Oh no, one of those spin, spin, spin, spin to move the numbers by 10?

That’s going a bit hard on the ‘fine-tuning’ bit of calibration for me.

Rythmik? They do sealed subs in 8, 12, and 15 inch sizes. Ported subs run that range and add an 18" option.

Have kept my eyes on them as the 15" sealed subs seem the perfect bass cab for our Heresy IIIs. If we keep them. ;)

What SPLs are you hitting?

The tinnitus in my ears right now tell me to give the standard PSA, mind your exuberance with the volume knob or pay the price. Can you tell I did not in my youth? ;)

I’ve found I prefer less going on with drivers and crossovers. 2 way speakers tend to be easier for me to relax and just experience where a 3 way may make me work a touch harder to make sense of what’s going on.

Oh, and 6.5" is my max midrange/woofer size. 8" mids are asking too much of the driver to cover the mids, much like 5.5" mid/woofers ask too much of them to cover the upper bass.

Yes, these are very much generalizations and many designers have done great work mitigating these issues. That is why the adage to ‘get out and listen to the speakers you are interested in’ is so apt.

I do reserve the right to change my mind at a later date, and to bounce back and forth on this issue as well. ;)

Thems fighting words! ;)

Bass is usually the most problematic. Placement of speakers and seat should be biased towards being able to reduce the level of bass being generated. Yes, I’m thinking speakers against the wall/corner and listening seat against the back wall. Yes, this is rife with problems for you and the lumpy bass response this tends to net.

But using room boundaries does enable one to turn down the bass output which should lower the transmission thru the building.

Oh, those ‘out in the room’ systems your see pictures of do sound great but tend to end up with higher SPLs to get one to the fun part of music listening.

I guess it comes down to how much you want to sacrifice for being a good neighbor.

an absolute ideal response

Isn’t that what Yamaha tried to do with their loudness knob solution in the 80s and 90s? You set the max volume you wanted with the traditional volume knob and then turned down the volume with the loudness knob. This circuit would massage the frequency response to match the loudness curves associated with our ears’ variables.

Yeah, I too didn’t find it that useful as it never really matched my ears. It seems the market said, thanks, no thanks and Yamaha killed off this feature.

Depends at what SPL you listen to.

The red curve may better align with your hearing at lower SPLs, and thus sound more flat. There should be some point as the SPLs rise that the red curve sounds like the picture shows, a little bright and a little bottom heavy.

The green curve will sound flat once the SPLs climb into the area where our hearing is flat. But this may sound foreign or ‘un-fun’ as we probably didn’t grow up hearing a flat sound system, either at home or at live events. We typically get ‘trained’ on very not-flat systems and I’ve found it rather difficult to retrain my hearing to appreciate a flat system.

In the end, it is your system, there for your listening pleasure. Live your best life is my best advice.

Right tool for the job at hand. So narrow the choices to items designed for the near-field paradigm. Yes, I’m leaning towards minding the dispersion and desk bounce compensation ends of things.

The cool thing about the LS50 idea is you could move those out into a larger space and have a 2nd system if you decide to change out the desk rig. Those Genelecs wouldn’t be my 1st choice for an ‘out in the room’ rig.

How you value the alternate options for ‘after the desktop setup’ may be the deciding factor. But for sure, give the KEF’s a listen in the near field before buying to ensure any beaminess at close range doesn’t bother you.

Is this just human nature, the internal, never-ending, push to ‘improve’ or ‘change’ things? As in, if we never had this trait would we have advanced as a species?

I’m reminded of how some apes can be taught to use tools or concepts but they just sit on this knowledge, with zero drive to advance or make other use of this knowledge. So without outside influence or pressures they are ‘stuck in the mud’ so to speak.

I’ve found it helpful to acknowledge this drive, or trait, and to ask myself why am I desiring a change in audio system. To accept good and not chase ‘perfection’ as perfection doesn’t exist in practical terms. Perfection is nothing but frustration in the eyes of our trait to always be improving so I leave it alone and accept good.

Our Heresy IIIs did not sound anywhere as nice as the demo units at the store upon unboxing. Same complaints about the highs and the bass was very restrained.

I came to understand why all the photos of Heresy speakers in-rooms showed the tweeters firing right and left of the main seat, minimal toe in if any at all, because those tweeters beam like mad. Mix in brand new, i.e. tight, drivers and this is all so much worse.

