Where 2 sit audio quiz

Have I missed something? I looked at your calculations and on the surface C sounds best but for what purpose I don't know. Your speakers could be placed in the center of the room immediatly adjacent to each other and actually sound (in audiophile terms) like crap. Why not give us the dimensions of your room and the physical location of the speakers so we can make meaningful comments. Re the bass - I think C is misleading - I think your low bass in C is nothing more than a room node and A may be in a bit of a suck out. PS I always fail tests.

Rooze: I would not insert a resistor into the tweeter section until you address the primary points of reflection. If you do that and things are still too "hot" sounding, then go the resistor approach.

As far as bass goes, Newbee has a point. That is, you need to configure the speakers AND your seated listening position taking room nodes into account. Getting the speakers positioned is one thing but then throwing that away with a poor listening position is all too common. Anybody that thinks that you can't take the room into account and obtain optimum results is fooling themselves.

Having said that, diffusion / diffraction is typically only good at mid to higher frequencies. Bass is a completely different animal and far trickier to work with. I can't really make suggestions based on the information that i have here. The one suggestion that i would make would be to pick up some books on acoustics and read, read, read.

Newbee: Your comments about room nodes is kind of "there, but not there". Everything that you hear is a combo of directly radiated sound and reflections / room nodes. There is no way to avoid this so the smart people learn how to tame and / or incorporate them into the response that you hear at the seated listening position. It is impossible to achieve linear response at multiple positions spread over a wide area.

Rives: I can't agree with your comments regarding rooms not really affecting anything above appr 500 Hz or so. The measurements that Rooze provided support my beliefs and experiences. While a lot of this will vary from room to room and speaker to speaker, making such a "generic" statement put you out on a limb. Luckily, i have a saw and a ladder and i'm going to get you down from there : )

Let's look at the variances above the cut-off frequency that you mentioned i.e. 500 Hz. Cutting you some slack, we'll double that and look at 1 KHz and above. I'll list the center frequency and the amount of variance from the highest reading to the lowest reading. This will demonstrate how much room loading can affect the sonic perspective at these frequencies.

1KHz - 13 dB's variance

1.25 KHZ - 9 dB's variance

1.6 KHz - 11 dB's

2 KHz - 6 dB's

2.5 KHz - 5 dB's

3.15 KHz - 5 dB's

4 KHz - 5 dB's

5 KHz - 10 dB's

6.3 KHz - 5 dB's

8 KHz - 10 dB's

10 KHz - 7 dB's

12.5 KHz - 6 dB's

As one can see, there are major divergences depending on room nodes / reflections regardless of frequency. To be fair to Rives, much of this has to do with the type of speakers being used. While Maggie's are not "oddball" or uncommon speakers, they do present a very different type of installation challenge than what most "front firing boxes" would. As such, one can not make sweeping generalizations without expecting some type of variance from installation to installation. Since i have every type of speaker known to man ( large towers, dipole's, omni's, mini-monitors and horns ), it is easy to see why i might have the outlook that i do whereas Rives has probably worked with more conventional designs most of the time.

As a side note, this is the reason that i don't respond to a lot of threads i.e. too much room for interpretation due to variables and not enough information presented. On top of that, i hope that some folks realize that "spec's" can be interpreted usefully. That is, IF one knows how to understand the data provided and that data was obtained in an accurate manner.

Having said that, i worked with the information presented here. I took into into consideration that the speakers are where they are and that Rooze has ( hopefully ) done his best to get them in the right spot. If such is not the case, then speaker placement should be done first and then one can calculate proper placement for room treatments from there. Not all rooms should be treated identically or following set formulas as the radiation pattern of the speakers to be used will alter what is required. As such, you can set up a room for one set of speakers and end up requiring a different configuration when you change speakers. Sean
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Rives, thanks, I've seen your site and tried the simulator, but I can't get my room dimensions keyed in, as the max width on your simulator is 10m and my room is 15m wide.

Newbee....my room is 45'X 28'. The speakers are 12' apart, 7.5' from the front wall and toed in slightly. I have some restrictions on where the speakers can go. They can't go closer than 18" to the front wall, and can come out into the room past 9' due to the proximity of a staircase. The closest possible listening position is at the 12' point, and the 20.5' position represents the farthest distance, being up against the back wall. The seat can go anywhere between the 12 and 20.5'....Though 12 is a little close due to the staircase and WAF.
There is an 'unreal' change in sound pressure as I walk between the 12 and 20'. At the 16-17' point, the spl just drops way down, and the low frequencies almost dissapear, then it just pops right back in there around the 19-20' area. I'm not really familiar with the term suck-out, though I guess that's what I'm experiencing in the 16-17' area.
To give some more information....the points ABC on the chart are actually A=12' B=17' and C=20.5'
I was amazed that the SPL could be significantly higher at 20.5' than at 17'.
As Sean stated, the best sonics would appear to be at the 20.5 position, given the apparent smoother low frequency extension. In practice, the sound is much better at point C (20') than at point B (17'). But at point A(12') the presentation is completely different than that at point C, even though the frequency/spl readings are quite similar.

There are obviously points in between the 3 positions that are possible, but only really at +/- 12" or so from the 12/17/20.5 points.

Anyway, it's been an interesting experiment for me. Right now I have the seat at the 20.5 position. I'm enjoying the
presentation of orchestral music and some big band stuff.
When I play more 'intimate' music like Diana Krall Live in Paris, or the Sting Live CD, I wish I were back at the 12' point for that enveloping soundfield effect!!...maybe I should install tram-tracks or something.

Anyway, when I moved to this bigger place and splurged on new 'bigger' sounding equipment, I never knew there was going to be so much involved. I wish I could afford to pay for the services of a pro installer who could perhaps get me at the 14-15' point by using acoustic treatments.

What do you think Rives?....I'm 12 miles from the Packer Stadium...I could get you tickets to watch some real Football, and you could fix up my room!...seems like a fair trade!

Rooze

Sean, sorry I just posted my last response as you were writing yours, so didn't see/comment on your last observations. What you say makes good sense, particularly that most of the issues concern higher frequency brightness and sibilance effects.
I'm intrigued to understand more as to what is causing the drop in SPL at the midway (17') point. Could it be that the 17' point is actually the more neutral place and therefore the 'best' place sonically?....perhaps what I'm hearing at the 12 and 20' points is 'boom' and 'refelections' for want of better terms. The sound is good at the 17 point, but just isn't warm enough with the absence of the lower frequencies...
Believe me when I say that as far as trial and error goes, I've worked bloody hard sliding those blasted marble slabs around!....I think where the speakers are now gives me the best low frequency extension and depending on the final choice of listening position, either a wide open soundstage (far position), or an envelopling, detailed and intimate sounding presentation (near Position).

Thanks again for helping me understand what is going on and help in exploring my options.

Rooze

Rooze, I'll have to admit that I have never worked with a room this size, let alone a room of this size with panel speakers. For what its worth I would opt for the best positioning for resolution and soundstage and supplement the bottom end with a fast pair of subs located in an area which will give you flat bass to 20 hz. How's that for a cop out! By the way have you checked out other room set up systems, such as Cardas. If not, you can read about this and others in the FAQ's at the Audio Asylum site. I'm not sure how you came by your listening seat positioning, but did you try the 14 to 15 ft area. I've often found some of my best bass reinforcement when the speakers and the listening position are around 25% of the room dimension (which in your case would be 7ft for speakers and seat). Have fun - good tuning takes a long time and you should take your time do it. Its a lot more than just good measured frequency response.