Country of Origin
Reviewer: Srajan Ebaen
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I often read that certain speakers or amplifiers soundstage really well. Do they? In my experience, location soundstages – or not if poorly chosen. Point-source loudspeakers with low phase shift help. So do electronics with a very low noise floor. But the big decider, el jefe, is placement. I learnt about this before my audiophile career commenced. One dealer in Berkley had a setup I'd not seen before. His electronics sat on a low table right in front of the seat and the speakers weren't far behind, sitting essentially on the room's halfway line. Much later I understood this to be the Asian way. It's how many Far-Eastern dealers practice setup. The soundstage experience at that Berkley dealer stuck with me for being far grander and freer from room reminders than others I visited in the larger Bay Area. It's something I've practiced ever since. If you want capacious soundstaging of ultimate depth, location really matters.
To do my Tibetan evening meditation with an Osho soundtrack by Deuter, I recently set up this small system in free space to create an intimate little listening zone rather than orient the room's entire layout to worship at the altar of hifi. I sit in half lotus on this couch, speakers quite narrow and near but with well more than half the room behind them. Again, when I read of certain amplifiers or DACs excelling at soundstaging, I just smile whilst looking at the commentator's speakers hugging the wall. I know the difference proper free-space locations make.
Granted, one must hide a longish power cord beneath a throw rug to establish a power source well clear of the wall. If one dislikes to see a lot of cabling, one must practice neat dressing. If one despises seeing the backs of electronics, one may need a low small screen like a fireplace protector. Where there is the will, there is a way.
We essentially invert the usual recipe of speakers against the wall, listening seat out in the room. All else being equal, this will out-soundstage the customary layout any day of the week; and by a massive margin. It's a cheap trick that has precious little to do with the hardware and its expense and all with retail's Gertrude Stein mantra of location, location, location.
Very simple: FiiO R7 SD card streamer ⇒ Simon Lee i5 ⇒ sound|kaos Vox 3Awf ⇒ Dynaudio 18S
If you've never considered it, give it a try. You might just be in for a real surprise. If you have tried it, you know it to be better than a cheap trick. It's free. It takes the same hardware, just reorients it. Rather than milk boundary reinforcement, this layout minimizes it and the room's general influence. We're doing a close-to-nearfield thing with the front wall far removed. It rolls out the long red carpet for soundstage depth. For me it's Berkeley all over again so goes about 30 years back.
For soundstaging in full bloom, this orientation is rather hardware agnostic as long as we obey common sense. Two refrigerator-sized boxes just 1½ metres from our eyes will create a psychological conflict with any Houdini hopes whilst their vertical driver array may not even cohere until at least twice that distance. Go with something compact, add a small sub if necessary and presto: a multi-purpose room with an effective hifi zone that doesn't take over the whole room. It's about subdividing an open space without physical barriers.
