Thank you! Yes, my speakers are usually along the long wall. Moving them to the short wall however really opened up the sound. When I move them back in a few days I will play around with the toe in. I should have mentioned I am using Monitor floorstanders. They tend to produce good bass response so I think they may respond very well with a generous toe in.
Room help
I'm new to this. I have of late been fascinated reading here about the room as one, if not the principal, component of a well tuned audio system. More recently I chanced upon a discussion about irregular rooms perhaps lending towards the best sound.
Well, I have an irregular room. It is approximately 15' x 27' with an 8' ceiling. It has a trapezoidal cross section (sitting on the top floor of my home under the eves), has a dormer and a staircase up from the lower level at one end. At one end the wall is brick and the other three are plaster. Carpeted.
I have my listening area set up on one end of the long axis (oriented transversely along the short axis of the room if that makes sense) . The speakers are 9' apart and 8' from me. Few feet from the front wall. Today I rotated everything 90 degrees so that now the speakers are facing out along the long axis of the room. The speakers are still 9' apart and 8' from me. But the back wall is now some 18' behind me instead of 4'.
The sound is much better. I've been listening for hours (with a pause for food, saying hello to visiting relatives, assuring my wife I'm still alive, and such). More "spacious" is the best word I can use to describe it. The soundstage is bigger.
However, this layout is much less pleasing from an aesthetic standpoint (please don't judge me harshly on this). Soooooo.... my question is: Is there a way to recapture this improvement in some way while maintaining the original orientation of the room (across the short axis of the room)?
Thanks for reading and I eagerly await any responses.
Showing 5 responses by likat
Ok, maybe I have answered my own question, Or at least am having a pleasant conversation with myself. But I'd love it if someone helped me work through this... Is it possible that the spacious sound I get when my system is set up along the long axis is because the back wall, which is brick, is so far behind me (about 17 feet) and the reflected bass is not there to muddle things? In this case when I go back to the short axis where the back wall is 4 feet behind me would the use of bass traps help me achieve the same effect?
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@mijostyn Thank you! I think that you speak the hard truth that I was hoping to get around through experimentation, dampening, analysis, etc. I will eventually come around to doing what's right. @ghdprentice Very practical suggestions indeed. @dreas I totally know what I will be doing with much of my evening . Thank you for the references!
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@ieales Yes! That looks like my room in cross section, looking down the long axis, except the staircase is behind the system. It does sound much better in this orientation. I am supposing it is because the back wall is so far away. Aesthetically though the set up looks much better when it is oriented perpendicular to the long axis (with the system along the long wall) so I continue to struggle to maximize the sound with this set up. Thank you for the insights! The adjoining room on that floor has been redone with hardwood floors and exposed beams transversely across the ceiling which is about a foot taller. . Built in bookshelves along the long walls. Not a ton else in there. But I have a separate system along the short wall and no matter what combination of things i do there it sounds very good to my ear. I'm getting off my own topic i suppose but I will be having the original room redone in a similar fashion. My theory is that it will actually help me to get the sound I want but I will need to work at dampening the back wall. I'll update if anyone is interested in my journey.
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