If your sofa is dead centre front to back that is usually a bad position. Have you tried waling around the room while music playing to see what it sounds like in different places, with your speakers where they are, and with them moved out! If not then do try.
Other ideas:
Rotate everything 90 degrees and try (facing the window)
Rotate 180 degrees and try
Swap the current position with the near end of the room, and try al, the above.
Try a diagonal arrangement, with one speaker in front of one wall, and the other at right angles in front of another (“shouldn’t” work, but I know of one setup where it does).
And as I suggested, get a copy of REW and a microphone and actually see what is happening in tge room.
Before the Dynaudios, I had bookshelves that I know they had a monstrous amount of bass in any room, big or small. Once deployed in 'stralia, the sound went dead (powerless), hence my speedy upgrade to standfloors. It’s almost as if the woofers died. They are still moving…but not that much to be honest.
If the woofer cones are moving, but you don’t hear the bass, suspect room cancellation.
As for the amount they move, with its twin drivers of the same size as the Elac, the cones on the Dyns will only move half the distance of the Elac’s woofer cone for the same sound output.
Dan, great room, but it does look as if it would sound very ‘live’. Lots of hard reflective surfaces and not much in terms of soft furnishing etc apart from a rug and sofa. The room itself might be the problem?
I strongly suspect that without either moving house or putting the system in a much smaller room, that you are just going to have to get used to the poor sound. No amount of tweaking mains or getting the shelves the right way up (!!) will compensate for the fact that the room is huge with hard surfaces everywhere and an opening on the wall where the speakers are. As soon as I saw that picture I thought ‘ah, so that’s why it sounds so gutless’. Whether significant room treatment would help I don’t know, as it’s something I have very little knowledge of.
In our smallish room 3.6m wide and just over 5m long, we have a concrete floor, concrete walls, heavy fire doors, carpet and a large stuffed sofa. With the doors shut and the volume up the system drives the room so you feel totally immersed. But looking at your room I can imagine a sound as if it’s just music coming from some speakers sitting at the end, with no engagement and no drive, just gutless.
So after all that, which is genuinely meant to be helpful, I’d say just get used to it, or put it in another room (and I can see why you wouldn’t want to do that) or move.
I tend to agree with that Nigel, I thought the same when I saw the room photograph. Dan, do you have an alternative room to see if you can get it working better? I know that is not ideal.
Hi Dan. I was in the same situation than you when I moved from an appartment to a house two years ago. In the appartment I was perfectly happy using small speakers (Sonus Faber Guarneri Evolution). However these speakers did not make it in a (much) larger living room, it was as if the sound did not “fill the room” anymore. Eventually I realised that the size of the Sonus was the limiting factor and, with regrets, I sold them. I am now running much bigger (horn loaded) speakers and that solved the problem for me.
I just recently used DSP to sort my system and room interaction out and very happy with the results its never sounded so good. I tried moving speakers but the position they are in had the best overall imaging and sound stage. I may try DIK and see what they say about my readings but I cant really treat the room much at all and bass traps are well out.
You don’t say whether you are going to follow though with some serious assessment of the room, which many of us have suggested is probably the root cause of the problem, whether doing it with a tool like REW to actually see what is going on, or by trial and error?
I don’t know if HH is right and nothing will make it better in that room, but if it were me, unless I had another room option to try, I’d be all over it seeoping if there is a solution as simple as rearrangement. (Simple doesn’t necessarily mean either easy to accommodate domestically without everyone on board, or necessarily quick to finalise!)
What about something like that? you close it when listening to music and open it when you want. It must be less expensive vs a nap 300dr and bigger speakers.
Get a copy of REW and a suitable calibrated mike. Use that to determine the response of the system and room working together.
Then get a DMM and measure the output of the power amp at 25Hz, 50Hz, 100Hz and 200Hz (measure it at the speakers). If these measurements are almost the same (say within 10%), then there’s nothing wrong with the electronics and the problem is all to do with the interaction of the speakers and the room.
Use the REW room and time response graphs to work out how to fix the problem(s).
How to I measure the power output Xanthe? Like I said before, I need to make sure my electronics are working properly, the Cyrus 8a giving way more bass than the 250DR is a major red flag for me. I know that amplifier, its so much leaner than the 250DR.
Set a digital multimeter (DMM) to AC volts and attach it to the speaker terminals. Set a function generator (e.g. a track on a test CD, a digital download track or via an app on a mobile phone) to 25Hz, 50Hz, 100Hz and 200Hz (or there abouts, the exact values aren’t critical!), and measure the voltage at each frequency. The result should be generally similar for each reading (say within +/-10%).
Compare this to the frequency response result from REW and you’ll see the problems caused by your room. It’s most unlikely to be a problem with the electronics, much more likely to be a problem with the room.
Yesterday I cranked the volume on the 272, to 50. It sounded more balanced (bass wise), except for a bit of harshness, understandable given the speakers are almost brand new.
Still want to check my black boxes. Any Naim owners in Adelaide, willing to help?