Seeking more 3d imaging, deeper/wider soundstage
No matter what kind of equipment you have the image and sound stage is going to be determined by interconnects and speaker cable. I first learned this as a dealer and couldn't figure out why the imaging was limited on a seriously high end system. It didn't seem to matter whether I was using $10k preamps and $20k amps, solid state or tubes. Yes with mediocre cable there will be improvements with better components, but nothing like you would get if the cable were top notch. When I say better cable I don't necessarily mean more expensive, my best cable finds have not been the most expensive, not cheat but definitely not the most expensive brands. If you haven't progressed cable to where you aren't getting improvements with better ones you are wasting your money on components. |
I have the Focal 926. They are wire out of phase. The woofers move in instead of out. Sounds terrible. Have to reverse wire. The whole Focal factory is on vacation for the summer. Needless to say thats an avoid. They are power hungry. You need to really crank it before they sound good. Unfortunately you don't always want to be at 100db. |
One last update. I went to Gold Sound in Littleton, and the owner treated me really well. We auditioned Wild Beasts' "Palace" and Peter Gabriel's "Don't give up" on three systems using Focal Aria 926 floorstanders, Cambridge Audio ICs and Kimber Kable speaker cable: #1 - All Parasound, P5+A21 #2 - Dared Saturn SET amp, 20w class A #3 - Parasound P5+PrimaLuna Prologue tube amp #1 and #2 both sounded great. #3 was auditioned right after the Dared, and the soundstage compressed in depth, even got a little "steel-y." This lends weight to the recommendations of tube-pre with a solid state amp, instead of vice versa. The biggest difference between #1 and #2 was the depth of the soundstage increased a little with the Dared. Sounded more spherical than rectangular, I guess. Also, the Dared is $2200, the Parasound stack is $3600. It was a fun visit. |
Check out audiokinesis (http://www.audiokinesis.com) Duke makes very affordable speakers that are also easy to drive and very musical. |
Thanks Atmasphere. I was considering Focal's new Aria 926 (entry level floorstander) as a replacement for my Quad's, I'd always heard Focal's products were super efficient, but this is what I found on their site: Sensitivity 2.83v/1m 91.5dB Impedance 8 Ohms nominal, *2.9 Ohms minimum* You have to go to the 906 bookshelf in the Aria line or the Chorus 816v floorstander to get impedance curves that don't go below 4 Ohms. This makes the Focals look power hungry to me, considering everything I've read... |
A bit of an update my my Quad 22L2's specs, I find the manufacturer's information lacking and went hunting on the internet, there seems to be a consensus to the following: Sensitivity: 89 db/1 W/1 m Nominal impedance: 6 ohms Impedance peaks: 60-70 Hz 17 ohms; 1-2 Khz 19 ohms Impedance dips: 80-300 Hz 4 ohms; 6-15 Khz 4 ohms Just FYI, folks... |
Well Saki maybe I should take a wall down. That has a very low WAF, I can guarantee you...I've already brought it up a couple of times...the previous owner finished out the basement in a a very inefficient way. He put the bathroom right in the middle, assuring that the rest of the rooms could only be square and small or long and narrow. Grr. Bobnegi, thanks, I did get a little hot after being told to "settle down." I've been reading a lot of tubes vs solid state threads, and nerves get stretched pretty taught on those. I'm thinking of starting one, but I don't know... |
Minorl - a few quick ones that are in constant rotation on my system, I doubt many here have heard of these artists (mostly ambient and IDM here, be warned): "Tesseract Redux" from Coppice Halifax's Outward residence "Devil and the Deed" from Yeasayer's Fragrant World "Terraforming" from Hans Zimmer's Man of Steel soundtrack "Numb" from Andy Stott's Luxury Problems "Bardo Thodol" from Demdike Stare's Tryptych (Disc 2) "Place Gun To Head Airlines" From Proem's You Shall Have Ever Been (Disc 2) "Lawk" from Funkarma's Solid State |
Tboooe - I'm in NY. I didn't put anything on the ceiling as I thought it would deaden the room way too much. Right now, I have the non - fatiguing sound I want, with just a bit of liveliness. Also, toeing in my speakers essentially eliminated certain ceiling reflections. As for a rug, I have wall to wall carpeting, so the floor is taken care of. |
