oldarnut

I use AR's in my 6.1 home theater setup.  Fronts are Infinity Quantum II's, side surrounds are ARLST2's with AR3a's for the rear surround.  I use a single 15" IB woofer mounted in the floor using the basement as the other side of the infinite baffle.

The LST2's work great for side surround, as their dispersion is very wide with tweeters on three sides of the front panels.

You can expect the horizontal dispersion to be hampered, but vertical dispersion improved.  The horizontal dispersion should be equal to the AR3a if your LST's are mounted 90 degrees from "normal."

What do you plan to use for surround and center channel speakers?  I use LST2's for my surround speakers, AR3a's for rear surrounds.  The front speakers are a pair of Infinity Quantum III's with AR3 woofers in them.  I don't use a center speaker.  A Hafler DH500 drives the rear AR3a's, while a Pioneer receiver powers the front and surround speakers.

This is not a speaker problem.  It's either program material (which you've already tried alternates) or a power amp problem.

The LF performance of both systems should be comparable.  The 9 and 9LS both use the AR3 12" woofer.  The 9LS uses a second 10" AR2 woofer.

Even though I've heard the AR9 and agree it is impressive, is it really the "best" AR speaker system?  My AR9LS's sounded terrible until I changed the crossover components to the 9LSi.  Unmodified, they sound very nasal due to a peak in the midrange.  After the update, they are a delight to listen to, similar to my AR3a's.

I realize many of you consider the AR9 the holy grail of AR speakers.  For some reason, the midrange/high driver assy. for the AR9LSi and smaller versions get very few comments--about dispersion, transparency, whether the frequency response is smooth, etc.  The AR9, however gets kudos as being the "best" in every area.

It seems odd that the tweeter in the AR3a is considered infallable when comparing it to any modern replacement tweeter, especially its dispersion pattern, yet even with all the praise of the AR9 system, the tweeter performance gets very little comment.