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In Reply to: RE: I am looking for guidance in setting up my Tympanis posted by andyr on February 24, 2017 at 23:20:05
Nice guitars, but as hollow bodies they must be resonating like crazy! Perhaps you can throw a lightweight blanket over them during listening sessions. Is that Vox amp an AC30? Great amp!
With that much room available, you should definitely, as Satie said, pull the Tympanis further away from the wall behind them, 5' minimum. And with that much width available, tweeters on the inside is a good choice, keeping sidewall reflections to a minimum.
If you can, bi-amping is a pretty cost-effective improvement for Tympanis. A high-powered solid state amp on the bass panels and a tube one on the mid/tweeter is a classic set-up. An electronic crossover won't cost much, as a single capacitor is all that is needed to create a 1st order high-pass filter for the tweeter amp, and a simple 1st or 3rd order (depending on panel orientations---see past Satie blogs on this subject) for the mid/tweeter amp. Great speakers, whether T-I's or T-IV's!
Follow Ups:
This is great info and giving me some things to work on. I will answer the questions:
1. yes they are I-Ds
2. speaker cable is Audioquest Rocket 33
3. I don't know the amp's output into 4 ohms, it's not in the specs I have
3. yes it's a mid 60s AC30 Top Boost - wonderful amp but too loud for most indoor gigs
It will take me a while to start with the tweaks as my wife is in the middle of a kitchen remodel and I have an 8 year old and 12 year old demanding some attention once in a while (as well as a ski season that has hopefully has another 6 weeks left)
Thank you all so much! I will report back.
The cables are slightly warmer sounding and rather light gauge for an insensitive speaker with a wide tweeter like the T-1D's. That tweeter has a tendency to beaming and drooping high end response that requires the tweeter panel to be carefully aimed at the listening position (equidistant arc placement will do that for you). When biamping you will want a brighter sounding cable for the tweeter. You can make such cables from CAT5 or 6 wiring or silver plated copper with teflon dielectric from Mil Spec excess inventory. Those are available online from Apexjr and ebay sellers. While 14 gauge is enough for the tweeter, it is not quite there for the bass panel wiring. You would probably hear a benefit going to fatter gauge cables. When biamping you can use a cheap stranded copper cable like automotive hookup wire (6 gauge). If you use your PSE's in mono then you would have the option to use relatively short runs.
Biamping the Tympani 1D there is less of a benefit from using a line level crossover than is normally observed when biamping other models since it is a simple 1st order crossover so is not a very reactive load for the amps. That said, using line level crossovers is still a significant benefit - to an extent that is because you bypass the OEM connectors and jumper scheme..
I found an interesting discussion of using CAT 5/6 for speaker wire here:
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/89-speakers/694823-cat-6-speaker-wire.html
If anyone were to ask me (and they'd really have to be silly to do so), it's just looking for trouble. However being only a hobby, that's the way they work. If everything were straight forward and simple one would have nothing to do but listen to music.
I have used the design they were referring to a long time ago and did other variants of it. I drove the Tympani IV through those initially in all their ear shearing glory, aided by the thin bright Bryston 4B NRB. I later made a separate tweeter speaker lines with a simplified version. The complex weave of Venhaus' (sp?) design is not necessary for the bulk of the benefit and it brings out the brightness even further.
Satie, thanks for your input. I always very much enjoy reading and learning about the experiences of knowledgeable inmates such as yourself. If you haven't already seen it and have the time and patience to read the Ven Haus story, it can be found here:
https://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html
Those were the instructions I followed.
The results are a very good but brightly balanced cable, which I think the OP would appreciate for his tweeters..
You need to fine tune the aspects of positioning from offset from the front wall, to your listening angle (meaning as determined by your listening distance) ,to the spread between the speakers, and tweeters in vs.tweeters out. Once you have these things aligned as well as you can for your preferences then start experimenting with absorption and diffusion.
Instead of watching for tonal shifts and focusing on timbre, you should find a well regarded recording where imaging is known to be very well done. Then do the fine adjustment of the positioning for image related issues, soundstage size and width and depth as separate aspects, image specificity and solidity and detail retrieval. These are all better when the speaker's time behavior is closest to good alignment.
So long as the room is essentially raw there will be tonal balance issues as reflections balance with direct sound.
Thanks, Satie - can you suggest some recordings?
A good listing is provided by these audiophile sites.
http://www.soundstage.com/referencediscs/referencediscs.htm
http://www.tnt-audio.com/topics/testrecords.html
We recently had a discussion about recordings with interesting soundstaging
http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=mug&m=223995
There is also this discussion where Stereophile test CD 2 and 3 are suggested, I use #3 for some testing and have done so since the mid 90s.
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/albums-used-to-position-speakers-for-best-soundstage.206249/
Personally I use The Stravinsky Haitink ballet suites recordings, Modern Jazz Quartet the last concert, Vivaldi La Stravaganza on L'Oiseau Lyre, Billie Holliday's last recordings (stereo), Benny Goodman's live recordings from his 1958 European tour. Decca Ashkenazy Beethoven Piano Concertos, Telarc Beethoven 9th Symphony and the early Karajan DG Beethoven symphony cycle, and a few others used more for late fine tuning once you are closer to being done.
I got the speakers 6 feet out from the front wall and I am making progress. Seems like sometimes I'm sitting closer that what would seem "normal". There is that distance where the direct sound and reflected sound reinforce each other. And the timbre changes with the amount of direct sound. What might happen if I lined up my guitar amps on the front wall behind the speakers? More absorption and diffusion. Vocals are a little thin right now....
Diffusers are a common treatment behind planars. I'd recommend however that you decided where you're going to keep them first. With 1-D's that can take quite a while! Then you can try some QRD diffusers at the first reflection point of the tweeter panels on the front wall (where you see them in a mirror when seated at your listening position).
Thank you, Josh358, for your insight! I have a lot of experimenting to do.
Good idea of the amps on the wall behind the speakers, and if possible the guitars too. They will act as diffusors, a good thing for the rear wave of Maggies. The distance between the T-I's and the wall behind them will create different interaction between the front and rear waves, leading to varying degrees of comb-filtering. Trial and error will be necessary to find the optimum position to minimize that.
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