May I ask some speaker placement advice?

[Boomzilla]

My "master speaker dancer," AKA garbulky, has been too busy to make a pass by Casa Boom recently. I'm trying to review some highly-respected bookshelf speakers, but they're profoundly not working in the positions where my Klipsch RP-600m speakers work, despite being driven by the exact same system, sitting on the exact same stands, and playing in the exact same room.

The speaker stands are 9 feet apart. The fronts of the speakers are 4 feet from the wall behind them. The fronts of the speakers are 10 feet each from the listening position.

Unlike the Klipsches, these speakers sound peaky and thin. There's no image width beyond the outsides of the speakers. The image depth is truncated.

Now I know from multiple online and magazine reviews that these speakers are highly linear in frequency response (which the Klipsches aren't). The current speaker location may be in some weird room black hole that eats the exact frequency peaks that the Klipsches exhibit, but makes these much smoother speakers sound funky?

The room has a carpet, wall absorbers, mobile diffusers, and wide enough walls to either side of the speakers that side reflections are a non-issue.

My initial thought is to move the speakers closer together and to move them out into the room another six inches to a foot.

Your suggestions?

Thanks very kindly - Boom

[monkumonku]

Jun 11, 2022 20:20:32 GMT -5 Boomzilla said:

My "master speaker dancer," AKA garbulky, has been too busy to make a pass by Casa Boom recently. I'm trying to review some highly-respected bookshelf speakers, but they're profoundly not working in the positions where my Klipsch RP-600m speakers work, despite being driven by the exact same system, sitting on the exact same stands, and playing in the exact same room.

The speaker stands are 9 feet apart. The fronts of the speakers are 4 feet from the wall behind them. The fronts of the speakers are 10 feet each from the listening position.

Unlike the Klipsches, these speakers sound peaky and thin. There's no image width beyond the outsides of the speakers. The image depth is truncated.

Now I know from multiple online and magazine reviews that these speakers are highly linear in frequency response (which the Klipsches aren't). The current speaker location may be in some weird room black hole that eats the exact frequency peaks that the Klipsches exhibit, but makes these much smoother speakers sound funky?

The room has a carpet, wall absorbers, mobile diffusers, and wide enough walls to either side of the speakers that side reflections are a non-issue.

My initial thought is to move the speakers closer together and to move them out into the room another six inches to a foot.

Your suggestions?

Thanks very kindly - Boom

Maybe there is too much sound absorption in that room. The Klipsch are very bright so that might offset all that padding you have but if these trial speakers are flat in response maybe the sound is going into the padding.

[audiobill]

Toe them out a little at a time.

[Boomzilla]

Thanks monkumonku, but garbulky continuously tells me that the room has too little absorption. The speakers don't sound muffled or dull - just peaky (voices sound shouty in a very narrow frequency range). Sandy Gross designed these, and every review I've read says they're highly linear. Gotta be placement. I'll apply garbulky's "speaker dancing techniques" tomorrow and probably get to the solution.

[novisnick]

Jun 11, 2022 20:56:30 GMT -5 Boomzilla said:

Thanks monkumonku , but garbulky continuously tells me that the room has too little absorption. The speakers don't sound muffled or dull - just peaky (voices sound shouty in a very narrow frequency range). Sandy Gross designed these, and every review I've read says they're highly linear. Gotta be placement. I'll apply garbulky's "speaker dancing techniques" tomorrow and probably get to the solution.

As well he should! garbulky is correct. From my memory, your listening room is rather large and would require a lot of absorption. 
Keep singing that song garbulky , at least untill Boomzilla learns to listen to you. 😁
I’d also give audiobill suggestion a try before adding absorption.

[garbulky]

I've lately been taking the room out of the equation. Using some nice headphones

[marcl]

Maybe the issue is off axis response. Toole found in comparing anechoic response to listener preference in "real" rooms, that speakers with uniform off axis response sounded the best in a listening room. Perhaps these speakers are linear on axis but have dips and peaks in their response off axis.

I'd also second the idea of leaving them where they are and nudging the toe in/out a half inch at a time to see if that has an effect.

p.s.  Try these two tracks.  In my system playing 2-channel they consistently produce imaging that is not only outside the left/right boundaries of the speakers ... but also behind my head!

Tool, Fear Inoculum:  Chocolate Chip Trip

Mickey Hart and Zakir Hussain, At The Edge:  #4 For Gaia

[Jean Genie]

Jun 12, 2022 1:32:51 GMT -5 marcl said:

p.s.  Try these two tracks.  In my system playing 2-channel they consistently produce imaging that is not only outside the left/right boundaries of the speakers ... but also behind my head!

Tool, Fear Inoculum:  Chocolate Chip Trip

Mickey Hart and Zakir Hussain, At The Edge:  #4 For Gaia

... also Moby Grape's "8:05" 💫

[DYohn]

No two loudspeakers perform the same, so "in the same locations and on the same stands in the same room but they sound different" is absolutely to be expected.

