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Why some are stand-mount people and others floorstanders

Chris

Chris

pfm Member
Are there sound reasons for your preferences beyond aesthetics, room size and SWMBO ? I use Wd25Tex, which are pretty big by my standards (see my Avatar). Everyone complements me onn how good they sound yet I cannot put my finger on why my Beyer DT531 cans seem to get to the parts they don´t reach, metaphorically speaking My only real criticism would be of the height of the image the WDs project - everyone is about 4 feet tall
Anyway, might standmounters be worth a punt ? I fancy making some of Robert´s Tribute to AR as shown at Scalford a couple of years back and I have all the parts ready. What does everyone think might change, presentation wise ?
In other words, in the same room, same day, same LP, what might change ? Or is the grass always greener ............
 
Room size must come into it. Big stand mounts like the NS1000 needed wall positions. Most modern standmounts pus their bass drivers too hard in a big room
 
Reasons I am a standmount person:

* Room size
* Better midrange from standmounts (in general)
* Better imaging from standmounts (in general, due to the below)
* Less box colouration and cabinet diffraction effects from standmounts

I find they 'disappear' more than floorstanders, unless spending A LOT of money i.e. Avalon speakers.
 
Generally speaking - pardon the pun -Standmounts do imaging better than floor standers and more easily “disappear”- so that you can’t specify where they are eyes closed.

They do however lack full bottom end so usually require well integrated sub.

But good standmounts can sound astonishing...and can do height and scale easily as well as Floorstanding Speakers.
 
sprogbasket said:
Generally speaking - pardon the pun -Standmounts do imaging better than floor standers and more easily “disappear”- so that you can’t specify where they are eyes closed.

They do however lack full bottom end so usually require well integrated sub.

But good standmounts can sound astonishing...and can do height and scale easily as well as Floorstanding Speakers.
Click to expand...

I agree with the above - but also notice you are comparing speakers with headphones: I briefly got into a 'leapfrogging' situation, buying better 'phones, then better speakers and so on. Now, I treat them as completely different presentations. It's not a perfect analogy, but is something like the difference between looking at a painting from 15ft away (speakers) and from just inches away ('phones). You can't examine texture, pigment and brushstrokes from 15ft, but they are nevertheless an intrinsic part of the overall piece. You can be aware of one aspect while concentrating attention on the other, but they remain two alternative ways of seeing, if that makes any sense.
 
I think the speaker vs headphone thing Is mainly because you are getting more of the direct sound with headphones. A good experiment Is to listen to your speakers near-field (assuming they aren't designed to Integrate at a distance). They often sound more real and alive because of less reflections from boundaries.

There's no reason why a floorstander shouldn't sound as good as a standmount, but floostanders are often tuned lower to try and get as much bass as possible at the expense of group delay, plus there's more chance of room-boom with lower tuning. Bass wont sound as tight with less bracing, so a bigger cabinet Is more likely to sound loose In the low frequencies unless adequately braced.
 
I have had one pair of stand mounts and two pairs of floor standers.

These days I go in for floor standers for two reasons
- labradors
- grand daughter

A wide footprint floor stander is so much safer than a box on top of a stand.
 
Do ESLs count as floor-standers or stand-mount speakers, or is it dependent on the height of their feet/stands?
 
I think the problem with the OP's perceived sound stage height could be down to speaker positioning in the room. Especially if it's an odd shape like most rooms these days. I had a similar problem some years back with my Audio Note E's. I'd tried having the speakers the same distance away from me, but in the end I solved it by keeping one speaker in the same place and gradually bring the other speaker closer, or further away until the sound stage suddenly opened up. Width and height just appeared from no where! Well worth having a play with what you have first.
 
Chris said:
Are there sound reasons for your preferences beyond aesthetics, room size and SWMBO ?
Click to expand...

I think I’ve largely narrowed down the speakers I don’t really get on with as ones that have either lots of drivers stacked up or widely spaced apart on a tall baffle. I really don’t like the ‘treble right up there, bass down on the floor’ thing at all. The vast majority of my favourite speakers (Quads, Tannoys, various stand-mount mini-monitors etc) are all point-source, or very close to it in the case of tiny stand-mounts. As such I don’t think it necessarily splits floorstander vs. standmount for me, though I do tend to like very big speakers and very small ones, with not that much in between.
 
JTC said:
Do ESLs count as floor-standers or stand-mount speakers, or is it dependent on the height of their feet/stands?
Click to expand...

Is there an ESL small enough to need a stand ? I've not come across one. They are floor-standers.

Having had LS3/5As, Rogers and other stand-mounts, I can see the allure, but it is, i.m.o., only the big ones (i.e. floor-standers) which can do scale. Scale with sound-staging/ imaging and oomph is where it's at. With hindsight, I'm a convert to ESLs, so am not quite sure about the 'oomph' bit !:)
 
Anyone here blind tested large floor standers against smaller stand mount speakers, what we see has a huge effect as we all know, obviously it depends on the speakers involved but when I did this many years ago, to determine if it were worth the extra outlay, with a pair of my mates dad's huge Tannoy's against my then, tiny by comparison, Mordaunt Short, the outcome was not as I was expecting, the difference was there, but mainly down to the balance & voicing, rather than the huge size differential.
 
My room is about 3.50m x 5.50m and the speakers fire across the room. If I finally do take a punt at Robert´s design for which I already have all the parts, would that be OK for, say, 22L speakers on my old Heybrook HBS1 stands ? - they actually use refoamed Acoustic Research woofers and a BMR, so really quite different to the concept behind my WD25s although sealed boxes, too.
 
Very big or very small is where it's at, most stuff in between is either designed to be lifestyle furniture or appeal to the 'it goes up to eleven' brigade.
 
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