Dunlavy SC-IVa Set up help


I have been playing with various speaker placements for the last several months and just can't seem to get the speakers to sound right. The frequency response bouncing all over. When I get the midrange to sound good, the bass sounds weak. When the bass sounds good, the midrange is lacking. The room size is 12x21 with the speakers on the short wall. Seeting possition is about 17feet from the front wall. I have to use the short wall because the room is also used for HT. My pre amp is an aragon soundstage and my amp is a pass labs x350. CD Player is an Anthem CD-1

Anyone in North Jersey (Rockaway) care to give me a hand ? I will supply the beer and load the grill with dogs & burgers.

Thanks,
Mike
mcreight
You might like top do some research on speaker set up using some of the 'systems' as described on the various sites, such as Rives site whcih has a CARA program, the Cardas System, the Audio Physic's method and the Dunlavy System. Look at the AA forum for further info on these.

Couple of comments though. For these speakers to work on the short wall they are going to have to come out into your room several feet to smooth out the bass, you're going to have to make sure that the 1st reflection points on the side walls and floor are deadened and/or severe toe in to avoid the effect of the side walls, and you're going to have to play with your listening position considerable to get anything close to optimum. Think triangle. I hope you have a test CD and a meter to help you assess the in room frequency response.

I'd also suggest if you want further assistance here that you give a physical description of your present set up (exact speaker and listening position) as well as any limitations you have regarding placement of either.
Dunlavy's like to be seperated by a fairly large margin. Keep this in mind, along w/Newbee's advice.
Hi, I have a pair of SC-V sigs, in a 23 x 14 x 8 room set up on the short wall. Speaker baffle 40" from rear wall 28 in. from side wall. These figures may be of some use, or none at all. It all depends on the surfaces in the room , furnishing, doors, passthroughs, carpet, or hardwood, or concrete floors etc... if you would like, shoot me an email

Scot
Nice setup. I've moved my 4a's around a lot and never could get them to sound right along the short wall, however, my room is not as deep as yours.(13X18) The guy i bought them from had them on the short wall with the sidewalls treated and they sounded pretty good. His room was about 24 feet long and he did have them pulled out several feet from the back wall just as newbee specified. Just remember as far as placement goes, these speakers need to be at least 9-10ft apart and the listening position back 10-11ft for everything to come into focus. Toe-in is mandatory. I started toeing them until I could no longer see the wood on the side. From my listening position all I see is speaker grill cloth. Treating the floor is a plus too. even having berber carpet, placing a large rug on top of that really helped things. A couple of things from my manual - It is best not to have the speakers the same distance from the back wall to the side wall and for the most accurate reproduction of bass long wall placement is the best setup. You could try your home theater against the long wall, mine works great set up like this. (see pic) In this configuration you can push the speakers almost all the way to the back wall. Since they are a sealed box design, they dont have the bass overhang problems that ported designs do when close to the back wall. If you go with the long wall setup you probably wont need to treat the first order reflection points but you will need to treat a 4x6 area directly behind the listening position. I hung up a small rug. It looks good too. Hope this helps.
Your short wall is simply too little space for this speaker. With the wide horizontal dispersion from this type of array, you're experiencing side wall reflections. This alters the in-room response and tonal balance. Once you reduce the side wall reflections by moving the speakers closer together and / or toeing them in away from the side walls, you've now lost the room reinforcement that the woofers were designed to work with. Now the bass sounds weak and anemic. You're in a lose / lose situation. That's because Dunlavy's weren't designed for short wall placement.

On top of that, these speakers suffer from severe variations in low frequency response from room to room due to the differences in floor to ceiling height. I made a recent post about how to address this problem in this Dunlavy based thread. This solution has a lot of variables to it and you can make it as pretty and / or effective as you like.

If you can't relocate the speakers to the long wall and impliment the type of baffle reinforcement device that i mentioned in that thread, these speakers will never work nearly as well as they could or were designed to in your specific listening area. Properly designed speakers take into account specific room placement in order to achieve optimum results. These are properly designed speakers and they are telling you that the placement / room lay-out isn't optimized for their requirements. Sean
>