|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
66.53.218.227
Im asking because after doing some switching around I found that my cheap MTX speakers seemed much less problematic of room placement than my PSB Stratus Mini speakers. I know that ive made a thread similiar to this and dont want to seem like im asking the same questions over and over, but this is somewhat a different question. I am curious because my room acoustics are HORRIBLE, in between the two rooms that i can use, one a 10x10 cube and the other a large living room which has horrible problems of its own : glass windows, a raised dining room with dining room table computer etc, and several other objects that destroy any hope of good sound, i cannot really do much to improve my acoustics in any room besides some small diy treatment stuff. If this is true than i may as well just give up on building a semi good system and just use either the Cambridge integrated amp that i have or the Onkyo reciever and either do a driver swap on my mtx's or get some bigger less refined speakers than the psb's that will match better with my amp's, get a tt and just forget about audio for awhile untill i become a millionaire and buy my own house. Id like some guidance on what to do and maybe some tips and tricks, thanks.
Follow Ups:
If you prefer your 10 x 10 (for some reason) you may want to try diagonal placement.I also have a 10 x 10 room and this helped quite a bit in my situation.
You may want to search this archive for "diagonal placement"... I have an entry and others (as shown in the link below)...
YMMV,
Good Luck!
- DeeCee
Hi deecee,I actually prefer the 10x10 room because, from what i can tell, sounds better than the larger room. Im thinking it sounds better because its more symmetric, but am not positive. And about the diagonal placement, ive actually tried it when i had much less quality equipment ( AScend spekaers, onkyo amp) and yes it made a big difference, especially in the highs, but this placement isnt possible now because im sharing this room with a queen sized bed and a pretty big dresser.
If you you wide frequency range component, your acoustic will influence more the sound than if you're using a boombox.Have you try both room?
One have all kind of problematic item, but is it cubic like the other?
If no, you might obtain better result with this one than any cubic room.
Cubic room are the worst you can find!
One should carefully select the speakers, especially when the room is problematic, acoustically speaking. Speakers should have high directivity index, which means that the critical distance (distance at which direct sound and reverb field are equally loud) is greater, the off-axis response should be linearly falling (with frequency) at all angles, without sharp changes, the off-axis response curves should be substantially parallel.If you place such speakers at the longer room wall, you will listen mainly to the direct sound without being bothered too much by first reflections.
A simple review or an auditioning won't tell you whether or not a given speaker meets the above criteria. You need measurements, and measurements are hard to find or to obtain.
All these speakers with wide dispersion interact heavily with the listening environment which too often gives reasons for complaints. Adress the problem at the source rather than cure the symptoms.
Of course a square room is bad, because of room resonance piling up. The other room does not look bad on first sight. I would concentrate on speakers, the electronic components do not interact with your room at all. Look at measurements as provided by Stereophile or Soundstage.com, and/or ask the manufacturers (although most of them won't give you any graphs, I wonder how they design their speakers). I personally would not buy any speaker without having seen a complete set of measurements.
Ive always wondered why some speakers work their best in small rooms and/or in corners, but now im starting to get an idea. Its all about dispersion and how well the speaker can generate sound in the space its given. And even though your tips on how to pick out a speaker are helpful i still am new to audio and wouldnt have the slightest clue on how to read measurements, which seems to be the tool to use when looking for a speaker that would perform well in acoustically bad room such as mine. As far as the bigger room goes its not THAT bad , just set up wrong and it would take careful rearanging to set it up in a fashion that would both sound good and be livable to the rest of my family. Ill try and take pictures of both rooms sometime and post them here on the asylum. Anyways, based on what your saying what would be your recommendation for a loudspeaker that would work well in my acoustically bad room(s). Thanks for the help.
John Atkinson has written a paper about speaker measurements:http://www.stereophile.com/reference/99/index.html
http://www.stereophile.com/reference/100/index.html
http://www.stereophile.com/reference/103/index.htmlJust now I would not know a speaker that would correspond to the criteria I mentioned, at least not in the consumer range. What you always can do is browse the archives of Stereophile, look at the graphs of speakers in a price range you envisage, take the best-measuring of those and listen at short distance. You then have no or few first reflections and possibly no too strong a reverberation field.
The graph shows nicely how the lateral response should NOT look like.
Klaus
I think you are better off using the larger room for your system. Almost everyone has obstructions and windows in their listening rooms. If you look at my system you will see that I don't exactly have the perfect room (it's barely a room, it's more like 70% of the air volume of my apartment), but I get very good results with my setup.From what I can see, you are using $1000 speakers with a $350 amp and $150 CD Changer, with cheap interconnects. I'm not saying price is always a judge of quality...but...there does seem to be a mismatch in equipment here.
You don't have to be a millionaire to get good sound at home. Patience helps, though. Don't go backwards with that MTX idea, whatever you do!
Hey Nick,Yeah, my speakers are by far the most expensive of my equipment, but i was always led to believe the speakers were the most important. My cdp is a Toshiba 3950, but from what i understand is suspose to compete with other cdp's in the 500$ range, so i figured it would be ok. Besides, a pretty large number of people say that cdp's make very little to no difference in sound quality so i never suspected my cdp was a problem. But id have to hear a better cdp to compare and draw a more educated conclusion. Anyways, if this were your system which would u replace first cdp or amp?
