knownalien,

The musicians in my house got all exited when they read your post. (Probably the first time they got exited reading anything in the Saloon!) I play my home theater, but between my wife and kids they play the piano, trumpet (and other similar brass), flute, piccolo, oboe, and english horn. I got a lesson in harmonics when my son played various notes on the piano and explained overtones. My son used the example of an electric piano versus a regular piano. The electric piano plays just the notes and it sounds shallow. A regular piano plays the notes and you hear the overtones being generated by the rest of the piano. It is a much more deep and rich sound. Room effects are nothing new to audio so room overtones with a live performance seem reasonable too. It was pretty cool lesson.

Is your question whether overtones outside of the audible range impact the quaility (depth) of the sound in the audible range? Well, the debate kicked off in the house between my family members with a call to a friend who is studying music. Their conclusion is that in theory the inaudible overtones would have an impact on what you hear. This would be no different than audible overtones impacting the sound in the audible range.

So when you buy audio equipment do you really hear it like you were in front of the musicians? I think there are so many variables that its hard to know. How good are the mics and every other piece of recording and playback gear between the musicians and your ears. If the overtones are subtle (as I suspect high frequency overtones would be) it seems they would not be carried through the recording and playback process.

Now something I can answer. I recommend the 7500 versus 5 2200's. I tried five 2200s and for a variety of reasons (# of cords, the space the 2200s took, and a quality issue) I sent them back. Just before the 7500 came out I got the equivalent ATI model at a very good price and I couldn't be happier.

AvFan,

Thank you for your quick response. I am in line with all that you said. It's interesting because the violin is a really good example of everything we are discussing here. Often with stringed instruments (usually the more complex wave recepies on an ossiloscope) you hear the phrase "try to ring." It is not without out its physics counter part. Imagine a violin plays the open G string. Then at the same time they play the open D string. The perfect 5th. Now imagine all of the overtones kicking off from there. To an osscilospce (I stopped trying to spell it right long ago) the wave recepie will look crazy. In truth, RINGING is getting the upper partials to jive better which is directly affected by how well "in tune" the fundamental notes are. And interestingly enough, just because A (440 hz) is playing, who's to say on a piano (for example) it is not "exciting" the A at 220 or 110. In fact, it is!! Certain piano tuners out there are legendary because they tune (whether they know it or not) to the partials. That is the RING! I am a bit of an elitist when I mention the violin, but to be sure, of the string instruments, it is acoustically the most perfect. I mean, for the string bass to be able to play at the same db as a violin, it would have to be nearly 5 times its size! Ofcourse, nothing is as perfect as the human voice. It can produce a perfect sin wave and in seconds a complex one just by adjusting the mouth.

I just got through listening to the Rach piano concerto #3 with Horowitz playing in the 1970's. It is an older recording than the one I was complaining about earlier: Stravinsky Rite of Spring played by chicago Symphony with Seiji Ozawa and the Firebird suite played by Boston Symphony with Erich Leinsdorf conducting. These are 1991 recordings. The Horowitz recording is MUCH MUCH better and both are ADD I believe. I use the Rach/Horowitz for the audition of every piece I buy. And today, I was listening at reference levels.

btw, I bought a 120mm brushless fan to put on top of the two stacked 2200's. It is really very quiet. Thoughts? I thought if I had 5, they could all be stacked with a flow of air going down through all of them. If I go the 7500 route, I spend nearly $500 more than if I get 3 more 2200's.

knownalien,

Outlaw recommending stacking no more than three 2200s. Give them a call if you want to stack more of them but with a fan. I personally like the US made amps Outlaw sells and have gone that direction, however, cost is always a consideration.

I have to get the musicians in the family to help me out with the first part of your message!

well, if you want to really ponder on the oddest thing about sound, it is this (and it is the single oddest thing that makes electro-statics seem even wierder):

at its essence all sound is is compression and rarifraction (sp). That is to say, a 16hz wave "transmits" "propogates" and "travels" by compressing air and creating a vaccum somewhere next to it and then relieving that vaccum according to the wave recipie. Thunder is an extreme example of this. The lighting heats up the surrounding air and that (thermal dynamically) causes a nearby vaccum. When the air immediately cools down, it sends it's "signal" across the sky. Loudly!

For what it is worth, many can hear above 20Khz and I am one of them. I can also hear below 20hz. I don't know why. I am concerned a little about the G class amp part of the 2200's. But I listen to them and they sound fine. Sonically, I am not that advanced yet in terms of comparing them to other high end stuff. I can only afford mid-fi. But as outlaw and SVS subs have shown, you can get near hi-fi for mid-fi prices. This is an amazing phenomenon for folks like us who love music.

In case you wondered what "rock" I listen to it is anything from the Doors, to Rush to the Dead Kennedys.

p.s. the LSi15's are pretty well known and I have to tell you, that Rachmoninoff recording I told you about . . . . you hear everything: chairs squeaking. pages turning. talking in the audience. On older setups you heard none of that, so what should annoy me is at the same time an indication of just how accurate and faithful the LSi15's and the 2200's are. I credit the Denon amp very little. That is why I want the Outlaw 990!!!!