Atmasphere, The right speaker was out of place because of several re-alignments due to impromptu visits from friends, auditioning Sky ICs vs my current King Cobras. I re-positioned the speakers last Sat night, using a tape measure from the seating position and side/back walls, and this was previous to the phase experiments. Imaging improved, and the late-night phase swaps tell me that when I had the speakers on the long wall earlier this year, they were hooked up out-of-phase. Having moved them months ago to the short wall to get better distance from the speakers, the hook up was phase-correct, so I was hearing a totally different (...and correct) soundstage compared to the previous setup. Even with all these improvements, the image still hovers around the speakers, it's wide but there is not much depth to it. Future experiments will include both sound treatments *and equipment upgrades*...my timelines are measured in months and years, not days and weeks, gentlemen. |
Rlb61, thank you. So your room is a lot like mine except the ceiling and opening behind the listening position of my room. given your ceiling height did you consider any panels up there? What about your floor? Do you use a rug? BTW, are you on the west coast? Its still kind of early out here. I am in Socal. |
Tboooe - I have 4 tri-traps (2 on each front corner stacked floor to ceiling), 2 244s (one behind each speaker), 1 Monster Bass Trap directly behind my listening chair, and 4 spot panels (2 on each wall) to hit first reflection points. Having a crappy, square room with an alcove right behind the listening position sucked big time ... but the GIK products have fixed that essentially, and I am quite pleased with the sound. |
Rlb61, I agree with you about Vicoustic and bass trapping which is why I dont use them for that purpose. I am considering RealTraps or GIK now. My room is very similar in dimension to your except that my ceiling is 9 ft and the wall behind the listening position is open to the family room and kitchen. What other treatments do you have? After bass trapping I am going to treat the first reflection points on the side and the ceiling with Vicoustic Cinema Round panels. |
The problem for me with the Vicoustics product is that foam does not work very well for bass trapping. It looks great, but great "sound" is more important to me. After much research based on price, quality, and effectiveness, I determined that GIK was best for my needs. I am very happy with my choice and recommend GIK highly. I, too, thought that it was difficult to get room treatment "right," particularly in a room with crappy dimensions of 10x10x8. It CAN be done with proper guidance. I have no affiliation with GIK, I am just a very satisfied customer, and am grateful that I did not have to spend mega bucks to achieve the wonderful sound I have currently. That being said, room treatment is not a panacea, and it may wind up that new equipment is in your future ... as someone who had a Rotel amp briefly, I can tell you that I found it grainy and unmusical. That's why I had it briefly. However, I think that room treatment is essential regardless of equipment ... Even the best, most expensive equipment, can sound like crap in a poorly treated or untreated room. Just go to a major audio show held in a bunch of hotel rooms and hear for yourself. |
Minorl: I think I understand the context of your request for titles of 'reference' recordings but I'd like to offer a slightly different perspective, FWIW. After years in what I would call an 'audiophile bubble,' listening to records that sounded good on my system, I decided to spend time and money on the best pressings of music i liked and wanted to listen to, rather than stuff that 'played the system best.' Granted, not all of these are sonic spectaculars, but, once your system is sorted, room, power, etc. (and it appears you have a pretty good system), so much comes down to the source material. In some cases, it is remasters, but in many, many cases, I'm listening to old records, particularly those made in the 60's and 70's. And, while the results are uneven, because not all of the music I like was well recorded in the first place, I'm really enjoying music, rather than focusing on how the system sounds. I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't include a couple of things (having no idea how the digital releases of these compare), but on vinyl: Shelby Lynne -Just a Little Lovin' -Chad's re-do, not the standard issue. A sonic confection, thank Phil Ramone. Janis Ian- Between the Lines- standard issue Columbia from the mid-70's; don't bother with the 180gram reissue- it doesn't sound as good as the record you can find in a bin for 5 bucks; Hoodoo Man Blues- Chad's 45 cut, particularly "In the Wee Hours." You'll probably smell the cigarette smoke from the club like setting of this classic blues record. Little Feat, Waiting for Columbus- just find a TML pressing and listen to the side with Dixie Chicken. I could go on, but you get the idea. None of these are obscure, or particularly expensive on vinyl. |
