Critically comparing Monitor 10 & Monitor 7

ratpin

I've been demoing a pair of one owner early monitor 10's with peerless tweeters and have been blown away with how well they stage in my living room. I have recently rotated in the Monitor 7b with RD0194 and immediately noticed the center stage has disappeared and gone towards the L&R speakers. I was very surprised it was such an obvious and apparent sound stage shift. I am still early in the testing of the 7's. As I play with tweaking distances and such I will update.

With the M10's, depending on the song the vocals would seem to come directly from the center of the component rack, dead center but with incredible separation when the recording incorporated it. One of the demo tracks I would use to showcase this was off the Peter, Paul and Mary LP "10 Years". In the Dylan cover of "Don't Think Twice It's Alright", Peter and Paul were perfectly separated between the left and right channel. Then Mary's voice comes in absolutely dead center between the two. With eyes closed it sounds quite spectacular. I've heard people say the dual drivers in the M10 can cause cancellation issues. Maybe some how this phenomenon is causing this acutely detailed sound stage I'm hearing.

Further testing with the M7's should tell me if it's the speaker or the placement, because everything else is identical.

Gardenstater

I can't find "10 Years" on Qobuz but I found that song on "Around the Campfire" and listened with my 7Bs. It is entirely the way you describe the experience with your M10s.

Maybe there is a crossover issue or unbalanced drivers issue with your 7Bs. What has been done with them? Do the drivers have the same mfg. dates or close? RD0194 is said to be an update to the SL1000 but not the Peerless. I never quite got that though since the SL1000 is what Polk used to replace the Peerless when they stopped making the KO10DT model, and I know of one forum member who had the SL1000 in his speakers and the crossovers were identical to mine with the Peerless. I didn't verify that his inductors were the same DCR as mine but everything else was the same.

xschop

Very interesting results. One of the drivers in the 7's could be wired backwards, out-of-phase perhaps?

VR3

Sounds like a phase issue

Gardenstater

For a test of midrange clarity in your M10s try and see if you can clearly decipher the words sung by the backup singer in Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game". See what happens when you move laterally off center of the sweet spot where lobing will cause some variations. It isn't just cancellation, there will also be constructive reinforcement, depending on the angle.

mhardy6647

The 7s should center a signal that's split 50/50 between left and right channels every bit as well as the 10s. If they don't, I, too, would think that something's amiss. Wouldn't take much -- even a 1 dB difference in the midrange might well pull the image noticeably offcenter (especially by comparison to another pair of loudspeakers).

erniejade

Besides what others have said, having owned both pairs at some point in the past, I feel the 10's with their stand was less picky about placement vs the 7's and, what stands are you using with the 7's?