2. speakers
  3. 132116-1973

Speaker Placement - When it's perfect!

So many audiophiles have commented that when your room treatment is completed, your electronics set up and tweaked and most importantly, your speakers are set up in your listening space correctly that you'll know it because everything just sounds so "right" and natural.  I just accomplished that feat in the last two weeks.  I say two weeks because I needed to play a wide variety of recordings to be sure that I'm there.  It is so great to have finally hit just the right set up.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that it has taken me well over a year of experimentation to get to this point.  It's not that other placements yielded poor quality sound its just that now everything sounds like a live event (as much as any of our systems can).

I would really appreciate hearing about your journey to the promised land of audiophile/music lover bliss.  How long did it take, what were the most difficult aspects of the journey?  And if you have yet to get there, what do  you think is the "brick in your wall"?
128x128hifiman5
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
I once built a fifteen foot long Helmholtz resonator to take care of an obnoxious 70 Hz standing wave located along the rear wall. The Helmholtz resonator was a folded S shaped 8" white PVC pipe with elbows and straight sections and end caps and put together with PVC cement and the purple stuff. A brass nozzle of the appropriate dimensions was screwed into one of the end caps.

Interesting factoid: At the big shows there are often a lot of empty bottles, coke bottles, whatever, lying around. These innocuous looking bottle are powerful little Helmholtz resonators. Unfortunately for the sound, they’re the wrong size and in the wrong locations to do any good. They actually hurt the sound quite a bit. That's a shame!
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,927 posts
 
and all those God particles getting in the way.....
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
What I’m talking about is not a particle. It’s a field. I like to call it Lucifer’s field. Unlike magnetic or electric fields it does not (rpt not) attenuate over distance. Mess you up.
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
Helmholtz resonators are too narrow in their frequency band. I need 20-200 Hz absorbed.

No worries about the God particles, I'm agnostic. They leave me alone
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Having built more Helmholtz resonators than the average bear 🐻 I think I can say they can be made to be relatively broadband. Otherwise they wouldn’t do much, no? But the very low frequencies are a tough nut to crack 🐿. No doubt about it. If your system goes down to 20 Hz that would be one helluva system. Sounds like you’re a good candidate for the DIY Room Lenses. They are broadband resonators. I’m a fan of Tube Traps too. Various resonators are in my product line up, too. They are also broadband. That’s what they skeptics used to say about the tiny little bowl resonators -"They’re TOO SMALL to have any effect on bass frequencies!" 😄 Even crystals can affect low frequencies; it’s all energy and they’re not biased. Just to add: you really should map out your room in all three dimensions using a test tone or two and a SPL meter to get an idea of the acoustic anomalies you're actually facing.

More to discover