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My new wife and I are looking at real estate for an eventual move, and finding a home with non-square rooms of an ideal acoustic footprint for Maggies (12'+ X 19'+) is difficult. However, several available homes have loft areas which open out into a living area below. It occurs to me that, if my Gunned MMGs were placed right up against the railing overlooking the space below, and the actual loft was large enough to allow for seating 5-7 feet away from the MMGs, this could be a particularly wonderful way of ensuring the front wall reflections would be much greater than 10 msec after the direct sound, and to get an immense soundstage. True, the railing would have reflections, but those could be controlled with either acoustic foam or installing a new railing with very narrow pieces to reduce its acoustic footprint. The nearfield aspect doesn't phase me in the slightest; I actually prefer nearfield listening. And my wife has experienced and enjoyed the MMGs set up in an ideal acoustic setup (see my earlier FRT ramblings on quasi-ambiophonics for set-up details) and has given me the green light to make a dedicated listening area in the new house. Yes, she truly is a gem! ;-)
Has anyone tried such a setup? If so, any lessons learned? Is there something obvious I'm missing? One that comes to mind is a potential reduction of bass response, but 1) I do room EQ, so that can be smoothed out somewhat and 2) I sense a Rythmik F12 subwoofer in my future anyway.
MG-bert
Follow Ups:
35 years ago I had MG-1s in a HUGE 2 story room. Must'a been 10,000 cubic feet.
Maggies in front of a door each leading into the smaller dining area. IOW, the backwave (most of it) simply disappeared into the other room.
Spectacular sound. And this driven by a Carver Cube of 200x2 or maybe 250x2 @4ohms.
They LIKE working in huge volumes.
Too much is never enough
I tried my IIIa's in a loft and was extremely disappointed. I never liked the sound with the chair along the railing. When firing across the room it was too constricted. I also tried it with the Maggies at the railing with the backs firing out into the family room behind and below. It sounded terrible. Dead.
So, no, I was never able to get it to work in my loft with my speakers. YMMV
What I have had success at is what I call large room REVERSE MAGGIES. I put the chair within a foot or two of the wall of a huge room. Then I place the speakers out about ten feet from the wall behind me. This gives a near field listening experience with no short term sidewall or front wall reflections. It gives a huge depth of field on naturally recorded acoustic music.
+1 to Swami's observation.
You need the reflections to fill out the tonal balance (power response) so removing all of them by placement at an open space will make them sound dull, so that the spectacular imaging obtained that way is not going to be enjoyable.
I don't think dipoles need front walls. They actually do quite well in open space.
I always wanted to drag my speakers out and onto the deck in the back of the house. Perhaps to learn even more I'll move them onto the lawn.
I'll make sure it can't rain on that day, there will be a continuous cloud layer to shield them from direct sunlight, and at least 1000 feet of speaker wire to connect them to their amps (which are too heavy for me to schlepp around).
I'll be on look-out for men/women wearing little white jackets.
Thank you Swamis Cat and Satie for your observations! I like Swamis' idea of the large room placement (although a large rectangular room would be a good candidate for a Limage setup as well - not to mention a Rooze). But this did have the unintended effect of waving a red flag in front of this audio bull. Since spectacular imaging is possible on a loft, but the tonal balance suffers? Hmmmm... can that be at least partially corrected with EQ? And a subwoofer placed close to the listening seat? Curious minds will find out!
We won't be in a serious house market for another year or so, but when we are, if we can find a place with both a large room and a loft, experimentation will ensue! And get written up here.
MG-bert
Well, don't expect to preserve the great imaging once you apply EQ. Nothing like phase differences in different portions of the freq range to kill off imaging.
There is a claimed phase free digital EQ plugin for foobar, and I would expect one compatible with each of the more popular player software packages. I don't think it actually sound like it is phase free. But it is a bit difficult to distinguish that from the EQ effect.
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