How would you rate your listening room?

garfish, heard the vandy 5's this last weekend. so much like our 3a sigs and yet sooooo much better. no resonances from the boxes, bass to die for (and i've got a rel stadium II). just seamless integration from top to bottom.i was drooling. and the guy selling them did'nt even have them set up for optimum effect.

Hi Mark...; thanks for the mini-review of the 5s-- whets my appetite.

My room I think is about a B. Looks like:

the black boxes are the speakers, in reality they are toed in slightly. The blue box is my listening chair.

The room is about 8' high, 14' wide at the narrow spot, and 20' long. The alcove in the right-bck has two doors in to adjecent rooms, normally closed. The front-right area is open to the second floor on the right hand side, and just open on the ground level in the back.

Floor is tile over concrete, left wall is about 90% glass. Back wall is drywall, as is front. Right wall is brick. The floor in front of the speakers is covered with a few rugs, as is the floor behind the listening position. I recently hung a rug on the back wall. Turned out that with the rug about 2" out from the wall, the room became absolute magic. Frequency response from 1kHz to 15kHz is +/- .5dB in almost the entire room... Stereo imaging from the listening position is absolutely amazing. I see the singers, I see the instruments, the sound extends beyond the speakers, and with my eyes closed I often times am not able to pinpoint the speaker locations. I love it.

The ceiling is hardwoord planks with beams haning down 8" at 4" wide at 8' and 16' from the front of the room.

I rate the room a B because the combination of the room and the speakers have a pretty serious bass issue, about +6-8dB at 50 and 63hZ or so, and a dip of about -4dB at 125hZ. The whole bass region is a bit +, about 3-4dB on average. This seems to be partially due to the speakers (Vienna Acoustics Mahler) and partially due to the room.

I have not yet found appropriate methods of dealing witht his bass problem. Just last weekend got the rug on the back wall up, which made a big difference. Build some bass traps, but they did not quite work like I expected. So, maybe with a bit more work can get it to a B+.

Niels.

I've never seen a graphic in a post before! How'd you do that?

Njonker, your bass response is not as serious a problem as you think. Although the exact frequencies may differ, nearly all domestic rooms without serious acoustic treatment exhibit the sort of problems you have detailed. A bass trap that would be effective at 50-60Hz will be very large, however, if the problem is particularly annoying, than a more effective solution is to use an outboard equalizer. The dip at 125Hz is probably phase cancellation from the floor reflection. Try placing something that will soak up sound at the "mirror point" between your speaker and the listening position. I use a large fabric foot rest.