To everyone: thanks for the posts. And I'd like to note what I've taken from this thread: room treatments and speaker positioning were mentioned up front, the positioning is something I've toyed with and will continue to toy with, and the room treatments aren't up yet but I'll report back when they are. Don't discount the equipment suggestions, I've written that I want to try tubes and I cannot do that without some brand knowledge, I am well-researched in the world of solid state, but not tubes. I need manufacturer suggestions that have a record of great 3d sound and reliability. All of the room treatments and speaker positioning will only get me so far, I know this, and I was able to fix some things with speaker adjustments of scant inches, which surprised me. But I still won't get to audio Nirvana with the Rotel, and maybe not the Halo P3 either. I've had the power amp for 4-5 years and I'm itching for an upgrade. I want to purchase something that will take the sound in the correct direction. Sheesh this post is getting longer than I thought it would be. Thanks to Atma Sphere for the phasing thing, I had the system hooked up wrong previously and now I know what was going on. I'm STILL going to upgrade the amp or the pre or both! Maybe not soon, but it will happen...Thanks again everyone. |
Realrmo, you need to settle down and wait patently for your room treatments to show up from Foam Factory, it took about a month for mine to arrive. Don't be spending money before you get to play around with the treatments, I found them to solve most of my issues. Noone has mentioned the golden ratio...listening position should be equal distance from the speakers (equalaterial triangle I beleive is the math term for it) I also have found for some reason that upgrading the amp power cord widened the soundstage, and also made it deeper, don't ask me, I cannot explain it in any terms that would sound scientific. I have a Parsaound 7100 processor with Focal Profile 938 and it was a wonderful wide soundstage (I recall you were considering the Focal) |
Before you go out and spend $$ on replacing equipment, give some consideration to room treatment. I was going to replace my beloved B&W N804s because they were sounding harsh in my new, but small listening room. It was extremely frustrating since they sounded great in my old, larger room. As a last ditch effort, I figured it coukd be the room itself. So, I called GIK Acoustics and sent them pictures of my room. As it turns out, room reflections were the source of the problem. For a little over $1K, I was able to get great sound and not spend a sh*tload of $$ on new equipment. Treating your room is AS important as the components you use. Trust me on this one. |
All my brain tissue and nerve endings tell me that when I am at a live music venue that I don't see and hear the depth of field that sometimes is played back in my home. With all my latest devices and resonance grounding methods I see and hear a giant sound stage in fact sometimes I am inside the shroud of music. I can see the other side and sometimes I hear a layer of depth but I cannot remember hearing depth at any live event unless I was walking thru an access tunnel or in a seat that I wish I wasn't. Tom |
I hope everyone is appreciating what happened here. The original was what could improve soundstage/imaging more. Shortly thereafter were many suggestions for room correction and reposititioning the speakers. To me, this should have been the first things done. My opinion is to avoid spending money and try to fix the problem by trying solutions that may actually center around room and speaker placement. However, I did notice many posts suggesting replacement of equipment. I see that often and find it very curious. Upgrade your equipment first. Why? I do know that eventually one reaches a level of refinement in sound reproduction that can only be exceeded by better equipment. But, that should'nt be the first level necessary to achieve what the original member wanted fixed. how many times have we had a simple problem to fix and someone suggested spending ungodly sums of money to fix it, when a more simple less expensive (or no cost) alternative existed? Some speakers are so directional that small adjustments in position will result in major changes in dimentionality, sound stage and imaging. Leave the speakers where they were and upgrade to much "better" more expensive equipment and guess what? The imaging and sound stage will still be off. And then you'll have a really pissed off member that came out of pocket unnecessarily. Atmasphere's suggetion was spot on. No cost and actually fixed the problem. This level of correspondence went from speaker placement, to new more expensive equipment, including the age old tube vs solid state undying discussion, to insults and finally to phase correction. Wow! I have to tell you I found the many responses very interesting, technically speaking. The insults back and forth were totally unnecessary. But many totally ignored the original problem as described by the OP. I like that there exist people like Atmasphere, Mapman and others, including Bo1972 that actually