Jeffinnh76, thanks for the additional information about your room. How much freedom do you have with speaker positioning?
My own sonic priorities are not very different from yours. Imo characteristics which contribute to "warm, romantic and detailed" without "ear fatigue after 15 minutes of listening" include:
- A frequency response curve which slopes gently downwards with rising frequency. This contributes to "warmth".
- The off-axis response tracks the direct sound very closely, as when there is a discrepancy between the two, the result can be listening fatigue.
- The ear’s sensitivity is highest around roughly 4 kHz. The region from roughly 2-5 kHz should be free from peaks, including peaks in the off-axis response. The latter is actually fairly common.
- "Romantic" implies a well-energized reverberant field, as spectrally-correct reflections convey timbral richness (which is one of the selling points of Maggies and SoundLabs). Too much absorption in the room can work against this, so one argument for speakers with smooth off-axis response is that they do not need aggressive absorption to "fix" their off-axis response.
- "Detailed" does not necessarily require an elevated or even a "flat" top-end response, but if the top end is gently downward-sloping (for the sake of warmth) then the tweeter should have high resolution to preserve inner detail.
- Imo some user adjustability of the speaker’s tonal balance can be beneficial, for adaptation to different room acoustic situations.
Duke
