Kunter's system

[Kunter]

@Kunter - Interesting comments about speaker positioning. I think they possibly share some characteristics of the KEF Blades, with opposed side mounted drivers. With my Blades, everything sounds exactly as it should, but there is one very deep bass frequency where I think they "null" slightly. This is in a very narrow band (almost atomically precise) and at a very low frequency, although they sound fine with even deeper bass. How low bass am I talking about? Well, the kind of bass you get in about 1 track in 50 listening to electronic music. With side mounted drivers they obviously interact with the walls, each other and so on, I suspect there might be some quite complex things going on! Have you ever noticed anything like this? Otherwise, any other positioning tips? (Other than the normal positioning stuff) I suspect your main tip might be to spend many, many hours carefully experimenting! (Also, please let me know if you ever need to sell these in a hurry at a very cheap price)

Altairs have side firing bass but only one sub driver per channel, so there is no opposing driver. They fire only towards the space inside the loudspeakers.
I am well aware of the advantages of opposed side mounted drivers, the biggest being rigidity, and Altair addresses that with simple brute force: VERY HEAVY and rigid cabinet. You simply don't hear any sound by tapping on the surface. If they follow you, you definitely won't stand a chance

For room positioning, I like following the WASP (Wilson Audio Speaker Placement) methodology first. It looks a bit funny from outside, but you basically walk near the area where you want to place your loudspeakers, and listen to the neutrality of your voice. Seating someone at the listening position who is familiar with your voice will also help. There is generally a rectangular shaped area where everything falls into place. Outside that, you start to hear some metallic character on your own voice. This is the easy and quick part, but very important for the next step.

Now, you place your loudspeaker in that rectangle. The bigger the room, the bigger the rectangle. In my case they are big enough to house all the drivers and the humongous port in the back of Altair. Play something with a male voice you are familiar with, and listen. Move the speakers a little at a time backwards / forwards and sideways to try and catch best definition on the voice, never leaving the rectangle. And hence the reason one old friend who thought me this method calls it : voicing.

Next is the toe in. It has two effects. The obvious one is the soundstage, but more importantly it changes how the speakers base is loading your room. In my case, even tiniest changes in the toe-in angle affected the in room bass response. For this I prefer recordings with double bass and human voice. Cassandra Wilson, Love is Blindness is a favourite of mine for this purpose...

Last but not least is minor changes in your listening position. Something with a little more bass slam works good for this. Like electronic bass for example. Pull your seat a little farther away from your everyday position. While listening to the music, move your head forward slowly to catch where you can hear more impact especially for the start of the bass notes. I am talking about a few centimeters. This will be your ideal position. No need to mention to stay away from the back wall...

Also, heavy curtains (or similar treatment) behind you help a lot for soundstage and depth.

For your case, I would suggest to fiddle with toe in. Minuscule changes will help you. You are both lucky and unlucky for having dipole bass. It generally is better for fighting room modes ( I used to be very happy with my quad's) but they excite more room modes, so placing and toe-in angle needs to be very precise...

Hope this helps.

And no, I don't think I will sell these, not to very cheap prices anyways

Cheers,

Kunter