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Focal Electra Be 937's placement

I have finally found out that my music room most be the most acoustically intolerant area of my house.
After setting up several different sets of loudspeakers through the years, decided for a pair of JM Be's 937.
At first I was hoping that time would serve to break in the speakers. Then, time went by and I was extremely dissapointed by the harshness of the famed Be tweeters.
The treble was so remarkable that rendered the loudspeaker's bass inaudible.
I have a 20 x 15 room with a aproximately 8'feet cieling.
After much experimentation and in the verge of looking for some venue to sell the darn gadgets, I decided to toe in the louspeakers "Acutely" so that both practically almost face each other. The results were outstanding. The sound stage widened to the max. Sounds and details appeared to be coming from magical areas of the room. I am in audio nirvana now.
Has anyone had a similar experience? It appears that the concensus is to not toe in loudspeakers too much. I hope that if your are faced with a similar situation you try this; even when i cannot explain why!
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8 responses Add your response
aball
2,016 posts
 
...almost facing each other? So you look at their sides when seated? I decided on the toe in of my 926s by using a test CD and SPL meter. The results coincided with my listening tests in terms of the compromise between soundstage width and image precision.

You need to check your room response to know if there is indeed too much treble. I felt the 937s sounded laid back! Arthur
mechans
3,048 posts
 
Sounds like a very active room, you made need some absorbers. Mine are toe in 4 feet rom the back wall with no harshness. I had to use the right cabling also a very important factor.
plato
1,543 posts
 
Maybe try putting the speakers along the long wall -- away from the side walls, if you presently have them situated on the short wall. That should help with the high frequency reflections you experience and probably provide a more pleasing bass balance, as well. Toeing them in a bit is still a good idea, but it needn't be as radical as your current setup.

I had the opposite problem in one room. On the short wall, I had too much bass. Moving the speakers to the long wall improved both the imaging and the bass balance. When setting up any system, it is good to try the speakers on both the long and short walls, as one position will usually sound much better than the other...
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neilgundel
15 posts
 
I second Plato's suggestion - I have the 1027 Be's on the long wall (but 4' out) of 16x22x9' room. Sounds great with the speakers toed in 3/4 of the way from straight ahead to straight at my ears.
mechans
3,048 posts
 
I have the even brighter 936s i.e. not Be but Tioxids and found that the toe in was the real deal, but not to that extreme you are probably getting wave cancelation effects. You can't always isolate a problem such as this which may be any combination of things. Audio is so multifactorial that once again the trite but true synergy question has to be addressed not just an active room, because a lot of harshness can be from direct beaming not reflected sound. First I had to change tube types in my SP6B pre to tame the treble (old 12AX7s to 5751s) it helped, then taking all of the silver cables out and using good copper helped yet again, Then finally I just changed preamps and now its fabulous - Nirvana as you call it. Anyone want a great legendary pre? You might want to think about the rest of your components.
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jmarshak
157 posts
 
Never needed to toe in. I have the 937s in a 17'x20'x8'H room. The speakers are at the 20' wall, 12' appart and facing along the diagonals. I get a good balance of sound stage and image.
aball
2,016 posts
 
I recently have read about extreme toe-in (crossing way in front of the listener) with great results. Big Triangles are supposed to work great that way. I will try it one day with my speakers but I find it just looks too odd!
buynow
4 posts
 
I have tried using the XLO burn-in disc to further enhance the quality of JMLab sound by choosing track #7 and #8.
If you use track #7, you can repeat run for 20-30 mins and you need not have to switch on your pre and power amps at all. As for track #8, you switch on both but reduce the volume to the normal listening level. Repeat run the same for 10-20 mins and you will be amazed to what you hear!
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