• New news from the mobile speaker room - David Aiken 13:45:35 08/18/07 (1)
  In Reply to: RE: I'll keep that in mind as I experiment with the distance. (nt) posted by clio09 on August 16, 2007 at 19:33:14

  In a fit of craziness, last night I dug out the tape measure and metre steel rule and moved my speakers back to the focal points of the ellipse. It's probably close to 3 years since I last had them there.
  
  I didn't notice any problems that might not be recording related, and I quite liked the result. The room has changed a fair bit in that time due to the addition of 2 pairs of DIY acoustic panels at early reflection points and that has probably helped.
  
  The soundstage has changed. With speakers at the quarter/three quarter points I routinely get a soundstage that extends to the outer side of each speaker. At the focal points, that only happened on a few tracks last night. Instead the soundstage didn't quite seem to extend as far as the speakers a lot of the time, but it was still probably the same width as before since the speakers are now further apart, and it's still a very wide sound stage. The depth of the soundstage seems a little deeper and images maybe a little less holographic and a little more rounded but quite precise. The height of some sources, especially voices, seemed higher on a lot of material and that's a plus for me. I didn't notice a down side but I only played about 3 discs before going to bed around midnight.
  
  Given that the only real difference between my first attempt at this placement and now is the room treatment at early reflection points and that placement at the focii puts the speakers closer to the side walls, I think side reflections may have been the cause of the soundstage issues the first time around. Interestingly, on one disc the soundstage did seem to group into 2 areas around each speaker and the centre image but this did not occur on the other discs and I didn't get the feel of a break in the soundstage between each speaker and the central image area. That disc was obviously mixed that way so perhaps what was happening last time was that due to the exaggeration of that mixing choice by early reflection issues.
  
  
  
  David Aiken
  
  

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  • Well now you've gone and thrown a wrench in it... - clio09 07:21:50 08/19/07 (0)
    In Reply to: RE: New news from the mobile speaker room posted by David Aiken on August 18, 2007 at 13:45:35

    I had pretty well settled on a set-up that used the quarter/3 quarters points and have the speaker no more than 8' apart. Even though this would not give me the 72 degrees or even the 90 degrees that Greene recommended, it was going to minimize side wall reflections. I can move the speakers further apart as I do have some 4' x 2' x 2" fiberglass panels to use for the side wall reflections, so maybe I should experiment both ways and see what happens. I'm somewhat of a set it and forget it kind of guy so tis would be a little out of character for me.
    
    At 8' apart the speaker/listening position distances would be close to an equilateral triangle, which I'm not striving for, but it just turns out that way. One thing about the wider placement of the speakers at the focal points and beyond is that the distance between the tweeters will exceed the distance from tweeter to listening position. I've never had placement like this before. I'm wondering how this will affect the sound. I guess there is only one way to find out.
    
    

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