First, I want to say thanks for the explanations of the differences between the 2way/3way speakers.
My time with the R100s is almost up and I have to decide their fate tomorrow (almost today being this Friday). I have them wall mounted (the ports is almost 6” from the wall) and worked hours trying to tweak their sound. The best two options have been using just the outer ring of the plug and the full plug. The more the port is plugged the more the sound stage is reduced, but the kefs have had such a large sound stage so this option isn’t as bad as it sounds. With only the outer plug, the speakers sound fuller and on most material sound great with a hint of bloom only on certain notes and not that distracting. When the wife played some of her favorite music, the R100s drifted into more bloom than I would like. Generally, the bloom was slight and forgivable, but some songs seemed to bring it out more than others.
Using the full plug seemed to help with the bloom but the lower mids and bass seemed to disappear at times. It was actually confusing to tell which of the two options favored the speaker. The R100s have lots of detail, but they don’t scream it out at you. So adding some plush warmth works very well, but I couldn’t ever tell or dial in on what exactly was the “true” sound of the speaker. I hope that makes sense. Perhaps someone with more experience could have easily been able to do a better job, but I did spent countless hours tweaking a lot of combinations. The sound seemed to center on great with either drifting to plush with a hint of bloom or a little lean depending on the plug being used along with music selection.
I took the advice from another thread and ordered an SVS sub which arrived today. FedEx did its best in trying to smash in the top of the sub. To the credit of SVS, the sub obviously got hit pretty damn hard and it survived but it will be sent back because of the damages. I am limited on space so I went with a vertical sub and the top grill looks like someone tried to run the forks of a forklift thru it. *sighs* I set the sub up anyways and crossed the R100 over at 80Hz (fully plugged) really sounded great and was obvious a relief to the R100 to pass off the low frequency duties. It’s not the R100 can’t play low and sound great, but the SVS in a smaller room like ours was just killing it. Overkill(ing) it is a better description
With all the tweaking and calibrations, I am not sure that all the difficulty I had in fine tuning the sound and ports was due to placement. Having said that, the way they are installed in my room is very suboptimum. I have some suspicions that the R100 can get bloomy on the rare occasion if the plugs aren’t installed. I think some other reviews might have mentioned this. If they do get bloomy at all, the near wall installation just adds to the issue.
Overall the R100 is a fantastic speaker that I have enjoyed listening to and having in the house. It’s on and off axis sound is great. They produce copious amounts of bass for their size. With the plugs installed, the lower mids can sometimes seem light on impact. With near field installation, it takes some tweaking between lean and a tad overly warm. I have listened to these two options and still can’t decide which I favor. These speakers have lots of detail but deliver it a full body’s sound without overly emphasizing one aspect.
It’s late and I still haven’t decided the fate of these great little speakers. Would the larger driver on the R300 cause more issues with mounting the speaker near the wall or can I expect it to behave like the R100? If the R300 is voiced with a heavier mid-range, would it possible be a better fit since I am going to use some type of plug?
