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4 speakers/two channel

In my system, i run four speakers --- two in front and two in back -- driven as two channels. I drive the back speakers (Vandersteen 1c's) through the pre-out of my main integrated amp (an Ayon Spirit 2) into a McIntosh integrated. The main speakers (PBN Montana EPS2's)are driven by the Ayon. This way, i can tailor the volume of both sets of speakers.

With the four speakers in 2-channel, the stereo image is 16 feet wide (going from 3.5 ft to the left of the left speaker to 3.5 feet to the right of the right speaker). When I shut down the back speakers the image collapse to ca. 9 ft wide. With all 4 speakers playing, the front speakers disappear (you just get a wall of sound.. w/o hearing directly the back speakers either). When I shut down the back speakers, and only the front speakers are playing, I stare at the speakers as I see precisely where the sound emanates. 4 speakers and you get an instrumentalist at size X, with the distance between instrumentalists at Y --- go to two speakers those numbers go to 0.6 X and o.6 Y. Fullness, body, palpable presence all are dramatically better with 4 speakers.

Once you go to the 4 speaker/2 channel mode (done right) --- the difference is staggering. Listening to the two speakers sounds like a veritable miniature toy in comparison.

Has anyone else tried this?
robsker

Showing 2 responses by robsker

robsker OP
132 posts
 
agreed.

When I have friends over and they hear the difference from the 4 speakers to the two you hear comments like "wow... if you went from your 8K speakers to 30K speakers the improvement would not even be close to the improvement here." It is staggering really how much better it sounds.

Some audiophile types say never do what I am doing --- until they sit down and listen. My total system is at 20K list --- and at the Vegas show I listened in 10+ rooms where the system cost was at least 50K -- and only one room sounded as good and one slightly better than my system --- all the others were less good (often by a wide margin --- and several of those had 80K or more in their system).

I can think of no improvement even close to this for the money that an audiophile can try.
robsker OP
132 posts
 
Klaudio.

How do you drive your subwoofer? Is it self powered? and how does it get signal (from which integrated or which amp)?
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