Having purchased the Aperture IIs one at a time over the last three months, I at one point had only two of them and stacked one above the other at front-wall center as shown in the photo.
I liked what I heard, as mounting the second one atop the first improved everything from perceived bass solidity to overall soundfield and all the sonic goodies we listen for in between. But when the third Aperture arrived, I naturally wanted to substitute two of them for the acoustic panels already occupying the first reflection points, as it's been my experience that treatment there typically offers excellent bang for the audiophile buck. To do that, I had to cannibalize the front wall for one of the Apertures. And you know from previous posts in this thread how happy I've been with the results, as well as with the placement of the newly-arrived fourth Aperture at the center of the rear wall.
Well, on a whim this morning I took the new guy off the back wall and mounted it above the Aperture that hovers above the lowboy dresser, restoring the earlier front-wall-center two-panel stack. I put on HDTT's DSD128 reissue of Leonard Bernstein's reading with the New York Phil of Aaron Copland's
El Salon Mexico and heard more chest-thumping skin with each bass drum thwack. That started a mini-marathon listening session with a variety of classical, jazz, vocals, Broadway, film score, and opera program.
The bottom line? The two-stack stays where it is, and I'll have to start restocking my penny jar to reclothe rear-wall-center with another light-oak-and-cream Aperture. As good as the four-panel configuration that I've raved about earlier in this thread is, everything I've thrown at the system program-wise today sounds more cohesive, more foundationally solid, better defined, and more airily dimensional with two Apertures at the center of the front wall.
Yeah, they
are like potato chips.