I have found the room to be the biggest contributor to sound, Sabai. Even an untreated 13 x 27' room, with many openings (a la Spanish architecture) allows the sound to move into other areas of a house without hitting boundaries, as I found out for myself when I set up my former boyfriend's speakers when I was out visting him years ago in the SF Bay Area, and he'd not returned from France yet. (Finally, I was alone to re-arrange the system without his low-fi interference. Long story.)
He had two rooms with no barriers between them: the dining level and a sunken living room (hence the 13x27" room, and the speakers were placed in the sunken area, with their back right up against the dining room higher area (Inever liked that placement: I thought sound waves would slam into each other immediately, and the sound was, corresponding boring. But it was his house). I looked at them, and thought hmmm, based on my experiences (and my work: writing for TAS, and then Fi Magazines), it would be better if the speakers were up on the higherlevel (the dining room, all of 24" higher. Again, dining room dimentions: 13' wide x 9'long - exactly 1/3 of the length of the whole room)(the sunken living room was 13' wide and 18' long, hence the total of 13 x 27'), so I moved them there. The change was immediately and completely positive: transients came alive (no glare) and the subtle nuances of sound revealed themselves. You could hear two fiolinists playing side by side and hear which direction their instruments were pointed). My ex had two boarders in the house, a woman and a man, who were in their room just at the top of the stairs, which is only on a level 9' higher then the dining room level where I'd placed the speakers. When I walked upstairs a few minutes later, Marianne, the woman, asked me "What did you do?" and I told her I'd just lifted the speakers from the sunken living room up on to the dining level (all of 2 steps, when you step down from the dining level to the living room area. She pronounced the sound "wonderful," and I hadn't even seriously tried to place them, width-wise. The only thing I did notice was that it it turned out that the speakers were 1/3 of the way from the dining room wall (9' and the room is 27' (rule of thirds here), but the speakers were less than 2 feet from the side wall on one side (heh, the house ended on that side: nowhere to go), while on the other side, it has the two spanish arches with no doorways with the front door and hallway immediately on the other side of the arches (again, NO DOORS). My best friend, who'd lived with me when I had WATT/Puppies, Versa Dynamic 2.d, MIT CVT Terminator, a JVC XLZ-1050 player and a Convergent preamp, Jadis Defy 7, VTL 300s and Plinius SA-250 amps - oh and the VAC 70/70 all with Transparent reference level speaker cable (circa 1995), shen I dragged her over, raving about the sound, said, "Oh, my God, Glen. I've heard your system sound GOOD, but this is a different level!!!). OF course, I neglected to note I'd just discovered Shunyata power cords, so I had a Black Mamba and a King Cobra V2 sent to San Francisco, so I could hear it while out there on someone else's system, and Jack Bybees first line conditioner and an ESP power cord powering Bybee's line contioner. The Shunyata went into the Arcam Alha 6 integrated My friends system, which I'd given him before I left California for lovely Connecticut, was a JVC 1050, an Arcam Alpha 6 integrated, MIT CVT w/Terminator, Transparent Plus speaker cable. He had a basic rack (Target, but not a sturdy rack), but with a level of sand bags, with MDF board on top with 3 GoldmundCones, another piece of MDF board and 3 MORE Goldmund cones, MAN, did we get imaging - AND focus. Oh, yes, the Speakers were the Mirage 490s, which the titanium tweeter. $600.00. HP reviewed the tweeter in the larger version, somewhere around TAS issue 84.
And the "holography/imaging" was stunning. Nancy Wilson CLEARLY outlined in space, singing "Free Again," off her Lush Life album. The bitterness in her voice was unmistable, the venemous bile made you recoil.
I point this out because I've been in several rooms, another one being Tom McFawl, the creator of the Meow, Meow cat commercials, who lives in Faifield, CT. His living room is easily 30 x45 - at the smallest (didn't have a yardstick) and he had Infinity speakers (non-descript ones), generic speaker cable in a nice, wood, walled room. Ceiling 10' or maybe 11. I bought over an Arcam FMJ -23 (with the Ring DAC) and Nordost Quattro Fils interconnects, and a Shunyata Python power cord. Other than the rug on the floor and the grand piano, there wasn't a shred of anything reflective - well, I guess those floor-to-ceiling lace curtains ofer the windows might've helped. But the room, I recall, didn't sound "live." That cold have been the bookcases along one wall.
