Shootr

I never meant to imply that standing waves had any effect on imaging of course. I was just rambling about the importance of speaker placement. And there are certainly economical solutions to standing waves but there are also grossly expensive fixes that are hawked too often. A well placed blanket on a wall will do that job as I suggested before. As for my "patently ignorant" remarks you said the very same thing talking about using a parametric EQ to fix a drop off due to a standing wave. So join the ignorant club. All I suggest (tongue in cheek) was that a big amp could give you the power to overcome almost any standing wave issue. It's that kind of "I'm smarter than you and I have no sense of humor" remark (patently ignorant) that keeps me away from discussing audio online. Someone always thinks they're smarter than the world. How about I introduce you to someone my niece just recently worked for. Eddie Kramer is his name. Maybe I can point you to his videos online that lay out how he achieved the remarkable sound that revolutionized modern music. If you don't know who that is you should find out. You'd be surprised who wandered through the Electric Lady while my niece was there. I won't bother telling you for fear of generating more insults. Let's just put it this way. Over 250 million albums sold. You just don't know who you're talking to on the net. I was given the chance to run a large studio for a record company that handled some well known bands. They didn't think I was "patently ignorant". I'm sorry you missed the humor in my remarks. I'm sorry you don't get it that you said exactly the same thing without the 500wpc joke I included. And I'm sorry you don't understand that the sound stage of any speakers are affected by speaker placement in any room. It may not be the primary problem but it never hurts to try to see if problems can be fixed by speaker placement. And I've seen several other comments on this thread that mentioned speaker placement in one form or another like talking about moving the speakers closer together. I can see this crowd has no sense of humor and you suffer from a big case of "I'm smarter than you". So who needs you. I'll go back to doing things you likely never dreamed of doing. And the next time you want to talk about someone being ignorant you should be looking in a mirror.

I wasn't kidding about standing waves. The only way to know if you have them is to listen for them. You absolutely can make up for the lost sound with enough power to push more sound to fill in the gaps. But you have to tailor the sound perfectly to do it. I can't believe people took me seriously when I said that. It was more or less a joke. It's far easier to just listen and learn. There are basic guidelines for placement but I've always used the tried and true method of trial and error. But applying 500 wpc to fill in a small gap in a frequency curve is like swatting flies with a sledge hammer. It is possible to make up for the lost sound that creates a standing wave but really hard to do. It's more of a bull in a china shop approach than anything. Geeze people get really touchy sometimes. And sorry but the only real method of fixing these problems is by moving the speakers. You can invest a fortune in acoustic tiles and pillows and all sorts of voodoo but the only real solution is speaker placement. That may not be what you want to hear but it's the truth. Yes you can conquer some problems with more power but you generally create more problems than you fix. I still can't believe anyone took that at face value. It was tongue in cheek all the way. This is what I'm talking about that runs into serious money and has limited effect IMO. Dampening the sound from a standing wave means losing the power it takes to generate that sound and with the added effect of dampening other sounds at the same time. You can hang blankets on every wall and absorb all sorts of reflected sound problems. But then a lot of power is lost that may come in handy for those super low notes of hip hop or a bassoon. You might as well put a pillow over your speaker. It accomplishes the same thing basically. I can't believe people think room acoustics isn't an issue. It is ALWAYS an issue. They built Carnegie Hall to be perect acoustically. Their money wasn't wasted. Standing waves are created by room acoustics period. And reflected sound in the higher ranges can muck up a sound stage in a hurry. It's the bright sounds that bounce the most off hard flat surfaces. I guess I always look at things from the eyes of a recording engineer. You will find them putting people in bathtubs with a saxophone or in a basement with a guitar trying to get the acoustics right to make the sound right. Reproducing sound is a very similar process. That's one of the primary rules of good audio actually. It's always the room. The specific problem of a sound stage maybe isn't the most affected part of room acoustics but it does matter. If you've ever been in a car with a truly great sound system tailored for the car you'll instantly see what a difference the environment makes in sound. If you've ever listened to how mucked up a set of Bose speakers are when it comes to a sound stage you should get the picture too. Their "bounce sound off everything" approach is just horrible IMO. I've never seen it work short of sticking a 901 right on each ear like headphones. The Kappa 8's I've heard sounded exceptionally good and they had no issues with imaging. I can't imagine the Kappa 9's being really bad at it. If there's a problem I'd put money on the room being the issue.The simple solution is to move the speakers closer together but that limits the sweet spot for listening. It's all but impossible to know what the problem is over the internet and that applies to everyone. We're all guessing. There are things to try of course. And speaker placement is near the top of those things to try IMO. It has always worked for me. It is something I worked hard at mastering when I was recording the various bands I've recorded. Sometimes there is just no fixing the problem but there are always ways of improving on the problem even if you don't completely fix it.

Since I never listen to a radio I wouldn't know about "overplayed". I just know it's a great song. It got to the top for a reason. And I wouldn't listen to either of those other two songs. They lost their appeal for me decades ago. This sounds a little Yogi Berra when he said, " No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded." If a song is disqualified for being too popular what's that say about us?

Frey wrote the lyrics to Hotel California. It is considered to be the most famous of all the Eagles songs and it certainly has the best lyrics. It is listed on pretty much every top 10 list of rock songs all time. Clearly it is Frey's masterpiece.

A Glenn Frey song should be on this list. I'd like to nominate Hotel California. It's a rock classic. It's in my top 5 of all rock songs. Frey passed on January 18, 2016. As a founding member (and lead singer) of The Eagles I can't see how he could be excluded.

Not a bad idea. Actually some of the RC vehicles they have these days might be capable of moving smaller speakers around. But then you have the problem of having the speakers off the floor on a RC vehicle which I doubt anyone is going to want as a permanent solution. Since the best way to determine speaker placement is trial and error it might help to move the speakers around like that but in the end it's going to take more tweaking after you get the speakers off whatever you have to move them. A different idea though. Again nothing really can replace trial and error to get speaker placement right. There are certainly guidelines to go by. For example I've used the equilateral triangle as the starting point for my speaker setup for a long time. Have your speakers the same distance apart as it is from you to each speaker. For a lot of speakers that's the ideal spot for imaging. Not all of course. But it's a good place to start. You don't want to be too close to a wall or in a corner. Sometimes there is no avoiding such things though. So my thinking has been to use enough power to drive the sound the way I want it and sculpt the sound with an EQ to compensate for really bad resonances out of a corner for example. Being coupled with the floor is something a lot of speakers don't do well at. And then of course there's that old bugaboo, the standing wave. AGain only trial and error can tell you if your sound is being lost to a standing wave. You can usually hear those waves if you're ear is where they are traveling. It's just something you learn to listen for with practice. Unless you're running 500 wpc you will be losing a lot of sound that you need with a standing wave. With enough power you can just create more sound to replace that sound though. That's been my experience. It's best not to have a standing wave but if your room is small you may not have a choice.

You left out Browne's best album! Late For The Sky

I'm a big fan of Johnny Winter. I like the "Still Alive And Well" album. I also like Stevie Ray. Who doesn't? But then I like a lot of stuff. I have over 3000 albums.

Should have posted a UBB link. I did in a later post.