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Read a post that had me convinced, but.....

L

lorriman

New Member
Apparently the speakers it praises are fairly strongly directional and so I assume not so appropriate to watching movies with my friends.

Here's the post:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/speakers/966469-mission-751-vs-b-w-dm610.html

So what do you think, folks? Are my friends going to find themselves hearing just one speaker? I don't intend to put the speakers so far apart in any case but it's a small room so I can't get so much distance from them. So it seems to me that perhaps I should be looking around a bit. Are these speakers notably directional? Maybe they have cousins that are not so directional.

But I would love to be convinced that the B&W 610 or cousin B&W's of equivalent value/performance are worth trying out. I'm not looking for a home theatre setup.

(NB:I'm really a music/audiophile than a home theatre person, which is why I value the opinions in this forum rather than the home-theatre. This is also a speaker technical question.)
 
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I have a pair of B&W DM603 S3s as the main left and right speakers in my rig, and a matching LCR600 S3 holding down the fort in the center channel position. In back, a pair of NHT 1.3As do the surround work.

One phrase I would NEVER use with my 603s would be "strongly directional." In fact, I think they're terrific at imaging. When I play music over just the 603s in stereo, not only do I get a good left-to-right stereo image, but I get an image with good front-to-back depth. My normal listening position is about 12 feet from my speakers (they're about 10 feet apart), and I often find myself getting up out of my listening spot and walking up to the center channel to confirm that it's not playing.

I know the center channel isn't playing, but those 603s put up such a good image, I can't relax knowing that I haven't made sure that the center channel isn't filling in.

Now, on movies, when combined with that LCR600, the front sound is amazing. Rock solid with very precise localization of specific sound effects (say a gun shot or breaking glass or a bird chirping).

They also meld really nicely with my surrounds as I don't get a sense of the voicing changing when you have a front-to-back (and left-to-right) audio pan or vice versa (space battle scenes in Star Wars movies or the first fifteen minutes of Saving Private Ryan are some great demo scenes, especially the Star Wars movies in Blu Ray).

Directional? Not to me. Imagery? Terrific.

If you have to put them close together relative to your listening position your mileage may vary, but in my rig, it's amazing how well they image.
 
The DM610 looks to be a straight forward 8" 2-way. There's no reason they should be more "directional" than any other box speaker like them. The only thing that might be affected is the midrange around the crossover point. The 8" woofer will start beaming before the tweeter takes over so that lower mids might be a bit directional. In a diffuse field you probably wouldn't notice.
 
Thanks for the advice, folks. Very useful. Haven't got them yet, though.

One other question: My room is only 3 meters long and 4 meters wide. Am I being over-ambitious with my choice of speakers?
 
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