The Duelund-Corona Project Audio System

In all three of my Altec based audio or audio-visual systems, I've eschewed the orthodox audiophile style of positioning the loudspeakers out into their rooms, and instead gone with room boundary positioning. 

In my Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers based audio-visual system, room boundary positioning was a necessity as the loudspeakers were too large and the room too small, to do audiophile style positioning of loudspeakers. It turned out really well and sounds great. Ditto for the Stokowski Altecs in my office audio system.

My house has a bit of an unusual design in that the master bedroom is the second largest room in my modestly sized home, and is nearly as large as my main music listening room where my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers are located, which is my living room.

In my master bedroom audio-visual system, the room is actually big enough to accommodate the Duelund-Corona 832A Project loudspeakers being positioned further out into the room audiophile-style. 

However, I wanted to position the Altec Corona loudspeakers into the room corners according to their original design intent, and to free up floor space. I figured if the room boundary positioning didn't work out well, I could always go to a more orthodox audiophile placement. 

I don't have photos to show you both Duelund-Corona 832A Project loudspeakers in room boundary positions in my master bedroom, as the room is too wide for good system photos, and I'm in the middle of redecorating so the room isn't particularly presentable.

Instead, I included the diagram below to help you visualize it. 

The Corona loudspeakers are positioned 14.5 feet apart in the room corners.

If I'm in listening position 1, the left loudspeaker is firing directly at me diagonally across the room from about 20.5' away, and I see the front of the left Corona loudspeaker as in the photo below.

If I'm in listening position 2, the right Corona loudspeaker is firing directly at me diagonally across the room from about 20.5' away, and I see the front of the right Corona as in the photo below.

View of Duelund-Corona 832A Project loudspeaker in room boundary position.

If I'm in listening position 1 and looking directly at the right Corona loudspeaker, which is about 15' away, the photo below shows what I see. Ditto for listening position 2 when I'm looking at the left loudspeaker.

View of the Duelund-Corona 832A Project loudspeaker from the front.

These are decidedly unusual positioning and seating arrangements due to this being a master bedroom, but do they ever deliver impressive results, and those results have me rethinking what I thought I knew about loudspeaker positioning. 

What really impressed me was how well that arrangement works in either of the 2 listening-viewing positions. 

I had worried that Corona loudspeakers being positioned 14.5 feet apart in the room corners would be too wide to get adequate center fill between them. It turned out that center fill was just fine, and the loudspeaker placement delivered a particularly wide soundstage with higher-fidelity recordings, that filled the room's width wall-to-wall.  

What really surprised me was that with higher-fidelity stereo era recordings, the soundstage and aural images projected out into the room a good six or seven feet, and the room was filled with the ambient space of the recordings. 

I hadn't heard this remarkable level of soundstage performance from room boundary positioning before, except on occasion with my Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers when driven by the Audio Note (UK) Meishu 300B integrated amplifier, and only from select movie soundtracks. 

Another interesting aspect is that the soundstage and imaging isn't affected by where I sit in the room. Whether in position 1 or 2, I never hear the soundstage pull to one speaker or the other, like I would in an audiophile positioning loudspeaker setup. It always like I'm in the "center" listening position, even though there isn't one. 

Leben CS-300F integrated amplifier.

The Duelund-Corona 832A Project loudspeakers connect to a Leben CS-300F integrated amplifier with Duelund 600V DCA16GA speaker cables.

Mhdt Labs Paradisea+ vacuum tube USB DAC.

From the Leben CS-300F integrated amplifier, Belden 8402 tinned-copper microphone cable interconnects connect to an Mhdt Labs Paradisea+ vacuum tube DAC, and to Yazaki-san's hot-rodded Douk U4 vacuum tube Bluetooth streaming DAC.

Yazaki-san's hot-rodded Douk Audio U4 vacuum tube Bluetooth streaming DAC.

As a transport for the Mhdt Labs Paradisea+ vacuum tube DAC, I'm using an inexpensive Sony BDP-BX650 BluRay player, connected with a homebrew shielded DCA20GA tinned-copper interconnect through its digital coaxial out connect to the DAC. 

Sony BDP-BX650 BluRay player.

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