Listening Room or Components or my ears?


My system is sounding a bit harsh, hard, shrill. (Cronus Magnum lll Amp, Focal Aria 948 Speakers, Denon DCD 1700NE CD Player, Shunyata Gamma Cables). It is just CD play back at 1/3 volume. It's a basement, L shaped room. Carpeted cement floors. The Speakers are 3 foot from rear wall. Left speaker 2 foot from side wall. Right speaker is 15 foot from side wall. Speakers are silghtly toed in and a 6 foot apart. Equipment rack and two subs between them. The wall behind the speakers is covered in framed posters. Is this an obvious fault? The walls themselves are wood paneling. Is there a problem with only one apeaker next to a side wall? Ant thoughts or suggestions? Thanks

bzawa

I have never liked the sound of Focal speakers, just to "French" which is very similar to man if not most Asian preferences as well. I would still do a good job of room treatments first and you might find they suite your taste just fine, if not then tuning if you can electronically, cables or tweak the crossovers to reduce the output of the tweeters or use a filter to tame the band width that is the issue. This could even be done on the exterior of the speakers or the output of the amp depending on how they are wired.

Rick

 

Totally agree that the first order of business is room acoustics. Everything else mentioned only treats the input into the room, not the output of the room to your ears. The critical distance, the point at which the reflected sound level equals the direct sound level in most untreated listening rooms isn’t more than 2 or 3 feet. That means at usual listening distances most of what you hear is uncontrolled reflections, made more noticeable by your speakers inherent brightness. This is why 'room.equalization' will not help until you've treated the room first. You’ll probably need a minimum of 60 ft2 (4 - 2X4 2" and 8 - 2X2 2" panels) for the sidewalls and ceiling, plus a couple bass traps for starters. Two large panels should go vertically on the sidewalls at the point of first reflection. The smaller panels can be used on the ceiling, in a grid pattern. The last two panels should go farther back on the sidewalls of a long narrow room or rear walls of a shallow wide room. Most panel mfrs offer a number of color and fabric options, or even art prints, so complimenting the room shouldn’t be hard. White panels on a white ceiling are nearly invisible. I like Acoustimac for their quality, selection, customer service and price. Virtually all panels, regardless of manufacturer, use Corning 703 Fiberglass or EcoCore Rockwool inside and commercial grade fabrics for the wrap, so be wary of any extraordinary claims, their performance is nearly all identical.

Once youve addressed the big issue, then you can turn your attention to the other tweaks, because now you’ll be able to hear them.

@OP - two definite problems and one potential one. Your Focals are bright sounding and the Rogue amp leans in the same direction - put together its a case of negative synergy. But the speakers are the more problematic of the pair. The room sounds like it would benefit from acoustic treatment. Since that is cheaper than changing speakers, it should be your first port of call. But don't be surprised if you have to look at the equipment once the room is sorted. But at least you will have a neutral sounding space to work with.

My older Wilson speakers have the Focal 1" inverted titanium-coated tweeters.   They have a bad reputation for harsh highs.   When I first got them, I concurred.   Not anymore.  Now, they sound sublime.   Zero fatigue.   The solution was cleaning up the AC power - with special attention to the digital components.   

All of the above suggestions about the room, room treatments, speaker placement, speaker toe-in are correct - as is clean power.   It takes a fair amount of tweaking to properly dial-in good SQ.    The distance between the speakers is based on several factors.  If they’re too far apart, the soundstage becomes defocused & delayered - a vocalist sounds like their mouth is 5 ft wide.

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