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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

128x128audiotomb
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
... that speaker which has one design flaw, it has two tweeters which are too far apart to reproduce the highest frequencies in balance with the rest of the speaker.
Mijostyn, as I mentioned in my previous post I have the same speakers as the OP. I also have a DEQX HDP-5 in my system. When I acquired the DEQX about three years ago, as part of the calibration and correction processes it performs I used it to measure the frequency response of the speakers, with room reflections minimized. I accomplished that by moving each speaker to the center of the room, placing large sound absorbent panels along the nearest walls, and a pillow on the floor directly in front of the speaker being measured. The measurement microphone was placed on a stand, directly in front of and pointed at the tweeters, at distances of 30 and 36 inches (those distances having been chosen per DEQX recommendations, to minimize room reflections that are picked up by the mic, and to delay them as much as possible relative to the sound reaching the mic directly). The HDP-5 puts a lengthy series of brief frequency sweeps through the system, and computes the frequency response and other speaker characteristics by analyzing what the mic picks up.

Those measurements revealed that the greatest response in any part of the audible spectrum occurred at about 18 kHz, and the average response in the top octave (10 to 20 kHz) was slightly greater than the average in the rest of the spectrum.

Also, from a subjective standpoint, in addition to the characteristics the OP mentioned in his post just above Daedalus speakers are widely recognized as being "fast" and dynamic. That would seem to be consistent with my measurements.

Regards,
-- Al



skywachr
123 posts
 
Before you do a lot of radical stuff, try something simple. Here it is. Position your right or left speaker, depending on orientation of the room near a corner as you normally would, preferably elevated. If the first speaker for example is the right, move left in the room from there and skip the corner you come to entirely. Keep moving in that direction until the next corner and place the left speaker there as you would if both speakers were associated with that shared wall. Place your listening position between them approximately on the diagonal of the room. Hope this helps. You may be surprised.
audiotomb's avatar
audiotomb OP
1,112 posts
 

thanks guys


Skywachr - I am not following your test procedure.

Place your right speaker near the wall and play only it - then progressively move it inward toward the left speaker?


acresverde
372 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.
audiotomb's avatar
audiotomb OP
1,112 posts
 

Thanks again Alan for stopping out for a listening session to address the issues.



I just posted my long and short wall room layouts in my system page

to better visualize things


https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/92


I may just place the speakers along the front wall, leave the rack where it is and sit right up next to it for a quick assessment.

I also am going to bring some Salks and Paradigns in to test


as far as the off center arrangement

I could angle the speakers from the front left towards the back right position (will need to move the rack back to the front wall)


Skywachr - with the diagonal setup are you suggesting keeping one speaker in a corner pointing toward the couch then moving the other speaker inward but pointing it down the longest diagonal of the room? Sorry I just am not following. Having both at the same location. Do you have a reference or feel free to PM me.


Thanks


TOm

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