Room help
I'm new to this. I have of late been fascinated reading here about the room as one, if not the principal, component of a well tuned audio system. More recently I chanced upon a discussion about irregular rooms perhaps lending towards the best sound.
Well, I have an irregular room. It is approximately 15' x 27' with an 8' ceiling. It has a trapezoidal cross section (sitting on the top floor of my home under the eves), has a dormer and a staircase up from the lower level at one end. At one end the wall is brick and the other three are plaster. Carpeted.
I have my listening area set up on one end of the long axis (oriented transversely along the short axis of the room if that makes sense) . The speakers are 9' apart and 8' from me. Few feet from the front wall. Today I rotated everything 90 degrees so that now the speakers are facing out along the long axis of the room. The speakers are still 9' apart and 8' from me. But the back wall is now some 18' behind me instead of 4'.
The sound is much better. I've been listening for hours (with a pause for food, saying hello to visiting relatives, assuring my wife I'm still alive, and such). More "spacious" is the best word I can use to describe it. The soundstage is bigger.
However, this layout is much less pleasing from an aesthetic standpoint (please don't judge me harshly on this). Soooooo.... my question is: Is there a way to recapture this improvement in some way while maintaining the original orientation of the room (across the short axis of the room)?
Thanks for reading and I eagerly await any responses.
@zazouswing +++, but - - - on the rears. @likat - our room is an almost duplicate of yours, including being upstairs with a staircase at one end. I had 8 foot custom bookshelves made that sit outside the speakers which act as diffusers. Blinds over the window and quilt over the TV. Pulled out the W/W carpet and installed Ultra hard strand bamboo floor about 75% covered with thick wool area rugs. The missus wanted it the other way. She hates saying "You were right" |
@likat , Your problem with the original orientation is that you are sitting way too close to the rear wall. You can try and add a lot of absorption to the rear wall but it will never sound as good as the new orientation. As a rule of thumb you want the listening position in the middle of the room with the speakers in a symmetrical situation. They should either both be next to corners or both along a wall away from corners. Both speakers near corners is better for bass but it puts an early reflection right next to the speaker which should be deadened. All this depends on the type of speaker you are using. I am assuming you are using a point source dynamic loudspeaker and not a panel speaker like a Magnepan. Symmetry is crucially important for stereo systems. Any variation between the two channels blurs the image. Achieving perfect symmetry is not easy. No two speakers of the same make and model are exactly the same. There will be slight variations in frequency response. Add the room and you can get wild variations in frequency response between the two channels. All this can be managed depending on how much money you want to throw at the problem. Getting any system close to perfection requires a measurement system and microphone ($300 at Parts Express) and digital signal processing (another $3000). Trying to do it by "ear" the old fashioned way is like duck hunting with a sling shot. |
You may (or may not) find this helpful. Since Audiogon won't allow links... search "Wilson Speaker Placement" in your preferred browser. Additionally, search "The Four Secrets of Speaker Placement" by Robert Harley, printed in "the abso!ute sound". Last, I greatly respect and appreciate Robert Harley's "The Complete Guide to High-End Audio. It is inexpensive eBooks or Kindle. I think it's a good reference that gets beyond all the personal pontificating often found in forums. 😇 |
@ieales Yes! That looks like my room in cross section, looking down the long axis, except the staircase is behind the system. It does sound much better in this orientation. I am supposing it is because the back wall is so far away. Aesthetically though the set up looks much better when it is oriented perpendicular to the long axis (with the system along the long wall) so I continue to struggle to maximize the sound with this set up. Thank you for the insights! The adjoining room on that floor has been redone with hardwood floors and exposed beams transversely across the ceiling which is about a foot taller. . Built in bookshelves along the long walls. Not a ton else in there. But I have a separate system along the short wall and no matter what combination of things i do there it sounds very good to my ear. I'm getting off my own topic i suppose but I will be having the original room redone in a similar fashion. My theory is that it will actually help me to get the sound I want but I will need to work at dampening the back wall. I'll update if anyone is interested in my journey.
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