You want life?!?! God, was it EVER alive. Every movement of the musicians, even down to their stomping on the floor, which disturbed Tom no end. "The Engineers should have edited that out," he screeched. My boyfriend and I made the point to him that it made the recording realistic in the sense of it sounding like real human beings playing their souls out.
He had NO sound-proofing of ANY kind,and the speakers weren't even on stands and were willy-nilly placed, one of e'm BEHING the piano. When the sound came out, I immedately thought, it's the size of the room. The room reflections are taking so long to reach the side walls, and ceilling, they reach the listener's ear LOOOOOONNNNG before any secondary relections.
His wiring was single end, but every bit as focused and holographic as when I heard Dave Wilson's WATT/Puppies in Novato in 1988 (Iwas the FIRST non-Wilson person to hear them.[Dave used to set up my Goldmund turntable for me]). And I kid you not, although the Wilsons had more resolution, they in NO WAY kicked Tom's Infinity speakers off the sonic stage.
People tweak everything, but how many know that if you put down a half-round 11" tube trap with the reflective side facing the speakers on the floor 6" away from the speakers and angling the traps so that they are not completely parallel to the front of the speakers (angle them slightly, so that if you measure one end, it would be 6 1/2" from the woofer (floorstandings: mine are Hale Rev 3s) and the other end around 7 1/2" away (usually the outer end of the trap is further away, as in the outside end of the speaker, closest to the side wall. I did that last night, and was disgusted I'd forgotten not to lay them perfectly parallel (ASC agrees, by the way). It brings back the lower mdrange frequency the Robert Green complained about in TAS about 6 issues ago when he said we were killing the lower midrange (sucking it out). I wrote Harley and said, use 1/2 round tube traps on the floor in front of the speakers and cure that suckout!
In any case, the size of the room surprasses most else (and the materials, too, of course: concrete? Yucky. ASC's wall damp - which I have - on a resilient channel - gives the wall the strength of a plaster wall ('course, it's not truly plaster), so flexing and bass loss are minimized.
Nonetheless, my upstairs listeing room is 13x20 with an 8' ceiling that suddenly goes up to 10' in the new addition (2003)part of the house.
For all that, the 23' x 43' basement (it's a small ranch), was THE most holographic presentation of the sound I've ever heard, and makes the ASL Hurricanes sound as they did in HP's review back in TAS' March 2003 issue. Upstairs in the smaller room, not quite the vivid, sheer, holy-good-it-sounds-live sound, although the imaging is better in the smaller room.
I cannot speak to multiple runs of wiring, but neither Dave Wilson, nor Alon Wolff use this approach, and certainly not the eminent Hary Pearson (and Ive heard his system, as well as Larry Kay,my former boss at Fi Magazine, when Larry had Grand Slamms, Transparent (top of the line) Rockport turntable, Jadis JP-80 linestage, Bel amps and, hmmm...not sure of the interconnects: either MIT or Transparent. I liked the $300,000 system, but thought it not a match for my measly $25k system - and I KNOW what to listen for. 'Smatter of fact, I asked permission to make a change and then removed the power cord from lying on top of the Transparent reference speaker cable, which I elevated with a book so it was like a bridge going over the power cord on the floor. Sallie Reynolds, upon a replay of the cut, gasped, "What did you DO?!?" And Tom Miiller looked at me (we were writing an article about the Audio Artistry Dvorak speakers at the time, me doing the commentary on his main review) and said, "Showoff!" I protested that this came from Enid Lumley herself, and was not my idea. Also, turn off your microwaves, and no, I don't CARE that you have your stereo on a dedicated 20 amp circuit. Unless your circuit box is completely separate, TURN OFF THE MICROWAVE.
So, to wrap this up, i've had a LOT of experience with designers in their own factory listening rooms, and I'm here to tell you, the room comes FIRST. if you don't fix it, you may find yourelf compensating to create an effect that need not be so complicated, except for the room's interference. (I still remember after my review of the Hurricanes on Ultraaudio.com, someone wrote to ask if I didn't find the Hurricanes "smeared," and I thought "his room's off." They are, as HP said, excellent on attack and decay. If you hear smearing, it's something else, not them. I wish more people would get about 10 9"tube traps, stack them behind the speakers and put one each to the side (first reflection point) and then you'll hear how much NATURAL imaging your system has. You can improve from there, but you can't build the rooms in a house without floor plans and knowledge of your building material. That's a recipe for disappointment.