Some loudspeakers just sound "shouty" meaning an apparent emphasis in midrange (or "presence") not because of anything other than good old Fletcher-Munson human sensitivity. A speaker can measure "flat" and sound like it has too much midrange presence since this is where our ears are most sensitive. It's what led to the old cliche of the "smiley face curve" in graphic equalizer days.

If you do not employ EQ, try compensating for this by adding bass. Move the speakers closer to the back wall. Move them closer to the side walls. Put them in the corners. Toe them out past 60-degrees (as suggested.) Increase the subwoofer level or raise the crossover point.

Good luck. Some speaker are just too shouty no matter what you do. This is why I abandonded a pair of highly-regarded and expensive Lowther single driver systems. I just could not find a way to like them.

[Boomzilla]

Moved these slightly further out into the room and placed the pair about a foot closer together. Now there's depth galore. I may need to play with toe-in to get the outside imaging going, but I'm feeling pretty good about making it happen. There's a wealth of detail with these puppies and I suspect that the designer intended the speakers to be played with the grills on. Otherwise, they can become shouty. I'm also wondering how these might sound with tubes...

[routlaw]

To my way of thinking 9 feet apart is too much, I would bring them in to about 6-7 feet apart, then you listening position closer as well maybe 9 foot max.

[marcl]

Jun 12, 2022 18:04:17 GMT -5 Boomzilla said:

Moved these slightly further out into the room and placed the pair about a foot closer together. Now there's depth galore. I may need to play with toe-in to get the outside imaging going, but I'm feeling pretty good about making it happen. There's a wealth of detail with these puppies and I suspect that the designer intended the speakers to be played with the grills on. Otherwise, they can become shouty. I'm also wondering how these might sound with tubes...

Funny thing about "outside imaging" .... why should we come to expect outside imaging?  If it's a studio recording, there's no THERE there ... the image is artificial and should be expected to be flat and between the speakers.  If it's a live recording in an acoustic space with two microphones, then one might expect some psychoacoustic phenomena to be captured that - if you sit in just the right place - could be reconstructed in your cranium by your brain, but not actually exist in the room.

But like, I get what you're sayin'  


p.s. the equilateral triangle always made sense to me ....

[creimes]

Have you tried moving back towards the wall a little bit at a time to get some gain in the low end, not right at the wall of course but maybe an inch at a time, also green painters tape will help, putting it down for back and forth positioning to find what is best.

Chad

[4thchoice]

Jun 12, 2022 18:53:27 GMT -5 creimes said:

Have you tried moving back towards the wall a little bit at a time to get some gain in the low end, not right at the wall of course but maybe an inch at a time, also green painters tape will help, putting it down for back and forth positioning to find what is best.

Chad

I like the blue painter's tape.  Green is a bit .... (Canadian?)

As mentioned (and as i am sure you know) toe-in can make difference.  But at 10' from MLP, height could easily be a factor too.  Are they aimed above or below your ears?

Just another $.02 idea to ponder.  Good luck and keep us posted on what you find (likely will be some little tweak).

[Boomzilla]

Jun 12, 2022 18:53:27 GMT -5 creimes said:

Have you tried moving back towards the wall a little bit at a time to get some gain in the low end, not right at the wall of course but maybe an inch at a time, also green painters tape will help, putting it down for back and forth positioning to find what is best.

Chad

Thanks Chad - These are being used with a subwoofer, and it seems to blend in fine. This frees me to place the speakers for best imaging without having to be concerned about their bass performance.

[Boomzilla]

Jun 12, 2022 19:46:44 GMT -5 4thchoice said:

I like the blue painter's tape.  Green is a bit .... (Canadian?)

As mentioned (and as i am sure you know) toe-in can make difference.  But at 10' from MLP, height could easily be a factor too.  Are they aimed above or below your ears?

Just another $.02 idea to ponder.  Good luck and keep us posted on what you find (likely will be some little tweak).

Thanks, 4thchoice - The manufacturer recommends 29" stands (which I'm using). The woofers are just about at ear level for me with that height (my sofa is kind of low). I've tried sitting up to see if the tweeter/woofer balance changes, but not really.

[DavidR]

What speaker are we talking about?

I didn't see them mentioned.

[KeithL]

First off I think you need to distinguish between "what will be there", "what should be there", and "what you would LIKE to be there".

When we have only two physical channels the cues our brains use to "locate the position of objects in the sound field" are basically amplitude and phase/timing.

Therefore, to be totally blunt, ANYTHING that could be captured in a real room could also be "synthesized" or "simulated" electronically in a studio, once we figure out the desired cues.

In very simple situations, our brains tend to follow amplitude cues, unless they are specifically overridden by phase cues.

For a simple example, take your speakers, and toe them OUT 45 degrees....

If you do that in a reasonably live room then the sound stage will almost certainly be wider than the distance between the speakers.

(Unfortunately, with most speakers, you will also end up with "a hole in the middle".)

A long time ago I owned a pair of Spica Angelus speakers... (which have very distinct cabinet shapes and phase characteristics).

