Flatscreen between speakers

@richardbrand do have a center channel and rear channels as well.  It has occurred to me that 7 unused drivers in the those three speakers were affecting the sound quality during stereo playback.  I have also covered those speakers to see if I can tell a difference in the sound quality.  I cannot.  For my system set up in my room, the TV screen is a much bigger factor.

kn

@spenav I see you are on a path with the dust cover.  Too bad camo wasn’t available in cotton.  Will be interesting to hear about how that works out.  Looks like your speakers are well into the room and your TV is well back of your speakers.  Not sure whether that reduces the impact of the flat screen on sound or just changes it.  Having the space from the back wall likely allows you to get some good depth in the soundstage which is great.  

My system is all on the wall in a purpose built AV/audio room.  I realize I am giving up soundstage depth but other aspects of reproduced sound are more important to me and I just like the clean layout.  On my TV I am using a medium weight wool blanket to cover 65” TV when listening to music.  It is not the thickest wool blanket I have tried, but it sounds the best. Center fill locks in, instrument placement improves both laterally and vertically, and there is much less glare in treble at volume.  The value of having the blanket in place has increased directly with improvements in analog and digital front ends and cables.  With the blanket over the TV I can get to recording studio volumes now and impact without noticeable distortion, which is fun in short bursts.  The blanket is bigger than the monitor so I drape it longways over the top and roll the overhang on each edge and stuff the rolls behind the TV to flatten the front face and to block sound from getting behind it.  I do not recommend lightweight fleece blankets as that did not improve sound nearly as much.  Heavy wool blankets, heavy cotton blankets and cotton towels all sounded worse, some worse than the TV alone.

As for the “where it belongs” statement, I have definite opinions and agree with many of the comments here that there is no dogma on this topic.  Call me old-fashioned but TVs in the living room are red card foul.  My opinion and a very subjective one.

For years in previous homes we had our two-channel sound system in our living room and our TV/home theater in a separate small bedroom space.  When we rescued and moved the main floor of an old house to a new lot I intended to have a two-channel system in the living room and a surround/two channel hybrid system for watching TV, movies and serious listening sessions in a new purpose built basement room described in the link above.  The acoustics in the purpose built room are very good.  In our 100 year old plaster walled, multi windowed, tile, wood and brick fireplaced living room, not so much.  So much not good that I abandoned having a decent system there in favor of a good Bluetooth speaker for background music, audio books and news - all serious listening is in the purpose room downstairs.

As for center channels and multi-speaker music listening versus serious two channel set ups, the better my sources the more I appreciate two-channel versus multi-channel reproduction with DSP.  But sometimes, listening to something like Miles Davis “Tribute to Jack Johnson” with 13 drivers around the room and 1,000 watts on tap is a revelation.  In all things HiFi, YMMV.

kn

@kubla36 cool!

@richardbrand I have a recent model OLED Samsung flatscreen with a very thin (scarily so) panel and covering it makes a noticeable improvement in the center image stereo music reproduction.  This may be unique to my room and the placement of my speakers relative to my flatscreen, but the improvement is on par with the benefits of covering my similarly sized plasma screen that preceded my current TV.  
kn

@spenav thanks.  The idea for the room and the setup has been evolving for a long time, starting before I even had a physical space to build it.  Frankly, even though 5.1 Blu-ray soundtracks sounded great pretty much from day one with multichannel DSP correcting for any latent room issues, it took a long time and a lot of work to get two-channel direct stereo to sound great even though the Arcam has a decent amplifier section.  It wasn’t until fairly recently that I determined the flatscreen was a big part of the problem.  I never listen to two channel music without the screen covered anymore.  Now both analog and digital two channel sound much better in direct stereo sourced from my external front ends than two channel digital processed by the Arcam, due in large part to substantial improvements in those sources combined with the screen covering trick.

Good luck with your efforts to get better sound.

kn