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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: RE: Best place to start. posted by bartG on November 25, 2010 at 00:59:35:
Vibration and room setup certainly do affect the kinds of details you mentioned, in my experience. You have to get these as good as possible before you can proceed with hope of success. The worst thing to do is ignore them and start tinkering with other tweaks. The results will be inconsistent and frustrating.
Make sure the speakers themselves are solidly supported and cannot rock or chatter. Any stands or racks used to support speakers and equipment should not introduce their own tonal responses. Simply rap them with your knuckle and listening for tones in the response. It may be necessary to get creative about filling hollow tubes with kitty litter or sand to keep them from ringing. I had to do this with my Lovan rack frames. Shelves are another problem area. I was unsuccessful at damping the Lovan shelves and simply replaced them with aluminum extrusion struts which I damped with automotive damping material.
Your cables and power cords should not touch the racks or floor. Simple spacers or lifters made of stiff paper work well and cost a few dollars to make. Cables should be supported like equipment, as their vibration is connected directly into the equipment.
Everyone's listening room is different so you will have to experiment to find whether there are any problem areas in yours. Imagine the walls, ceiling, and floor of your room covered with mirrors. The places where you would see the reflections of your speakers in these mirrors are the first reflection points. If these are hard, flat surfaces, then you have confusing sound waves arriving in competition with the direct waves from your speakers. It is as if the imaginary reflected speakers were sending waves to your listening position, and these arrive later in time because they are farther away. These can really degrade the resolution of your speakers.
Treatments include carpets, curtains, or soft fabric wall hangings to break up the coherence of the reflected virtual sources. Natural wool is a better surface than artificial fibers for surface treatments in a listening room.
Speakers and speaker cables can pick up RF noise, which does affect audio tonal purity and detail. Does your amp operate your speakers and your headphones? Try disconnecting the speaker cables at the amp and see if you hear better sound and more detail with the headphones. If so, you have RF noise problems.
Once you have your setup as good as you can get it, you can compare your speaker presentation to your headphones. Speakers can have their own problems with internal resonances and cabinet diffraction, so your speakers may not deliver as much apparent detail as your headphones. At least then you will be able to make informed decisions.
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Follow Ups
- Lots of things affect resolving power. - Al Sekela 19:34:15 11/25/10 (0)
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