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Hi folks,I'm currently toying with shifting furniture to create a better soundstage, but my room is really, really unusual.
My room is giant L. The main sitting area is 14' wide and 17' deep. The *back* 8' of the room has a ceiling height of 8' at which point the ceiling shoots straight up (no slope) to 18' for the front 9'. If you had your back to the front wall with the high ceiling right above you, the right side of the room is completely covered with windows, except for a fireplace in the middle. To your left, the room continues for another 15', but is only around 10' deep. See link with more pics.
I have hardwood floors and most walls are uncovered (will definitely consider room treatments).
So, can you help out a fellow audio buddy by recommending the best place to put two speakers? I'll toy with the furniture afterwards :)
Follow Ups:
Looks like a worse version of my room - mine is smaller and only open on one side.I had problems relating the layout to the pictures so I'm not quite certain where your speakers currently are, so I'll try and describe what I would suggest.
First, I'd use your 14' x 17' area with the glass walls on the left and the speakers against the solid wall at the top of your diagram. The open area is to the right as you face the speakers and that's the same as in my room.
Now, the tendency is going to be for the left speaker to sound boxy in comparison to the right which has more space around it. The solution is to fake the space. Keep the speakers as far from the wall behind as you can. Put a bass trap in the left corner behind the speakers, and absorbing panels along the left wall. Unfortunately that loses you the glass which I assume is a window, and the view too :-( You don't have to put panels along the whole of the left wall but definitely cover the first reflection point on the wall. These can be free standing panels standing a few inches out from the wall and you can build them yourself using Jon Risch's instructions (see Tweakers Asylum), and you can do bass traps the same way. If there is a door in the corner where I'm suggesting the bass trap, use panels there also to leave space for passage. You could also use room lenses - DIY also and easy - along the glass between strategically placed free panels since they offer fairly minimal visual obstruction and would retain some view but you definitely would be better of with one substantial panel at the reflection point.
The alternative would be to rotate things 90 degrees to the right and put the speakers along the short wall opposite the glass wall. Use bass traps and panels as before and you can reduce the problems of reflection from the glass wall which is behind the sitting position by spacing room lenses along the wall. Sit a fair bit forward of the wall in that case to allow the diffusion time to develop. While you need to keep a bit of space between the left speaker and the left wall, you can put the right speaker right up against the right side since it's open and there will be minimal reflection problems on that side. While your width is only 9', if the left speaker is around 2' from the wall you can still have about 6' between the speakers by putting the right one up against the side. With the 29' length, you can pull the speakers out a fair way in front of the wall - even 6' or 7' may not be a problem and put the gear further back toward the wall so there's absolutely nothing in the space directly between the speakers.
In both cases you could consider putting some absorption along the wall behind the speakers.
By judicious use of absorption along the solid walls and some added diffusion, you should be able to minimise the sonic differences caused by the asymmetry in speaker placement. Taming your bass problem is going to be a bit harder because you can't get bass traps into all of the corners since some are out in far field in the open space. Probably the best suggestion I can make there is to make sure the speakers are as far out in the open as possible since not only will that help in terms of the asymmetry of the room, it will also minimise corner reinforcement of the speaker on that side. What you can also do is move the speakers to where you plan on sitting and have them facing where you plan to put them. Put on something with very low bass - at the limit of your speakers extension, and walk around the corner area where you plan to place one speaker listening to the bass, looking for areas where it's at its maximum and minimum. Place that speaker at a point where bass was at a minimum and then work out the other speaker placement from that. See how it sounds and, if necessary, fudge the speaker placement towards the nearest spot where you got strong bass if necessary. Between the points where you found the maximum and minimum reinforcement, you should be able to find a spot that suits.
Consider Susan's suggestion about furniture very seriously. You've got spaciousness galore so eliminate clutter, give the sound room, and visually flaunt the space. Turn what you think is a disadvantage into a visual highlight. It'll lift your spirits and that'll make things sound better too - mood is important!
All the best,
David Aiken
Hi David....
Do you think those treatments would apply to my set-up?
http://www.geocities.com/sundaesundaesundae/audio.htmlI've always noticed:
My right speaker(facing the speakers) sounds much better, fuller, and more predominant than the left...I've tried every
toe-ing position known to mankind....
both exhibit a Very thumpy bass on ALL drums....but worse on the left...
Can you suggest treatments to try.....?
I am not adverse to much of anything visually....I love the high tech look...and the sound is more important
to me....
thanks!
Susan,I've got no experience with rooms as tall as those you and Leftiself has. I've got 10' ceilings and that's it. I'm not certain what effects such a tall ceiling will have apart from (1) increasing the volume of the space loaded by the speaker which is likely to mean you need to set volume levels higher than you would with a normal ceiling and (2) probably ensuring that floor to ceiling nodes are likely to be significantly different than the nodes in the other 2 dimensions which should help smooth bass response a bit unless the ceiling height is a multiple of one of the other dimensions in which case nodes will be replicated and room response will get bumpy. It's possible that the floor to ceiling node will reinforce a port tuning frequency and you may get some boom that way. What's more likely is that the large space allows a lot of reverberation and that's what produces your "boominess" - the low frequencies just hang on for too long. Try clapping your hands and see how long the echo persists, then do it in a normal room and compare. Ideally it should cut off as quickly as in the normal room or perhaps even a little quicker.The only way to reduce the duration of the echo - the reverberation time - is by absorption, especially in the corners and also mid wall helps.
