You were perfectly clear. Sorry if we weren’t. Well those of us offering useful advice anyway. Thought the jokey sarcasm would have clued you in. Oh well. Then let me explain as clearly as I’m able why the switch box should never be done. Spoiler alert: its nothing to do with impedance.
Speaker performance is highly dependent on placement. Floors and walls, all large flat surfaces, act to reinforce bass as well as reflect higher frequencies. Objects as small as one square foot, roughly the size of an LP or a lot of components, can reflect enough sound to impair imaging.
So in order to hear what a speaker is doing you really must listen to only that one speaker, because even the presence of another cabinet nearby is going to ruin the sound coming from the other one. Also its extremely unlikely the best sounding location for each speaker just magically happens to be sitting next to the other one.
That’s just the speaker performance angle. There’s also the listening angle. Right now you’re thinking you need the box because they’re gonna be so close you’re never gonna remember what’s what any other way than by switching rapidly back and forth. Why anyone today still filling people’s heads with this nonsense is beyond me.
Critical listening is a very high level intellectual activity. The more and the easier it is to switch back and forth the easier it is to develop the lazy habit of letting one tiny little thing or another catch your attention and you decide one is better than another based just on this one thing. Manufacturers actually rely on this, many of them deliberately tweaking in the hopes this excitement factor will dupe guys into buying. Vast numbers fall for it. Vast numbers. That switch box will have you on the fast track to running the upgrade treadmill.
What you want to do instead is set one up to where it sounds as good as it can. Then listen a good long time. Depending on the speaker, how new it is, how easy to move around and set up, etc that could be anywhere from under an hour to under a week. Then repeat with the other speaker.
That’s how its done. No joke.
Speaker performance is highly dependent on placement. Floors and walls, all large flat surfaces, act to reinforce bass as well as reflect higher frequencies. Objects as small as one square foot, roughly the size of an LP or a lot of components, can reflect enough sound to impair imaging.
So in order to hear what a speaker is doing you really must listen to only that one speaker, because even the presence of another cabinet nearby is going to ruin the sound coming from the other one. Also its extremely unlikely the best sounding location for each speaker just magically happens to be sitting next to the other one.
That’s just the speaker performance angle. There’s also the listening angle. Right now you’re thinking you need the box because they’re gonna be so close you’re never gonna remember what’s what any other way than by switching rapidly back and forth. Why anyone today still filling people’s heads with this nonsense is beyond me.
Critical listening is a very high level intellectual activity. The more and the easier it is to switch back and forth the easier it is to develop the lazy habit of letting one tiny little thing or another catch your attention and you decide one is better than another based just on this one thing. Manufacturers actually rely on this, many of them deliberately tweaking in the hopes this excitement factor will dupe guys into buying. Vast numbers fall for it. Vast numbers. That switch box will have you on the fast track to running the upgrade treadmill.
What you want to do instead is set one up to where it sounds as good as it can. Then listen a good long time. Depending on the speaker, how new it is, how easy to move around and set up, etc that could be anywhere from under an hour to under a week. Then repeat with the other speaker.
That’s how its done. No joke.
