The Listening Room Reality

Specially for @Thomas. You should be interested.

MAGICO’S MEASURING ACCURACY…

“The Klippel NFS robot measures 3000 points of SPL around the speaker using the field separation algorithms technique to isolate radiated sound. As a result, the accuracy achieved is much higher than that of an anechoic chamber.” Below is the M2 Spinorama - unsmoothed…

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It depends on whether you want to hear the bass, or just cut it off. I wouldn’t live with a system that cut off the bass. The alternative is to explore speaker and listening positioning and room treatment.

Hi HL.
I do think I understand what you and Hans are saying, and that the room can play into certain genres of music favourably. However this can very easily lead to the trail of playing those certain CDs, which give you that particular kick or live feeling ( trust me I’ve been there). This is to me unacceptable, if it leaves 90% of the music collection collecting dust. On many occasions we have also concluded on this Forum, that ‘we all hear things differently’ and I’m sure we do, although I am really struggling with understanding how?
When room treatment is carried out from a real need as in mine and other cases on this thread, the most important thing is from, what I have learned the last year, to kill excessive bass with absorption behind the speakers and retain the listening end as live as possible, however still managing unwanted reflections. ATB Peter

I take it as meaning we all have different concept as to what constitutes good sound - e.g. as a simplistic example, some people lije bass and others seem to be shy of it.

I just like well resolved bass me :grimacing: ATB Peter

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Same. I use two subs with my large floorstanders. Not for more bass, but for better bass. Jazz double bass sounds fantastic. Not boomy at all, but well defined and fast, with great PRaT.

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Me too. I like bass. But clean, resolved and not distorted.

Here is a REW measurement taken at my usual listening position of both the left and right speakers together. I am worried that the general lower levels with several peaks/troughs spanning 15dB between 60Hz and 220Hz are compromising the sound quality. Music lacks warmth and atmosphere. The peak around 54Hz isn’t great either. The room is 54m^2 and ceilings are 2.5m high, it is untreated and has wood floors. Speakers are Spendor D7.2s.

@Xanthe it’s not a regular-shaped room but if your kind offer above of advice stands I’d appreciate your thoughts.

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I love the “fairly” at the start of this post. My entire sytem cost me under £1500!
Not that I am jealous or anything :smile:

Hi Chris.
Although not being Xanthe I’m happy to muscle in.
Tricky one this and it probably is anybody’s guess, but depending on how accurate your impressive floor plan is, ALWAYS maintain speakers at equal distance to their sidewalls if at all possible. I would try and rethink your set up to this purely to see, if it helps the room response. Move sofa/ hifi rack(?) and speakers around 180 degrees. Ie sofa say 1-2 feet up towards the back wall, maybe with a couple of nice GIK thin range limited absorbers directly behind your listening position. Admittedly the question is, how your speakers will work in the free position for bass response, ie where your sofa is at present. This would also aesthetically be pleasing to be said overlooking your nice space instead of looking straight onto your wall. If you are not happy to embrace room treatment ( well much), you will have to move the speakers around the room within the parameters of, how much change you are willing to accept from a domestic point of view. Now you have your room response graph, trust what you are yourself actually hearing. Good luck with it. ATB Peter

OK, the 54Hz peak is characteristic of a distance of approximately 2.25m, could this be the distance from the left speaker to the side wall?

It could also be due to a distance of 6.75m (although I don’t think the small wall behind the sofa is big enough to cause this on it’s own, but it could be the effect of the dining area).

Please could you do separate L & R frequency plots? Comparing those to each other and the combined plot may well help to track down any problems arising from the asymmetric layout.

Hi Chris, I have been working to optimize the sound a the listening position too. Speakers placement is the fist and more important step. Speakers should form an equilateral triangle or as close as practical/possible. Other important consideration is symmetry. Equal distances to walls. Then, the directionality, some speakers sounds best on-axis, other may work best in parallel. Look at the speakers manual for instructions on placement. After that, take care of primary reflection points related to the listening position with room treatment. Then comes the icing on the cake: DSP. This is not for everyone. The majority of the people would prefer to address room acoustic issues with placement and treatment only. I am in the camp of a combination: placement+treatment+DSP. I use a German software, Accourate, for DSP with good results. A lot of experimentation to find the right tuning, both it worth the effort.

DSP for room correction doesn’t do one any good if they have an analog front end and want to keep the playback chain analog.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I have tried the speakers much further into the room, moving the sofa and other furniture back. The stereo imaging is noticeably improved there, I think there is more clarity and separation between instruments, the 54Hz peak disappears and the dip narrows to between 100Hz and 190Hz. However, I am not allowed to leave our living room set-up that way :smiley:

That 54Hz peak is only present in the right speaker measurement, I’ve attached the individual responses. I only have digital sources these days (streamer + TV) and have been looking at the Auralic Aries streamers as they have PEQ filters, I like the idea of filtering at the source. Moving the right speaker away from the corner and towards the middle of the room decreases that peak too. Unfortunately the TV unit between the speakers is mounted and braced into the wall, it’s a big job to move it so at the moment I am boxed-in with the right speaker placement.

Do you think the dips between 60Hz and 220Hz are a big issue as I doubt EQ will work on them?

Thanks,
Chris.


Chris, what doesn’t make sense is that First harmony ( the peak) is followed in your case by a second harmony ( the dip) , which seems at a higher DB level than 1st= the suck out is more pronounced acoustically. This from my knowledge is unusual. Are you sure your test equipment/ read out is correct? :thinking: Push on Peter

That is correct. For pure analog chain there are only two choices: speakers placement + treatment. In my case I am all digital, I don’t have any physical media.

I think there is some other reinforcement going on between 105Hz and the peak at 120Hz - the small dip that forms a shoulder below that 120Hz peak is at 109Hz, 2x the big peak. The measurement chain is a calibrated UMIK-1 USB mic into an Apple laptop running REW. I’m using a timing reference on the same speaker channel as the measurement in this case, and a single 512K log swept sine over 11.9 seconds. RTA measurements with high averaging give the same results.

Also, as important as speaker placement but often overlooked as a critical variable is listening position.

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First thing to try is: move the R speaker about 0.75m to the left and the L speaker about 0.35m to the left, then rerun all three traces (keep the microphone centred between the speakers.

The other potential problem is that the piece of furniture between the speakers is too close to the R speaker; this may need to be centred between the speakers.

Fundamentally Chris, what is it about your replay, which you don’t feel is right? My guess is( drum roll :grimacing:) TOO MUCH BASS- and beyond finding the best balance between actual speaker/ listening positioning BASS lift is an actual killer, when it comes to the rest of the frequency band, midrange included. It murks everything with a loss of all the things, we love to hear when listening to our wee systems. Domestically and finding your partner’s acceptance to look at absorbtion is going to maybe be your biggest challenge. In other words get the bass issues sorted before anything else and then look at, what your system sounds like. Running for cover… Peter
PS. Also at this stage maybe try not to get hung up on your readings although, it may feel as if ‘ the world is falling out of your bottom’. :weary: