Got them down the stairs by myself and unpacked. 7’ ceiling forced me to tip the boxes toward the couch, but I got it done.
Cudos to the packaging designer. That was ONE of my jobs before I retired. He did a great job, much easier to unpack than other things. Chris you did a fine job. I sat these down pretty much were the FR5s were when they visited. Used the Cardas set up, but not as close together as it specifies. Strong family resemblance between the 5 & 10, but with more solid bass, and more precise image placement.
Of course they’ve only played a few songs at this point.
Picture of my set up with Princess Hailey supervising.
As Audioholic said - beautiful room and setup! I’m glad unpacking went smoothly. We’ve worked on trying to have a great “out of box” experience on setting up our speakers.
Your comments on sound are definitely what we were aiming for.
Thanks everyone. This is my dedicated audio room I built in my basement, 26X12X7. Steel studs with rockwool insulation, Drywall & paneling screwed n glued to both sides of the wall. Ceiling has R30 insulation. Dedicated electrical circuit for the gear. Insulated duct boots to cut noise from airflow in the HVAC ducts.
Took about 8 months, working by myself.
When I was breaking in my new FR10’s I felt the bass and mids were pretty good but it seemed like the highs were lacking. After a few days I started to wonder if I had made a bad choice getting the FR10s as the music lacked that sparkle on the top end - cymbals and high notes felt buried and not well separated. I continued to break in the system and started to adjust positioning so that my speakers were a bit further apart and I added a bit more toe-in than what was conventionally advised for these speakers. At one point after the first week or two of break-in and fine adjustments to positioning the sound snapped into place.
My recommendation is to trust your ear - if something doesn’t sound quite right in soundstage or separation or holographic staging or tone imbalanced do some fine tuning with positioning and keep breaking-in the speakers. At least one other forum member was experiencing the same frustration as I and we both found the magic with break-in and positioning.
I was experiencing the same thing. They were sounding good, but a little “soft”. At one point, it was almost like someone threw a switch, and the speaker brightened up suddenly. It’s a tiny bit too much now, but hoping they’ll settle down with more play.
It is weird, but also very perceptible. Glad to hear your FR10’s are coming to life! IMO it’s logical that speakers are the most break-in-susceptible components as they are primarily mechanical devices. Now cable break in on the other hand, I think, is a psycho-acoustic phenomena - cost of the cable seems directly related to the time it takes to “break in” and the amount of improvement that is perceived, resulting in declarations like “the best cable I’ve ever heard!” However, I like how @aangen just simply states “it seems nice.”
I’d have to disagree about the cables….. For some brands.
I’ve heard dramatic changes in brands that I’ve used in the past, and even moreso when my friend treated them on the cable cooker.
Otoh, I use Cardas and sound great out of the box, just hook them up and leave them alone. If you move them around a lot doing A-B tests, they will take a couple days to settle back in.
I hear you and mostly agree. I have experienced differences between cable brands as well. I am less convinced about break in for cables, at least to the extent that is often reported on forums, i.e. “after 500 hours things really opened up…” Ears are much more likely to adjust over the break in time than cables IMO. The way I see it, if it’s a fantastical report it is actually fantastical. It’s probably not coincidence that many HiFi cable manufacturers embrace the break in philosophy. By the time a customer has broken in for 500 hours they are more mentally committed to keeping the cable and thus will justify the crazy price they paid by “hearing” incredible differences.
