2. speakers
  3. 150303-1627

Swapped long wall to short wall and now I am having some big issues

I have a 14.5 x 27 ft x 8' room (it is narrower at 12 ft (the last 6 ft on the end where I have the speakers)


I had my system aligned on the long wall with the rack in between the speakers.

The speakers were 9' offset from listening position and the side wall were so far away (and had two record cabinets) that they were out of the equation.  I had real traps mondo bass traps in the corners and GIK art panels to handle slap echo.

The sound was excellent - great tonality, dynamics, imaging. The only issues I had were a limited listening area and not back enough for full speaker driver integration.


After listening to a friends system in a 12x23 room - old home with wood construction I was a gasp. His system was short wall and there was great integration with easily 2 rows of 3 people could sit and listen. It was a very relaxing and engaging experience.


Fast forward. I made the move. knocked out a closet in the corner. Removed one of 2 floor to ceiling record racks, a Wurlitzer jukebox, and Victrola.  I placed the equipment racks on the opposite side wall.  The speakers were set up 2 feet from the walls in front of the two corner bass traps. The sound was dreadful.  The once luscious mids were thin and highs (1.2-3khz) were bright and cymbals were brittle, hard strumming acoustic guitars and brass sounded terrible as well.  If the music got dynamic - it sounded terrible.


The vinyl was bad - cd atrocious.


I went ahead and took all the acoustic panels out except the GIK art panels.


I did some research and bought some GIK Impression 2' 2" panels for first reflection  and GIK Impression 1' 4" diffuser/bass panels for the front corners allowing absorption from the back.  This was much better but still way off.  I moved the speakers out from the wall and then the instrument subtle details snapped into place - at 6 ft this was most apparent however it developed a very bloated mid bass.


I am looking for ways to tame the high end and mid bass but bring out the mid range,  I do not want to over treat.

This in incredibly frustrating as I had my sound very refined and the short wall setup should theoretically produced better results.  I would be interested in your comments and suggestions.


Thank You

audiotomb

Showing 2 responses by acresverde

acresverde
403 posts
 
@almarg

I spent over six hours at Tom’s house a couple of nights ago listening to the system. No doubt about it, he has boomy bass and grainy highs that definitely are not part of his former setup. I did not have the benefit of hearing his system’s sound after he installed his new ZYX cart before he moved it from the long wall to its current position. The one conclusion I reached after all this time and that I shared with him is that the anomalies he is experiencing were jumping right off of the skins of the drivers (so to speak) and not the result of room interactions. This very much coincides with your thoughts. I think, when the smoke clears, the culprit will be found lying elsewhere but I certainly could be wrong. Although a pain in the ass to do so, the next step should be to move everything back to the long wall location and see if order is restored. I rather expect it will not be. I have thought long and hard trying to come up with a happenstance that would result in this outcome and have come up dry, especially in light of the fact that it is source nonspecific and Tom informs me his preamp is dual mono and, of course, he’s running monoblocs. Tis a poser, indeed.
acresverde
403 posts
 
@audiotomb     If you can pull off just moving the speakers only back to the long wall I think you'll find the story is told, one way or another, without having to resort to inserting other brands of speakers into the mix. I'm a little dubious as to how much stock you can put into whatever the results of those speaker substitutions might yield considering you don't really have a baseline for what they would sound like normally paired with your associated gear. And, at least with the Salks and their lowish sensitivity, I doubt they'll mate well with your Uesugi EL34 monos, which we did all of our listening through the other night. Just curious...would putting the Daedali back on the long wall entail any changes in cabling from source on through to the speaker cables?
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