Zu Omen or Tekton Lore

I can say I'm still very happy with my Lores. I would also like to say that I now understand the full bass response of the Lores after doing a lot of work positioning them - and they DO make right down to about 30 hz if they're getting the right room reinforcement. In my case, it was a matter of just a very few inches placement that made the difference between the bottom being 40hz and 30hz. I don't use a subwoofer for music anymore, no need. I do turn the subwoofer on for movies, though, as those really low frequencies are needed for enough impact.

The dynamics of the Lores are as addictive as their tone and nuance. For this reason, the Pendragons are quite tempting. I'd like even more dynamics without giving up the overall sound of the Lores, and I'm sure the Pendragons go a long way there. But I'm very happy with where I am right now, and not interested in going a different direction for quite some time at last.

Over on one of the audiocircle threads about the Lores, a guy described a series of cabinet and driver frame dampening he did that really improved imaging/clarity. I plan to try that soon, but man I'd be surprised if it could make things that much better.

Are the Lores the best speakers ever - definitely not. Are they worth $10K? I have no idea, as I've never had speakers of that caliber in my system at home. I can say that they're way better than any other speaker I've had in there, including Tyler Acoustics monitors, Hornshoppe Horns, Omega Hemptones, Klipsch Lascalas, and Zu Druids. They don't have the dynamics of Klipsch, nor the complete coherency of the 4" Hornshoppe single drivers, but they have the best combination of tone, dynamics, frequency extension, microdynamics and nuance, large soundstage, and competent imaging of any speaker I've heard in my system.

Room reinforcement happens in every room. But pushing your speakers closer to the front wall and corners are a compromise. Every wall is a support for bass. But you give up quality to get quantity in doing so.
Bloated bass and you loose the depth of your soundstage.
Thier are serious listeners and cassual listaeners.
A casual listener normaly has his system in the livingroom with a home theater right in the middle of his speakers.
With the furniture placed here and there.
For them, the pushing a speaker back to get bass is ok and works fine.
The serious listener usually has a music room devoted to his system. With room treatments and minimum furniture.
Laser towing and to the inth measuring to get everything as good as possible.
For this person, pushing the speaker closer to the wall is just not an option. He wants the purity of the speaker and will sacrifice bass for it.
Now, if that person wants more bass, the sub-woofer is the answer.
The right sub-woofer I might add.
For some reason their are a lot of people that look down thier nose at a sub-woofer. In fact, they might think thier better than the person that uses a sub because he can push his speaker closer to the wall and not have to use a sub.
The fact is, a sub-woofer is a fantastic tool. It allows me complete control over my bass and I keep the clean bass and deep soundstage that is very important to me.
I am a no comprimise listener that would rather use a tool than to comprimise quality.
The Lore done a lot of things right, but once you've had 20hz clean bass response, the pushing the speaker to the wall just wont do.
This is my rant.

Wow, what a thread!!

This thread has convinced me to try out a pair of lores to see what a full range driver based speaker can do.

Though some of you do need to take this thread with a grain of salt and not take it so seriously. This is a fun *hobby* after all.

Zman, I suppose I would be a casual listener by your definition. I have found a positioning of the Lores in my room that does not have bloated bass at all, has just as articulate of bass as when the speakers were a little farther out into the room, but it goes down to the full 30 hz. Now, as for soundstage, I'm sure you're right that I'm sacrificing soundstage depth. I guess that's a compromise of having the system in my living room. That said, I'm a bachelor, living alone, and have the ability to make of my living room what I want. In this case, I do have quite a lot of room treatment (including absorption panels in front of TV when not watching it), and furniture is comfortably arranged in ways that make it a nice lounge as well as decent sound. Is it fully fully optimized, no, probably not. It's not been compromised for the needs of a family, though!

Also, I totally agree with you about a subwoofer being an excellent tool. In fact, before I had the Lores, I had Hornshoppe Horns, which needed subwoofer support all the way up to probably the 80-100hz range. In that case, I was using a subwoofer along with an active EQ customized for the sweet spot. With the Lores well positioned for quality bass response, I don't feel like I'm lacking anything until I'm sub-30hz without a subwoofer. I'd say that's pretty good, but it does make me curious about the Pendragons, and I wonder if you could get away with less wall reinforcement in the bass area with them.

Ok, that's it for my ranting response.

Zman did get me thinking and motivated to further explore positioning. I did a lot of positioning work a while ago to get the right room reinforcement for quality and quantity bass. Yesterday I gave up the bass quest entirely and embarked on a quest for soundstage depth. I moved the speakers out into the room about 2 feet more and about a foot further from the sidewalls. Indeed, the soundstage depth expanded greatly, and the bass suffered. I think I'll keep it in this configuration for a while, as I have the space with my current setup. It's not as nice and tidy as when the speakers were closer to the corners, but I do like the much much greater soundstage depth. It's helping a lot with both my high quality recordings as well as the lower quality ones - the music has more room to "breath", so the layers of the music aren't compressed on top of each other nearly so much.

As a result, I have re-engaged my subwoofer with room EQ, and while the bass isn't as coherent and will take me a while to tweak until it's just right, it's there in the right quantity to keep the system full-range. I'm not having much trouble with the speakers disappearing for the most part, although I bet some high quality monitors may do a better job of that. I do intend to do the cabinet and driver resonance tweaks, which I am told should reduce the sound of the cabinets and help them to disappear even more.