DrJRapp
Well-known member
There are several of us who have purchased the Summit X feet from ML to use to upgrade our (legacy) Summits. I'm creating this thread as a place to discuss the results of that upgrade, and I am welcoming all to chime in. I thought about entering this under the "tweeks" section, but decided that since there has been so much intrest shown about Summit upgrades, that it belonged here in Main Discussion.
Installation was a snap. I first thought that because of my bad back I would need assitance lying the Summits on their side to change out the feet. This turned out NOT to be the case. The entire process took less than 20 minuits. Repositioning and dialing them in was another story. The increase in height and the ability to achieve zero rake make subtle differences in setup to achieve ultimate soundstageing, so set aside a good hour to play around with positioning.
In my room, the differences in terms of low-level detail retrieval and microdynamics is noticable. Previously, with the speaker at about a 6 degree (rearward) rake the midrange and highs would, at least partially be directed towards the ceiling and the ceiling wall boundary of the wall behind my seats. The resulting reflections would muddy the sound to a very small but not unnoticable degree. Another factor that has influenced the overall sound is an apparent small increase in the volume of the mid frequencies. I'm not sure if this is because the center of the panel is now at ear level, or less is bouncing around. Anyhow, louder ALWAYS sounds better, so I am noticing improvements in midrange presence. Even my wife was able to pick that out without coaching.
The last point is an area that needs further work on my part to properly assess. The Bass seems weaker, and I'm not sure yet if that comes from less resonance because the bottom driver is higher off the floor, or because the bottom driver is now angled slightly backwards ( I have the taller feet on the back) rather than straight downwards.
Installation was a snap. I first thought that because of my bad back I would need assitance lying the Summits on their side to change out the feet. This turned out NOT to be the case. The entire process took less than 20 minuits. Repositioning and dialing them in was another story. The increase in height and the ability to achieve zero rake make subtle differences in setup to achieve ultimate soundstageing, so set aside a good hour to play around with positioning.
In my room, the differences in terms of low-level detail retrieval and microdynamics is noticable. Previously, with the speaker at about a 6 degree (rearward) rake the midrange and highs would, at least partially be directed towards the ceiling and the ceiling wall boundary of the wall behind my seats. The resulting reflections would muddy the sound to a very small but not unnoticable degree. Another factor that has influenced the overall sound is an apparent small increase in the volume of the mid frequencies. I'm not sure if this is because the center of the panel is now at ear level, or less is bouncing around. Anyhow, louder ALWAYS sounds better, so I am noticing improvements in midrange presence. Even my wife was able to pick that out without coaching.
The last point is an area that needs further work on my part to properly assess. The Bass seems weaker, and I'm not sure yet if that comes from less resonance because the bottom driver is higher off the floor, or because the bottom driver is now angled slightly backwards ( I have the taller feet on the back) rather than straight downwards.
Last edited: