Acoustics, speaker placement, subwoofers

Mine too. I'd really like to hear, or even better design and make and hear, a nice pair of linkwitz, electrostats or true omni's

 

FWIW, I compared an SVS SB1000 and a Rythmik L12 head-to-head in my setup, and the SVS was the easy winner, despite my expecting the L12 to come out ahead. The SVS integrated much more seamlessly with my KEF reference standmounts, whereas the L12 always sounded out of place and somehow killed the depth of the entire sound, pulling everything forward. In part, I think it had something to do with the Rythmik creating a hump around 125hz that I could not get rid of no matter what I did, whereas the SVS was much flatter through its range.

 

There's a new value option for subwoofers, from Seaton Sound, which makes the best products on the market right now in my opinion. Worth checking out: http://seatonsound.net/product/js-12-subwoofer/

 

Now that I've got my 2.1 system EQ'd & sounding (mostly) peachy (see my recent profile posts), I've discovered a really nice bonus to "going 2.1"....I no longer need an active pre-amp.

I was secretly hoping this might be the case, but it's even better than I suspected. The load the sub has taken off my speakers allows my fairly modestly powered CJ power amp to drive the nuts off my Dynaudios (85dB 6ohm) with ease, so much so that the passive pre-amp volume control in my dac (DiDiT DAC212SE) has tons of headroom...and this is WITH a Jensen Iso-Max in the signal path, which attenuates by -13dB.

Now, I should note that after a lot of trial & error & measurements, a crossover of 120hz between sub & speakers works best in here. Obviously, this takes a lot of work away from the speakers, although only an extra 6dB compared to an 80hz xover I think. Occasionally, I think maybe I can localise a bit of mid bass to the sub, but not enough that it's a problem for me.

Anyone want to buy a Freya?

 

Glad you sorted it all out mate, hope you didn't loose too much hair

I hung the ceiling panel the other day and it's very nice, looks ghetto AF so tidying it all up is going to be a chore. But ah well...

 

Cool, care to share a pic of the panel? How's it constructed? In my old room I made pine frames, shoved rockwool in them & covered the whole thing in acoustically transparent fabric, then hung them from the ceiling by four chains (cathedral ceiling).

 

Well the panel is made up out of pieces of rockwool i still had laying around so it is quite ugly and lumpy. Basically it's a frame on top of the rockwool wrapped in cheesecloth. With hooks for easy hanging. I plan on redoing the panel when i order the Camira cloth from Gik to rewrap everything. The frame will also be redone, it used to have beams that sat on top of the first reflection panels(i couldn't drill into the ceiling).

Can't drill in the ceiling here either coz of electrical wiring so that's why I used steelcable.

 

Other than some corner tune pillows over the years, I never messed around much with room treatments, aside from some big paintings recently to damp some side wall early reflections.

Well, 40 years later I now know how important they are. forget cable, dac, amp upgrades, treatments are massive.

Now, the looks are awful, but the sonic results, heavenly. Focus, clarity, imaging, space, depth, reverb trails all present and accounted for. You really do not realize how much a front wall can muck things up, until it doesn't, haha.

 

There's an old tale about sub-woofer placing.

Put the thing on your listening chair. Crawl around the floor looking for the place where it sounds best. Put subwoofer in that place, self back in chair, and enjoy.

I don't know... but it sounds too down to earth to be audiophile tosh! So I guess it works?

 

Works great, that's how i found out that raising mine off of the floor sounds the best.

 

Been experimenting with toe in. Quested recommends that the point of the triangle should be about 0,5 to 1m behind the listeners head. I had that quite a bit closer, maybe 10cm but i followed their advise now and i quite like it. Maybe i should read more manuals in the future(nope).

What are you guys doing with toe in?

 

For my previous speakers (Audio Physic Temp 25), I had them toed in so they were firing onto my shoulders. With the new Dynaudios, I prefer them only toed in a little bit from straight. I think it's because they're brighter speakers than I'm used to so less toe in smooths them a bit.

 

Makes sense, so many factors to consider.

 

Ain't that the truth. After all of this, if anyone in my household moves a speaker an inch or turns a knob on the sub I'm going to have a serious sense of humour failure

 

Oh yeah the sheer horror, let's not go there for the sake of our sanity. Backups with exact measurements and tape. Nice trick i thought of was putting tape under the stand so you can see if something has moved even a mm. Your stand should have feet though obviously.

 

I get good results with point about 1 foot or so behind head.

 

Nearfield monitors? That must be nice!

My guess is that the fine adjustments are very dependent on individual speakers. Maybe even on individual ear lobes, the comb-filter effect of which is notorious

(You could catch me out there, having admitted only recently, in another post, that I don't quite understand comb filtering, only that it has an effect)

 

Yep i'm a self proclaimed Quested fan boy. Like i said above the amount of variables in acoustics is mind boggling, physics will do what it wants and we have to obey the rules whether we like it or not.

 

Tiled floor here the cleaning woman once moved the speakers, after considering manslaughter for a microsecond or two settled on marking the exact placement of the protective pads my spiked speakers stand on. Position of listening chair also marked on tiles, toe in angle 63.5 degree, so the point of the stereo triangle is slightly behind my listening position. I do not use a sextant, a laser meter is sufficient for me. I do not consider myself bonkers, I just found out that for me speaker and listening position and their interaction with room acoustics have more impact than changing from not too shabby DAC A to a little less shabby DAC B.

 

I don't know what to say.

But I suppose that if something is not as good at position A, moves, through an arc of goodness, to being not as good at position B, then there must have been an optimum point. You found heaven at 63.5 degrees. Enjoy!