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My Demo results: I feel like I'm at a frustrating block in my speaker journey

Hi all,

New poster and longtime lurker. 

As the title says, I feel like I'm at a frustrating endpoint in my audio quest, and hoping to draw from your guys' experience for some direction.

I bought my first speaker system a couple years ago because at my old house my tv speakers were not cutting it. 

First I bought an old budget pair of Klipsche bookshelves (P15s?  I dont really remember)  They were really shrill, and I sold them fairly quickly. 

After reading a bunch of the mainstream audio review sites (I now understand these platforms are often pay to play) I purchased the ELAC Unifi UF5 Towers.  These had beautiful, lush musical bass but sounded about engaging as energetic as a sponge.  They also had kind of a dark muffled sound at times- like there is a wet blanket over them.   Paradoxically, they also sound inorganic and kind of metallic. 

In the past few months I decided to start demoing speakers to see what I like.  Ive found some speakers that do certain things right, but not everything right.  Every one of the high-end, expensive speakers I have tried have had certain large flaws. I've been kind of shocked at this whole experience, because to my ears my $60 set of logitec computer speakers handily beats a number of speakers 50x more expensive. Like, they dont have great detail retrieval or clarity but at least they dont color the sound a ton, and they present very engagingly.

Im still lookijng for my goldilocks speaker.

  • Various Kefs- very similar to the ELACs but worse imo- very metallic and unengaging
  • Various B&W- Metallic, boring, no dynamics
  • Warfedale Evo 4.4- nice highs!  Absolutely sloppy bass (for my room at least) and terribly muddy mids
  • Tannoy Revolution 6XTE- Similar to above.  Very, very dark speakers.
  • Martin Logan 35XTI bookshelves-  Eureka!  These are much more organic and clear.  Guitars actually sound like guitars instead of a bad digital rendering of them.  Theres energy in what I listen to.  This is what I was missing in the others... things sound like theyre supposed to!   Only issue is they arent as full-bodied as towers.  They just cant play very loud and I wish they had more bass to be better full range speakers.    Somewhat more minor issue is that they sound slightly grainy.  Though thats not a total dealbreaker. 
  • Martin Logan 60XTI Towers- I had high hopes for these.... but where did the magic for the 35s go ML?  These are very "meh".  The highs and satisfying acoustic resonances are gone.
  • Focal Aria 906 bookshelves- holy clarity batman!  But it sounds almost too clinical to the point that theyre not engaging.
  • Focal Aria 948 Towers-  Holy clarity and body batman!  These sound almost perfect- but they dont quite come alive until higher volumes (and I have a small space), and there's still something missing... a certain *zing* in the acoustic guitar resonances. 
  • Def Tech 9060- Hard to describe.  Sometimes they sounded good, sometimes they sounded imprecise and like the drivers were way too small.  Bass gets bloaty in my room.  Theyre also ugly as hell. 
  • Ascend Sierra Tower with RAAL-  After all the others, I had only tthe ML 35XTIs and the focal 948s remaining.  I was hoping, based on my extensive reading of forums, that the ascend towers could give the best of both worlds- the clarity/full body of the focals with the acoustic resonance/energy/zing of the MLs.  Unfortunately I was once again disappointed.  They seem unbalanced to my ears.  Like, they have very punchy bass but they color the sound to be sweet and there seems to be something missing in the middle of the sound.... some body that just isnt there.  The highs are very sweet and engaging, but almost a little artificially so.  Where the MLs sound like an actual acoustic guitar being played in front of me, the Sierras make it sound unnaturally sweet or high.  Theres unnaturally sweet zzzing out of string instruments that I dont think actually sound that way....  Im bummed because I really wanted to like these speakers. 


I think I've established a list of qualities Im looking for:
  • The etched sound of the MLs
  • Full body and clarity of the Focals
  • The forward, engaging nature of the ascends
  • Not overly smooth
  • Not metallic (I dont think I like aluminum tweeters)
  • wide horizontal dispersion (my room is wider than it is long)

Where do I go from here?  Im at a loss.  Id appreciate any recommendations you guys have. 

mjt8

Showing 4 responses by sandthemall

sandthemall
544 posts
 
I hope I’m not sounding preachy but probably the best place to start is with fundamentals.

Maybe you’re well beyond this point...but this book was my starting point and opened my eyes about how sound behaves, how to make the most of a room, and speaker placement. It’s a basic start...but a good one.
 
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Sound-Stereo-Speaker-Manual/dp/0830632743

I think a lot of speakers that many people think sound dull, are just fine...they just need to find the right position in the right space. I think there are modifications to furniture layout that can withstand SAF (spouse acceptance factor). In fact, I think it’s easier to match amps and preamps etc. than matching a speaker to a room.

Do you want to truly understand what really great imaging is like? You won’t get it from a special amp. It’s room layout. 
I temporarily lost low and mid tone hearing in my left ear this winter. I couldn’t concentrate on a conversation with multiple people talking in a restaurant. It also completely eliminated my ability to get proper imaging from system. 

Get to know where a particular speaker sounds best in a room and you’ll be more than half way there. Different speakers want different positions.






sandthemall
544 posts
 
Just saw your room pictures. I believe it’s your room setup.
No amount of money spent on gear is going to fix that. First issue is that your speakers are on the long wall and they’re too big for the room and one is firing into the side of a chair.

iI sounds like you’re not willing to change that and it’s a smallish room so that’s going to compromise things a bit.  You may be able to get away with it if you placed more modestly sized speakers closer together but you would need a narrower media console.

I’ve tried all the speaker placement formulas to no avail but one that worked for me is to divide the room into 5 parts...side to side and front to back. But you don’t have front to back width...so let’s just ignore that for now. Have the speaker tweeters 1/5 in from each side wall. Then play with spacing off the back wall. Tweak from there.
sandthemall
544 posts
 
You really just can't pull out speakers 2-3 ft. in a room like that. Where's the room for that?

You might want to consider keeping your rack and TV in the existing spot and having smaller speakers fire lengthwise in the room.

Have you tried paper dolls? Make cut-outs of all your furniture and place them on graph paper with the walls of your room laid out.  An see what you can do with that first.

I just moved into my home in October 2019.  But I used a computer program to build all my furniture pieces and equipment racks to determine layouts that would appease my wife and the audio gods.

I chose to defer to my wife and the picture window and went with the 2nd best room layout I drew up. After moving in...I tweaked.  It's May and I'm still tweaking. One of my wife's concessions is that there will be no framed artwork/pictures that us glass.  Family pictures are in the dining room and hall. For those of us without a dedicated listening room, we need to make and accept compromises.




sandthemall
544 posts
 
Speaker placement and room set up is a science.
The best thing to do right now is stop talking about components for the time being...and focus on exploiting the best layout based on what you have. Understand and solve that now. It will give you a reference point for new amps and speakers when you do upgrade.

Ask yourself where you will be listening from? Pick one listening spot. Then arrange furniture to satisfy other guests but defer as much as you can to that listening position. It's a compromise when you don't have a dedicated listening room.

It's tougher with newer homes because the trend is to no longer build formal rooms...nowadays rooms blend into other other rooms to create open layouts that are all the rage these days. 




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