George,

MRC isn't the only way to tighten bass response. Bass tightness varies with every recording yet the decay times don't change in the room. I can lower my sub by 1dB on a track and get tighter bass. Cleaner bass lines will sound tighter. Extra high end frequency extension can make the bass sound tighter and less bloated. Almost the same as lowering the sub. Yet the room doesn't change. The long decay time people are measuring are there rooms. Unless your in an anechoic chamber your not going to measure any major differences. There are other factors...The tighter bass is most likely from less distorted bass or cleaner top end making the bass sound tighter. Also better dynamics do to cleaner power will make bass sound tighter. The plots will look the same.

Hell the other day I lifted my speaker cables off the carpet and WOW! More air in the soundstage yet bass sounded thin. Image sounded flatter. I was reading a Mapleshades flyer and I had read this before that setting your cables on the carpet is bad because of the added storage capacitance by the cheap dielectric in the carpet. It smears the imaging because this capacitance interfers with the EM field around the cable. I'm not sure I really liked them lifted off the carpet. I put them back down and it immediately sounded back to the way it was before I lifted them. My cables have very thin teflon insulation on them so while on the carpet the copper is very close to the carpet. I've tried this before with other garden hose like cables and didn't hear a difference. But they had thick outer insulation on them. I still need to check again to make sure my ears were not tricking me. I tend to go back and forth till I'm sure it isn't just me or the air pressure due to low pressure/high pressure weather fronts moving through or my mood at the time. So many factors can fool our ears. Like you know the weather has been up and down here in Mass the past few days.

It still was a big difference...it really surprised me. It just goes to show how small changes can sometimes make a big difference. Not always good for over all sound.

Ron

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