Acoustics experts - a little help please

@maprik Wrote:

@ditusa

Thanks for the video link. Great stuff! 

You're welcome! 

Mike

So if bacch is out of the question..... here are some things you could try to achieve the goal of tricking yourself into deepening/layering the soundfield...incrementally.

- a sub sitting on the front stage or a front corner did no favors for above mentioned goal. Get a pair of microsubs that are easy to move around/hide away like the kef kc62. You will need to keep them somewhere behind or near the couch on either side, use a crossover betwern 80 to 100hz and experiment. Keep an open mind and stray away from the 'group think' on dovetailing/where a crossover should be set.

- Sidewalls are far enough away that they may not matter much,  proximity of couch to the back wall is the biggest culprit, said distance is too small for correctQRD diffusion formula to work properly. Some diffusion at the equivalent of reflection points on the ceiling may bear some fruit on the 9 ft ceiling.

- Your 2 way speakers appear to be nothing to write home about. A  concentric driver design such as a TAD ME1TX monitor/standmount would be a conducive speaker, if you can afford it. There are some things designed into tads, in consideration of phase characteristics when more than 1 speaker is in a space (as would be the case with stereo).

On the cheap, a Tekton impact monitor could serve as an alternate perhaps, but, less forgiving than the tad. You'd have to get more ocd with placement, toe-in and interspeaker distance. The latter's array produces some semblance of a horn+concentric driver hybrid

- Watch out for some culprit electronics that have a soundfield 'flattening' effect....couldn’t say much about a Hegel, but a very famous brand that starts with a 'M' tends to have that effect and so on...

It may be the best you could do in consideration of your room's limitations.

So I downloaded some audio apps to my phone. One of them measures RT60. I put my phone in my listening position and clapped my hands at both right and left speaker positions. I don’t know if this is the correct way to do this since there were no instructions and I can’t find any online. Anyway, multiple tries from these 2 positions gave me RT60 readings of 0.34 - 0.36 msecs. From my research it seems anything below 0.50 is good. But what does this tell me other than I have an acceptable reverb level? . 

In my opinion, all the equipment in between the speakers is destroying your 3D soundstage. Try to keep all audio equipment below the height of the speakers close to the floor see here @ 3:30.

Mike

@ditusa This is great advice, components and racks not good room treatments. My sound stage extends from very near floor to ceiling, coherent life size images require properly designed acoustic treatments on front wall, diffusion works for me.

Great video. OK I’ll get rid of the coffee table and see what I can do about the equipment in the middle.... Not sure i can do much since the wall mounted TT stand will be difficult to move. But the top shelf stuff could be relocated and maybe I can raise the TV.