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Room treatment-I was afraid of this

There I was with a dedicated room-not ideal being nearly square and a less than 8' ceiling-and barely adequate music, not awful but the system had sounded better. I tried moving things about some with differing results but nothing satisfying. Part of the problem was moving from a 30x35 foot room with an 18' ceiling. I was used to the speakers being well out into the room, far apart and sitting pretty far away. I used the odd integer matrix method promoted by Vandersteen but hadn't considered either placing them closer to the wall or moving near field. Nick at GIK recommended both, as well as some furniture rearranging that made a very pleasant difference. That was all the encouragement I needed to order bass traps, 1st and 2nd reflection panels and front and rear wall treatments. Installed them by about 4pm Monday and listened until 2 am, back at it last night from 3pm-1am. It's just as so many have said, this is a serious component upgrade. It is matched in scale only when I went from Vandersteen 2CE's to Chapman T-77SE's. Not a single aspect of the listening experience that isn't enhanced. So now the problem; I suppose a lot of the glowing stuff folks make of cables, power cords, fuses, and on and on also make significant differences. How long can it be before I'm off and running on that stuff?
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Showing 3 responses by nonoise

nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,581 posts
 
It's sounds like you're pretty well set after all the work you've done so I'd not second guess yourself with tweaks just yet. 

What you need to do is get some long term listening in to familiarize yourself with your set up and then experiment with cabling. Power cords can add more presence and authority than speaker cables or interconnects (in my experience) so I'd start there first: improve the foundation and it'll be easier to proceed from there.

Also, make sure your furniture is optimal and be ready to discard it, even if it's one of your favorites. I say this because I recently got rid of my overstuffed sofa and went with a set of Barcelona chairs and the improvement was more than subtle. I thought that the highs would improve some but it was the mids to bass that got better. Go figure.

All the best,
Nonoise
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,581 posts
 
:-)
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,581 posts
 
Just wanted to add to the point that furniture type and placement is so important when dialing in one's system. I just hauled out my Tonian Labs TL-D1s and fired them up (without the oversized sofa) and they sound effing fantastic. There's mass, depth and presence that just wasn't there before, prior to the sofa. If I knew this beforehand, I'd never had moved on to my present speakers (which I still love and am keeping). It's just that one doesn't know what one has until all possibilities are exhausted.

I wish I had a second room for a second system instead of listing them on another site. :-(

All the best,
Nonoise
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