So toe out the speakers for now, so you are listening some 15-20 degrees off axis and then heat them up with some highish volume listening, say low 90s dB in the seat. Nothing out of their capability but get the drivers moving and heat driven into the voice coils/spiders, and do so for about an hour. Turn the rig off and come back the next day and give her a listen, then report back what you found.

I figure you’ll be pleased at how things changed. ;)

After the above we ended up having to EQ the highs down to a level more in line with the mids and lows. In the end, our AVR’s EQ couldn’t do enough so we resorted to Audyssey which man-handled the irregularities in the mids/highs enough to get the rig more like what I heard in-store.

But then I noticed the 160Hz peak/resonance, which I hope the IVs do not have. Audyssey didn’t really address that as the old version we have doesn’t touch the bass.

After some 7 years with these things I’m looking to move them on. The JBL Studio 580s are so much more clear sounding/invisible, but have their own issues with being overly bright up top. But these respond well to minor EQ adjustments. I hope the updated drivers in the IVs do not present enough problems that you feel the need to sell them after the break-in is complete.

Is a 20 year old high end amp just as capable of a high end amp today?

Put yourself in the shoes of the amp designer. This statement says you’ve done bupkis with half your working career, furthered the industry zero percent with your 20 years of laboring. Or, at least says it is possible you’ve achieved nothing.

Yeah, diminishing returns and all that come into play, there may not be much ‘gravy left on the table’ with traditional designs some ~100 years old. For sure, if I was an engineer designing amps, or any other part of this hobby, and nearing retirement I’d want to think back and be able to say I made good advancements.

Is it better to look at the value proposition, old vs new? As in, how can I get the highest levels of performance on a fixed budget? Used higher end than I can afford new, is that the way? Or going down-market a bit to purchase my ‘new and shiny’ stuff? Going used should allow for more leeway in equipment flipping. So if you know you are not a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of person going used may be the biggest bang for your buck and psyche.

This measuring thing can become a side hobby with its nuances, the required education, and difficulties in measuring well.

I’ve made the typical rookie mistakes. Hell, just last night I used the 90 degree cal files with the mic pointed straight ahead. Took a good few minutes of listening to figure out the highs were not like what the charts said. Don’t be me, trying to do this stuff right before bed! ;)

We perceive rising distortion as a gauge on how loud things are. Think back to the first sound systems you remember and how when you turned things up what fell apart first, typically the bass.

So when we finally have a system that can produce sounds louder than we should listen to without distortion something sounds unfamiliar. Like we equate distortion with ‘loud’. Since our mighty fine system doesn’t distort we are left wanting that ‘Linus’ blanket’ feeling, the ‘comfort’ of distortion as a gauge of loudness.

So I’ve had to retrain my expectations with systems that do not distort meaningfully at the SPLs I enjoy, or can stand.

Underrated - JBL Studio 580, on sale for $300/each delivered.

Yes you need to roll out some of that treble via EQ or treble control but once that is done what a revealing and easy to listen to speaker. The efforts made in dispersion and crossover designs pay great dividends in listener enjoyment.

it seems very likely that they might undergo a certain degree of mechanical change during the first hours of use, not unlike a new pair of shoes break-in.

The first loud listening session, some low 90dBC in the seat, with the fresh out of the box Heresy IIIs presented us with some warm smells from the speaker fronts. Much like glue curing, warm paper, MDF, and grill cloth. Things smelled fresh and warm. After being ‘beat upon’ the speakers now sounded like the demo models at the showroom and lost their bass-shy nature and the glare in the mids and highs.

That listening session was well within the speakers limits/capabilities so no damage should’ve occurred.

Years later I learned voice coils may hit 200C in normal operation. How much of that heat makes it to the spiders and cones I have no idea but I better understand why we smelled warm smells after the high SPL session of an hour or so. The guts of the speakers become right warm when run hard.

So I’ve taken to thinking of speakers more like a new leather belt, stiff until some movement happens and then it settles down to a certain level of flexibility for the majority of its lifespan. Only at the end does it get extra floppy and feels ‘worn out.’ One would assume materials engineers for speakers have a firm and vast knowledge of this phenomena and this was taken into account during the design process, with the goal of quickly arriving at the ‘sweet spot’ for long term satisfaction of the end user.