Hi All,
Here's my story. First off, my living room is approx. 15' x 20'. Originally, I bought the Polk R200 bookshelves and had them on stands. They were placed about 20 inches from the front wall.
I mostly listen to classic rock (Pink Floyd, Beatles, Dire Straits, James Taylor - on and on....). I really liked the Polks except my wife says they are too boomy (I believe she doesn't like the very deep bass notes - says it hurts her ears). Now I don't play anything really loud (70 to 75 maybe 78 db max). So, I went on a speaker quest and bought the Elac Uni-Fi UB5.2.
Reasons for choosing these is they have a smaller cabinet dimension, a 5 1/4" woofer and are front ported (the Polks have a 6 1/2" woofer and are rear ported).
At first my wife like these better, but on the second day I played them, I chose better recorded material (with deeper bass/clarity). Now she's complaining again about the bass.
So, my question is: Can anyone recommend a good sounding bookshelf speaker that doesn't have a lot of deep bass output? I know I can fiddle with tone controls, putting plugs in the ports (which I will try), but aside from that, I would still love to get some recommendations on other bookshelf speakers. Many thanks!
My experience is that women are more discerning than men about reproduced sound, and more often intuitively correct than men. I think that is why so few women get involved as they hear too many flaws. As I was growing up my mother had an uncanny knack of hearing problems immediately.
It was really brought home to me, when I went on a service call, to a single female now retired, who owned Quad ESL 63s. She has owned them most of her life. So on this occasion I asked her about her choice. She said those Quad ESLs were the only ones she auditioned she could possibly tolerate. So I think in general women are adverse to resonant bass.
Now moving coil cone systems are pretty much all resonant systems in the bass. Ported speakers obviously are. However, sealed speakers are also resonant systems. I know this may surprise some, but they are. So I suspect this is the basis of your wife's displeasure.
Apart from using panel speakers, like Quads and Maggie the only two solutions I know are very low Qts drivers horn loaded to bring up the bass, or aperiodically damped transmission line speakers. These designs can be critically damped. That is my preferred form of loading.
The only damped smaller speaker I know is from PMC who have labyrinth design in their range. I have designed and built labyrinth bookshelves. One design was for my sister, four years my junior, about sixty years ago. She is still using them and won't part with them.
I had a recent similar experience with my own wife. I built her an in wall system with an in wall TL sub, and sealed left right and center. But even she was sensitive to the slight ripple at the lower end of the sealed speakers. So I had to raise the crossover frequency well above the ripple to the sub. Since they are all in proximity that was no problem. Now I have a happy wife.
So I fear you are going to need panel speakers or build a damped TL design. Women tolerate bass in my experience, but not resonant bass.
