10-Mar-2016, 13:09
(10-Mar-2016, 12:04)McChicken Wrote: Would love to hear your objective opinion
I think this falls into the placement, placement, placement arena. To start to comprehend this, we need to state what is "wrong" with a 2.1 set-up vs a full range speaker. The answer is relatively easy. It is typically a low mid-range, higher end bass suck-out. The worst example of this is the Bose cube systems. They just about reach to the lower mids but do not have the ability to "fill the range out", and there is a complete gap in the higher bass, where the cubes don't reach and neither does the sub do it properly either. So you get this hump at the mid bass, then a suck-out until firmly into mid-range terroritory. This is a very common 2.1 scenario, it's just the Bose is one of the worst examples of it. However, it doesn't sound unpleasant either which is why Bose sell so well.
Now if we are to believe Devialet, the response is within +2/-2dB across the entire 16-25kHz range up to a certain volume level. There should be no suck-outs. What I also haven't seen is the crossover frequency from mid-range to bass drivers. But it shouldn't suffer at all from the 2.1 effect you described in principal.
I have a high-end system consisting of Kef Reference 4.2 monsters and Bryston power amplifiers. It sounds phenomenal. The Phantoms are in another room, but I did have them side by side for a while. I found that in certain positions the Phantom's would develop a response that is a bit like you described, while in other positions they would sound remarkably close to the Kef's. There are benefits of the Kef system overall which I won't go into now. But the 2.1 effect which I believe I understand only happened when the Phantoms were positioned either too close to a wall, or interestingly, too far away from them (I assume it was just creating different humps, dips around the mid-bass area). So your evaluation may be related to your positioning.
You have mentioned the lack of presence of the kick of a drum before. I have been trying to wrap my head around this because either the frequencies are reproduced at the right level or they are not. The feeling of a "kick" that you "feel" in your chest, is purely about shifting enough air at the right frequencies. I can certainly get that feeling in my set-up. So I need to try the tracks you mention and then I will feedback again. One of the actual advantages of the Phantom's over the Kef's is the sense of things being "live" like the instruments are in the room, including drums (e.g. Dead Can Dance - Yulunga with the volume cranked up).
As I said, I suspect that positioning/placement is what is causing all of your negative critique....and I have found the Phantoms are MUCH more fussy about positioning than the Kef's.
