Speaker Asylum

RE: Quite depressing

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This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Quite depressing posted by Bill the K on February 24, 2021 at 23:04:52

It's your room. Take it from someone who's experienced it a million times - it's your room. All the speakers you've heard would sound great with even a moderate system - in a sympathetic room.
I live in a condo that cannot support good sound an-y-where. It's astounding - the first decade I lived here could not find good sound with any of my long, long list of speakers - including ESL 57's - anywhere. Kept spending money, nothing worked. I thought I was going insane.
During that period I went on summer vacation many a time - and often got fantastic sound immediately with all the same gear - even the most modest. Often in very similar sized and treated rooms. Come back home - set up the exact same system the exact same way - and nothing. It's like the sound was smothered and only came directly from the speakers - yet the room has no slap echo, doesn't sound overly bright - it's bewildering. It just seems to smother the sound entirely.
I finally gave up - figured I buy a pair of larger Harbeths, put them on either side of a nice easy chair nearfield - and just use them as headphones. Did that with my Quad 57's but got tired of looking the mess. To get used to the idea - I put my Quad 11L2's three feet away on either side of my nice comfy reclining chair - put a sneaker under each to angle it up - just to see what I'd be dealing with. The sound wasn't nearly as bad as it should be. Quad 303 + Creek OBH-12. Kinda boomy though - ya think?
Blamed the passive pre - not enough excitement to cut through the boom - but had no active pre. So reluctantly in goes my Onkyo TX-SR373 receiver - wow, major improvement. Guess what - it has bass controls - yowza - still sounds great with tone controls in, super massive imaging, deep deep bass with the help of the floor. Damn this Onkyo images like hell - has a quite effortless bold delivery, it's not even breaking a sweat.
Hey here's a thought - why not use my favourite (for over a decade) dac the DSpeaker Antimode 2.0 to even out the bass? Major improvement again - still need the bass control on the Onkyo - I mean when you put your speakers on the floor with a sneaker as a speaker stand, the Dspeaker can only do so much, but still - major improvement (I set it to EQ to 500hz - default is 150).
That was years ago - still using it the same way today, at incredibly low volume to boot. ALL kinds of music - it never fails. Doesn't hurt that the particular position of my easy chair and floor-based speakers is at the "T" intersection of an L shaped living/dining room setup - so there's 23' behind the speakers and 21' side to side - even though they're right beside a wall to my left (left speaker almost touches the wall). The thought of using subwoofers here is ludicrous.
I laugh when I see people recommending expensive dacs - if you have no equalization in your system at all to "even the playing field" of whatever speaker you place against your room, the DSpeaker to me is a no brainer - I'll never need a better dac, the fact that it eq's the bass to the room is a mere bonus.
And my oh-so-budget Onkyo TX-SR373 lets me make my Quad 11L's fit the room like a glove - has a built in crossover that you can change from your listening position, and if you set the crossover to 150 the bass controls then just turn the subwoofers up and down. That's the kind of swiss army knife you need to figure out what the hell is going on. With my 11L's I have no subwoofer, but I tell the Onkyo there is a subwoofer and change the crossover point to cut deep bass where necessary - between 50, 80, sometimes even 100 hz - depending on the type of music (and time of night). I can turn my 11L2's into my Rogers DB-101's with a click on the remote (kinda).
It took 10 years to conquer my room - I felt at one point exactly as you do now, and if not for the final desperate move of putting my 11L2's on the floor nearfield, would probably be still working away at it today many years later. Nearfield alone has so many advantages.
I see a lot of people offering up new speakers in this thread - offering yet another pair of speakers to an audiophile is like telling an alcoholic to have another drink - it won't work. Try non-audiophile setups, however embarrassing - until you see hope in your room, at which point you'll probably find even the most modest gear is all you need. I've had my Dspeaker / Onkyo / llL2's in place for many years now, no plans on changing - haven't spend a dime in all that time (sold a lot of stuff though)

Edits: 03/11/21

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