Help, moved and very unhappy the sound of the syst

Is your wall current up to snuff?

First thought about your arrangement is that using the wall with the 9' height for your equipment and the 12' height for your listening position might be a better choice if possible.

I installed a dedicated 20 amp circuit.

Marty: (This is a sarcastic joke) Try to buy 32,000 dollars worth of power cords. Then 120,000 in IC's. Then flip all your gear over at night to make the cosmic mutations less noticeable....blah blah blah. (But the person who asked about the AC out of your wall had a TOTALLY valid point/question!)

Marty: (Serious)20 AMp circuit does not mean clean AC. Have you looked at where things are echoing? I moved myself with similar results. Since I went smaller, some things I will just never fix. But I did find that getting rid of a picture on the wall and rplacing it with a wall hanging hepled out...(your fish tank might have been doing more than you thought)
How live or dead is your room compared to the old one?
What kind of walls did you have, the paint on them? (Paint actually makes a big difference.)
Listening position?
Talk to me goose..........

I'm no expert but as you were previously happy with your equipment I'd suggest appropriate room treatment or digital room correction.

Some simple observations based on the info you provided.

1) you were used to a large percentage of highly concentrated reflected sound in your previous installation. The new installation is PROBABLY more correct in the fact that the reflections are more "diffuse" and delayed. You're just not used to it.

2) loss of reflections will initially appear as a loss of life or "openness" along with less energy or "congestion" in the "warmth" or lower mid / upper bass region. This is because high frequencies tend to "bounce" more than low frequencies and that has drastically been reduced ( less side-wall bounce and that HUGE "glass signal bouncer" of a fishtank is no longer involved. As such, the bass "hole" is probably not the source of your tonal imbalance ( although it will obviously affect the overall sound )

3) smaller rooms are easier to pressurize. As such, you will need to increase the amount of gain to achieve similar listening levels and the equivalent amount of mid-bass that you used to have.

4) you have the speakers on what most would consider the wrong side of the room. Optimally, the sound should be able to spread out into the room, not necking down.

5) you make no mention of how far apart you have your speakers

6) you make no mention of whether you have changed the type of support that the equipment is supported by

7) you make no mention of whether or not you are on a suspended floor i.e. on the second floor or above a basement

8) you make no mention of where you are seated at in terms of the rear wall and distance from speakers

9) We need more info : ) Sean
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Thaks for all the help. I switched the placement of the whole system be 90 degrees, to run the length of the room.

Some improvement, but little. The speakers are 5 ft apart, 5ft from side walls and 4ft from back wall. 9ft to listening position. I am starting hear and will see where I get.

The floors are the same, concrete with carpeting. The old place was a brand new apartment unit, 9ft ceilings with flat painted sheetrock. The new room is an older house with painted sheetrock, with some "texture" to it. The room is sunken about 1ft with carpeting around the whole perminter up 1 ft, weird 70's thing?

No change in support of equiment. New seating location is 11 ft from back wall.

The house has a 200 amp service panel, old push-matic circuit breakers. I re-installed a trip-lite rf filter used only on the pre ampo and dvd player.

I am thinking I might have a real dead room, just feels that way. Not sure if this can be overcome...

Thank you all for your help

Marty

Marty:

As the others have already noted, your problem is almost certainly due to room/acoustic problems. Your room is fairly large, asymmetric, and plagued with a wall of glass, so there are a number of factors which may be contributing to your dissatisfaction.

You could spend weeks trying various solutions, but this is one time I'd really suggest spending some money and hire the services of a good home theater guru. Do a little research and find out which store / HT consulting service has a good reputation in your area, and engage their services. My bet is that you won't regret getting some expert help. If the advice you get is too expensive to do everything at once, then tackle the problem incrementally, starting with the changes that will make the most impact.

Marty, your speakers are WAY too close together. You also have them the same distance from two boundaries ( 5 ft to rear wall, 5 ft to side walls ) and that is a no-no. Each distance from the speaker to a wall creates a specific resonance or node. Having the same distance between multiple points of reflection will tend to reinforce those nodes and resonances, making them WAY out of control. At the same time, you're also increasing the amount of cancellation in other frequency ranges.

Take a look at the thread below and see if it helps. If you try all of that and you're still not happy, you might want to contact a professinal acoustician to see what they have to say. I would be VERY leary of most "audio guru's" that work in stereo shops that do HT installations. Many of those that i've seen are acoustic DISASTERS that people paid BIG cash to have installed. Sean
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http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1021745115&2&3&4&

Thanks all for the help, so far the front mains are 7ft apart and I am moving the speakers forward to work out the bass.

If I end up with something that NO women would ever life with than am I on the right track?(audio side of life only....)

