Well I expect he’s reduced to recapping them himself these days. Probably the best he can scrounge up for the job is some old jam jars filled with potatoes and vinegar with a couple nails in them.
Not at all. It will cause a bass lift, and that will apply in every case. As you point out, the magnitude of the effect may well vary according to wall material. But in every case a boundary design should be used as intended, ie. close to the wall, to achieve correct performance.
If anyone is interested I have taken the decision to try @anon55098131’s suggestion (instruction).
It hasn’t made any immediate impact on the sound, but it has neatened up the room a bit…
Thanks for the reminder Richard, I think we can all be guilty of at least some of those on a semi regular basis. And apologies if we make your life more difficult in the process!
Thinking back to Dan’s thread where he moved the racks onto the L side-wall I wonder if this might be an option? This would create more space at the speaker end of the room and get the racks out from between the speakers. It may be that the room is too narrow to faciliate this I guess but thought the suggestion worth airing…
Many thanks for your reply. This will be predominantly for TV use but the Piegas deserve something significantly better than an ‘average’ AV receiver or ‘budget’ amplifier, though the latter are no doubt better than they used to be. The K3 appears to offer a lot for the money though the model does seem to get mixed reviews: either glowing or ho-hum.
Ref your Linn speakers and their positioning, I don’t want to tread on anyone’s toes but I think the whole room and system must be taken into consideration. I don’t doubt that Linn designed the speakers to be used close to the front wall - indeed they now use Space Optimisation (their proprietary room correction system) to facilitate close-to-wall positioning for a whole range of different speakers. However, in your instance, by moving them back you also appear to be positioning them closer to the side walls (clearly by necessity) which introduces another range of issues with reflected higher frequencies.
Personally, given the ability/power of your upstream equipment I would favour a further away from the front wall approach, have a greater distance from the side walls and use the REL to ‘compensate’ for any bass that you may have lost due to positioning further into the room. I did just that with my Tannoy Revolution speakers - the bass, midrange and treble clarity + tone and sound staging all improved massively with positioning the rear of the speakers over 70cm from the front wall. Any loss of bass level/impact was more than compensated for by two sealed-BK active subwoofers. We all like different sound but personally I like stage depth, natural tone and smoothness and positioning speakers away from walls/reflective surfaces has always helped with this🙂.
Look a bit tight in those corners to me. If you were happy where they were then I’d move them back. The Keilidhs like a bit of breathing space and major on the mid range. You’ve mitigated the lack of bass with your sub. I think you can trust yourself to know what sounds best in your own cabin.
Not wanting to pour oil on the fire, but my concern is that the speakers are now too close to the side walls and you’ll be getting lots of reflections, which can really mess things up. Given that being closer to the back wall will increase bass, you can compensate for the bass reduction in your previous position by using your subwoofer. I’d be inclined to put them back again.
Hi, I don’t look at this thread very much so forgive me if this has been asked before. Have you ever tried your speakers on either long wall?
I ask because in my experience, positioning speakers close to side walls generally just produces muddle. I accept that your Linn speakers could be an exception but it’s a serious question.
Your considered moderation and the usually courteous tone of this forum are features which keep many engaged. I am a member of another forum, elsewhere, which is much less civil in tone and this I find very off-putting - to the point that I now never contribute to it, for fear of over-robust responses.
Your use of the word “agreeable” is very apposite. The post, or posts which started this conversation may not have been “knee-jerk reactions”, but they certainly weren’t “agreeable”!
In order that this thread can get back to its extremely interesting subject, I will not be continuing this conversation, should others be moved to respond.
Well, I took the advice and moved them to the back, I then listened to my whole demo playlist.
The result was the Mids became muddier, the Highs became to edged and intrusive and the Bass dropped away with the Rel obviously having to move further into the room.
I did enjoy the extra space, but not the resultant sound.
Thank you to all who made suggestions, but I will be changing it back now to the way I like it.
I had Isobariks up until fairly recently and I actually found they were better about 2ft away from the back wall, although the side walls were only slightly further away so would also have been giving bass re-inforcement