Talk but not walk?

The best sound and best stereo imaging will occur for the case when the most diffuse sound is obtained using the out of phase track. Assuming your system is in Correct Polarity to begin with. See last sentence. You should hear the sound coming from all around you, from no particular direction. When you get as close as possible to that situation with the system out of phase, after carefully moving the speakers a little at a time from an initial position about 4 feet apart, that’s where the absolute best speaker locations will be. Of course the out of phase track will also highlight whether your system is in correct or reverse Polarity, also nice to know.

However, it might very well not be possible to obtain this magical case where the sound is coming at you equally from all directions, no matter where the speakers are. That’s because the room is not treated enough or not treated correctly. Fortunately, the out of phase track allows one to redo room treatments, as required, to have better success with the out of phase track.

It’s a fluid situation in the room. The whole dynamics of speaker locations, listener position, the size and shape of the room and type and number of room treatments, among other variables, combine to determine the sound quality, all other things being equal. But as I pointed out in my last post, all this *uncertainty* changes when you employ the speaker set-up track on the XLO Test CD or similar Test CD. Using your own ears - move a little/listen a little - to try and find optimum speaker locations is bound to fail. You might find locations that you deem better than when you started but they won’t be the very best locations. There are a million possibilities. People get it into their heads that speakers should be far apart for a wider soundstage and toed in toward the listener. You will discover when using the Test CD that is actually not the case at all. Generally, most speakers should be closer together rather than far apart.

In any case, for those who experiment with room treatment and other tweaks like vibration isolation, etc., you need to re-visit the speaker set up track *every time* to add or change room treatments or tweaks. Otherwise, things can easily get out of control. Complexity is not your friend. In fact, the best course of action - remove all room treatments from the room, and using the out-of-phase track as a guide, slowly introduce the room treatments back into the system, moving the speakers as required to get the best results from the out-of-phase track. Then, placement of diffusers, absorbers, Helmholtz resonators, tiny bowl resonators, crystals, what have you, is a snap.

It also helps to have a SPL lever meter and test frequency track on hand to be able to map out the 3 dimensional space of the room to get a handle on where room treatments should be placed initially. For example, Tube Traps are sometimes best when placed a foot or two *away* from the room corner. It depends on where the standing wave sets up in a given room. There’s also the empty box trick for locating standing waves and similar sound pressure peaks in the room that can be employed.

Q - Mr. Dylan, why did you go from playing protest songs to playing folk rock?

Dylan - I don’t play folk rock.

Q - How would you describe your music?

Dylan - I’d call it mathematical music.

Corners are interesting. If you ever map out the room for sound pressure peaks, I.e., reflection points, echo locations, standing waves, etc. what you’ll find is that corners are where very high pressure standing waves set up. Using a SPL meter and test frequency generator what you’ll discover is sound pressure levels in room corners are often 6dB or more than the average sound pressure level in the room.

Mr. Jones was a pinboy. Who would have guessed?

barbr555
HEA forums are no different from other online places where the exchange of ideas and learning e.g. astrophotography, photography, etc. the participants generally loose focus...

>>>>>>....astrophotography, photography, etc. the participants generally loose (sic) focus. Good one! 🤡

Happy Thanksgiving, Michael! 🐈🐈🐈🐈

Thank you mask man!

Lizzie would welcome you back too, I’m not 100% but it appears her self-destruct button blew itself up. Anyway, huggies from Lizzie in anesthesia, I mean abstensia.