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In Reply to: RE: Odd listening chair placement posted by Kythyn on April 29, 2017 at 15:40:16
Kythyn, if it is possible, the side of each speaker located close to it's nearest long wall, the speakers firing down the length of the room, is the way to go. Dipoles can be positioned that way because of the null to each speaker side. But they cannot, or at least for good sound shouldn't, be placed too close to the wall behind them---the further away, the better. Three feet absolute minimum, five feet even better.
Follow Ups:
I'll post pictures later tonight to show where I am now with the Cardas Golden Cuboid approach. I had tried the limage(sp?) placement when I had the TV and audio gear cabinet back to back in the middle of the room as a sort of room divider. The sound was good but the speaker locations where readily identifiable.
I can revert to that speaker placement again, but am concerned that the right channel will be firing into the side of the loveseat at a distance of about 6'.
Over on the Audiogon forums there are a pair of 3.3Rs priced at $700 and a pair of 1.6QRs at $799. Would either of those be better suited to my application than my MMGs, which I would then sell?
Here are pictures of the current arrangement in the Cardas Golden Cuboid.
Don't worry about the loveseat - do this and it won't matter:
Get a pair of boxes or blocks that will be placed under the speakers so that their vertical acoustic centers are at listening height, then shim the leg of the speaker up till the panel is vertical. To avoid toppling you can weight it down with a bag of sand.
with this setup the speaker will be unaffected by playing into the love seat.
The Limage setup does not work well when the speakers are tilted. They need to be setup vertically as described above.
Satie,Will the Home Depot homemade stands be sufficient? If so, how far should I lift the speakers off they ground?
Also, what distance from the front wall would you recommend? In another thread when I first bought the speakers, you suggested 9 feet from the glass slider in the linage arrangement but I was never clear which way you were facing the speakers (towards the slider or towards the blue wall)
And thanks again for your continued patience and suggestions.
Edits: 05/03/17
Yes, you can build new stands from home depot that lift the panel up and hold it vertical. The center of the driver should be at ear height - so pick it to match the height of your ears when you are sitting in your chair.
In the Limage setup on the sliding window end of the room the speakers face towards the kitchen and your listening seat would be somewhere in the dining area . They would be 9 ft or so from the window.
You can do the same on the kitchen end with the speakers 6 to 9 ft from the kitchen wall at the sidewalls, and you would sit as near to the window as the treatments on it allow. The heavier and wider they are, the closer you can pull your seat to the window.
Regarding treatments on the slider, typical curtain panels only cover the window. Should I extend the panels to the ceiling? Or around behind the chair and TV?
Should I keep or remove the plastic vertical blinds?
Is there some more effective treatment that would function much as curtains would, pulling out of the way when not in use?
don't remove the blinds. They are acoustically useful to help partially break up window reflections when they are in the open position..
You can get full length curtains and a wall to wall curtain rod placed in front of the blinds. The curtains do not need to be fully "populated" and you can have two panels that would be hung in the center behind you when you are listening and to the sides when you are not. You can add panels as necessary for the curtain's use as an acoustic treatment, or as a curtain.
Thank you, I will try the stands and Limage positioning this weekend. The MMGs are 48" tall, putting the center of the driver at 24" off the ground. If my listenong position puts my ear at 36" off the ground, then the speakers would have to be raised 12" by the homemade stands. Are my calculations correct? ff I use brackets that extend both front and rear at least as far as the increase in height, will that avoid tipping problems or should I weight them with sandbags?I don't recall if the larger rug in the room will extend within 10'" of each side wall, but if not, what should be under each speaker other than the laminate that is in the room?
I have made an offer on an upgraded Odessey Khartago amp. How would I combine that with the Adcom for biamping? I am aware of the concept of biamping, but would need specific connection details.
Edits: 05/04/17 05/04/17 05/04/17
They would make for a good match to drive the top end of a 3.x series.
other direction.
Nice room first of all. My first impression when I saw the chair in the corner is why not simply move the chair (or secondary chair) into the 'sweet spot' when playing music? Also, if it's the tv that precludes moving the chair, why not simply move the tv to the opposite side wall and move the speakers to the long wall? Or you could even move the Tv down towards the speakers.If it's simply a matter of aesthetics (again- a beautiful room) no amount of room treatment in the world will create a soundstage they're known for with one ear facing the speakers and the other ear pressed against the back wall. I simply can't see it happening. I'm not saying they won't sound good, they will; but you can kiss a 3D sound stage good bye.
