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Swapped long wall to short wall and now I am having some big issues

I have a 14.5 x 27 ft x 8' room (it is narrower at 12 ft (the last 6 ft on the end where I have the speakers)


I had my system aligned on the long wall with the rack in between the speakers.

The speakers were 9' offset from listening position and the side wall were so far away (and had two record cabinets) that they were out of the equation.  I had real traps mondo bass traps in the corners and GIK art panels to handle slap echo.

The sound was excellent - great tonality, dynamics, imaging. The only issues I had were a limited listening area and not back enough for full speaker driver integration.


After listening to a friends system in a 12x23 room - old home with wood construction I was a gasp. His system was short wall and there was great integration with easily 2 rows of 3 people could sit and listen. It was a very relaxing and engaging experience.


Fast forward. I made the move. knocked out a closet in the corner. Removed one of 2 floor to ceiling record racks, a Wurlitzer jukebox, and Victrola.  I placed the equipment racks on the opposite side wall.  The speakers were set up 2 feet from the walls in front of the two corner bass traps. The sound was dreadful.  The once luscious mids were thin and highs (1.2-3khz) were bright and cymbals were brittle, hard strumming acoustic guitars and brass sounded terrible as well.  If the music got dynamic - it sounded terrible.


The vinyl was bad - cd atrocious.


I went ahead and took all the acoustic panels out except the GIK art panels.


I did some research and bought some GIK Impression 2' 2" panels for first reflection  and GIK Impression 1' 4" diffuser/bass panels for the front corners allowing absorption from the back.  This was much better but still way off.  I moved the speakers out from the wall and then the instrument subtle details snapped into place - at 6 ft this was most apparent however it developed a very bloated mid bass.


I am looking for ways to tame the high end and mid bass but bring out the mid range,  I do not want to over treat.

This in incredibly frustrating as I had my sound very refined and the short wall setup should theoretically produced better results.  I would be interested in your comments and suggestions.


Thank You

128x128audiotomb
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 

the switchbox has no resistors

those amps are not sensitive to no load condition

Wow, that was quick!

Given that the amps have output transformers I’m not sure how or why they would not be sensitive to the no load condition (when processing a signal), but I’m sure Richard wouldn’t have said that without good reason.

In any event, since both amp/preamp combinations manifest essentially the same sonic issues in the new arrangement it appears that we can rule them out as suspects.

Best regards,
-- Al


acresverde
396 posts
 
@audiotomb     If you can pull off just moving the speakers only back to the long wall I think you'll find the story is told, one way or another, without having to resort to inserting other brands of speakers into the mix. I'm a little dubious as to how much stock you can put into whatever the results of those speaker substitutions might yield considering you don't really have a baseline for what they would sound like normally paired with your associated gear. And, at least with the Salks and their lowish sensitivity, I doubt they'll mate well with your Uesugi EL34 monos, which we did all of our listening through the other night. Just curious...would putting the Daedali back on the long wall entail any changes in cabling from source on through to the speaker cables?
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mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Almarge, by your description it seems that the speakers are already "bright' in the near field. As you move away from the speaker this disparity is like likely to increase. primary reflections close to the speaker will make this worse. You can absolutely correct the frequency response with room control in the vicinity of the listening position and you can be clever with position and acoustic treatments. This is a problem with all dynamic point source speakers in one way or another depending on the speaker's design and the room they are placed in. With basic acoustic treatments an room control (speaker control) you can fix almost anything.
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 

... by your description it seems that the speakers are already "bright’ in the near field.


No, I didn’t intend to indicate that. I think of the brightness region as being in the area of roughly 4 to 8 kHz or thereabouts. According to my measurements that region is if anything very slightly under-emphasized relative to most of the rest of the spectrum. In the 3 to 4 kHz area, though, there is a narrow peak, although that peak is not quite as high as the one I referred to at about 18 kHz.

BTW, I should add to what I said previously that the measurement microphone was omnidirectional. So the fact that it was positioned directly in front of the tweeters at a close distance (30 and 36 inches for the measurements I did) would not have under-emphasized what it was picking up from the woofers or the midrange drivers, even though those drivers (especially the woofers) were somewhat off axis. Specifically, the mic was an Earthworks M23. And to assure accurate results DEQX supplied a calibration file for the specific serial number of the specific mic,the file having been supplied to them by Earthworks and converted by them to the format that is necessary for use with the DEQX software.

In any event, as Tom indicated Daedalus speakers are known for their accurate tonality and non-fatiguing sonic character. "Natural sounding" would be another way to put it, IMO. They are not excessively bright by any means.

Best regards,
-- Al


skywachr
124 posts
 
Tom,

So sorry to have confused you in my description. Best way to describe is to label on paper each corner of the room moving clock wise as A and B for the first corner. Moving clockwise again label the next corner of room as C and D and so on clockwise with each corner as E/F and G/H. Let's say right speaker is placed at position E. In that configuration the left speaker would be placed at position B. These assume normal poisoning of the speaker in each case. Once you mark those 2 locations on paper the gist of what I am suggesting should be clearer. Thanks for your patience. I will pm you as well 
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