came up with viable suggestions. Again, the insults I could do without. But arguments are a two way street. One cannot argue by him/her self. Well, they could but it would be really strange. Also, initially, I didn't interprete Bo1972's posts to be insulting at all. When some did interprete them that way and went after him, that is when it got really ugly. I would like to see one thing in analysis of systems and sound. We speak much about dimensionality, imaging, 3d effect, etc. I would like to see a list of recordings that eveyone agrees exhibit those qualities and therefore, when one does not hear those qualities when being played back on their system, we have a reference to determine if it is the recording or the equipment or even speaker placement or phasing. Realremo stated that he/she possessed recordings that demonstrated those qualities. Would you be so kind as to list a few? I would very much like to experiement to see if I can hear those on my system. I'm finding that many of my digital recordings played back on my system lack real dimensionality. It has been a gradual lessening, but I am noticing it. I'm not really happy with my Audio Research PH5 phono stage and therefore, record playback isn't making me smile as it used to. I think an upgrade to a better phono stage is in the works. However, what digital recording can one offer that has good dimensionality and imaging? I think I do need some good reference material to start with. Thank all, and do enjoy |
Bo1972 has been conspicuously absent from Audiogon. I hope he is ok and not just sitting in the corner of a room in self imposed exile upon discovering that he he arrogantly scolded a world class audio designer by accident. Bo, show some character and post your apology to Atmasphere. Sure, your carefully fabricated expertise on all things audio has taken a hit in this community but running away from your mistake isnt the way to restore it. Simply say you were wrong, everyone will say "cool" and then you can go back to posting positive reviews of products you sell without full disclosure. |
Having one speaker out of phase with the other will result in loss of soundstage, poor center fill, reduced bass and overall lack of dynamic punch as the speakers are literally fighting each other. If you hook one speaker up out of phase, the more phase linear your equipment is, the more the sounds will sit in the speakers. The center will be very diffuse. Some equipment that struggles with phase shift problems will give you some very odd effects when you put one channel out of phase. To get low phase shift the equipment has to have wide bandwidth. Our ears don't hear phase shift at all with a single tone, but they can detect phase shift problems over a band of frequencies. If your equipment has low phase shift, you will get a better soundstage as a lot of the soundstage information is presented in the form of shifted phases at various frequencies depending on the room in which the recording was made. Sometimes bass is tricky to hear on some systems so to test for phasing I select a recording that has a vocalist positioned dead center in the recording. Then I can listen for bass and center-fill. |
So interesting things happened last night. I found the right speaker was out of position a few inches, so I fiddled with it using a tape measure. Now I have both of them about 28 inches from the back and side walls. There is about 6 feet between them and I sit 8 feet from either speaker. Imaging returned, soundstage grew in width and height, but still hovers around the speakers. I listened for about 2 hours, enjoying the improvement my tweaks gave, then I tried inverting the phase on the left speaker. The soundstage wrapped around my left shoulder and behind me. I was pretty stunned at the difference this made. Later I listened with only the right speaker out of phase, the center of the image traveled out from between the speakers and sat just right of center in the room. I used to have my system on the long wall of the room, I swapped it to the short wall earlier this year, to get a little more distance between the listening position and the speakers. The imaging and soundstage I had on the long wall was lost. I have been chasing that sound ever since, I think now I know that one speaker was hooked up out of phase on the long wall, accidentally. This actually sounds really nice for certain electronic music, but it makes tracks with vocals sound a little strange. Haven't tried classical with this yet. So, no one hooks up one speaker out of phase on purpose, do they? This is an incorrect hook-up, right? |
