Wilson MAXX musicallity and sound

Dave- Yes, I saw Guidocorona's comments, and I'm sure you're both happy, but I'd love to see before and after a Sumiko Master Set room measurements taken from the listening position.

I wonder how we'd measure the intermodulation distortion at the listening position, do you have any ideas? This is about way more than frequency response.

Dave

Like Dave says in his descriptions of the Sumiko Master Set procedure, getting the focus right in bass, mid, treble and everything in between is very difficult but achievable. If you want to DIY, you can use mono recordings to assist in getting balance and focus correct. In my particular setup, when my Wilsons were in the incorrect position, the bass would shift around 1 foot to the left of center even with mono recordings. Or the bass would sound like it was a coming from a different speaker and not contiguous with the rest of the music. I guess this is the result of an unlevel frequency response caused by the cancellation or doubling effect of sound "nodes" occurring in the room.

However once I hit that sweet spot, suddenly, the image became dead center, the bass, mid, treble and all in between grouped together in the center and played as one (remember it's a mono recording, I use one of Ella Fitzgerald's earlier works). Forget testing with stereo recordings, there are just too many variables and unknowns.

Don't forget that your sitting location is important too. You have to choose your favourite sitting location and then optimise the speaker setup for that one location. I find that speaker setup is dependent on the sitting location and even hifi components. I had my sofa too close to the back wall by 4 inches and just couldn't get the speaker focus right. When I moved the sofa forward, the focus eventually snapped into place.

If this sounds all too complicated, just call someone and pay for a proper setup. For me, it's part of the hobby and learning process.

Based on what I see all your equipment is excellent,but there has been significant improvements in digital recently. Two years ago I purchased an MSB Tech Platinum CD Player II and I am on my second upgrades and I can tell with each one there was a significant improvement in sound to do with range,clarity and depth of the music. Stereophile has rated the MSB DAC the second best in the world. The best one was for over $30,000 and the MSB sells for around $6,000 ,it probably as good as it gets. MSB Tech is a neat little company in California and all they really care about is are DAC's they do have other stuff to go along with it but their main focus is the Dac. Upgrades are always available when they make the next significant improvement.Plus they have the new ilink which will tolally Plow you away it make any cd player obsolete. I now sit for hours listening to music that I haven't listen to in years.
From what I here Accuphase has fallen way behind in technology in this area.

"I wonder how we'd measure the intermodulation distortion at the listening position, do you have any ideas? This is about way more than frequency response."

Dave- Forget ID measurements, just try to borrow a TacT RCS unit which will measure frequency, pulse response and allow you to EQ the system. They also have a feature call
XTC(see: http://www.ambiophonics.org/Ambiophiles.htm), which should work wonders on a set up like yours.