Those speakers produced a very deep sound stage, which extended behind the speakers, and far to the sides OUTSIDE the speakers.

Although this effect was more pronounced with some content than others - it was more pronounced WITH THOSE PARTICULAR SPEAKERS with pretty much any content.

(And, yes, the effect seemed artificial with some content, but sounded quite nice with some content.)

 

You can also do something similar, and equally simplistic, by some very basic processing ( L = L - 0.5R ; R = R - 0.5L ).

In philosophical terms you are "making the left channel more left than just left and making the right channek more right than just right".

It's basically a mixer, which would be sued to reduce separation by adding a little of each channel into the other, but "with a knob that goes past zero".

(For fans of history this is how "DynaQuad four-channel" synthesized its surround channels... it was surprisingly effective with some live recordings.)

However there are modern sound-processing plugins that handle this sort of simulation in much more sophisticated ways.

So you CAN make a studio recording that includes these same "psychoacoustic effects" that would convey room acoustics in a live recording.

In the really cool ones you can even adjust the size, shape, and dimensions of your "imaginary room".

In fact, in the REALLY cool ones, you can RECORD the acoustic signature of a real room, and then APPLY it to the tracks in a recording.

For example, to take your studio tracks, and make it sound like they were recorded in Winchester Cathedral.

You can even adjust controls to decide "where the musicians are sitting" and "where the listener is located".

However it is worth noting that, while certain speakers, or a certain amplifier, might cause this sort of "effect" by causing phase or timing shifts in everything you play through them...

  in that case you're really talking about a novel and slightly unusual form of coloration...

And this is different than if you have content "with the effects intentionally baked in" (either because it was recorded from a real room or added synthetically later in editing)...

  in which case they're going to work best if you produce an accurate rendition of the pre-processed content.

Jun 12, 2022 18:25:52 GMT -5 marcl said:

Jun 12, 2022 18:04:17 GMT -5 Boomzilla said:

Moved these slightly further out into the room and placed the pair about a foot closer together. Now there's depth galore. I may need to play with toe-in to get the outside imaging going, but I'm feeling pretty good about making it happen. There's a wealth of detail with these puppies and I suspect that the designer intended the speakers to be played with the grills on. Otherwise, they can become shouty. I'm also wondering how these might sound with tubes...

Funny thing about "outside imaging" .... why should we come to expect outside imaging?  If it's a studio recording, there's no THERE there ... the image is artificial and should be expected to be flat and between the speakers.  If it's a live recording in an acoustic space with two microphones, then one might expect some psychoacoustic phenomena to be captured that - if you sit in just the right place - could be reconstructed in your cranium by your brain, but not actually exist in the room.

But like, I get what you're sayin'  


p.s. the equilateral triangle always made sense to me ....

[Boomzilla]

Jun 12, 2022 21:07:17 GMT -5 DavidR said:

What speaker are we talking about?

I didn't see them mentioned.

It's a bookshelf speaker with a ribbon tweeter. Since I'm being paid to write the review, I'll hold off identifying it until the review gets published.

Cordially - Boom

[marcl]

Good points KeithL ! I remember some of those processors that you could use with any material.

I mentioned those two recordings - Tool and Mickey Hart - because they produce imaging in my system not only far outside the envelope of the speakers, but also behind the MLP ... unless I turn my head, which demonstrates that the sound is all coming from the front. But - and many on here have seen my room diagram - my front Magnepans ARE toed out 45 degrees and aimed at very reflective side walls in a room otherwise dominated by diffusion and bass traps. The effect is VERY dependent on the recording. And also what's interesting is that sometimes when I use DDSurround upmixer on some studio recordings, the image collapses more to the center instead of widening and surrounding. Whatever phase information is in some recordings seems to backfire when upmixed.

As Keith says you can get a hole in the middle with this radical configuration. I found with lots of measurements (impulse and ETC) that with careful attention to reflections in the space from speakers to MLP I could eliminate the hole and get uniform soundstage starting about 3ft left and right of the speakers and right through the center.  depth of soundstage is also recording dependent but can go several feet behind the front plane of the speakers.

Back to those two recordings ... the Tool recording is relatively recent and it's certainly plausible that they intentionally processed it to produce the effect. The Mickey Hart recording is 32 years old so I think less likely. I researched a bit and could find no references to spatial processing for either recording.  So Boomzilla ... if you have access to those two recordings I'd be curious to hear if you get the same effect.

Also ... a couple years ago a friend in the industry lent me a pair of prototype Fluid speakers to try. They were small bookshelf size with about a 7" woofer and coaxially mounted folded ribbon tweeter. Biamped internal power and no doubt some DSP. They measured very smooth from 40Hz up to 20KHz. They sounded good for what were, I think $1100/pr speakers, but despite the tweeters measuring so well the highs sounded mushy compared to the Magnepan ribbons. I had them on stands right at the edge of the Magnepans in the 45 degree position, so I turned the Fluids toward the wall and the effect was very similar to the Magnepans.