Positioning & Setup (Part I)
Part I is the quick ‘n dirty version used for initial comparison. Part II (end of review) is the normal setup, room description, and equipment for anyone interested.
Since I purchased a DIY upgrade kit rather than a complete loudspeaker pair, I did not have the luxury of doing a proper AB-AB comparison. So after a bit of thinking, I came up with an informal testing method along with the following speaker placement:
This is NOT where these speakers normally sit. The black tape on the rear edge of the desk is the usual position. I marked it before moving the MoPads forward. What this modified setup does is create a rough point source and allows me to switch back and forth between the Sierra-1 and the Sierra-2 more seamlessly than if they were farther apart in the usual position.
Please excuse the fingerprints on the upgraded speaker. It’s from handling the cabinet during the component swap. I knew there would be more handling before I was done, so I didn’t clean the cabinet. I probably should have for the pic, that’s one downside of a piano black finish. Oh well. They’ll be cleaned properly when the review is finished.
The next obstacle was how to play back stereo music through two different speakers. Using a raw stereo signal to test two different left/right speakers isn’t exactly apples-to-apples. So what I did was download Nullsoft Winamp (ah, the good ‘ole days) and the “Somewhat Mono” plug-in (by Bernhard Kohlhaas). Once the plug-in was activated, I could collapse a stereo input signal into a mono output signal and send it to my external DAC, ensuring that each speaker received an identical signal. Obviously, the mono signal sounded horrible compared to stereo. But I knew that going in. I only wanted to roughly compare the sonic signature between the two speakers. Another feature that Winamp has is a channel balance control also known as panning. This was the real reason I downloaded Winamp. My stalwart JRiver Media Center doesn’t have a basic panning slider. I tried several things, but the best one still required me to mute/unmute each channel. The delay was just too long. When comparing electronics or speakers, it’s imperative that the switching be near instantaneous due to the fleeting nature of audio memory. Sliding the Winamp balance control between left and right channels enabled near instantaneous switching between the two speakers.
I did not have the capability to properly level-match the Sierra-1 and Sierra-2. However, because they differ in sensitivity by only 0.5 dB (anechoic), I did not find it to be a noticeable issue.
For this informal listening test, I sat about 4 feet away with my ears nearly parallel to the tweeters. The following impressions are recorded using the Winamp software configuration and “point source” speaker placement mentioned above.