I haven’t posted much since the new forum and thought I’d share where I’m at. I’m stuffing a pair of Scala V2’s into a small room and my room treatments just shipped. Pretty stoked about getting them installed, but until that happens I am playing with speakers and room treatment placement. Huge noticeable difference right off the bat… Sound is a lot clearer and organized at the front of the room. This will make speaker placement so much more accurate and effective.
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How did you arrive at the correct treatment to buy? Did you test for yourself, maybe using the free advice service of GIK or simikar, or did you engage a professional?
hey IB I sent sound samples to GIK and James did some analysis. Realized a few things from that. The waterfall graph shows some strong ringing at about 60Hz, and its octave around 120Hz. He said the impulse response shows a LOT of strong reflections, within -20dB of the initial impulse, all the way out past 70ms. He added, the room will sound quite uncontrolled and jumbled, with an indistinct soundstage/image. Treating early reflection points on the side walls, ceiling, and rear wall behind you is the first step to improve this. Those are his reccos. Then of the GIK products I decided to use treatments that both absorb/deflect. From there we measured all open wall space and figured out what options fit the little wall space I have immediately available.
Now it’s off to playing around for a bit. I want to get speaker placement dialed in & spike them, to get room somewhat settled, then I’ll get proper racking. I’m being as patient as possible with the process at this point I think.
From the start of all this I knew the challenge would be getting these big ass speakers to work in this smallish room. Challenge accepted! =]
Quickly discovered after choosing designs of treatments, the room now looks a bit nuts with this black & white rug. It was the first thing to go into the room. Looks like it will be the first thing to leave… jeezzz
Is it neccessery to have that niche with a sink in the room? I would remove that. But if it must stay then I would close it with a slide doors - I don’t know where do you live but HAWA from Switzerland produces brilliant solutions for this purposes. That niche acts like a speaker and makes another one aside from the right speaker. I woud certainly remove that and/or I would go for nearfield configuration. I think that you can achive much more if you relocate your resources in more balanced manner… you say it’s small room and according to the furniture and the rest it seems it is very damped…
Thanks I’ll check these out
I think I remember your original problem look - a problem room, so hopefully this will fix it and you will be able to enjoy what those speakers are capable of delivering. I look forward to your final conclusions.
the room is 17x20x8, and one wall is all windows, with thick curtains from end-to-end. This is primarily a listening room, but it’s also practical. The back wall is all shelves with a lot of vinyl. How does this play into the dampening of room?
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The shelving an dcontecnts are probably reqsonable good at diffusing higher frequencies.
Aside from that, there is the ?kitchenette that Strah mentioned, and you have that ‘hole’ at the rear of the room (bathroom IIRC?). These probably have worse effects - but the analisis by GIK hopefully has provided you with the solution.
I long to do my own room as it is far from ideal, but as a house move is on the cards some time in the not too far distant future I am not going to spend the money on it here.
Don’t get me wrong, I think this is all well imagined and relized for man’s cave but irregularities in the shape affect the sound and since you have very revealing Focal speakers it could affect the sound. I think your efforts are great. Regarding damped: first, sofa is huge, many pictures on the wall, narrow ceiling in the corner (which could be good), and corner shelf in the right side of the picure, carpet - aside from things mentioned before. And tv behind the speakers. Aside from that, I think it is a very good and cosy room that I would like to have and spend time in it but you won’t get the full out of the speakers - which are very expensive, so I would go different way - but that’s me. I belive that sound treatment can do improvements but it can also and almost certainly damp the sound and with the focal that means that won’t be airness in top end which is their strong signiture especially if you have berillyium tweeter.
Since are the curtains on one side, thr easiest is to do that on the other side - pull them out when you listen the music, and when not - strech in them the chosen appropriate place - e.g. those two walls that close the bar/kitchen. Just an idea. The easiest was to achive symmetry.
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Good point about the Focals - they are very revealing. I really feel I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with these Scala V2 bad boys, and pretty much knew this going in. I bought these after auditioning several Focal models, a couple Wilson’s, my hometown EggelstonWorks, and a few others. My problem was not being to audition anything in my own home…
I really appreciate everyone input & opinions. I have these 4 walls, and I have decent equipment, and hopefully lots of time to play around.
The sink/bar/refrigerator/ice maker is staying. It is tricky because the walls of this “bar” area are quartz slabs, and they are horrible reflection points. Maybe I put a thick curtain over the bar - ? - this would be easy and my wife suggested it.
One other issue that I tackled the best I could was the 4 doors in this room. There are 3 doors behind the speakers, and one other door. They were hollow core doors and I replaced them with solid MDF doors, and this helped.
This is a room above a garage on 2nd level, house was built in 1976, and I feel this is having major effect on any best possible results.
What speakers make sense for this room? 
Sounds like a reasonable compromise for a listening room 
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Primarily be guided by the results of the analysis by GIK.
In terms of the reflections, you’ll be able to see from the impulse response if the bar area is actually a problem or not. If it is a problem then you’ll see a strong distinct reflection at about 6.5ms with a further set of reflection spikes occurring at about 7.5ms intervals (assuming the bar is 1.3m long) . If you don’t see this, the bar it isn’t as big a problem as one would (naively) expect!
If it does need to be fixed, you could consider sloping the end panels in by about 10 degrees.
The angled shelves at the rear won’t act as a ‘horn’, the area will simply act as any other corner.
The shelves at the back won’t provide broadband diffusion as the pattern isn’t irregular enough for that.
It may be worth setting up the mike again and then tapping each of the (now MDF) doors to see if they are being too resonant. If they are, then look for that resonance in the frequency sweep, and, if present, add some damping to the doors - flat MDF panels can sometimes be quite resonant.
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This Focal isn’t for this room no matter how (naivly or not) GIK or any other software would show. If something isn’t basicaly good/compatible then fine adjusting won’t do anything worthy of the expense.
You can easily get some of of the speakers in your room and try. I bet you would like it better. Or you can put the mike again and again and try to persude yourself that it will be good. I would rather enjoy and put the rest of the money in the wine or similar…
If you try, please write your findings here…
I already have written up my findings on room treatment (and DSP compensation of the sub channel) in the previous incarnation of the forum.
It wasn’t addressed to you but the owner of the room to write his findings when he put another speaker in the room. The room is the most important and basic and the most expansive part of stereo system and everything starts and revolves around the room. That’s why so much type and size of the speakers. If you start differently you will spend so much money and time without wanted feedback like Jared obviously knows now. Nothing against Focals, I owe one. Sometimes and often less is more.
Unfortunately with this forum software, unless you specifically reply to someone else it always appears that you are replying to the previous post (unless it’s obvious from the text of your reply!).
Hi Strah, unfortunately when you reply to the immediate previous post (as I have just done here), the avatar of the person to whom you have just replied doesn’t actually appear.