Lack of depth problem


Can someone please give me suggestions on how I can improve the sound depth of my system? I recently upgraded my speakers to Focal JMLabs Alto Utopia, but they still lack of depth. They have wide and tall sound stage though.

The room is about 15' wide by 9' tall, and 23' long. The speakers are 5' from their rear wall and the seating area is 17' from that wall. The room is lightly treated with sound panels.

Thanks in advance.
vett93
However, I do hear vocal moved to the back and drummer to the front as Shardone pointed out. Good catch!

Then you can do several things.

1. Speakers closer together and away from side walls.
2. Sit much closer to the speakers (or bring the speakers closer to you)
3. Toe them in as you have done (this reduces reflections and increases primary signal)
4) Use a PEQ or tone control to cut or roll off slightly from 5K upwards (this will place percussion further back)
5) Heavy room treatments to absorb more high frequencies.
6) If none of this is suitable then you may need to change the speakers (although JMLabs are exceptional - so this is not an easy task) - but basically it is possible that these speakers do not suit your room/listening/far-field placement. Look for speakers with a very even horizontal dispersion right across the entire frequency range (no dip in the upper midrange) - these will most likely give you more of the depth that is actually intended on the recording. You can see this on the speaker dispersion plots. I suggest a three way with one or two small 3 inch midrange woofers would work best for your far-field listening setup.

FYI: All large 6 inch woofers are simply not suitable for far-field listening as they all roll off around 1 Khz - well before a dome tweeter can take over. Some manufacturers use a phase plug to help improve dispersion. ATC get round this problem by grafting a midrange dome onto a 6" woofer for their two ways. Others will crossover the tweeter very low but this usually results in compression at high output levels needed for farfield. Others go to a horn design on the tweeter to get more output (which tends to narrow dispersion also).
they all roll off around 1 Khz - well before a dome tweeter can take over

What I meant to say is that the horizontal dispersion rolls off. (this is caused by beaming)

Another way round this is to use cones that flex allowing the centre part of the cone to decouple from the outer edge - this is called controlled breakup and you can see it on some woofers with "rings" although you do not have to have rings to exploit cone flexure - it has drawbacks in temrms of added distortion and an uneven frequency response.
I had a similar problem. I had given up and concluded that my speakers were incapable of producing depth. On a lark I purchased a DIY power cable from VH-Audio - Flavor 4 with the Furutech connectors. I wasn't looking for a fix here, just curiosity and was hopeful for even greater spatial cues and detail. After inserting said power cable everything changed. My speakers took on a character they NEVER possessed. This was especially true in soundstage depth. Just a thought..
I don't think you need tube traps on the ceiling, Vett. I just like to experiment, having had tube traps since 1988 and still find them great for absorbing bass.
If you have any "jogs" in the room, bass does tend to pile up there. That jog in my room from 13' to 12'8" was piling up quite a bit, something I didn't realize for many, many months. Otherwise, just a couple in whichever corners you can put them in should smooth out any humps in the bass. It's also helpful (but only it it's not overly expensive) to have a height of 6' on the traps, which means 2 of them. I have found that the closer to the ceiling you get, the more the sound improves. I put a box in between my bottom and top trap just to see if it improved,and it seems that higher up is better! You can always try the Real Traps, but it sounds as though you have enough damping for higher frequencies, which are, as I recall, pretty short. I think a 1khz wave is 1" long -- or shorter, so I wouldn't worry about that too much. One could have a tall ficus tree to break up those wavelengths. It's the upper bass that I find haunts most rooms of normal size.