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Toe-in for Harbeth M30 in a narrow room?

Although my Monitor 30's present lots of problems in my room from hell (see below), they perform better than most speakers I have had in this all but impossible room. Fore me, the most vexing issue is toe-in.

I am m trying to position my speakers for fairly nearfield listening. They are 64" apart and I sit 64" away.. For the most part, the side walls on my L shaped living room are very reflective, although I have a few bookcases and wall hangings to ammediorate the hardness of the plaster/concrete/cinderblock construction.

Pointing the speakers at the listener, yields a very intense and focused sound and a very compressed soundstage-almost like looking through a fish-eye lens, However, there is good tonal accuracy, for the most part. The sound can get a bit over the top and fatigueing at 75-85 db. I sometimes have to lower the volume. While center-fill is excellent, some images just hang around the speakers.

Pointing them straight ahead, gives a wall to wall rectangular sound stage, with slightly diffuse images-although relaxed and easy to live with and non-fatiguing. loss in transparency and tonal accuracy, but not significant.

Surprisingly, an intermediate level of toe in, seems to combine the worst aspects of each approach. Midrange becomes hard and compressed.

Trying to get them further apart and therefore closer to the bookcases/sidewalls makes them sound worse still-very recessed, thin and vague.

The nearfield placement, as described above seems to work best, but I am bafled about the toe-in.

Under these circumstances, if you had to chose between pointing the speakers at the listener and no toe-in, what would you chose?

Thanks so much,

Jay
jaybar
tobias
1,534 posts
 
FWIW a diffuser made of angled panels placed behind my speakers and close to the rear wall helped both image and midrange in my situation.
newbee
4,767 posts
 
If you like the sound of the speakers pointed straight ahead, but for a bit of diffusion created in the sound stage attributible to the nearby side wall, try crossing the speaker axis well in fron of the listening position. Actually use the same degree of angle of the speaker to the ear that you use when they are pointed straight ahead. I assume this would be 22 to 23 degrees. Doing this will allow closer placement to the side walls, i.e. widen the spread, just move your listening position back accordingly. I've never done it with Harbeths but I have will several other dynamics and I always got a better (more focused, and IMHO accurate image (but you loose a bit of the reflected sound from the side walls which can give the impression of a wider stage (more 'airy' some feel - :-). Everything has tradeoff's. Give it a try.
frank_sm
112 posts
 
Have you tried different stand heights, as well as different height seating position? Experiment here if you can. It may be that you are sitting at or near a null and differing degrees of toe-in fail to improve the sound at your listening position.
eweedhome
227 posts
 
Another M30 listener! Excellent. (And I think we've exchanged posts perhaps in the past.)

The dimensions I'm working with are different: About 19 x 14, with the speakers on the short wall. The speakers are about 6 feet apart, and I'm about 10 feet away. Both the speakers and I are at least 3 feet from the walls behind us. I get very nice imaging with the speaker modestly toed in (so that I can still see the inner sides--it's not directly toed in, and therefore, the axis wouldn't cross in front of me--it would cross behind). If I point them straight ahead, I lose some of the image. If I point them straight at me, it's a bit too much.

I'm thinking that if there is a way that you can get further back from the speakers, you might like that. In my room at least, they seem to like to have a bit of space to breathe.

In spite of all the bruhaha floating around about the Harbeths, I was very disappointed to have the experience--as you describe--of finding them fatiguing...or, I should say, capable of being fatiguing. Like you, I had some wall reflexion problems--windows, really, and I seem to have resolved those to a fair degree with some Marigo dots on the windows. That seemed to help. I've also found that (contrary to what I expected--perhaps foolishly) the Harbeths are very sensitive to whatever I feed them. They can be kind of punchy, and they can even be...if not exactly "bright", at least, as you say, fatiguing. So they seem to like more laid back gear feeding them. I'm in the process of experimenting with electronics, etc. to get to the right place with them.

But I want to emphasize this: As someone who has been disappointed with a lot of high end gear, generally because I think most things overly emphasize treble, and slam, and a rather in-your-face kind of sound, I've found the Harbeths to indeed have a really fine mid-range, great for voices and strings and other mid-rangy things we tend to like, and, generally, to be pretty friendly speakers. I'm finding their care and feeding at least much easier than for my former Vandersteen 3a sigs. Yes, I'm thinking about a sub-woofer, but I'm starting to think I might be able to stop worrying about speakers pretty soon. For a change.
jaybar OP
4 posts
 
Thanks guys. Keep your suggestions coming!

eweedhome,

It was great to hear iof similar experiences. I am beginning to re-try a modest amount of toe-in, as per Alan Shaw's s suggestion (about 5-7 degrees actually.

Eweedhome, I would like to sit further back, but my living room does not allow it. There is a separate sitting area behind the back of the couch (my room is semi open-plan), so I can't get the couch much further back.

Theoretically, I could move the speakers closer to the wall behind them, but my room's concrete and cinderblock construction (plaster over cinderblock), hold on to bass like a sponge. Getting any speakers significantly clser to the wall behind them, yields distracting undefined bass..

Very modest toe-in does yield some promise, but reduces soundstage width. So many trade-offs.

Thanks again,

Jay
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