What all 3 of us have in common is a speaker "in a corner", even if it's a bit out in the open, and one that isn't in that sort of position because there's no wall within a long distance to the side. Effectively the first speaker gets a lot of assist from the corner, hence the fullness in sound of your right speaker, while the other gets a bit of support from the rear wall behind and nothing from the side.
What we would all love is symmetrical placement but there's no way of physically doing it by putting in a wall. The solution is to place absorption around the corner to reduce the reinforcement the speaker there receives, thereby balancing the sound. The bass trap in the corner and the absorbing panels should do that.
What you should end up with is a better balance between the sound of the two speakers but you may still have the boominess, hopefully reduced to some degree. If that's the case, then you could look at trying to put bass traps out in the corners of the adjacent areas if that's possible. I don't know how effective that will be because of the height of the ceiling but it might help a bit. I'd try one of the corners to start and then move on to others. You may not be able to fix it entirely but I think you can get somewhere with it.
Jon Risch has a "recipe" for quick and dirty bass traps which just involves sticking several roles of fibreglass insulation still wrapped in their plastic bags in each corner. You can wrap the bags with open-weave material to dress them up. I've got a fairly live room and didn't want the high frequency reflection that the plastic bag gives and I wasn't happy about fibreglass. What I did was buy some bags of wool/polyester blend insulation batts but straight polyester will do and wrap them with wire fencing mesh to compress them to a density of 2 lb/cu ft. I then wrapped the wire mesh in thin polyester batting from a craft shop and had a bag made from loose weave curtain material to cover them. Using one bag of batts per trap produced a bass trap a bit under 4 ft high, 21" wide and 18" deep. You can test how they will work pretty quickly by just tossing the bag of batts into the corner as it comes - compression in the bag is likely to be close to the right density - so that will give you a rough idea, though the plastic will be reflective of high frequencies. If you can persuade a hardware store to let you take some bags of batts with the option of returning them unopened if they don't work, you can get a very quick idea of whether this approach will help. A few minutes tossing bags of batts in corners and time to play the disc which gives you the most problems and you will have a pretty good idea of whether you want to go to the expense and effort of dressing up the traps and making some absorbent panels. You might want to stack 2 bass traps this size in some of the "taller" corners to get more effect, especially if you can't put them in every corner because of the way that space is currently being used.
I wouldn't worry about diffusion devices out in the adjacent area - if there's too much reverberation then diffusion won't help reduce it.
In a space like that you'd really want modern furniture, wouldn't you? I don't have that much space but I just spent a fair amount of time looking for a decent listening chair and ended up placing an order for the Le Corbusier chaise-longue that Mirage were showing in their ads in Stereophile some months ago. I think it would really look great in a space like that but it's likely to look cramped in my room, still I bought it for the physical comfort and I'll get that. I like fairly firm seating and all of the standard recliners were way to soft for me.
David Aiken
I'll leave the positioning suggestions to the experts....(I have a *similar* room and I need(ed) help too)...
but visually you could have a stunner...take advantage of that architecture... and put in some sleek/industrial/
hi-tech furniture.....
(I know this isn't Decorator's Asylum but the artist in me just creeps out)
I don't think speaker positioning is your first task. I'm guessing that this rooms biggest problem is that it is "live". With the hardwood floors and ceilings that are tall, I'll bet you have a massive echo chamber, not unlike a church. I know I had a room like this.I would concentrate on removing the echo first. Plenty of carpet, rugs etc. and them some wall treatments. Or what I did - I moved to the lower level of my house which was a lot more acoustically friendly.
Cut-Throat
Looked at the scenario. I'd still try for the traditional long wall set-up.The ideal might be shifting everything to the right of where it is now.
Centering the speakers backing the long wall working to get the sweet spot at the base of and just out of the way of the stairs might prove ideal for imaging. You'll want the speakers 2+ feet from the long back wall, 8-12 feet apart. Your chair could be against the bottom of the bannister/start of the stairs. You should still be 8-9 feet from each speaker. Your first reflections from side walls will be minimized.
What goes on in bass reinforcement and suckout in that space is hard to guess. Should support stygian bass though...
Like you, I'm running a pair of PSB Stratus Golds and they have a tendency to be a bit boomy (EAD Ovation/EAD Powermaster 2000 setup). I'll try that set-up. I must say that an A/V setup is a terrible pain. The TV just wants to dominate the seating positions, but the audio and the architure is really what I want to enjoy...Thanks for the advice!
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