Last two weeks I play a strange game with myself while I am waking in my room. I walk soft like a Cat and really pay attention where I lend my leads, I afraid to step on anything. Nope, I did not pawn my Cat and got a hamster. What I afraid to step on are…. my new loudspeakers.

If you follow my Macondo MiniMe Project then you know that I am nowhere with it so far. Still I have no other playbacks and to run 12 Milq channels for not attentive listing is damn and keep shuffle the different crappy monitors without any good results and without any high expectations.  It is not that I have difficulty to put any mini-system in my room. My primary listening is FM and me to have any other new tuner is to have 3dB last from my main antenna cable. So, I would rather to run my main tuners and source the secondary playback from my main preamp…

Anyhow, a couples weeks back I got a hold for two awful 2 mass-market monitors. I would not name the brains even – it is not worthy. It is very small, the size of a hamster, two way little speaker with a little port and if to listen it normally then it is truly revolting. So, some weeks back I was trying to listening something the Prairie Home Companion level and had nothing operation in my hand. I connected those let call them the hamster-speakers and let them to play where they were – lying on the floor and shooting in Got know where. I was listening the Prairie Home Companion, then I was listing the BSO Sunday concert and then I asked myself: what the hell is doing on?

The crappy hamster-speakers sitting on my floor and pointing in random direction gave surprisingly good sound. It was not THAT good that would make me to shut up bitching about Sound but it was remarkably not annoying and quite musical. For the next few days I was moving the hamster-speakers around the floor spot, turning them, trying to shape more interesting sound. I do have a good success. You have to clearly understand how ridicules it is. When I am taking about hamster-speakers I mean the 7” tall little plastic hi-fi speakers the have $29.99 retail price tag and when I am taking about “floor” I mean the literally sitting on the floor behind my rack. There is no even direct line of sight between me and the hamster-speakers, in fact I can listen them from any location of the room with identical result.

I am not kidding when I say that it sounds good. I even asked myself if I even need to abandon my further peruse of the MiniMe speaker. Probably if I did commission the guy from Palanet10 then I would. Does the “hamster solution” sound as good as I would like the MiniMe to be? Nope it is not. However, it is very much accepted sound and I hate it much less than many hi-fi solutions that I have tried.

Nope, I am not familiar with those Carlssons but I have seen a number of similar ideas. I never was too warm with them as usually people introduce is as a solution for main systems. I do not know how about that but for the second, “pilot-type” playback it might be a very smart move.

I have a local guy who has some absolutely ugly and horrible 40 years old American monitors sitting on his shelf, shooting god know where and covered with stuck of records, CD and VCR tapes. It more looks like the speaker in a used record store then a home playback. However, over the years I always very surprised how “readable” and distinctive music sound in his room…

el`Ol wrote:

I don´t know whether you are familiar to Stig Carlsson´s speakers. The result achieved with Carlsson speakers is a stunning spacial realism when fed with true stereo recordings. With synthetic reverb recordings the sound just sticks to the speakers and you have nice pingpong stereo.

drdna wrote:

What is revealing is that the system functions poorly with recordings with a lot of reverb. This is what one would expect of course, given the setup. Probably the best recordings to play on such as system would be the old Three Blind Mice records and such, due to their being recorded with the musicians in separate anechoic chambers. The recordings sound strange on a traditional stereo, but on a Carlsson type setup, they might be quite magical.