Joseph Audio Pulsar 2 Graphene Placement & Break-In?

@vdotman

Oh man, that worries me to hear.

I'd worried a bit from the Pulsar Graphene issues reported in this thread that maybe this would happen between the Original Perspectives to the graphene version as well.  Other Perspective Graphene owners have been very happy with the bass performance and yours if the first report I've seen of unwieldy bass with the Perspective graphenes.

I have the original Perspectives and have wanted to upgrade to the graphene version. I have a 15’ x 13’ room with a very wide room opening, which seems to allow larger speakers to "breath" pretty well. I am also able to pull them well out from the wall behind them, about 4 feet or so to the back of the speaker. The bass of the Perspectives is generally well controlled. Though it just occasionally on some content borders on too much. I’ve read that the graphene version has "tighter bass" but also "more bass" so it’s hard to know which directly that would take in my room.

Can you explain in a bit more detail why rear ported speakers have issues in your room? Is it a small room? Or are you unable to pull the speakers well out from the wall or something?

Thanks.

It’s not unique to the Perspective2’s. It’s my room which has a pretty prominent bass node issue. Also, I can’t pull them out more than a couple of feet which is limiting. I would not judge the speaker by how they did in my room. The guy I sold them to thought the bass was too light, so it is all about room and system synergy. I have been able to solve my problem using the high and low pass scenario I described along with a pair of sealed subs. I don’t think bass issues are a unique problem. There are a lot of integrated amps with DSP now or DIRAC or something similar designed specifically to address the problem. The Bel Canto E1X has its own bass EQ DSP which I have just started to experiment with. It can’t fix a strong room bass node but it can effectively address boomy bass which is very helpful.

Thanks for the response vdotman!  That's helpful info.

Couple of things:  Aside from the bass issues, what did you like about the Perspectives?

Any reason why you didn't just use the sub with the Perspectives?  What did you move on to?

I bought the Perspective2’s as the ubiquitous end-game speakers. I didn’t have the subs at the time as I didn’t think I needed them. Aside from the bass node issue that occurred less than 10% of the time (but enough to be irritating, especially given these are $15K speakers), I loved everything about the Perspective2’s and would have kept them and called it quits on the speaker search. Yes, they are that good in my opinion. After those, I bought the pair of SVS subs and a pair of Dynaudio Contour 20’s, then the Graham Audio Chartwell LS6’s which worked and sounded great, so I kept them as I liked them better than the Contour 20’s, which were no slouch by the way. I later picked up a pair of Graham Audio LS5/9’s, which when paired with the SVS subs, sounded even better. BUT, all the while I had been looking for a pair of Pulsar2’s, and as it turned out, one person who I had previously contacted about selling his pair contacted me and offered to sell them to me along with my trading for the LS6’s as part of the deal. It was a very attractive and fair offer so I took him up on it. It was hard to part with the LS6’s though, especially since they were as-new and in the rosewood finish, but their condition and finish allowed me to get top dollar for their traded value. All in, I got the Pulsar2’s in rosewood in 9/10 condition for around $5500 which is about the best anyone can hope for I think, certainly a fair deal all the way around. I have not experienced any bass node issues with them so far, or any other bass issues since I have tuned the system to the room, so I think I made the right decisions all things considered.

Thanks for the details vdotman!

Wow back to the Pulsars.  Very nice.  What a deal.

I'm also jealous of your time with the Graham Audio speakers.   I'm a fan of the classic Brit speakers - I own Spendor S3/5s and have owned Harbeth SuperHL5plus.   The Grahams have really intrigued me.  (Nowhere to demo them, though).