critical listening - i hear something i don't like


i need some help. I've been around this high end audio and theater thing for a while...but am just finally getting MY system close to the point where i really want to listen to it. I just upgraded a few components and actually (finally)hear 'air' in a movie i was watching this past week. The entire front collection of speakers dissappeared. WOW!.. getting very close to something good.. okay..enough background...

Here's what i need help with. In between these episodes of marvelous listening, when the movie track gets loud, the sound appears incoherent. There are three things i'm guessing i could attribute this to: 1.) the amp speaker relationship - either the speakers can't take the signal output by the amp, or the amp can't keep up with the signal. 2.) my room really does need some anti-reflective treatments - I have stuff in the corners.. but the side walls are bare (rectangular,sealed room, carpeted floor) 3.) the digital cable between DVD and PrePro may need some more thought

Any thoughts on where to focus my efforts? i explicitly didn't include a system description because i don't want to get into equipment conversations yet. If this thread gets interesting, i'll do that next

thanx in advance
objective1
Let me run this up the pole and see if anyone salutes it.

It's hitting a major room peak resonance point. The room shakes, which shakes the rack, which shakes the CD player, causing it to go into extreme error correction/concealment, which drains the power supplies, which now throws the clocks off. And for a brief milli-second the sound goes to he!! in a hand basket...

If your rack is at the midpoint of any wall, or in a corner, it stands a good chance of being excited even more, as they are the points of highest pressurization.

Dave
Spend your $100 on a few good books about room acoustics and the rest on buying the supplies that you'll need to treat the room. Room treatment not only benefits system linearity, the sonic presentation will become more enjoyable.

There is something that should be said here that many folks may not realize. That is, an acoustically treated room that was not designed from the ground up will only be QUIETER than an untreated room in terms of total spl. Having said that, you may find yourself listening at louder levels in a treated room than an untreated room. That's because the presentation is both more enjoyable and linear in amplitude over a wider bandwidth. As such, max spl and average listening spl are not the same thing.

Outside of the speaker / room interphase, you probably don't have enough power to drive the Request's with authority. You are talking about a speaker that is rated at 87 dB's with 1 watt in and a 4 ohm load. Don't be fooled by ML's "bogus" rating of 90 dB's as it was spec'd with 2 watts of drive fed into the speakers ( 2.83 volts @ 4 ohms is two watts, not one ). If you do the math, you need gobs more power. Yes, i did say GOBS more power. Even if you did have the power available, you are using a speaker that is displacement limited and not suited for high volume listening sessions. Most E-stat's were never intended to reproduce sustained spl's.

If you do some checking, i think that you'll find that people that purchase "panel" type speakers end up changing musical tastes in a relatively short period of time. That is, music that has a high average power level ( rock, hard blues, etc... ) doesn't sound as good to them as it used to. Sure, the music still sounds phenomenally crisp and detailed, but it lacks the "drive" that gives that type of music its' energy. As such, they start listening to music that caters to the presentation / spl levels that these type of speakers work best with. That's why you'll probably hear more acoustic, jazz, classical, etc.. type music coming out of these speakers than "rock" or high spl HT presentations. This is true even though the owner may have been quite a bit more of a "rocker" when they initially purchased this type of speaker. Acoustic, jazz and classical are all basically transient in nature, which better suits the limited displacement capabilities of a panel speaker.

While you have a dynamic woofer to take some of the strain off of the panels in terms of excursion / displacement limitations, you're still running out of power. Combine the two distortions ( amplifier smear and speaker break-up ) with the effects of an untreated room and i don't doubt that you're running into problems. My guess is that most of the people that frequent this forum and others like it are in very much the same boat, but may not even realize it. Then again, we all use our systems differently and expect different things out of them, so high spl linearity and cohesiveness may not matter to many of them. Sean
>
Sean...thanx much.. i've read a bunch of your other posts as i've been flopping around the forum over the past few years.. and based on what i've read in the past (both here and elsewhere) your responses seem right on the money. What you suggest, is what i suspected... thanx for the confirmation. Room treatment and amp changout where the next things on the list. Followed by moving to something like wilsons when the budget allows.