Suitable for listening room?

stangman67

Fellow Polkies,

In a little bit of a dilemma right now. My 2 channel setup currently resides in my living room, and while I like the look of it where it is, the room is not ideal for a few reasons. It is hardwood floors so the room is a little bright and because of the placement of the windows behind the speakers, room treatments are kind of out of the question. Second the couch in the living room is a pain in my **** (literally) to sit on in one spot for more than an hour or so.

I have two spare bedrooms upstairs, one of which is a quasi workout room right now. I am going to dismantle that for the most part and move my erg down to the basement. The other is a guest room. One will remain the guest room and thinking about making the other a dedicated listening room. Problem is the rooms are fairly small and unsure if the listening environment will be worse than it is right now. One room is square at 11x11 feet and the other is 12x10 feet, both are carpeted. Thinking the 12x10 room would be the best. Equipment is listed below, I am thinking because I have bookies that the smallish room might work out okay. I can get a comfortable chair to listen in and do some room treatments as well in either of these rooms. Any thoughts?

2 channel as it sits in my main room

Thanks for the opinions!

Ricardo

With those speakers the 12x10 room could be an excellent listening environment. You just need to try it, and will need some treatments.

DaveHo

Square room = bad. I think bookies in the 10x12 would work well.

Ricardo

Here. Found this. In case you're bored. Dimensions are close....

http://forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/50820/building-a-dedicated-audio-room/p1

Conradicles

I agree the 12 x 10. Room treatments are a must. Have fun!!!

stangman67

Thanks Ricardo. That was a great read and a fantastic looking room

tonyp063

Yes @Ricardo , it was.

I learned some things today. Thank you

stangman67

Did a bit of experimenting today, cleared out the 12x10 room and quickly set up the speakers and amp/source. I tried to use the Cardas calculator for speaker placement and it just isn't feasible in this room. So speakers are 24" off sidewalls and 24" off backwalls with 62" between woofer centers. Biggest issue I read of with a small room like this is bass management and boomy bass , happy to report bass seems pretty tight and controlled. The room is pretty much completely empty save for a temp listening chair. Definitely needs some treatments as it is still a bit bright but not much worse than it was downstairs. Soundstage width has suffered a bit but that was expected, overall imaging isn't bad at the moment. Thinking about putting the speakers on the long wall and trying that. Thoughts?

Conradicles

I read somewhere that in a small room like this, the speaker's can actually be placed closer to the side walls, but just make sure to treat the 1st reflection points. If you do that, you can better keep the equidistant triangle. Good start you have there.

Ricardo

I would stick with the short wall. Try this. Bring the speakers towards you until the distance from the back wall is the same as the distance from the side walls. Don't worry if you think they are too close to the listening position. Just close your eyes. Let us know how that sounds.

Ricardo

Hmmmmm. It seems you have them centered in reference to that window.... Don't do that.

Edit. Well, that's how it looks from the second picture, but not from the first.....

stangman67

Thanks for the suggestion! The pictures are a little deceiving, the speakers are both 24" off the wall and the rears of the speakers are about 22" off the wall right now. I just went to Ikea and bought a chair and once I get the spike covers off, I'll move the speakers into a more permanent position.

mikeyb128

Conradicles wrote: »

I read somewhere that in a small room like this, the speaker's can actually be placed closer to the side walls, but just make sure to treat the 1st reflection points. If you do that, you can better keep the equidistant triangle. Good start you have there.

This is good advice, I had my speakers 19inches from the side walls at one point with 1st reflection points treated, it seemed the soundstage extended beyond the walls.

stangman67

Thanks man! I'll give it a shot. I'll move them 18" from the side wall and keep the distance from the back wall the same and set the chair to make an equilateral triangle and see how it sounds.

It is strange, but bass response seems weaker in the this room than it was in my large living room, may have something to do with the fact that the speakers were pretty close to the back wall in the living room.

Progressing pretty quickly actually. Got an Ikea chair and ottoman, brought up an old end table from the basement. I've got everything a man needs in this room at the moment: Beer, my pup, and some great music! Life is grand

tonyb

If getting rid of some brightness is your goal, 2 things come to mind, room treatments and better cabling.

stangman67

The cabling is for the most part pretty nice. Good power cords, the interconnects shall suffice. I'm looking at getting different speaker cables though. Room treatments will definitely happen, just slowly

Upstatemax

I think it's going to work great!

My 2ch system is in a 12x10 room and I love it!

stangman67

Derek, thanks for the tips. The center of the midwoofer is about 3 inches below my ear level right now. I gotta get short quick lol! I might fashion some solid wood risers if you will for the speakers and stands. I'll message you about some panels.

txcoastal1

Speaking of what Skip mentions above
I have an adjustable chair that slides vertically and locks. It's amazing how an 1" can zero in on a perfect sound field.

Be patient in that room. Use a few guide lines that you have already researched, but no measurement is set in stone. People height and ears are all different and even the slightest adjustment can make the difference.

That's why I have 2 chairs in a room like yours...."mine and whoevers" hehehe

Enjoy
Cool room, you'll find the sweet spot

stangman67

I really appreciate all the help with this! I've never had such a uniform room to mess with. It sounds good as is, speakers 18" from the side walls and 23" from the back wall. This seems to be a good initial position to spike the speakers at and I can make fine adjustments from here.

Jaybeez

I would still suggest room treatment. 1st reflection points and that back wall area adjacent the closet. Skip's panels are 24 x 24 so agree with his assessment of 6. 2 each at 1st reflection and two on the back wall. You could mount with a 2" gap between them (over / under) and they'd look cool. Will tame things a bit and give you a flatter response.

txcoastal1

I know you have been taking measurements, but log them too if you haven't already.

When some of us do audio setups for show, I keep blue painters tape handy to stick to the floor and a sharpie to note as I adjust

stangman67

Defintiely going to do room treatments on the walls. Can anyone give me an idea of approximately where the first reflection points are going to be? I was going to stack 2 of the 24x24" panels vertically behind each speaker and the same on the side walls. SO I was going to buy a total of 8. And then do a sound absorption curtain behind me as I didn't want to pound nails into the closet door

txcoastal1

Great start as you have mentioned.

For side walls play with the mirror test.

Set your speakers in your current sweet spot

Sit in your sweet spot

Have someone take a mirror, at speaker height, slide mirror down side wall till yo see the speaker centered in the mirror from your sitting position.

Try those spots first for panels on each side.

stangman67

Sounds great! That is easy enough. Been in the room now for a few hours, really enjoying the speakers in a near field arrangement like this. Any performance above what it is now is just gravy in my book. This is really the first time I am trying to get every speck of sound quality out of my gear. I have had decent gear in the past, but I think this gear deserves a proper room and setup.

txcoastal1

OHHH you are so screwed...LOL

I popped into this forum and got waaayyy to much info

Tons of money later, I'm still an addict...lol

Enjoy bro

stangman67

Oh I know I am! I am finding myself looking at 1000$ acoustic zen speaker cables. I will probably buy them sooner than later. Good thing about having a room like this is I won't be too tempted to upgrade the speakers anytime soon as it will probably be a detriment at this point to get my "end all" speakers.

txcoastal1

10-4
Patients, and buy as much as you can on used market

Cheers

Joey_V

stangman67 wrote: »

Fellow Polkies,

In a little bit of a dilemma right now. My 2 channel setup currently resides in my living room, and while I like the look of it where it is, the room is not ideal for a few reasons. It is hardwood floors so the room is a little bright and because of the placement of the windows behind the speakers, room treatments are kind of out of the question. Second the couch in the living room is a pain in my **** (literally) to sit on in one spot for more than an hour or so.

I have two spare bedrooms upstairs, one of which is a quasi workout room right now. I am going to dismantle that for the most part and move my erg down to the basement. The other is a guest room. One will remain the guest room and thinking about making the other a dedicated listening room. Problem is the rooms are fairly small and unsure if the listening environment will be worse than it is right now. One room is square at 11x11 feet and the other is 12x10 feet, both are carpeted. Thinking the 12x10 room would be the best. Equipment is listed below, I am thinking because I have bookies that the smallish room might work out okay. I can get a comfortable chair to listen in and do some room treatments as well in either of these rooms. Any thoughts?

2 channel as it sits in my main room

Thanks for the opinions!

What I like about your room is that you have a good distance from the lateral walls which means your first reflections off the sides are going to be significantly delayed which would not necessarily smear the front waves.

