true midrange magic there to be had. The images were also nicely focused and fleshed out with a specific realism to them. The more I listen to them the more I realized what I had been missing. But, when I had switched back to the full Infinity system, I noticed right away what the CLS was lacking. They lacked a certain mid bass weight and largeness to the presentation. Yes they were fast and tight, but still quite lacking in that area. Also, as fine a focused and realistic soundstage as they presented, there was very little information to the outsides of the speakers. It was a much narrower presentation than the 1bs, for they provided, depending upon the recording, a much greater width expanding the soundstage wall to side wall. The Infinities could provide a huge soundscape when called for, where in my room at least, the CLS excelled in much smaller scale works.
Tried as I might over the course of a year, or so I could not increase the width of the CLS presentation. That aspect was important to me and so I concentrated on attempting to bring the 1bs closer to the strengths of what the CLS possessed. The room treatments did not help expand the width of the CLS, but did help in the focus of the 1bs.
With large 4 piece systems there is a lot to fiddle with adjustment wise. There are the level controls, crossover points, positions of 4 separate speaker enclosures within a room, etc. Since I had an idea of the target sound I was now looking for and knew it could be reproduced in my room given the proper conditions, the tweaking continued with the 1bs. Eventually I achieved what was pretty close to what I had been looking for. While not as seamless as the CLS, it was much improved.
Now with my new speaker system, once again monolithic sized structures
, I have been able to completely combine the strengths of my previous efforts while even expanding more on the both of them. What is the moral of the story? Listen to your audio Yoda, if you have one. Chances are that they have already walked the same ground as you may be attempting, and just possibly may know something that you need to. The collective knowledge of forums such as this offer a very fine substitute. Take advantage of it.
