<font color='#000000'><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"> I would be interested in hearing what others think after some exposure to audioperfectionist.com.</td></tr></table>
I read the enitire two free journals on your advice. I think that many of Hardesty's ideas are truly sound, but can't help but feel he is a questionably huge Vandersteen proponent. While this might just be coincidence, it does make you feel something fishy is going on. I can understand his need for choosing the Vandy subs for its Q adjustment, but the mains also? Just makes you wonder.
He did very little to explain where or how to obtain the passive filters he speaks of. I'm not a tweako wizard so I wouldn't know how to construct these or where to find them, he is a little too presumptious with his audience in this regard. Though overall his prose is fairly understandable, he repeats himself too often. He makes you wonder at first if he is talking about something new, until later you realize he is saying the same thing again in a different way. I find his writing technique a little strange, it doesn't flow well from subheading to subheading. He also had a tendancy to ramble about technical babble well after he has made his point. I found myself saying "get on with it" quite often.. Maybe he is just trying emphasize his points, I don't know, but it was annoying nonetheless.
He was also hypocritical saying initially that the room acoustics he performed would meet spouse approval, his wife maybe, but not most. He was using big 'ole tube shaped traps and hanging up fiberglass diffuse, and absorption material. If you want to meet wife approval you hang a quilt not fiberglass. If you want to use diffuse in corners you have to put a nice big "pretty" flower pot there, not a bass trap.
I wouldn't have a room large enough to bring out my mains a "minimum of 3 feet" from the back walll, which he lists this as the number one most important thing to do in speaker placement, not that this is his fault, but how am going to expalin when my wife sits at an angled position to the TV and she can't see because the speaker is in the way? Just little things like this made so much of what he recommended unreasonable in a real living space. If you have a dedicated HT than by all means, go for it. I just feel there there is no pratical way to adopt his setup in a normal room that must be lived in. You can use his ideas, but compromises are great.
Also his particular techniques require me spend a huge amount of cash relative to my income. A minimum of four subs are required in his HT setup, each at $1250. Also your main amps require a line level output. (something he never states in clear terms) which none of my current amps have.
Overall I'm sure this would be a great way to go. and there are ideas in these journals that can be adopted rather easily, without much effort in any real living spaces that can make your system sound better. So read it at the very least for this. Due to the compromises I personally would have to make and also many of the necessary equiptment changes, I won't be adopting his entire methodolgy anytime soon. In my opinion you would need the following five things things to take full advantage of his concepts, which I myself do not have:
1) A very comfortable income.
2) A dedicated room.
3) Measuring equipt that can accurately measure bass frequencies.
4) good knowledge of passive filters and where you might aquire them
5) Willingness to replace many of the components already in your system.
Just my take.</font>