Realremo, to check to see if your speakers are in phase, you simply reverse the connections on the back of **one speaker only** - not both. If this works, you will immediately notice greater center fill and sharp images between the speakers. If it does not work, the images will become more diffuse. Regarding tube equipment reliability: tube amps and preamps are usually fairly reliable- some more so than transistor equipment- it depends a lot on the manufacturer. The issue is the tubes themselves, which are considered user-replaceable, which is why they are in sockets. When a tube goes bad, quite often it will tell you about itself :) So you don't have to send the product somewhere to get serviced, you simply replace the tube and you are down the road. If it were any other way it would not be possible for tube equipment manufacturers to be in business for decades at a time! Its important to distinguish between the reliability of the chassis as opposed to that of the tubes. For example in our amplifiers if a tube fails it will not damage the amplifier (although it could blow a fuse); our amps are stable enough that I have a demonstration I do at audio shows where I remove power tubes from the amp while it is playing music. You don't hear any change- the amp continues to play as if nothing happened. Now not all tube amps are like that but OTOH its not really important- they will hold up just fine, hence the existence of used tube amps that are heavily sought after 50 years after they were made!! IOW don't worry about the reliability. Right now it seems you have bigger fish to fry. Keep us informed of your progress. |
Realremo - Atmasphere's comment related to the speakers themselves being out of phase not the musical signal itself. Make sure the + and - from the power amp goes to the + and - to the speakers. If one is incorrect, then the images will be outside of the speakers rather then in between them. Concerning the signal itself being inverted, you could resolve this by inverting the speaker cables at both speakers .but I don't think you will notice much here. I had a DAC with an invert switch and I could flip it again and again and no way would I ever pass a blind test that anything was changing. Concerning repair of vintage electronics, there are such repair places all over the country. And people here would be able to point you in the right place with a simple query. Some of the companies in my list, CJ, BAT are still in business. Tubegroover - You will notice that I had no ARC products in my list. And this is because, for me anyway, the ARC magic starts with the SP-8, and this typically sells in the $1500-1900 range which is outside of the budget here. |
I think my DAC actually inverts phase, I think I read that somewhere. So to invert phase - I swap the output cables coming out of the DAC, right? Or do I swap the speaker cables at the speaker end? Or does it matter? My only concern with vintage tube gear is maintenance. Where can I get that stuff serviced? I am interested enough in tubes to definitely try them. I have a lot of research to do to familiarize myself with the different brands. @ Raymonda: Wild Beasts, Proem, Coldplay, Bola, Coppice Halifax, Muslimgauze, Fuck Buttons, Miles' Birth of the Cool, Yeasayer, Demdike Stare, Andy Stott, The Berlin Philharmonic's recording of Holst's Planets, Amon Tobin, Haxon Cloak, various Beethoven symphonies conducted by Karajan, James Blake, numerous Hans Zimmer soundtracks, Moderat, Om, Love and Rockets and even Vampire Weekend, I consider all of these to be high-quality level recordings or artists who produce them. |
Jafox great recommendations for preamps on a budget! You are absolutely right I'm sure many of the vintage tube pres from ARC, CJ maybe even an older CAT would be a great alternative to many of the current budget alternatives. It this turns out to be the issue. Something to consider Realremo. Life is short and any audiophile or music lover should at least TRY some manner of tube product before the inevitable. A vintage tube pre-amp is a no brainer. Almost impossible to lose on and better than ANY of the cheap alternative options within your budget. Oh that Luminescence is a nice piece of gear for sure! |
Tom, I kind of enjoy waiting for the next pronouncement from Bo....I just sit back amazed that some things are actually considered by some people to be normal behavior. He actually thinks he's being profound in each of his posts although I also point out that there are certain unexplainable things that just occur in nature with no logical explanation. Bo may be single handedly killing the bricks and mortar business model in his homeland. I'll bet if he went back and researched his sales volumes, there would be sales spikes that perfectly correlate with his absence on those days. I'm sure Bo means well but his abject arrogance ticks me off. Until Bo apoligizes to Atmasphere for Bo's completely idiotic dismissal of Atmasphere's earlier advice in this thread to the original poster, I plan on calling his BS on everything however if he accidentally provides some amazing piece of insight, I will give credit where credit is due. I'm not holding my breath. |
