today, i woke up a little earlier and tried again with the four way system, this time with the windows open. that is real life and both introduces noises and reduces reflections. i also pulled the celestions a little bit closer to me and a little away from the wall.

with the initial four-way setup, the ssris record sounded better with the celestions closer, which is because it turned down the yamahas. i decided to move to a different record, so i pulled a similarly self-produced record by another canadian rock band from the same time period; the record is ball by a band called spiral beach, which no longer exists. i saw spiral beach play a handful of times in ottawa at venues like zaphod's and at festivals like the blues and folk fest. i picked this up used in a small independently run record shop in a doomed mall in the west end of ottawa proper, called carlingwood, that i do not believe exists anymore either (the guy might even be dead). this record is a little more compressed than the ssri record and it was immediately obvious.

running the spiral beach record through the four-way sounded ok, but now the yamahas sounded a little tinny and loudspeakery due to the higher compression, which makes sense. this record sounds better through just the celestions, although i will try again with an 8 ohm speaker as a secondary. i'm probably looking at pioneer cs-x5s for cheap, which are full range surround sound speakers and i think should work well in a reverse surround setup like i'm designing here. the reverse surround is really introducing some nearfield studio monitors right in front of me, while i the bulk of the sound continues to come from behind me, which i'm used to in my bedroom. of course, if i lie down in my bed and put my head on my pillow, it's not reversed anymore, it'd normal surround; it's only reversed when i sit up in bed and am typing. i'll have to test. if not, i have some cheap low watt full range decent quality utility speakers.

i then switched back to the ssris record with just the celestions in their new speaker placement and while i am noticing the absence of the boost in midrange volume from the missing yamahas, it is demonstrating the limitation of the source - which is good.

i'm going to test a few more records with this celestion setup this afternoon and then test the nad with the yamahas tonight.