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Speaker Placement - When it's perfect!

So many audiophiles have commented that when your room treatment is completed, your electronics set up and tweaked and most importantly, your speakers are set up in your listening space correctly that you'll know it because everything just sounds so "right" and natural.  I just accomplished that feat in the last two weeks.  I say two weeks because I needed to play a wide variety of recordings to be sure that I'm there.  It is so great to have finally hit just the right set up.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that it has taken me well over a year of experimentation to get to this point.  It's not that other placements yielded poor quality sound its just that now everything sounds like a live event (as much as any of our systems can).

I would really appreciate hearing about your journey to the promised land of audiophile/music lover bliss.  How long did it take, what were the most difficult aspects of the journey?  And if you have yet to get there, what do  you think is the "brick in your wall"?
128x128hifiman5

Showing 8 responses by toddverrone

toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
Hifiman - I also have a basement listening room. I love the quiet of being underground. Mine is a walkout, so I do get some outside noise, but I also get natural light and a door to the outside where I can go light some incense. A fair trade. I definitely noticed how the sound image snapped into focus once I got my toe in correct. I’d never toed my previous speakers in as much as these. But it sounds right.

Now I’m working on the room. I just bought a calibrated mic and have been using REW to take measurements. I’ve definitely found the problem frequencies I was hearing. Now that I have some measurements, it’s time to decide on some bass management..
I can’t wait to hear it when it’s fixed. I remember how good everything above 200Hz sounded when I sorted out absorption in that range.
But bass seems more difficult
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
@willemj - hey, thanks. I’m aware that bass management methods are far different than simple higher frequency scattering/absorption, but I appreciate the feedback, especially delivered in a friendly recommendation.

I’m trying to decide between bass panels or slack membrane absorbers. Any recommendations?

Funnily enough, @geoffkait , I recently moved an orange tree back into my listening room after it was outside all summer. I’ve been having boomy bass issues and have some measurements showing me the frequencies that are not decaying fast enough. After I moved the orange tree inside, the bass issues are reduced by a significant amount. Decay times and volumes of spikes are greatly reduced.

Plant power! This tree is helping my sound...
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
@geoffkait it sounds great so far. Plants and I get along. 😉
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
Well, the plant may not be a good bass absorber, but the giant pot it's in, full of wet soil and placed in a corner is probably where I'm getting the bass absorption. Or super strong expectation bias. 😁

I have my measurements and they show a significant drop in bass decay time on a waterfall plot. And I have my ears.
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
@stfoth   peace lilies are easy to care for.. they go limp when they need water, you water them, they perk back up. Not sure they’d be in a big enough pot to absorb much bass. I kinda lucked out with the orange tree.

@geoffkait I’m open to the possibility that the plant will affect sound in ways that aren’t instantly obvious, but right now I haven’t noticed a degradation in sound. In fact, the opposite. But that is definitely from the bass absorption
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
@kalali - ha! Yeah, I'm aware and am researching bass traps at the moment. It's just that I recently bought a measurement mic, so I can finally see what frequencies I'm having booming bass problems with. And it's getting colder, so it was time to bring the orange tree in.. I just didn't think that the potted plant would almost cure my bass issues.

I'm thinking of building a slack membrane bass trap, as it seems I can make it reasonably small as long as I can find a very dense membrane. So, we'll see where this goes..
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
@geoffkait you could hire yogis to do yoga asanas in the corner. We can measure the absorptive properties of each asana and then tailor them accordingly. A headstand over behind the speakers, a nice corpse pose in front of the speakers to absorb floor reflections.. 
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
Helmholtz resonators are too narrow in their frequency band. I need 20-200 Hz absorbed.

No worries about the God particles, I'm agnostic. They leave me alone
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