Edits: 05/03/17 05/03/17
Green Lantern,You are absolutely correct. I will move the chair with its back to the glass slider for serious listening, so what I am working on is a "best fit" for casual listening with the chair in the corner.
I tried the long wall approach, which put the speakers 6 feet away from the chair. This presented several problems. First, the speakers felt physically intrusive being that close. Second, it potentially exposed the speakers to the morning direct sun that comes through that slider. While the blinds can be closed, it makes the room dark and spoils the morning sun effect in the room. Such are the trials of living in your sound room.
The doorway to the master bedroom is 70" from the glass slider. I have positioned the MMGs in the limage (am I spelling that right?) layout (speakers 9' from the slider and 10" from the side walls) when I had the audio cabinet and the TV back to back in the middle of the room as a sort of room divider. The sound was good, but the speakers were an obvious source of sound. I will try that arrangement again if I can figure out what to do with the loveseat. It seems like leaving it where it is would have the right channel firing directly into the side of it.
My current consideration, given the room, is whether used 3.3Rs or used 1.6 QRs (both $700 - $800) might be better suited to the room. That might allow me to sell my MMGs and upgrade my amp. Alternatively, I could acquire the 1.7is for $2000 less the value of the MMGs but then I will have to stick with the Adcom. It has also been suggested that I have the MMGs (or 1.6s) "gunned". That, too, would require sticking with the Adcom.
Your thoughts on these alternatives would be welcomed
Edits: 05/03/17
'Jesus H Christ', it all boils down to personal preferences AND trial and error. How much of a fuss can be made over this simple situation?
Good background info.Now regarding the 1.6 vs 3.3 I was in the exact same boat as you back in 2002. I ended up going with a brand new pair of 1.6's since I didn't want to deal with delam potentially occurring with (even back then) older 3.3s and/or having a under powered amp to push them.
If your interested in the 'Maggie sound' in that part of the room you may consider a secondary system with Mini Maggies which would fit right in that corner by the window.
Edits: 05/03/17
Any 3.x model is a better speaker but for the seamless coherence of the all wire maggies. For most people it is not as important as the great ability of the ribbon tweeter to give you detail and extension far out beyond most people's hearing..
If you do get an older 3.x that has not yet been refurbished (same for the 1.6) then consider starting to save towards a rebuild of at least one panel within a few years. Unless you can DIY a delam repair..
It is an advantage of the 3.x series, till the current 3.7 that they can be biamped. If you want to you can keep your Adcom for biamping and use it on the bass panels and get a nicer amp for the top end. A good high current 100 watt amp should do fine. The older Theta Lexicon and Proceed multichannel class AB amps are remarkable for biamping. The Theta Dreadnought is a legend. Another favorite choice for the top end is the Classe DR9 or model 10.
When using the stock crossovers, or stock xo points, Magnepan recommends amps of equal power when biamping the 3 series. At least they do for my MGIII's.
Regards,
Steve
I have looked at that but I think the current demands for bass can only be met when you have a higher power rating than that of the top end amp. The ratio would be at least double. If you were doing deep bass with a subwoofer then I would agree. While the energy content in the signal might split evenly over time at a midline of 3-400 Hz, the peak momentary energy draws on your amp in most music are in the midbass and deep bass. Choral music is the exception where peak sustained power is in the midrange.
In short, statistics are not physics.
I believe aggressively hit (hard!) acoustic piano notes require a lot of power too. "Shattered" piano notes, from mis-tracking cartridges, power amps clipping, and even recording microphone capsules being overloaded, are not unheard of.
Well, pianos can do real forte. I can say that one of the things I got from swapping the mids for a line of Neo8 was the jump factor from well recorded piano transient. Particularly with amps having ample transient peak power. One of my favorites on the mids is the modified NuForce Ref. 8 as it has only a 100W rating but can swing 600W for a few milisec. Which is what the piano calls for. Despite the low 90s db sensitivity of the line array, about 6db and change more than the maggie original I did run the little switching amp hot, But the 60W mod. Dyna III do just fine.
