Now this thread has truly become fascinating.
In reply to:
I've read elsewhere, and even in college psych if I recall correctly, that our ears are great at intuiting information that is not there but that we expect to be there.
Absolutely. The brain anticipates as it always does. The expectation of something creates the ensuing impression or response elicited by the trigger. Does anyone remember Pavlov's dog?
Note how this same principle of the human imagination will also come into play while auditioning audio equipment. The same principle in which many audiophiles refuse to believe exists, and as such, they continue to 'audition' components and compare them descriptively simply by walking into different stores or friends' homes and casually listening to things.
Illusionists indeed!!
Spiff gave a great description
earlier today about his thoughts on several speaker sets. I loved his wording. If all audio reviews were similar, i would pay alot more attention to what they said and would probably buy alot more audio review magazines.
In reply to:
(all speakers on small regardless of size, crossover set to THX regulation around 80 Hz) seems fine for HT, but I'm not sold on it for music.
In regards to the subwoofer addition, i personally agree with you here, although i understand the rationale and do not disagree with the material from those articles. The best sound that i've found with my EP350 and M60s is to use the sub primarily for a HT application. I have the M60s set to 'large' in my receiver and have turned the EP350 crossover to about 50Hz on the dial (how accurate that really is, i'm not sure but it makes sense according to the relative rolloff at the lower end for M60s based on the
NRC graph for the closest brethren, the M80s).
For music i found the sub sound to be very intrusive and rather unpleasant, similar to the description from the article. I tried tweaking position, gain and crossovers to no avail. Ultimately i wanted a sub for HT but NEEDED a sub for music that contains a lower bass level beyond the reasonable depth that the M60s can attain (i.e. notes in organ music...some of my wife's favorite material especially around Christmas...British vocal choirs and all). I found the 50Hz cross on the EP350 works best and i 'found' that point simply by listening to music and slowly turning down the cross notch by notch until it blended well with the M60s.
Chances are i may have to modify that again if i move the setup to another room and change the seating distance along with room acoustics.
There is no set point that works 100% everytime. The THX recommendation is only a starting point, not a be-all-end-all solution to the crossover setting and subwoofer use.