Thank you for the thorough review.
3 Likes
Well done, Donald! Curious to know the distance between speakers (tweeter to tweeter so called) and from listening position. I guess during next months you will experiment lots of different positions, as soon as you become more familiar with the new sound after the burning in period.
4 Likes
Now it is 8’ 6" between tweeters, and about 11’ from the listening position. I hope I will receive those Herbies footers soon. Right now the bases are sitting on top of the footers, but I cannot really move them.
I may change back to the furniture slides to make further adjustments.
4 Likes
Yes, speakers have a big impact along with the room. The large areas of the tweeter and midrange require less movement and convey music effortlessly and confidently. It’s nice that you still have matching feet. These are probably replicas of the feint elements and were also recommended by my dealer. (Of course the originals for 500 € in a set of 4, dealers don’t want to hear anything from Aliexpress 
) I think you can happily listen to music with your feet.
I had seen that there was already a topic here in the forum about setting up the Fr 30/20 where some feet were mentioned.
3 Likes
I am so jealous Donald!
4 Likes
These larger boxes for the bass will definitely need more time to break in. I was planning to wait a few more days to post the review but I promised Stier2704 to give an “early impression”. 
I am sure the bass will improve in the coming weeks, and I want to experience with different positions later too.
3 Likes
I can hardly move my speakers, which weigh over 80 kg, with my feet. It’s best to do it with another person. One person carefully tilts the speakers so that the other puts a towel under their feet. With the towel under the speakers, you should be able to easily move the speakers on your wooden floor.
With a cone speaker, the surround and rear centering are retracted a little. The bass is usually a bit tighter and less pronounced at the beginning. Over time it will sound richer and deeper. Don’t listen to music too loud
2 Likes
Thanks for the initial review, and yes, it will take more time for the woofers to start woofing. The dual top box adjustments are a matter of room, recording and taste so there is really no right setting, just what you like. Taking away those adjustments, however, is pretty obvious. A colleague of ours that was contemplating FR20’s (and subsequently got them) heard these differences at my house. Subtle, but there none the less.
I’m a purest at heart and like a “flat” speaker, but if part of the design can accommodate some room conditions and sound better for that, why not.
Such thoughts could have me thinking of BAACH ORC. That would be a paradigm shift, potentially, but I’m still playing with the 30’s and hearing the benefits with each cable and component change.
7 Likes
These hi-resolution speakers reveal any little change in SQ from cables and tweaks, as I found in a short two-day period.
4 Likes
Forgot to ask, Donald. I see you are about 11 feet from the speakers and they seem to be even, front to back. With mine, given a 9 foot distance, I had to tip the speaker forward and raise my chair to get the right tweeter to ear alignment. Just seeing if this positioning matches yours. To be honest, this fine tuning came after months of no horizontal moves, as I thought they sounded just fine. You are still on you honeymoon.
3 Likes
You don’t give Donald any stupid ideas. He has enough cables and optimizations. Or as my dealer told me with a grin and dollar signs in his eyes “Now the game starts all over again”
3 Likes
Once I receive my new footers I will play with the tilt angle. These XSSH footers are adjustable too. Now I am still in honeymoon, so the sound seems to be fine for me. My previous speakers are tall too, so maybe I am used to higher soundstage.
I will experience later for sure.
3 Likes
For me, getting my ears at the height of the FR20’s tweeters was crucial/critical/a must/ to experience the wonderful magic of these speakers. This is a “tweak” that I cannot emphasize enough how extremely important this is.
4 Likes
I think it’s just as important for the FR speaker models as it is for mine with AMT tweeters. For complete sound, a listening position on axis with the tweeter is crucial because the tweeter concentrates sound more vertically. The FR 30 also has the rear tweeter to generate additional diffuse sound. For optimal timing, the sound from the individual transducers should reach the ear at the same time and in the same phase as possible.
Then a better soundstage and tonality is guaranteed. Donald still has a lot of setup and setup options ahead of him before he should consider any more tweeks. Don’t forget the break-in period in the next few weeks. 
After replacing the capacitor, my speakers took several weeks to stabilize. I would initially listen like this for 2 weeks so that I don’t have to constantly readjust the speakers. Did I say that ? Or maybe the speakers constantly moved.
2 Likes
All 2 of my previous audiophile speakers, the Infinity Modulus and the Sonist Audio Concerto 4, had their tweeters aligned at my ear listening height. The Infinity speakers were clean, but have only a little magic by comparison. The Sonist speakers had an unreal amount of magic, but were not clean sounding. The FR20’s are at a whole other level, open and wonderfully magical yet super-clean. With the right music, the FR20’s completely disappear.
7 Likes
My FR20’s took about 100 hours to break in, then improved some the next 100, and became a little more refined the next 100 hours…will be fun to play around with your new speakers, but you will probably need to slightly readjust everything after a few hundred hours…but that’s the fun !!! I do run mine with dual subs…
5 Likes
Congratulations Donald on getting the FR30’s. As others have mentioned, it does take a few hundreds of hours for these speakers to break in and they continue to evolve. Also, I concur that toeing the speaker-tweeter downward towards the listening ear level makes huge difference on where the soundstage and vocals end up. When I first installed the Gaia footers which are taller than the supplied footers, the sound stage voicing ended up way up towards the top of the ceiling. I have toed the speakers downward and now the voicing is straight in front of me a few feet up as if they are on a stage in front of me.
You mentioned that you only needed to toe in your speakers a little bit. I currently have my speakers toed in pretty much pointing at my seating area to get a very focused sound stage but once you are out of the seating area, the sound stage is no longer focused. This is probably personal taste and having the FR30’s in a smaller room initially.
I would be very interested to hear from others on this thread how much toe in they have in their set up and how focused their soundstage is.
9 Likes
My FR20’s are far apart 11’-2" (center of tweeter to center of tweeter) and have a decent toe-in. The left speaker is aimed a few inches to the left of my left ear and the right speaker is aimed a few inches to the right of my right ear. The soundstage is wide, there is depth to the soundstage, but not to the incredible depth that @straightwire has in his system.
4 Likes
Thanks for the input guys!
I just turned on the system after a busy morning. 
The recessed bass is no more, Instead, the Godzilla bass was awaken. Now I believe I need to toe-in more since the bass is a bit of overpowering.
I will place back the furniture slides this afternoon and make some adjustments. You are right that the fun part has started!
3 Likes
Donals did you install the M2 fuse before switching on? Or was the bass already louder before changing the fuse? The AM Ultimat Premier in my Kraftwerk also provided too much bass in contrast to the SR Purple or Master. If the system is well tuned, the slightest change can cause the system to become unbalanced.