Sound is better when I stand up?

Does the chair have a headrest?

holmz no headrest, but it is a wingback. I wonder if that’s an issue

@simao
What is a wingback?
Is there a image of the model of chair?
(If there is some place for sound to bounce off of it can cause a problem.)

Have you tried a simpler chair, like a dining room chain, in the listening position?

Try standing up and moving rearwards so that your back is against the back wall… Does it also sound similar to the sound in the chair?

Why is this? No matter my listening room (large basement with 7 1/2 foot ceilings or small office with 8’ ceilings), the sound is more open and more spacious when I stand up from my listening chair. When I sit, the sound compresses a bit. Sitting, the tweeters are about 5-6" above my ear level. Should I angle the speakers down?

My chair is at the apex of the .83 ratio Jim Smith suggests for getting better sound. I'm about 3' from the back wall and my standmount speakers are 3' from the front wall. 

What acoustics are responsible for this?

Well @simao we have “solution bukake” (SB) where everyone is throwing out an answer as the solution to the problem…

You probably want a UMIK and REW to do some measurements.

On the “other hand”, your ears hear it, so you need to determine if it is the speakers throwing a high pattern, or a cancelation from the chair, or something else.

Salmon Rushdie’s winged horse in his book “Satanic Verses”, attracted a fatwa against him.
I would bet your winged chair is attack against the ears, but I could be wrong.

 

holmz Ahhhh. Haven’t joined Audiogon and bukake in quite some time. Thanks for the reminder.

I cannot think of a better term for loads of advice thrown out in a seemingly random fashion, mostly to make the person offering advice to feel good, rather than helping the person who asked the question.

So - the culprit was my wingback! The two wings and its low seating profile managed to smear the sound. On the advice from @elliottbnewcombjr I temporarily replaced the wingback with a straightback that also seated higher and it made all the difference -- sounstage opened up; instrumentation much more 3D than before.

Which sucks as my wingback is really comfortable! I put four sections of 2x4 beneath each leg to get equal with the tweeters, but that helped only so much.

Still, this will be a cheaper solution than almost any audio addition I can think of!

I would love to see a visual map of the soundwaves and how the wingback blocked or did something else to them.

It is probably 3-4” inches from the back of the headrest to the ears, so the reflection will be 180 degrees out for a 1’ wavelength (~1000 Hz), and there will be risings modes up and down at the harmonics. That is about 0.5 milliseconds of delay.

It is called a comb filter.

A fluffy towel on the headrest should help a bit. But a shorter chair back is better.

Let’s review this:

you need the speakers custom tuned so that they sound brilliant when youre sitting down rather than standing up. Nothing to do with acoustics. Its the speaker crossovers need retuning

Notice the use of a chair without wings:

simao    

I note you have removed the toe-in.  This is the purist position.  If the production was classic then there was a spaced pair of dipole microphones in front of the musicians.  If you don't toe-in you are hearing what the mics heard.  If you toe-in, the image of the sound will be spread outwards. A 'hole' may appear in the centre.

Speaker toe-in and listening distance are of course related.  Less toe-in is has a similar effect to listening from further away…

I think that another school of thought is as the room get brighter in reflections, one may also chooser to toe them in.
Particularly if the speakers have a narrower radiation pattern.
If they are super wide, then the toe doesn’t matter at all.
But sometimes if they are bright, then toeing them out can reduce the direct SPL.

There is nothing seemingly pure or impure about it.
I thought it is like a tone control to tailor the speakers bespoke to the room the speakers are in.

If one like films, then later in Jan in the PSFF, and that and their summer film festival are both good for film loving types.

We wing back, winged horses, and now a winged plane.
What is next? Paul McCartney and wings?

All crickets, all the time.

Especially at this time of year there is a famous Aussie dessert that usually starts to make an appearance.

https://www.food.com/recipe/sticky-date-pudding-with-caramel-sauce-40187

It is “solution” @asvjerry - As in everyone chucking out multitudes of ideas to try and solve the problem. (Hence it is a shower of things and ideas in “solution space”.)
Maybe I should have said it is like playing pin the tail on the donkey? (Where we blindly take a stab at it?)
But I like analogies which paint a sort visual description, and i am a visual learner.

In any case I figured it was a head rest of sorts.
And certainly much easier than a new set of speakers that waver the sound opposite of the comb that the chair provides.

But in theory one could use a DSP and inverse comb the FR to make it flat in the chair… If the OP had a DAC with a parametric EQ it should be relatively easy to try… that would be a pretty cool thing to take a crack at IMO.

How is NC at this time of year?
The relatives will be going from near you, up to the VB area around thanksgiving.
Enjoy the fall.

tom_guyette it would be the latter. It's plush and upholstered which means I'm definitely, according to your observations, getting some absorption mids and highs

Ah… no.
(He is saying the opposite.)

The sound hits your ears first.
Then it bounces back off the wingback and splashes back adding to the next wave(s) of sound coming directly to the ears from the speaker.

It should sound similar to standing with your back against the wall.

As the chair’s headrest becomes more and more plush and absorptive… it should become more and more like no headrest. And if it was a wood or leather headrest then it gets worse and worse becoming more like standing with the back against the wall

Just try the “back to the wall” and then try the chair.
And try the chair with a sheepskin or blanket on it. Or even a hard plastic cover.

There should be changes… I would think.

But plushness will not do much at all as the frequency gets lower, unless the headrest is like a transparent net. 

Those are my thoughts anyway. Compare to your situation, run some experiments changing the area behind your head with the wing back, and a sense of what's going on could become apparent. 

+1

I know halloween is over, but this headgear should make the ”standing up sound”, and the “seated sound”… a bit more similar.

holmz 

 

I think you have it… tilt that back a bit and it really improve the sound at the seated position. 

The chair does that already, the headgear is to replicate the chair when standing. And gets better and closer as the angels angles get steeper.

@coppy777 Good point. When I had my listening room downstairs (see my virtual system), I placed section of 2x4s beneath each leg of my loveseat. It made all the difference

Tilting the speakers might also have worked…
But sometimes those chairs are a bit low, lifting them makes it easier to get up.

We have some noce mid century modern ones that a comfy, but feeling like one is a “dog with worms” being so close to the floor, and a bit of a knee killer getting out of.