Not many of us have a perfect room and for those moving home frequently, learning how to optimize the acoustic effect is part of the audio game...Try to fix the usual suspects such as glass reflection of windows and balconies, sidewalls reflections, placement of speakers are almost unavoidable in a listening/living room.
Your observation that the music sounds good at very low volume tend to suggest that the reflections at sides and/or back walls may be one of the problems. Try speakers placement and damping first reflection walls may be the first thing to look into.
pete
See I don't get it. You send out very mixed messages about the PSB's - on one hand they cause you problems so much so that you;re looking to MTX? But at the same time you say you like almost everything about them. Yes the rooms may suck - but I live in an apartment with those cheap ass walls and they have windows - the main room has a sliding glass door as a side wall and an open end the other side - I also have a bit of slap echo.The other option is to get a really nice headphone system - Mine is under $1k Cdn and I enjoy it more than most of the speakers out there for double that. No room problems with headphones (they have shortcomings but clear they are.
It took a very good speaker maker to have me not listening to the headphone set-up.
Your Cambridge is a nice amp - 4ohm speakers? Don't know the total impedence swing of the speakers but if it's more than ~12 points from max to min and it goes under 3ohms the CA may be in tough.
10x10 is really quite a small room
another aspect of the my system is that it sounds decent at VERY low volume, barelly enough to make out the music, but once i turn it up it just hurts my ears and causes fatigue VERY quickly. I think that this is also one of the reason that im sending out mixed messages regarding my speakers, one that i didnt notice untill recently. My guess is that my room is so bad that any kind of volume causes it to echo and cause problems. IM not talking about a lack of bass or anything, the main thing is that vocals seem like theyre hard and shouting out at me.
Speaker can't add what's missing from the source. Try a better source. You might be surprise. And as someone said before, your amp might have trouble driving your speaker.Like other you have built your system thinking that the speaker was the more important component. Next time, try the other way. Source-amp-speaker. notting is purer than the source.
You really think its my cdp? Its strange how some people claim that they cant hear differences between cdp's, while others claim to ear only slight differences , and then there are those who think the source is critical ( like you). This makes me curious as to who's right and whos wrong, i guess the only way to figure out is to listen for myself. btw what different cdp's have u tried and found a huge difference in?
Hey RGA,Yeah, im a bit conflicted about the PSB's- I know they are great speakers, and i know that i havnt tapped into their potential but i simply cannot afford to add a GOOD sub, a better amp, fix my room and whatever the hell else it would take for them to sound their best . I admit that sometimes im not so clear on how i feel about my equipment, but then again i dont really have anything to compare them too, and part of it is that im a very picky person who gets annoyed pretty quickly and changes his mind maybe to the point where ill never be happy. The Ax-Two's? I never recieved them, maybe the dealer didnt trust me? Weird that he wouldnt send them after we agreed upon it, If you want to know more about this please email me . The MTX speakers well ive owned them since i was 16 ( im now 19) and was thinking about taking this advice http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=speakers&n=131624&highlight=dave123456@mail.com&session=
as it would be much cheaper than adding a sub, amp whatever to the psb's. It wouldnt be the most refined but at least it would have bass.
Yes the cambridge is a nice amp as far as i can tell, and matching speakers with it would be alot easier and cost effective than matching amps with the mini's .
The headphone system has came into my mind before but i dont really find wearing headphones to be that comfortable and i like the idea of having some nice looking speakers singing to me and to whoever i have over at the time.
Well I can't comment on that dealer - I would simply send them another e-mail - they may require a Visa number or something to make sure you send the speakers back should you not like them.Trouble is this is a vbad time of the year. The CES is in Vegas from January 6-10 and Audio note is showing there - I know a lot of the dealers like to go. My dealer actually closed the entire store last year because Audio ntoe outsells everything else they own. But I think they're the largest Audio Note dealer. My dealer said that some other Audio Note dealers don't really know what they have in the line. Probably because he carries multitudes of version of speakers - smaller dealer may carry the basic E speaker but he carries 4-5 levels same with preamps, cd players etc so you can show people that gee silver might matter and gee the cabinet material does matter - not just driver materials.
That's an aside - other dealers are no doubt heading to the CES as well since early January is probably a slow month for them. But I'd send an e-mail to them and make sure all the info is correct. I know at least here that some of the big chains stoip taking shipping orders at a certain point in December due to the backlog.
Certainly rooms cause problems but I understand your frustration. $1k is a lot of money and you want them to sound good. It may be that the Minis don't like small rooms, like more power, or a combination of both. It also might be that hey the speakers simply are not for you. Usually rooms are more of a disaster for bass response - if you listen in a nearfield position(close to the speakers and the speakers not too far apart) then you can get away from some room issues. If it's still not doing it for you really try and isolate what part of the sound is the problem.
Some speakers sound good over short duration but over longer assessments can cause fatigue. Speakers using metal tweeters I tend to really want to focus on. The used to be nails on chalkboard bright but I get the sense they've caught onto that and are creating a kind of laid back presentation(though the treble still has issues they try and cover over it).
It sounds like those spekaers are simply not designed for that room. I find a lot of these speakers (slim line multiple stacked 6 inch woofers - and their standmount versions) seem to like tons of space all around them - in a small room that may be a problem.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: