18-Oct-2020, 21:13
I'm going to take a slightly different approach to this question. The stated aim is to use the 120 and speakers in a bedroom.
Bedrooms tend to be fairly dead rooms with a fair bit of absorption due to beds (blankets, covers, foam mattresses or futons, pillows, curtains on windows, etc) so quite possibly a bit more upper bass absorption than in other rooms. Against that, you're usually listening while lying on the bed and that means your head is usually close to a wall so you're ears are in a high pressure zone which means you're already getting some "natural" bass boost from the room itself and added bass boost from SAM might prove to be a bit too much of a good thing.
Add to that the fact that one of the reasons for music in a bedroom is to help you go to sleep and pounding bass isn't what you want. I know that when I have music playing in my bedroom (not from a Devialet system), the music I listen to tends to be quieter and less "energetic" than the music I listen to on my main system and tends not to have as much bass as the music I listen to on my main system.
SAM only affects the bass frequencies below 150 Hz. Most of what makes one speaker better than another happens above 150 Hz so SAM will tend not to be a factor which can make one speaker better than another in most cases, and bedroom use is likely to be an area where what SAM does is less likely to be what you're chasing in order to get better sound.
Regardless of where you're going to place the system and what kind of music you listen to, my advice would always be to choose the speaker which works best when SAM isn't engaged. The better speaker without SAM is still likely to be the better speaker with SAM. SAM is nice, and it can be a great "extra" when there's a profile for the speaker but the speaker remains the main course, not SAM.
It's also worth reading Jim Austin's review of the 140 in Stereophile for his comments on SAM. He found that using SAM with too high a setting in his room exacerbated modal problems in the room and he had to turn the SAM setting down to avoid those problems. Just because SAM is capable of extending bass response for a given speaker from 45 Hz without SAM to 26 Hz with SAM does not mean that you will be able to get that extension to 26 Hz with that speaker in your room. If you run into modal problems and need to use a low SAM setting as Jim Austin did, you're not going to get the full amount of extension claimed by Devialet. Just how much extension SAM will bring to a speaker in your own setup is going to depend on your own setup and it might well turn out to be less than you expect.SAM does not come with a guaranteed response, just an indication of what may be achievable in the right room under the right conditions.
Bedrooms tend to be fairly dead rooms with a fair bit of absorption due to beds (blankets, covers, foam mattresses or futons, pillows, curtains on windows, etc) so quite possibly a bit more upper bass absorption than in other rooms. Against that, you're usually listening while lying on the bed and that means your head is usually close to a wall so you're ears are in a high pressure zone which means you're already getting some "natural" bass boost from the room itself and added bass boost from SAM might prove to be a bit too much of a good thing.
Add to that the fact that one of the reasons for music in a bedroom is to help you go to sleep and pounding bass isn't what you want. I know that when I have music playing in my bedroom (not from a Devialet system), the music I listen to tends to be quieter and less "energetic" than the music I listen to on my main system and tends not to have as much bass as the music I listen to on my main system.
SAM only affects the bass frequencies below 150 Hz. Most of what makes one speaker better than another happens above 150 Hz so SAM will tend not to be a factor which can make one speaker better than another in most cases, and bedroom use is likely to be an area where what SAM does is less likely to be what you're chasing in order to get better sound.
Regardless of where you're going to place the system and what kind of music you listen to, my advice would always be to choose the speaker which works best when SAM isn't engaged. The better speaker without SAM is still likely to be the better speaker with SAM. SAM is nice, and it can be a great "extra" when there's a profile for the speaker but the speaker remains the main course, not SAM.
It's also worth reading Jim Austin's review of the 140 in Stereophile for his comments on SAM. He found that using SAM with too high a setting in his room exacerbated modal problems in the room and he had to turn the SAM setting down to avoid those problems. Just because SAM is capable of extending bass response for a given speaker from 45 Hz without SAM to 26 Hz with SAM does not mean that you will be able to get that extension to 26 Hz with that speaker in your room. If you run into modal problems and need to use a low SAM setting as Jim Austin did, you're not going to get the full amount of extension claimed by Devialet. Just how much extension SAM will bring to a speaker in your own setup is going to depend on your own setup and it might well turn out to be less than you expect.SAM does not come with a guaranteed response, just an indication of what may be achievable in the right room under the right conditions.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
