@dgage @Frohlich where's our play by play gentlemen?
Sorry, we were knee deep into HT geekness and David had a limited window since he was gracious enough to drive 4 ours each way to come up here. I didn't realize how much of the 5 hours would be spent moving speakers around, connecting wires, checking all the settings,etc.. Only probably 20% of time was actually allowed for sitting and listening.
First things first, I want to thank Dgage for making the round trip. He just left about 30 minutes ago so he till has long drive ahead of him. He took a lot of time out of his schedule and was nice enough to bring his 212 LP and Coach's Seaton Cat 12s and his measuring equipment. He also was very knowledgeable, nice and all around good guy. Also, Coach, thank you so much for letting the Cats come out to play.
So the first thing I learned is that my response graph isn't that great. I have never measured my room before. We did an Audyssey XT 32 graph and a non XT 32 graph. I do have some room treatments (bass traps, absorption and diffusion). Sometimes ignorance is bliss and I truly love the sound of my system but if you were to just show me the response graph of my room I wouldn't say that it was a great looking graph. I had some dips and peaks that Audyssey XT 32 seemed to over compensate for them at certain frequencies.
On to the infamous mid bass difference between 212 HT and 212 LP, it definentely shows up on the graphs as the readings were almost mirror images above 120 HZ but under 120HZ the LP graph showed a several DB difference between the two. I think we would agree that this is what we would expect to have seen and we did.
The catalyst 12s I was very excited to hear as it is a speaker I have been interested in and is on my list of speakers I would consider for future purchase. It was a well built beautiful speaker that was extremely heavy for us to tote around....then again I am old. The challenge is that we could either run it flat (no Audyssey) or apply Audyssey but it would have been the setting for my JTR speakers. We were running short on time and didn't have time to run a new sweep for the Cats, so we just played them with no EQ.
I think there are two things I learned about the Cats 1)they sound very good but different from the JTR Noesis sound 2)in my mind I thought the Cats would pound in the mid-bass area but really it was just playing mid-bass the same as the 212 HT. I think you could more than likely EQ in additional midbass and to that extent you could probably EQ more midbass into the Cats than the 212s but leaving them alone they have the same midbass "impact" as the 212 HT. That is not what I would have expected...likely because I am ignorant as it only makes sense if you have a flat frequency response.
Please note we did not have time to do extensive evaluations and we were mainly comparing the 212
HT and Cats. The only real time we spent with the 212 LP was the frequency sweeps. We picked several clips we were familiar with and played them on both speakers. We also listened to a little bit of music. I think to truly evaluate any piece of equipment, you would need much more time and content. But at the end of the day it was about hanging out with a fellow AVS HT geek, eating Skyline chili and having a good time. Thanks again David!!!
BTW, Coach, David bet me $10 that a screw driver wouldn't fit into your Cat 12 compression driver and we confirmed that it does indeed fit. So the good news is I am $10 richer for winning the bet. The problem is that the screw driver got stuck in your speaker somewhere and we never saw it again. If you ever find it, do you mind mailing it back to me. Thanks so much!!!