I moved up from a Pioneer Elite receiver to the 990/ATI 2005 and never looked back. I tried the 990 with 5 2200s and was equally impressed with the improvement over the Pioneer. Many here have commented on the two channel capability of the 990 and I must say the 990/2005 revived my interest in music again. I now listen to music (Dave Matthews to Yo Yo Ma) far more often than TV or movies.

To that end I'm thinking of putting together a two channel system. My M&K's are great for movies (and they work size-wise in my family room) but I think I can do better for music. I like the idea of satellite speakers with a subwoofer and so I'll be auditioning a pair of Selah Audio Tanzanites (www.selahaudio.com) in August. They are sold as a kit and I'm a decent woodworker so I could make the cabinets to match the decor. Maybe I should listen to the LSi15s! Outlaw's RR2150 has some great features (in particular bass management like the 990) that is available in just a few expensive stereo preamps so it is on my short list if I put together a stereo rig.

I wish I had your hearing! Age, loud concerts, genetics, woodworking machines and large bore rifles have taken their toll on my hearing. I'm now very careful when I'm around loud noises to protect my hearing.

I'd say for a low wall standard. you can't go anything below an LSi15 for music. I know that for $3000 I would likely get a better speaker than LSi15. But for the price, there is nothing that beats it. However, if you do go the sub route, I would definitely consider it. The SVS sub essentially makes the 8" woofers on the LSi's obsolete. The way I wired my system, a full range signal is being sent to the fronts and to the sub. Polk recommended that, but SVS didn't. SVS feared the "cascading" effect. I only wanted a sub that could go below 32hz (the LSi's limit) and really just support the sound. I have that now. For my townhome, the SVS sub is too much. In a house, it will shake every fixture you own, and that is hardly joking!!! LSi just happens to make a REALLY great satellite in the LSi9:

http://www.polkaudio.com/homeaudio/specs/lsi9/

Ofcourse, if you were SERIOUS, you might consider this:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/index.html

the Orion. I can't because you need a lot of room for it.

I dunno about that. I listened to the Polks and they certainly didn't suck and perhaps they're perfectly fine. But for about the same money, I felt I got a much wider soundstage and better high frequency response from the Magnepans. :-) I don't listen to much chamber music, but I do listen to a lot of live jazz recordings and the Maggies + LFM-1 subwoofer + outlaw gear is working great for me.

Cheers,

I've actuallly never heard the Maggies, but I hear from people who really like theirs. I admit to being curious. I am going to look them up now. I am starting to get concerned that my source (in my sig) is severly lacking. About Jazz recordings, it really depends on what era we are talking. Most of them are studio. That's a controlled setting. I have several live recordings dating back many decades. Jazz recordings are likely the 2nd best way to test speaker abilities. People say vocals are best because human ears can more easily discern when they are being "colored" but the saxes, muted trumpets, and piano are better for me. Why? Their wave forms are going to be CRAZY. That's what I want as the benchmark for the midrange and tweeters of speakers. I also like to listen to music direct, if it is an option on a source player or pre/receiver, but the LSi's (though powered with seperates) never gives enough to the low end, or the recording engineers weren't very good.

I find the ‘open’ reproductive technology of speakers like the Magnepan and the Orion to be intriguing, but have listend to them only in environments that were too small, which I blame for the very disappointing sound I heard.

Loudspeakers that radiate both front and rear in basically opposite phase from each other would seem to be a contradiction. In an idealistic sense, who would ever think that would work? In the real world however, even a perfect speaker that would radiate sound in all directions perfectly in phase still exists in an environment where reflections and reverberations occur and arrive at the listener’s ears with a widely ranging mix of time delays. Even if the direct sound from the speaker is in phase, everything else is almost random. Place an opposing phase dipole acoustic radiator in the same reflective and reverberating environment and a curious thing happens. If the travel time of the reflections and reverberations from the rearward-radiating signal is large enough, the phase of the rearward sound, compared to the front-side sound, as it left the speaker is practically irrelevant. The ear-brain connection has already interpreted the front-side sound by the time most of the rearward sound has bounced and reached the listener. The rear-side sound, coming back with sufficient delay, adds to the feeling of spaciousness. A room large enough to allow for this may even ‘sound’ larger than it is.

But if the out-of-phase rearward sound is sent back toward the listener without sufficient delay in a room that is too small, or if the speakers are placed too near the walls, then significant amounts of some frequencies will be reinforced and others will suffer cancellation. This leads to what I call a ‘hollow’ sound where plenty of what should be there seems to be missing and some other things are over-emphasized – a cousin to the ‘boxy’ sound, this is the ‘open-air, hollow-box sound.’

While I appreciate the lauded reproduction of these types of loudspeaker, I’ve never had the environment available to make good use of them.