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In Reply to: RE: ha! all we need is a portal posted by Green Lantern on January 31, 2017 at 03:37:23
Watts,
It's good to know that you have a nice set up that is giving you such fine results.Can you describe your speaker positions & room treatments?
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Well, without measuring precisely right now; speakers are 52" from front wall, 16" from side walls, tweeters on the outside, and focused about 2' behind my head, which is 8' from the speaker plane and about 7' from the back wall.
Back wall has a thick wool carpet, and a couple of 2" thick 2' x 4' absorption panels in the corners.
Front wall; see the picture in the tube traps thread you started :)
I imagine with a little more diffusion/absorption on the side walls this will improve: right now I have racks of cd's as diffusors.
I looked back at your pictures in the Tube Bass Trap thread.Your results speak to the effectiveness of your room treatments & placement.
Setup, Maggies are about 1/3 out (6 ft) from the front wall, tweeters in. My gear is listed in my profile, room treatment is a work in progress. I can go into more detail later when I get home from work.
I started out with an essentially bare room that was also pretty echo'y, so I used a couple of spare throw rugs I had stored away on the side walls to tame reflections. My wife bought an additional 8x12' rug for the center floor. I use a runner carpet on the front wall behind the left speaker but have been meaning to take it down since I think it may be 'robbing' me of pinpoint imaging.I know this setup is hardly scientific but I wanted the room to be 'family friendly' since it has the only TV in the house (other than the bedroom) there. But now that the house is essentially empty (all the kids are away at college) I figure the time has now come to tap it's potential. There are some challenges, ie a very glassy entertainment center and dead smack in the center a 55" tv. Yet despite the glass I've never regarded the sound to be 'glaring'. I just recently began replacing all my cabling with DIY cables a'la Jon Risch's (post a few paragraphs below this thread). The initial results are far beyond my expectations and as they burn in -will only get better. I use three room lenses (original Ardent) I bought from an estate sale. The owner was a serious audiophile who had just passed away. They help tremendously with imaging.
So basically that's it. I'm waiting on my next batch of Cardas RCAs, and belden cable to arrive to complete the interconnects aspect, next will be DIY speaker cabling although I'm not sure which variety of DIY I'll use as of yet. In addition to saving cost, I find DIY very satisfying and rewarding to the point where I personally know the sound originating from my system is a result of my own efforts.
Hope this answered your question, now I gotta get back to the music!
Edits: 01/31/17
I am really curious about how damaging the center console is to your imaging. If you are curious too, try this experiment if you happen to have a spare door or large board somewhere. Set it up at the center between the speakers - vertically and parallel to, and a couple of inches ahead of the plane of the tweeters - dead vertical. That should block some of the most suspect early reflections from the console and give you some idea of what good diffusion or absorption will do for your imaging.
Actually, there has been a change: picture to come....
I've got the weekend pretty much set aside for the room (didn't have time last weekend). 8 more Cardas RCAs are arriving Friday which will round out the final four interconnects. Next project will be speaker cables although there aren't many choices available other than Jon Risch and Chris VenHaus.
Regarding the TV shelf I looked at a few options including building a removable diffuser such as:
However such an endeavor would seem impractical due to it's excessive weight. This led me to thinking about alternate materials other than solid wood. One material being foam blocks, the kind you'd find at a hobby store or even Walmart. Also those green Styrofoam 'planter blocks'. Only problem for these would be the cost, comparable number of blocks of the foam would equal about ten times the cost of regular 8 foot, 2x2 pieces of wood.
I could very well end up using wood, perhaps mounting the acoustic board on elevated legs and wheels with the ability to roll it out of the way and against a wall when I want to watch TV. We'll see.
The planter blocks are expensive because they are an open cell foam. That makes it an absorber at high frequencies and will attenuate the reflection off of it somewhat. It is only a good material because of the higher density . But styrofoam and PE foam are available at higher densities, at much higher cost, which might reduce their ringing with the characteristic "plasticky" noise that sounds like rustling. But your best bet with styrofoam skyline diffusors is to paint them with a hard setting latex paint.
or swim noodles cut to size :) but it is just not something you want catching fire in your house...
Satie, if what you are suggesting to GL is simply that he experiments with this, I agree. I always encourage (in-room) experimentation.
Now, relative to my room and to other rooms I've observed, the reflective stuff is not too worrisome. At least, not when the system is well balanced, like GL's seems to be. In fact, for maximum soundstage & imaging attributes, I have a reflective surface (60%+ of it door glass directly behind + drywall/wood the rest) behind the Maggies. Notably, however, the corners are truncated (about 18" wide) which makes a significant contribution to imaging/soundstage. (So does the glass reflection, although I would not suggest so much of it in most cases).
GL made a comment that I find interesting. In essence, he seems to suspect the current validity of some absorption he placed early on, which may now be robbing imaging after other changes were made. While I believe that his use of floor absorption will still be useful to him, I would agree to be suspicious of the wall carpets now. In this sense, I would remove them for observation. Then, he could try to truncate the corners experimentally. [In my case, flimsy Styrofoam failed to do the trick...heavier drywall, particle board or plywood did. Perhaps this (see bottom) which I just bought at Home Depot for tests later on, could do without breaking backs, or banks.]
Now, to your other important point -- that of test-placing something flat in the null area between the Maggies. For now, I'll leave out the "technical reasons" for agreeing that it should be tried. I simply wish more people did.
To this day, it is the combination of truncated corners and the flat TV between the Maggies, plus judicious amounts of reflection at the back, which contributes the most to salient imaging features in my room. There are other factors, to be sure. However, after trying the same type of approach in other rooms along the years, similar imaging trends appear with other dipoles and gear.
I'd forgotten about your blocking experiment. Something to try for sure although since I have a projector it can't be a permanent installation for me.
As I indicated, it is something to do in order to evaluate subjectively the effect of the complex surface of the center console on imaging. It is a decidedly difficult solution as a practical treatment unless it is a TV on a rack/cart, which is a large surface you would have in the room anyway.
I currently use a stack of junk (CDs for the most part) on a cart at the center between and ahead of the mid/tweeter to block reflections off the center racks that are too difficult to move around while I am still experimenting with placement for this particular combo of placement and crossover setup. I took the idea from our discussion some years ago about your using a TV to block unwanted early reflections in the central portion of the front wall (also blocks first reflections)
Apropos this discussion, Josh and I were just talking over his preliminary experiments with creating a RFZ (reflection free zone) using reflectors to divert the first reflection point of the backwave away from the listening area, which produced substantial improvement in spatial performance. The practice is common in design of sound control rooms. It is not practical if you don't have a bare wall behind your speakers. So it isn't workable for me. But it might be useful for others who do have a bare wall to contend with. Ultimately, diffusors would take the place of the reflectors for a more uniform diffusion of the backwave.
I have used diverters before to prevent early reflections from the racks . Those are simply boards placed at the side of the inner edge of the speaker at an angle towards the center of the front wall, so that the backwave does not reach the center rack at all.
Just got back from Home Depot with a couple of styrofoam boards for further experiments. Hoping to try them tonight.
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