Before that the piano did not come off right. it was rather obviously compressed on loud transients. But then I only expect a piano come through with full power on large horn systems like the laScala or Altec VOT models. Despite their steep price tag I was surprised to hear how close to that the Focal Nova Utopia managed to get.
Yeah Satie, piano is one of the hardest instruments for a system to make sound real, their transient nature one major reason. The same is true for drums, and for the same reason. One of the most startling things about Direct-To-Disc LP's is their transient response---it makes percussive instruments like piano and drums sound much more alive than does a recording made on a tape machine. Digital I won't even mention!
Yes, I wish direct to disc was cheaper, but it just produces limited runs. So any sought after recording would never be cheap.
Based on my experience biamping with a pair of 200W amps using the crossover settings recommended by Magnepan, I would say a 100W amp for the mid/highs is too low. And I don't listen at a high sound level.
Regards,
Steve
Well, there are 100W amps that are spec'd above what they can deliver, and then there are those that deliver more.
A high current design spec'd at 100W, e.g. Classe DR9 will output 200W into 4 ohms and have better than 3db dynamic headroom. That is what I had in mind.
If you can add acoustic treatment to the sliding glass doors, that end of the room would likely be better for sound. How far from the glass is that doorway on the right hand wall (facing the glass)? If it's at least three feet, you could have the speakers right behind the doorway. With the MMG's dipole output, the opening might not have too drastic an effect on channel balance and imaging. Or even better, put the speakers on the listening side of that doorway, for more distance from the wall behind them!
Edits: 05/03/17
BDP24,I want to make sure I understand your recommendations. Assigning the glass slider as the "front" wall and the blue wall as the "back" wall, the doorway to the master bedroom is 70" from the front wall.
I have had the speakers positioned 9' from the front wall (and hence 13 feet from the back wall) and 10 inches from the side walls, with the tv and audio gear cabinets back to back as a room divider. However, that chopped up the room and made the speakers obvious sources of sound when in the listening chair, centered between them. I'd like to try this arrangement again, if I can figure out where to put the loveseat so that the right channel isn't firing directly into the side of it.
If you would please take the time, using the above reference points, can you restate your recommendations in terms of distance from front wall, back wall (distance between them is 22 feet) and side wall (distance between them is 12.5 feet). Room height is 9'. Thanks in advance for your time.
Edits: 05/03/17 05/03/17
First thinks first---if the morning light is important to you, forget about doing as I am about to suggest. Direct sunlight is the second worst thing you can subject Maggies to (it wreaks havoc with the glue holding the conductive wires onto the Mylar of the drivers), the worst being water.
If you can sacrifice the morning sun for best sound, do some research (my technical knowledge is too limited to be able to give you definitive advice!) on how to treat that wall of glass at what will be the speaker end of your room. You will need to get rid of the severe reflectivity of the glass with either sound-absorbing curtains, or ones that scatter sound randomly (in different directions, rather than the mirror-like direct reflections off glass).
Once the glass is taken care of, you can put the speakers 60"/5 ft. (or more---up to the location of the doorway to the bedroom, for instance) from that wall, as close to the side walls as you want, firing down the length of the room. Your loveseat will go towards the other end of the room, as close to the counter as you want (but the further away from it you are, probably the better). It would be nice if the doorway to the bedroom can be closed for listening (so that both side walls are approximately the same), but not mandatory.
Then your equipment rack should not be on a side wall if possible---in the bedroom would be great! Seriously, just run your speaker wires from there to the speakers. If you don't want to do that, I guess right up against the glass doors will do, or at the back of the far end of the room. The TV can go up against the glass, and for serious listening (if you plan to do any) temporarily covered with a quilt.
If that sounds like a lot, well, it is! Welcome to audiophilia ;-).
Bdp24,
I will have to give that some thought. It took me a while to figure out that I could sacrifice the dining area ( which is where the speakers are now because there is another eating area on the far side of the kitchen. I am not sure I would give up the sun although maybe if it is only in the mornings I could do that. The audio gear wouldn't work in the bedroom as that is the most minimalist room in the place, with no electrnics allowed. For me, it has made a difference in the quality of my sleep.
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