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In Reply to: RE: Another as good as it gets speaker and proper electronics. posted by josh358 on September 19, 2016 at 15:07:49
I'm real happy to hear that Josh, 'cause my sealed room is only 13' X 14.5' (with an 8' ceiling). In the past I would have considered that entirely too small for Tympanis, but I'm gonna give it a try anyway. The room is laid out perfectly symmetrical (two doors and one window) if the long wall is used as the width of the room. The T-IV's can be 5' from the long wall, firing towards the opposite wall 8' from the panels. The listening chair will be right up against the back wall, my head about a foot from it. With the bass panels placed right up against the side walls, the tweeters can be 8' apart and 8' from my ears. I like an equilateral speaker/listener arrangement, so that's great. Really the only thing wrong is the room is too shallow---I would like three to five feet between my ears and the wall behind them, but I'm out of luck.
For whatever reason the room sounds pretty darn good, from what I can tell without a real system playing in it. I have a bunch of ASC tube traps (9", 11", and 16"), and a DSPeaker Dual-Core to tame the room modes I am sure to have. We shall see!
Follow Ups:
Your listening arrangement would be a lot like mine -- speakers 5' out from the front wall, sitting close to the rear wall. You may have better results with split configuration. I had planned on it from the start, but I tried them first in the in-line setup and it just didn't work in my room. Not enough image width, and in the small room the speakers blocked too much of the backwave. I had them on the narrow wall, though, only 12', so you may do better.
If you have them touching the side wall, you're going to get some pretty fierce bass! But the DSPeaker should tame it, along with the midbass boost you get from using Tympanis in a small room.
The way I have them in the room now, the M-T panels are 5' off the front wall and the woofers about 3'. That puts me about 6' from the M-T panels. (The room is a lot more functional with the M-T panels only 4' from the front wall, but when I pull them out to 5' they develop amazing depth. I'm hoping the diffusers will let me put the M-T panels closer to the wall.)
But wow, that Tympani midbass -- by chance, I was listening to a recording of Idomeno, and the tympani (lower case) just knocked my socks off. That combination of clean, natural planar bass and near-dynamic slam is just amazing. All thoughts of how crazy I was to put a pair of Tympanis in a room that's better suited to Mini Maggies evaporated the moment I heard it. And overall tonality is just amazing. I have a stack of Neo 8's for the midrange, but they're sounding so good now I'd be delighted to live with them as is forever.
Great setup you have there Josh!
I'm just surprised on two things you said:
1) "You may have better results with split configuration". I have always thought that the best possible configuration is side-by-side for all three panels, and split configuration is kind of a compromise with not-so-good sound quality
2) "M-T panels are 5' off the front wall and the woofers about 3'". I have always thought that 6-8' is a *minimum* space between the Tymps and the front wall, to get the best out of them.
But it seems that the world is not so black & white after all, when is comes to Maggies' positioning...;=)
Hey, sorry if I wasn't clear, I was referring specifically to undersized listening rooms, where in my experience anyway split config works better than the in-line configuration and you can't pull the speaker 8' out without hitting your nose! I also have a projector so have to have enough room between them to see the screen.
That being said I suspect that Roger is right that split configuration can be excellent in the right circumstances. Certainly it's working for me. I've only just started experimenting with this location and have really had the speakers in only a few places so far.
Setting up Maggies is daunting, setting up Tympanis is the square of daunting, and setting up Tympanis in split configuration is daunting^3! But I know what worked with the MMG's and in my experience, the further the speakers are from the front wall, the better. About half way out into the room was good -- that's about 6'. I did try the M-T panels out further at firstm but they didn't sound good, probably because of a phasing or timing issue. As it is, at 5', I had to flip the phase of the panels. Ultimately, I'll be using the MiniDSP to bring them into time -- that should result in an improvement wherever they're located. But I'm going to have to lay in a new amplifier first.
I think that 6-8 ft is the ideal range, but that assumes the room has enough space beyond that point. in a 12 X 14 ft room you don't have anywhere to sit if the mids are pulled out over 6 ft - you would be wearing them as headphones....
It is not just a matter where the speakers are positioned in relation to the walls, it is also a matter of where you sit. The split configuration is not automaticly a compromise.
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