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RE: Diffusison

Posted by josh358 (P) on October 2, 2016 at 19:14:55

In Reply to: RE: Diffusison posted by play-mate on October 2, 2016 at 10:02:25:

Hey Play-Mate,

I'm still experimenting with speaker location so for now the room is basically bare. I expect I'll have a rug and whatever else I need to bring the reverb time down. Dust/allergies are an issue for me so I have to find stuff that's washable.

There's certainly room for some tube traps behind the woofers. Bass changes so radically with speaker position that I'm not sure what I'll need or where. Fortunately, the bass is surprisingly smooth given that the room is nearly square and it was awful when I had the speakers on the wall facing the fireplace. I think this is because the wall I'm against opens into a hall which breaks up the z-axis modes:

QRD diffusers behind the speakers definitely improved imaging when I tried them. I can't put a diffuser behind my head though since as you can see above I'm basically sitting within a foot or so of the wall. (Maybe a shallow cylindrical, which could also serve as a bass trap with some fiberglass behind it). I've seen absorption recommended for this situation and may give it a try.

The room features are apparently irregular enough to avoid obvious slap and flutter echo, even with only minimal furniture in it. The speakers snap into focus when I put the null at the first reflection points on the sidewalls, but to do that, I'll need to use the MiniDSP which I can't hook up until I lay in some more amps.

I'm fairly constrained in where I can put diffusers, sitting against the wall like that and with the hearth on the right and two windows and a column on my left. So still not sure how I'm going to work that out.

What amazes me though is how *good* things sound now without any treatment. A one note midbass resonance probably caused by the cavity to the left of the fireplace mantle goes away when the woofers are pulled forward as they are now, with the speakers equidistant as an experiment and a 6" gap between the mid-tweet and woofer panels (gap not shown in this shot -- also distances and angles are distorted by the panorama):

This arrangement is an experiment to get a sonic baseline, as a matter of practicality I'll go back to some variant of the split config. But the speakers are sounding great like this -- plenty of depth (they're at 5' off the front wall, would be even better at 6') and lateral spread -- the jaw-dropping "magic carpet" planar line source imaging that I love. Also, the IVA's are nicely balanced despite the lack of absorbent material -- a bit tipped up in the highs but not harsh -- whereas the MMG's sounded unpleasantly hot in this room when it was bare.

The big challenge for me right now is to get them sounding as good in split configuration as they do in line. Here, they're at the standard stereo spread but it's hard to do that with split config, so the image seems constrained laterally. And a radiator is in the way on the left, and the mantle on the right:

Anyway, as you can see, I have a lot of experimenting to do before I know where they'll be sitting -- I've only had them against this wall for a week or so. Once I know where they'll be living I'll start measuring and work on acoustic treatment. It may be that he only way to get them to image well will be to separate the midbass and low bass panels and move the low bass panels elsewhere, e.g., out in the hall. Which is why I'm intrigued by BDP's dipole woofer comparison experiment, in a room like thi sit really would be more practical to use just the M-T and midbass panels and use dipole woofers for the deep bass. But the bass on these speakers is so stunningly realistic that it's quite a challenge to equal it!

I've still never heard midbass to equal the Tympanis, that combination of planar bass clarity and near-dynamic slam. It's one of the things I love about them.

Edits: 10/02/16

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