Audiophilepure

Fleetwood DeVille Speaker Review

The overall in-room response, as measured on the tweeter axis and within a few inches above and below the tweeter midline, was fairly uniform to about 300Hz, where room modes began to appear. A response dip of about 3dB was seen in the upper midrange with the measurement mic positioned a few inches below the horn. I’m not suggesting that a single measurement is predictive of the in-room tonal balance when listening in the far field, where spatial averaging of sound energy becomes important. However, I had set up the DeVille as I would a mid-field studio monitor, and found listening height to be a critical factor to obtaining the most accurate tonal balance. Mounted on the 24-inch-tall factory stands, the horn ended up above my ear height. I experienced a significant increase in upper-midrange energy when I stood up, such that my ears either lined up level with or were slightly above the horn. I went the extra mile here and acquired 16-inch-tall stands (featuring a slight tilt back) so I could lower the horn midline by about 8 inches and match the horn height to my ear level. This gave the most accurate tonal fidelity with my favorite sopranos.”

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