Speaker Placement - The "Real World"
Cam -- Mon, 06/07/2010 - 09:56
Hi Folks,
Like many of you, I assume, I don't have the luxury of a dedicated music listening room in my house. My audio system is located in my living room, which is about 18' by 15' with 3 doorways (double french doors in to the dining room on the north wall, a door to the front foyer in the north-east corner and a door to the hallway at the north end of the south), a fireplace on the south wall and a big bay window on the east wall. To accommodate the room layout and the furniture set up, my current speaker placement is (gasp!) not on a flat wall but on either side of the south-west corner of the room so that they project out towards the north east corner of the room. I have drawn up sketches to make this description easier but can't seem to attach them to this post - but I can email them to you if you are willing to spend a few minutes to help me out with placement!
While I may be able to change the room set up so that both speakers are on the west wall, they will never conceivably be more than a foot away from that rear wall (unless I pull them out every time I want to do some serious listening).
I have 2 questions for members here:
1) Are there high end speakers out there that are less sensitive to placement and more adept at performing in "real world" environments? Or, at some point, is it worthless for me to invest more in speakers until I have the space to actually place them ideally? FYI, I currently have ProAc Studio 140s and am thinking to upgrade to higher end full range speakers like ProAc Response D38s, Vandersteen Quatros or 5a's, Sonus Faber Luetto or Ceremona Ms, etc. Would this be a waste of money? FYI, the rest of my system consists of a Marantz 11s1 SACD player and a Simaudio Moon i-7 integrated amp, along with Cardas Golden Reference cables throughout and a Panamax power conditioner.
2) Are there any good tips/tricks to deal with speaker placement that is not ideal (i.e. way out into the room away from all the walls)?
Thanks in advance for your advice!
Cam
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In most instances, you must commit the room!
I think that the solution is to use an ARC like Anthem. The sound will change a lot. I recomend you that read about this issue.
Say what?
You will gain a huge advantage with the Vandersteen 5 because of it's bass-equalization capabilities. As you probably know, the speaker has an integral 11-band equalizer for 120Hz and below. This will enable you to compensate for the inevitable peaks and dips in the response. You still want to position the speakers where they have the smoothest bass, but it's less critical with the Vandersteens. The equalizer all allows you to position more for imaging with less concern for the bass.
I saw and heard the Vandersteen bass equalization in action last week as Richard Vandersteen set up the Model 7s (same equalization scheme as in the 5) in my new room. (I had also had the 5s in my old room when they were first introduced.) I would be careful about adding a full room-correction system as aflre1964 suggests; they have a radical impact on the entire spectrum, not just the problematic bass.
What about Legacy Whisper as a solution ?
Thanks for your advice folks!
SundayNiagra - I hear you - I could probably afford a bigger house if I didn't have this nasty audio equipment habit :)
alfre1964, interesting solution the ARC is. I may try that downstairs in my home theater - I bet it will work wonders for concert DVD's! I'm reluctant to include much processing into my audio system, though. Right or wrong, I'm a bit of a "purist" who believes in a clean signal path (I am the type of guy who bypassed tone controls when I had them!).
Robert, interesting! My local dealer was saying something similar about the Vandersteens. He is recommending the Quattro as a step up from my ProAc Studio 140's but I'm not a big fan of the "sock" asthetic. The 5's are a great looking speaker though. It is finding a good listening position that offers optimal imaging and bass managment appears to be my key issue. Positioning a listening chair to form something close to an equalateral triangle with my speakers, the Studio 140's become most hollographic. However that listening position (close to the centre of the room) is considerably lacking in bass. Moving the listening position further back from the speakers (i.e. where my sofa is), the imaging becomes less holographic (although still quite good) but the amount of bass increases (maybe because I'm closer to the rear wall and/or due to reflections from the bay window behind the sofa). It'd be a plus to be able to get the best of both worlds!
Thanks for your posts!
Cam
I bought a book called Get Better Sound that was about room setup, and speaker placement in particular. It is pretty fun to read through and helped me perform my setup a lot more systematically. I'd highly recommend it for your situation. You can google the title. A buddy and I spent a weekend morning / afternoon going through the setup procedures, and I've enjoyed the music a lot more ever since.
Have you tried the Sumiko "Iron Chef" speaker placement protocol? The idea is to "master set" the speakers to your room. This idea uses the harmonics of the room in concert with the loudspeaker. I think it has a great deal of merit.
Greg
Have you tried the Sumiko "Iron Chef" speaker placement protocol? The idea is to "master set" the speakers to your room. This idea uses the harmonics of the room in concert with the loudspeaker. I think it has a great deal of merit.
Greg
Rule of thirds works best!
Hi,
I think the most important thing here is you asked specific questions and said yor room/setup was unusual. When that's the case using typical setup procedures may just make things worse. Ther may be more than one effect the room has on performance and our ears and head just aren't good at identifying several problems at once, fix one thing and make something else worse kind of problems.
Sending a sketch and or pictures, with simple dimensions, would be the best course of action. Giving advice on speakers and equalization is a bit premature. I agree equalization is a good idea but you need to know how to set it up. If you can't send it throught the forum you can send it to me at deang [at] soundprogression [dot] com and I'll give it a look and you some feedback.
Speaker and seating placement is very important but just grabbing a procedure at random may not get you anywhere. The most tedious (oh well) but reliable (oh yes) is to measure the room with either something like RoomEQWizard, your laptop and a SPL meter or a good test CD, a piece of graph paper and an SPL meter. We can discuss how to interprete what you find.
I'm very big on equalization when necessary. It's most useful at lower frequencies. To set it up you eaiterh need to trust an automated system or have the measurement tools available to adujt it properly. Equalization can't always fix and acoustically (live room, room mode dominate) challenged room.
#1 - You can take almost any speaker, barring dipoles, and they will behave pretty much the same in a given space. What you see is the interaction of the speaker, seating and room interaction. Yes, there will be some variations but you will get good general idea how the room behaves. If the problem exisits only in low frequencies, lets say 80Hz, you may benifit from a sat/sub combination where you'd only need to correct the subwoofer with equalization and placement.
#2 - There are lots of trick but you need to identify what the challenges are first.
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