I enjoy listening to records more than any other format!

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I think you are right. When I got the speakers, I played with their positioning to see what sounds best. The woofer is in the corner, and the tweeters are at opposite ends of my desk, about five feet apart. I have also tried tilting the speakers away from the center, which seems to help fill the room, but doesn't sound as good when I am sitting at the terminal listening to music. I suppose you can't have everything.

the best you could do for the room filling aspect would be to get the SRS plug-in for your puter, that was the best of the stereo-expanding algorithms I have found, along with "spatializer" [a pro format]. but do not splay the speakers outward as that give you a hole in the middle. at most have them facing straight front. the best imaging generally happens when you toe widely-spaced speakers inwards so that their axes form an X just in front of the listener location. this is called "time/intensity trading" and gives you a more solid center fill when your speakers are widely separated. but do try the SRS plug-in on a moderate setting. they will enlarge the sweet spot both laterally as well as in depth, allowing you to have more of the best of both worlds [both at your puter and out in the room].

Blabby, thanks for the advice on SRS. The Bose set works too well to give up. But I lost my last set in a lightning storm, so I never know when I'll be needing a new set. I will look at SRS when that time comes.

I've noticed what you say about that sweet spot when I'm sitting here at my computer. That effect seems to be lost in the larger room though.

SRS=Sound Retrieval System, which is a stereophonic ambience recovery system that has the bonus of widening the sweetspot and widening/deepening the stereo image as well. it is a plug-in [earlier it was a black box that you could buy and insert in between your computer's headphone output and your speaker inputs] that you install on your computer and play your audio through. you DO NOT have to give up your bose speakers! they will still work, they are merely the endpoint of the sound. I guarantee to you that if you get that plug in installed on your puter and listen to your bose speakers through it, you won't wanna to back to listening to them without. it is not expensive.

Interesting. Something unique about these Bose speakers, at least in my experience, is that they don't plug into the headphone jack, but have the same type of plug a flash drive does (I can't recall what those are called). The speakers have to be recognized by the computer to work.

I will have to call Bose and see if the system I own can be made compatible with an SRS device. After you told me about SRS, I did a cursory search and saw an article on SRS on Wikipedia, and some Sony SRS speakers advertised. I'm not a huge fan of Sony anymore personally. I bought some real junk from them.

the SRS plug-in will work with windows media audio and the windows media player, it installs inside of it. then it should not matter if the sound comes out via headphone jack or USB port [what yours work on].

Yes, USB port is what I was referring to. I would add that I have an iMac. I'm not sure if it would be the same or not.

Do you have a recommendation on a brand of SRS?

sorry, I didn't know that. (clicky on this for the mac version. SRS is the brand name for the app, there are no other versions, it is all one company. it originally was an offshoot of hughes aircraft company, of all things.

Blabby, I learned something new. When I get the chance, I'm going to take a close look at this, and likely order it.

Mac has a reputation for having superior sound and graphics to Windows. It does sound good, but I suppose I would have to have two machines side-by-side to make a fair comparison.

One advantage I have over most music lovers is that my nearest neighbor is over a mile away. I could hold a rock concert out here without disturbing anybody. I normally don't play my music terribly loudly, but it's nice to be able to do so from time to time.

when I was young I used to like to blast it. the maggies [due to their large surface area] made the air pulsate and tingle just like a real loud physical sound-emitting object. I have a recording of a jet taking off, and played through the maggies it was like I was on the tarmac, that same feeling of visceral vibration and total immersion of sound. my windows machine is sufficiently high-quality to be able to do semipro audio restoration work.

Then do you listen to mostly older, obscure music? I listen to everything from the romantic composers, to punk rock, to red dirt music myself.

in my oft-played section-

*Wurlitzer pipe organ recordings, especially those made at organ stop pizza in mesa AZ-
*Christmas percussion music, percussion music in general, both chromatic and non-chromatic
*the odd liturgical holiday music, with classical [not Wurlitzer] organ and percussions-
*oldies [pops] from the 1920s [electrical] to the 1980s, a few 90s and almost nothing newer. gary jules' "mad world" would be the sole exception. the music featured in "across the universe" worked astoundingly well in the movie but listened to by itself seemed to be lacking-

*big band jazz from back in the day to the present day [if played in the old boogie-woogie style and not so much shuffle]-
*classic acoustic jazz in the old ragtime/2-beat/Dixieland style, some bebop, some west coast "cool" jazz-
*broadway showtunes.

I was a regular [as often as I could be within broadcast range of a broadcast] of the old "doctor demento" radio novelty program. I have many hours of tapes of that and another novelty radio program called "music with moskowitz." I made 12 novelty compilation CDs for another WPer here who calls himself "naturalplastic" - of which he occasionally broadcasts a tune here and there on his radio program called "the lighter side" on Fairfax County [VA] public access radio. I collect as many stereo originals of monophonic original release recordings as I can find. I have stereo originals [!] of glenn miller and tommy Dorsey recorded in the early 40s on multichannel optical film sound mastering recorders [what movie soundtracks were mastered on back in the days before analog tape]. they were not quite high-fidelity but they were in bona-fide stereo sound of a much higher fidelity than the pinched and harsh 78 rpm sound of the day. my prize possession is a tape-based restoration of the stereo original version of the phil spector Christmas album, all you can get nowadays in stores is the cruddy-muddy monophonic version that crazy phil preferred. but the restored stereo version is absolute ear candy and must be heard.

Though it is certainly a case of to each his own, the closest I come to your tastes is my appreciation for fusion-type jazz; and some of the old western swing, which closely resembles big band. With the exception of my classical, most of what I listen to is newer, from the early sixties through the present day, though I don't much care for pop music.

I also LOVE the music of isao tomita. his stuff is utterly unique. I would really LOVE to find somebody on this forum who has direct experience using the ELP laser turntable.