Your seat is awfully close the rear wall which means you will likely be experiencing comb filtering or addition or cancellation of bass waves. You will need a significant amount of absorption in the rear, much more than a 2" sound absorber as that will do nearly zero under 200hz. You are not a candidate for diffusors off the rear, you do not have any distance to allow for non-smearing delay in terms of millisec lag.

You will also need to control SBIR in that room, you will need some bass treatment behind the speakers themselves, you will need to calculate your bass absorption frequencies based on the distance of the woofer from the rear wall. Without adequate attention paid to the SBIR, you will experience comb filtering in the bass as well.

The front of your room is pretty live, indirect reflections will smear the sound stage. You can experiment with absorption or diffusion up front, but the main thing you will need is bass control. If you can find a combination trap, that would be ideal.

Next up, you will need to treat the bass corners with large bass traps as that handles 4 planes of intersection (2 walls, floor, ceiling). Without traetment, you will have a likely 500ms drone.

Lastly, you will need to address the ceilings, you will need absorption as your ceiling is too short for diffusion.

Joey_V

Together, my friend and I have read books on room acoustics, we are not experts but we have a lot of experience over the past few months. What we have learned is constantly tweaked as we start to compare REW theory and what we hear.

I'll make this short and sweet. It's not as simple as just treating first reflection points. If this is where you're at and where you're satisfied at with regards to room treatment, it's akin to you saying you just want to stick to a receiver your whole life.

There are some of the basics of room treatment and acoustics:

1. There are 2 main issues in a listening room. The speaker and the listening position relative to the room itself.

Let's call it speaker dependent and room dependent.

2. SPEAKER DEPENDENT:

SBIR, that's speaker boundary interference. It is basically comb filtering that occur in the closest boundaries to the positioned speaker (rear wall and lateral wall). The premise of this is that at a certain position, you tend to cause comb filtering to the forward propogatory sound waves. Meaning that the back (and side) waves will bounce from the nearby wall, and reflect 180deg. If IN-phase, it will boost certain frequencies, if OUT of phase it will cancel frequencies and you will have a suck out in bass.

3. ROOM DEPENDENT:

Each room's dimensions causes certain problems in terms of standing waves. And standing waves are not just on the X plane, but also on the vertical (Y) plane. This means that your seating position within the room will determine how much or how little bass you experience. Not just that, but your listening height will have a lot of effect on the bass you experience as well.

Ever wonder why when you stand up the bass seems to be sucked out in certain rooms?

This is something you cannot necessarily repair (unless you redo the room dimensions) but there are certain things you can do to ameliorate or play with the null points.

4. CONCLUSION:

The idea of proper room acoustics is not to necessarily install treatments with the goal of cancelling all non-direct sound waves. The idea of proper room acoustics is to cancel all UNWANTED non direct sound waves to tune the room to make it sound best. Sometimes, you need that comb filtering.

You don't want overhang, you don't want smearing.

Control the reflection points, control the ceiling (for the love of all things audio, control the dang ceiling), control the corners, diffuse appropriately, control the rear, pad up the front and control the SBIR bass.

That's my 2 cents.

Take it for what it is.

Joey_V

stangman67 wrote: »

Thanks man! I'll give it a shot. I'll move them 18" from the side wall and keep the distance from the back wall the same and set the chair to make an equilateral triangle and see how it sounds.

It is strange, but bass response seems weaker in the this room than it was in my large living room, may have something to do with the fact that the speakers were pretty close to the back wall in the living room.

Progressing pretty quickly actually. Got an Ikea chair and ottoman, brought up an old end table from the basement. I've got everything a man needs in this room at the moment: Beer, my pup, and some great music! Life is grand

Bass is probably weak because you are sitting on a null point. Bass is also probably weak because of SBIR and you are experiencing out of phase comb filtering.

Though those polk 703 have a flat baffle which will limit the off axis propogation of waves, you will still need to treat the ceiling and lateral walls...

Too small a room and there are many early reflections to deal with. Treat that room well and you have not heard what your 703 can do.

At low volumes you might find the staging adequate, crank it up and though it might still sound musical, you will not have a smear free stage and your problems will be exacerbated.

The perfect room will sound nearly identical at low and max volumes.