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My Home Speakers, My Car, and Me...The Ballad of What's Going Wrong?

Okay, so tell me what's going wrong.

My new dedicated room is 13x12x8. It's small. Bare walls. Hard tile floor. Windows on the front wall.

I have some loaner speakers in there at the moment while my other speakers are on order. Right now I have Dynaudio Focus 340s. They are 7ft apart from one another, 29" from the side walls, and 19" from the front wall. I am sitting 9.5ft from the speakers with a glorious center image.

I have ran room correction via my Linn KDS/3, called "Space Optimization." It works very well.

Yet, here I am listening, and verything I put on gives me anxiety. Literally a vibratory feeling that sucks.It's maybe half of a song in and I'm feeling this way.

And I think to myself, "When I'm in my car, cranking my music, why don't I feel the same?" I feel fine in the car. Perfect, even.

So, why would I be feeling this way in my room?

I question if I naturally need to sit further back from the speakers (which I can't do: I'm out of space/room). It seems my best speaker experiences are when I'm at a friend's house and either I'm a really good distance away from the speakers, or the room is very large and/or the speakers are much further apart. All of this, of course, is contrary to what I experience in my car.

Then I think, well, let me try some near field listening with my speakers, and I end up with the same anxious feeling. 

There's really only one more thing I can try, and that is to move all of my gear into the parlor, which is a much bigger room. I couldn't leave my stuff there, because the wife wouldn't want it, but at least I could experiment to see if a greater distance from the speakers will be better. However, that doesn't answer my question of why I feel fine in my auto with the music blaring in such a confined space.

Could it be that a sealed up listening space, full of soft stuff, is optimal?

Here is a diagram of my room (if it matters).

http://imgur.com/PC8LyVX


Thanks for nay thoughts. It's driving me batty.
evolvist

Showing 2 responses by auxinput

auxinput
2,920 posts
 

Have you tried turning off the Linn "Space Optimization" room correction? 

I had the opportunity to work with DiracLive room correction in my system.  It did weird things to the frequency response as well as the phasing.  The result was that the audio sounded like it was right at my head (almost like listening to headphones) instead of far out in front of me.  Sometimes it would cause an effect like one speaker was out of phase (like donvito suggested).  Since you have so much hard wood/wall reflections, the room correction could be over-compensating these reflections and it could affect phase.

In any event, I really tried DiracLive with all sorts of configurations, adjustment levels, mic placement.  In the end, I just did not enjoy the result and found that non-corrected audio just sounded better and more natural.

I'm not saying this is your problem, but it's something you could try.  Maybe in a more treated room, the "Space Optimization" correction could work better?

auxinput
2,920 posts
 

I would first look at putting in the absorption panels.  Twelve 1' x 1' panels are not a lot.  A standard size 24" x 48" panel is equal to about 8 of those.  It's better then nothing, though.  It may help cut down some of the slap echo.  Check out GIK Acoustics if you are interested in larger size absorption panels for a very economical price.

Once you have the absorption up, be very careful with diffusion.  Certain types of diffusion panels, such as QRD or skyline, can cause cancelling of some frequencies and boosting of other frequencies, especially when they are mounted very close to you in a very small room.  If they are just generic reflectors (such as the pyramid style diffusion), then it may be less of a problem.

Also, I noticed that your room is almost perfectly square (12 x 13).  A square room is actually the worst acoustic situation because of the equidistant walls creating standing waves in both directions.  A better room would be more of a rectangle shape.  :). Though sometimes we have no control over this.

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