Sure. I just commented similarly on Jeff Fritz' post. The front seat was NOT the sweet spot according to ARC/Sumiko. It was the second row, middle seat. I sat in both at length. The main differences were in the image height. In the front seat, the image was a tad high. I was concerned about this and spoke to a very knowledgable gentleman (John?) Lazarus, who heads Sumiko marketing and knows the speaker well. I mentioned that with a speaker such as the Alexandria, one can adjust the rake angles of the tweeter and midrange units to assure excellent height placement of the sonic image. I asked if such adjustments were possible in the Aida and told him I found the image a tad high when sitting in the front seat. He informed me the Sumiko team spent many hours setting the speaker up as you can imagine, and optimized the sound for the second row, middle seat. I was pleased to learn that there are indeed rake adjustments that are hidden in the base of the speaker which are critical for image height. Once they were made during set-up, they are not visible to the observer as they are hidden by the surround plinth of the speaker base. Back to the sound. I challenged this beast with everything I had in my arsenal. Choir and organ, big brass jazz swing, heavy orchestral, yo name it. It was simply the first time in my show experience I could not knock a speaker off its pedestal. I'm sure, like every speaker, it has relative strengths and relative weaknesses. But I'll be damned if I was able to find the weaknesses in my brief time with them. The are, simply put, a gorgeous musical instrument that made any music I played just sound "right". I know it's so "yesterday's cliche" to say they made it seem like I was listening to music and not a speaker, but what can I say? That's the way I heard it. Again, let's go back to the Magico Q7 for comparison. I couldn't get out of that room fast enough. With the Aida, I was genuinely pissed off I had to leave, only because common courtesy required me to be kind enough to allow someone else the privilege of hearing the speaker in the right seat. But if it was up to me, I would have stayed in that damn seat and ordered room service to boot.
Cough, cough.....
