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alternate Tympani IVa placement experiment

Posted by methylmarty (A) on December 13, 2014 at 19:47:22

Just thought I'd post my findings on this unorthodox speaker placement. I have had my Tympani IVa with the tweeter/mid panel separated and placed in front of the bass panels for the better part of three years, and have loved every minute of it. After looking at some alternate placements (Limeage, Rooze, etc.) I thought I'd play around a bit. My room is only 16'x15' and doubles as a living room, so Limeage is out... Room opens to the side and back, so Rooze is out...

So I started by placing the bass panels perpendicular to and against the side wall (and fridge on the other side... side wall to be added at a later date) to reenforce the bass. The upper-bass panel is in, lower panel out. Then I placed the twt/mid panel perpendicular to that in the center of the bass panels (like a "T"). At that point, twt was in and mid out. I ultimately switched this so the twt was out, closer to the listening position. I also pulled my dual-opposed stereo subwoofers to 15" from the back wall.

This setup firstly added ridiculous amounts of bass, and in a sort of uncontrolled, bass coming out of every part of the front wall sort of way. Secondly, the soundstage became much deeper, more three-dimensional. This, however, was at the expense of side-to-side imaging, which became sort of expanded and imprecise.

To remedy these issues, I toed in the bass panels slightly, still against the sidewalls, and placed the twt/mid panels inside, with the bass panel almost touching in between the twt and mid. The twt/mid panels are parallel with each other, not completely perpendicular with the bass panels. This restored the tight bass sound while keeping some of the sidewall boost, and it mostly corrected the accuracy of the imaging while keeping the extended soundstage depth.

So we have increased depth, slightly reduced imaging. This sound is addictive and I COULD live with that in a dedicated one-person listening room. However, this is my living room and home theater room. my previous setup was optimized for a single center seat and then toed enough to retain that while catering to a few other seats. You could actually walk around a bit and still have a decent soundstage. With my new setup, a few inches off center becomes a totally collapsed soundstage. I mean, holographic one second, and an inch over is like, "oh, there they are, and they really are there and there only." Bummer.

Well, maybe in the future when I get my dedicated listening room back. To everyone else, however, give this a try. I'm going to spend a while putting this back to normal, but with non-Tympani speakers it should be as easy as turning your speakers sideways.

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