Seeking informed advice on speaker acquisition (Vandersteen vs. OHM Walsh)

Arturos

Lots of info sites and manufacturers for acoustic panels and placement.
 If you have the cash any number of places will be happy to sell you their room treatment panels...................I'm a D-I-Y guy and like getting the best bang for the buck, so I built my own. I used 3/4 plywood cut to size for the frames. You can make quite a few frames from a single sheet, so cost per is pretty cheap. Stuffed them with 3" rock wool, although there are other choices at roughly $1 per square foot, again pretty cheap. I wrapped each panel with fabric from Joann's fabric store, but pretty much any fabric will work as long as it's reasonably light weight. I used 100% cotton print that I liked. The fabric was the most expensive part of the equation, but that was simply because I went with something I felt would be attractive in the room. What I used was about $13 a yard and I probably used 25 yards or so, but you can buy something suitable for half that price, less on sale...........Even still, to do a rather extensive room treatment cost me less than $500, a fraction of what we typically spend on gear or even cables and the difference was quite significant and positive. You won't need super hearing to appreciate it and you'll be quite amazed at how much better music you thought you knew well is going to sound. Built frames, cut and stuffed with mineral wool....easy to cut BTW,  stretched the fabric neatly over it, like wrapping a Christmas present and stapled from the back.............Let your wife or significant other choose the fabric if she wishes. That way she's more likely to be receptive to the whole idea and these "boxes" can actually be made quite attractive as well as functional with a little creativity.............Enjoy!!.....What I built, BTW is virtually the same thing that most manufacturers will sell you for significantly more money.........There's no magic to it and it works.

I'd say this comes down to what type of listener you are. If you like to sit in the sweet spot and listen more critically the Vandy's would probably be my choice. The Ohm's on the other hand (I've owned 2 pairs) will fill a room with pleasing full range sound with any type of music or movie that will sound excellent regardless of where you sit in the room. The Ohm's sometimes get lumped in to the "Bose Lifestyle" type of speakers and I think this is a bit unfair. The way the produce sound is so different than most everything out there that once you've become accustomed to it (like me) direct radiating speakers just don't sound right anymore. The one word for me that best describes Ohm's is "Big", they just sound huge and full and I'd say the best compliment I can give them is once installed in my system I stopped fretting over my equipment and just enjoyed the sound. They are both great speakers and you really can't go wrong either way, just figure out how you'll be utilizing them and that should lead you to your choice. 

Panels and placement.

Placement isn't critical, but cover your first reflection points first. This is where music from your speakers will bounce off flat any room surface, wall or ceiling and be reflected to your listening position............think of it like playing pool, it's a bank shot with sound instead of a pool ball.............Easy to locate these. Have someone sit in your spot while you move a mirror around the walls and ceiling.........I did it by myself, but it's faster and easier with a helper....Any place that you can see either speaker in the mirror from the listening position is a first reflection point and should be treated. After that treat as many corners as you practically can........each room is different. You'll get the best effect by straddling the corners, wall-wall as well as wall-ceiling with the panels. Panels that will straddle corners should be left open in the back to allow the sound to pass through, bounce off the surface behind it and come back. This effectively acts as a deeper panel and you'll get better low frequency absorption from each box that way.

I wasn't certain what or how much to expect so I built and installed a few at a time, then played music and listened..........It just kept getting better, so I kept building panels..............Keep in mind that there is a point where you can have too much of a good thing. The music will begin to sound worse or dead instead of better.........That's largely a personal preference, so take your time and when it sounds right to you, or you think you maybe went too far, just stop.

My room is 14x23x7.5  feet and I installed a total of 22 panels around the room and ceiling. Thicker panels soak up lower frequencies, panels straddling corners  tend to behave acoustically like a thicker panel. Different types of rock wool or fiber glass will absorb sound slightly differently, but probably not enough to matter in the grand scheme of things. I bought Roxul, 3" rock wool from Lowes because it was readily available and inexpensive, but as mentioned there are other options. Easy to cut, I just used a sharp, serrated butcher knife and it cut just fine.

My system is probably around the $30k MSRP point and the money I spent treating the room probably made a bigger difference in bass, sound stage, imaging, detail and overall quality than any single piece of gear I've ever bought.............for 500 bucks............Music that I had listened to many times and thought I knew, as well as my system, sounded so different with may recordings that it was like I hadn't heard it before.........you can't go wrong my friend and acoustic panels don't need to be "burned in"....although I wouldn't be surprised if some one here disputes that!! LOL........try it, you'll like it

Vandy's and power levels.

I agree with audionoobie concerning the need to goose the Vandy's a bit to really open them up. Mine, the 3A's, seem to have two gears, low, which is fine for more casual listening and high when you really want them to start singing.............Not saying that you need a monster amp, I could drive mine just fine with a 130 watt intergrated (Bryston) before I bi-amped them. Nor do you need to rattle the windows, volume wise, but they do sound better at higher levels. Depending on your listening tastes and where you live, that may be an issue. I enjoy them at low volume, but they ARE better with more power.

dep14: You have an order on back order? Which ones did you get? If you've heard them, what were your impressions?
shadowcat2016: Thanks for the great DIY advice. I researched making my own a while back, but forgot most of what I read after building my first two. Reading your post was a good reminder. I forgot about the rock wool. Luckily, I have my own music room so aesthetics won't be an issue. Did you do roof panels above/in front of the speakers? I have 15'x18' room with 7' wood plank ceilings, brick walls and wall-to-wall rugs. I have a large two-pane window on the side wall too. I am going to source materials like you did and experiment. How did you build the corner panels? Any other advice is greatly appreciated.