Marty

Marty, I'm sure everyone is trying to be helpful(but probabaly confusing..as they're mostly guessing), but the reality is you should be prepared to do a lot of studying, and a lot of experimenting, trial and error!...and I mean a lot!!!! Or, your best alternative, possibly makes even more sence...PAY SOMEONE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING TO set up your system!!!
There is simply WAY TOO MUCH going on in a given room/system to try to guess, and to think your going to solve your acoustical challanges without a tremendous amountof knowledge, skill and experince! There's really no replacement for these things, and it takes TIME!(and desire).
I have done over 1000 systems in the last 20 years, and can say all this as the gospel truth.
Sometimes people get lucky on their own, but it's rare. When you consider the considerations to be adressed in attaining great(even good) sound, it can be very imposing. Most just settle for mediocrity, or switch gear untill they just give up.
Anyway, if you ever want definitive solutions, try giveing someone who knows what they're doing a call, and be done with it. Otherwise, be prepared to dig in and make it an extended hobby/project.
Good luck

hahaha... you might end up with something like that depending on your room, speakers and listening preferences : ) Sean
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Marty, let me just qualify my statements a little bit further here...If your looking for some answers to fix things on your own, and that is your goal/interest, if you persist, in time I think you'll likely solve a good deal of your challenges and difficulties your having, yes. Like anything else, if your ernestly looking for the answers, your going to find them!!
Your main goal here if indeed your having a "hole" at around 63hz range, is to get the speakers involved with covering that frequency in a better possition to bring that frequency up! Your sub will definitely have to be doing that frequency well in conjunction with your listening possition from what your telling me your crossovers are set at(80hz...?). Actually, this is largely correct setting for more traditional set-up's such as yours. You should be crossing over the mains(which can't do proper justice to full range DD/DTS signals really), and letting a powered/active woofer(s) do the bottom end for sure. STILL, I've found time and time again that, unless your mains are balanced well in that critical 60hz-100hz reigion(or the other speakers as well really..they're all important to balance evenly), your likely going to have problems at the crossover! This usually results in a perceived(and realized) "hole" in that reigion, and lack of pressence, dynamics, and impact where it counts a great deal!
You sub also needs to be set up where it couples with the mains and blends, balances, and "sync's" or coheres with them from your listening possition. This task is also rarely pulled of by even the most seasoned audiophile tweekies unfortunately.
Location, location, location,..is definitely the more significant factor for getting proper sound from ALL speakers. I can't stress this enough. If you get the speakers placed right, the rest of the stuff is comparatively easier, and you're way ahead of the game. Actually, to an extent...really, the other acoustic considerations take some time to understand and master as well. But the speaker possitioning and relative set-up is still the main thing, besides the gear itself of course(50/50)....
.....You know this stuff wer're talking about here is really where the game is at for building truely top notch, even world class, audio and video set-up's! There's a lot of great gear out there, and some of it works better in some situations/rooms/applications than others. However, that only goes so far, and most people don't know that. They spend time getting excited about learing about all the hot ticket, "A" rated products and what not out there, then attempt to put something together. And that's fun, it's all good. However, most people can only ever see this far, and think that, just because they plunked down their hard green for the best, most highly rated products at any given price, means that they're going to have great sound(or picture). And of course, there's a lot more too it.
So, I appreciate when someone takes the time to consider help with set-up, speaker placment, acoustics, etc. It's the most least understood, recognized, considered, or pursued among considerations regarding Audio or HT systems among the vast majority of the consumers out there for sure.
But don't loose heart, I've found most rooms to be at least "workable", with of course acceptable compromises...and there's ALWAYS compromises.
Hey, if you are indeed serious about learning setting up speakers, learning "EQ'ing"(sometimes needed in HT systems largely). room acoustics, indepth room theory, tips, tweeks, design, etc.., you may want to consider contacting the master, Russ Herschellman in San Francisco, and finding out when one of his next 8 hour seminars is going to be held again!
Russ is the leading well known, highly sought after, acoustical engineer/custom theater designer in the world pressently, and has worked on the best projects money can buy. He's also a current Stereophile GHT, Home Theater Mag, and AVInteriors(I think) writer. Anyway, he does good work,and know's his stuff. He charged $750 or so for his last seminar in Frisco, and I think it's probably worth looking into if you've got the bug!
Another consideration worth looking into would be to try to contact Lucas Film THX , and find out about their week long course for THX certification! They charge like between $1200 and $2500 or something like that, but at least you'd learn a whole lot. Heck, for me it's way worth it...but then I do this stuff for a living, as well as serious hobby. You'll have to weight it for sure.
Still for the money, Russ H. Is a great investment I think.
It will still take time for you to learn on your own, but it just may be worth it to you in the long run...or you can just pay someone whos good. Ah decisions, decisions...
Good luck

Marty -

I am forced to conclude that it has very little to do with your room and everything to do with your AC, dedicated lines notwithstanding. Here's a low cost solution. Get a high-current Ultimate Outlet, mini-Lab Cable and Juice Bar from PS Audio - 30 day money back guarantee. Plug the UO into your wall via the mini-Lab Cable. Plug your amp into the UO and the rest of your gear into the Juice Bar - plug the Juice Bar into the second socket on the UO. Let it all settle in for a few days. I think you'll be shocked at the results.

Just because you have a dedicated line doesn't mean that you have clean AC power.

What are your thoughts on Richard Gray Power Comyany vs the PS Audio product? It seems to be either clean up the ac or give the system a large boost.

I tried a RGPC at the old room, little differance but I am sure that it all depends on the supply. I really have no noise or buzz. Running the sub on the non-dedicated line it clipped big time. I am wondering if a RGPC might be a better choice.

Marty

If you can't get the amount of voltage and current that you need out of the wall to begin with, there isn't a device made that will give it to you. Sean
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