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Room Acoustics Forum by Rives Audio Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share you ideas and experiences. |
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Room Acoustics Forum by Rives Audio Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share you ideas and experiences. |
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In Reply to: RE: Help figuring out room treatment - Part I posted by LewinskiH01 on July 14, 2009 at 19:35:24:
You've got an asymmetric space there, not as wide as the room in front of it. It changes width slightly due to that "bump" on the left wall and has a door at the rear left opening into another space behind. You've got a cabinet close behind the left speaker covering the centre of the opening into the space behind and most of the gap to the right of that is taken up by the equipment rack.
The cabinet is very close to the left speaker meaning it will definitely provide a first reflection for the mid drivers on down but the tweeter is above it and you probably won't get a first reflection from the cabinet for the tweeter. The equipment rack will probably do close to the same for the right speaker but it's open to the rear on the bottom shelf and doesn't extend as high so the reflectivity isn't going to be the same.
The cabinet and rack, plus the asymmetry, and those first reflections from the mids on down are probably going to have an effect on the depth of the soundstage and will probably also impact on the apparent width and spatial location of some images.
If the space behind the speakers was as wide as the room in front and there was nothing so close behind the speakers I'd expect a fairly deep soundstage and good imaging provided the speakers are good at those things and not all speakers are.
Replacing the current cabinet and rack with a wider rack will make a change but it's hard to say what the change will be. It's good if it doesn't have a front and back but the front panels of the gear are solid and reflect sound. If they're placed as close to the speakers as the current rack and cabinet are, then the reflections will behave the same to some degree. The frequency "balance" of the reflections will probably change since some sound is lost due to absorption and to energy losses when reflections occur and the frequency spectrum of those losses vary with different materials. I wouldn't expect a big change there but if there's more reflections from metal equipment faces for the left speaker and less for the right then I'd expect the left speaker's first reflection to get a little brighter and the right's to lose a little brightness.
I'd try to move the rack somewhere else but I suspect you've got little space for options. Moving it to the side wall on one side would be better but then speaker cables are going to cross areas where you walk and that can be a problem. If you can't relocate the rack, make it as low as possible so that as much of the speaker's height as possible is above the height of the rack and equipment. That will help a bit. Even so, the asymmetry of the space behind will have an effect.
I side with Ethan on the advantages of rotating the setup 180 degrees but that's not an option for you. I'd rather have the asymmetric space behind me, where it is to a large degree in my room, than in front of me because I think symmetry in the space surrounding the speakers to the sides and behind them is highly desirable. Of course, what is desirable and what we can actually achieve in our homes, especially in a home with small spaces and the audio system in a living room, can often be quite different.
David Aiken
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- RE: Help figuring out room treatment - Part I - David Aiken 14:56:00 07/15/09 (0)
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