Equipment, Rooms, and Accuracy.

While the system occupying my main audio-visual room remains finely tuned and relatively consistent in terms of permanently installed hardware (my most recent upgrades involved surround-speaker changes that I discussed in a previous column, and more recently the replacement of my last CD player in that system by a third DVD player), the home-theater systems in my smaller A/V room and my living room (hereby called the "small" system and the "living-room" system, both of which are similar in size) are normally a hodgepodge of outwardly incompatible and ever-changing pieces of hardware.

This fact is regularly articulated by my wife, who remains perpetually frustrated by hardware rotations that tax her ability to watch movies, watch regular TV shows, and listen to music. Some of the switches also jolt her sense of visual propriety. ("How long will we be keeping those butt-ugly speakers in the living room?")

The current main-channel speakers in that living room are a pair of definitely not butt-ugly AR Phantom 8.3 models, that both look and sound terrific. Even my wife admits that she likes both their sound and their looks. They are not the most bass-potent speakers in the world, but the addition of a Velodyne CT-120 subwoofer to the installation has worked wonders for the response down to a reasonable 30 Hz. The living room now has a viable, high-quality A/V system.

For a month or so the Phantoms were replaced by a pair of Waveform MC satellites, which looked, well, interesting (so said my wife) and also sounded terrific. Moreover, to be truthful, they sounded sensational.

Before them, the TV was flanked by a pair of Allison AL-125 systems, which also sounded fine, but which looked out of place in that room. (Vinyl-clad finishes are a no-no in the living room.) Before that, the room had a pair of AR 310 HO models for several weeks (at least their black vinyl looked good), and at other times the systems in place were Coincident Technology Triumph Signatures that alternated with some Tannoy Mercury M2 units. The Coincidents and Tannoys also pulled a significant amount of duty in the small A/V system.

All of these systems were fine performers in the living room, with the Waveforms probably having a slight edge in terms of detail and focus over all the others. The AR systems measured slightly flatter in that room, particularly in the midrange (this was in contrast to measurements I took in the main room, which had the Waveforms a bit flatter), and the Allisons always sounded more spacious than anything else, even the Waveforms. My wife also emphatically told me that the Phantoms looked better than any other systems we have ever had in there, and she felt that they looked way, way better than the Waveforms. The roundish Waveforms just did not fit into a room that had furnishings that were more angular, even though the room also contains a grand piano.

For a couple of weeks at a time, both the living room and smaller A/V room also hosted Velodyne CT and Atlantic Technology T-70 sub/sat systems, as well as somewhat larger Polk RT-35 and CS245 satellites (well, almost: the rear-ported CS245 center speaker would not work in the living room, because of the way center speakers have to be positioned under that room's TV monitor), and a bit earlier the smaller A/V room had been occupied with the Atlantic Technology System 270 sub/sat package.