703s or 705s as surround speakers? (For 707 mains)

jeremymarcinko wrote: »

Use 707s 706c and 703s. Use 705s in a two channel application in another room.

That was a definite option. Or use the 703s in another room?

Hi guys. This is just a quick update to this thread.

So, I have good news, and bad news.

The good news is that I received all 4 tower speakers very quickly. Sadly, out of the 2 707s and 2 705s that I received, only 1 707 was pristine.

One 707 had a scratch on it, and one of the 705s had the feet/base completely broken off. The other 705 had a leg knocked off the unit. ( I screwed it back in, but it made me question the integrity of this speaker) So I had to return these 3 to Adorama.

I do have some observations with my brief time experimenting with them. I am not a "trained and certified audiophile", so these are just my unofficial observations.


Interesting observations:

1) The Denon x4500h, contrary to my prior assumptions, is actually a beast. It was easily able to run 2 707s, 2 703s, and 1 706c without any obvious stress. It didn't feel strained, and never overheated... it felt like it could have powered even more of these speakers. In fact, this receiver had plenty of room left in it... it would definitely play much louder than I ever asked it to.
*A caveat -- I cannot say how much cleaner or better this system would have sounded with a true dedicated amplifier, but the idea that a "receiver cannot power the LSiMs" is false. Maybe the Denon X4500 is more powerful than the average receiver users are attempting to use with these?


2) The 707s rock! The 707s kick the ever-loving **** out the 703s. I had the 703s as mains prior to this, and I gave them about 3 months of fairly critical listening. Within the first few notes of the first song on the 707s, it was very obvious that the 707s are in a different realm. These speakers are not even broken in yet, but it was like a night and day difference transitioning to the 707s up front. Music sounds much more full, much more rich (for lack of a better term), and obviously more bass. The soundstage was much wider, taller, and everything sounded more "real".


3) I cannot say this for certain without more experimentation, but it appears that the 705s blend more seamlessly with the 707 than the 703. I cannot say for sure why this is so... and I wish I could better elaborate on this. I had expected the 703 to blend better, since all its drivers are supposedly the same as the 707.

As I mentioned above, I only had 1 705 to connect to my system since the other was completely broken. Because of this limitation, I experimented with running a left surround 705, and right surround 703, and vice versa, to see how they sounded with 707s up front.

My testing methodology was to play some Dolby Atmos 4k Bluray movie scenes, and listen to the same scene over and over with 2 703s, and again with the 705 on the rear left, and again on the rear right, in case there was some variation in the movie surround channels. I also played some Tidal FLAC music in "Multichannel stereo" mode, with all 5 channels driven equally.

For whatever reason, the 703 kept drawing more attention to itself. Whichever side it located was on, the 703 seemed to provide less complete sound, and kept drawing my mental attention to its output. It definitely sounded like I was hearing a "surround speaker", which I did not like. The sound did not quite blend 100% seamlessly with the 707 front stage. Whichever side the 705 was on, seemed to provide a more seamless transition from front to back. There was also more bass, which was nice.

Perhaps this is cognitive bias. I had my wife listen to the same test, and she said "I don't know, this side [with the 705] is louder with more bass"


Thoughts or ideas?

Keep in mind, I am not running a dedicated subwoofer in the system, and everything is being powered by a Denon X4500h. I suspect it might change with a sub, or greater amplifier power.... but the 703 still probably has inferior output to the towers.

txcoastal1 wrote: »

It’s not necessarily how loud but also how long. Once the crossovers heat up the right bass drop especially on an under powered system can easily smoke tweeters or crossovers in a blink of an eye

Well that sucks. I mean, I was playing about -20 db on the Denon control.

Is it safer to run the same volume with a high powered amp? Or equally dangerous?

txcoastal1 wrote: »

Yes it’s safer

There have been dozens of people who come on this forum with RtiA9 speakers with blown tweeter/crossover issues

Our first question to them is what the were running them with.....ding ding ding yep you guessed it, AVR

Good to know. What is the mechanism why an AVR is so dangerous? They cause more strain to the crossovers?

What typical volume level is known to be dangerous?