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room treatments? is it the room that's bright?

Hi

Tom from New Orleans, here goes with my novel,
please excuse the length

I've been refining my system with ic and speaker cable upgrades - Cardas,Harm Tech, Acoustic Zen, preamp upgrades - Arc LS 5, tube upgrades - pricey nos Telefunken and Siemans,Dac and transport upgrades - EVS MIllenium II and TEAC VRDS 10 transport and power upgrades - equitech balanced power on my front end.

All have made nice improvements. I've been moving steadily toward good imaging, resolution and natural tonal balance.
I've always tried to move towards more musicality - tonal balance, naturalness, air and warmth.

Unfortunately it may be my room that's my guilty culprit for a slightly bright mid and high end, and I don't have a lot of experience in taming that.

I have a 27 by almost 15 by 8 room, hallways on both ends and my speakers are along the long wall, leather couch opposing in a couple foot notched out area (small closets from other rooms notched in on the ends of the hallways).

The speakers are almost 2 feet away from the walls, set in 9' equilateral triangle with the listening area - imaging is very nice (even with a Proton tv on my cwd lowboy equipment cabinet, back a little from the front of the speakers). Floor is carpet (older), walls drywall with drymount music posters on them, ceiling spackled - no special room treatments

The speakers are Von Schweikert Vortex screens - basically a VR4. they are large floor standing. Their tonal balance is good, acoustic instruments sound nice - I play acoustic guitar. I thought maybe the titanium teeters may be the culprits and I've been considering upgrading to VR4se at $6000 or another neutral speaker, but I'm now think my room may be the biggest culprit and would like to take care of that first. At lower volumes things sound nice tonally, but get a little shrill at higher 'more resolving' volumes. I also have a pair of B&W Matrix 2's to compare, which are nice, but they have more cabinet resonance and don't disappear or image as well in the room.

Imaging is great in the room, I went to great detail in the setup, the speakers disappear nicely (a trait I like) and the image is well beyond and behind the speakers (these speakers are designed for true phase coherence.
But things appear to be a little brighter at mid and high freqencies at mid to higher volumes than I'd like. If I am listening in the room behind this room the tonal balance sounds absolutely wonderful even on sax, horns etc(of course imaging suffers).

Is it the room? Is it too reflective that is causing the slight brightness in the mids and highs?

I did an extensive search here on room treatments and I'd like to hear a few more suggestions. I'm single so I don't have the WAF factor, but I don't want anything too hideous looking in the room.

I'm probably less inclined to do a diy project like at David Risch's site, but would be interested in finding some asthetically pleasing but not too expensive room treatments to tame the high and mid freq. Perhaps absorbtion panels on ceiling first arrivals and back wall arrivals, maybe diffusion behind. The low frequencies seem rather nice, so maybe I don't need to go the corner trap route first, plus I have an old wood victrola in corner. I'd prefer something that would be removeable later for resale purposes.

Any suggestions on manufacturers, particularly those not too pricey, who make high quality products that can slightly tone things down? Anybody work with your dimensions or recommend full room treatments based on them? Any elegent or easy DIY projects?

It's distrubing to think that I've ignored my room all this time, when it's more than likely the biggest factor. Doh!

thanks a lot

Tom

thanks

Tom

Can anyone suggest
128x128audiotomb
audiotomb's avatar
audiotomb OP
1,112 posts
 
It was hard to match levels with the levels going down all the way to the 55-60 spl end, so I had to increase volume for the test

here are my results nearfield and listening position

freq near listening
20hz 51 77
25 51 84
31.5 55 87
40 55 94
50 58 90
63 69 85
80 69 86
100 75 92
125 75 92
160 85 94
200 84 92.5
mid
250 84 93
315 88 91
400 89 89
500 92 92
630 92 94
800 93 88
1k 96 91
1.25 97 93
1.6 95.5 91
2 97 88
highs
2.5 97 89
3.15 98 91
4 99.5 93
5 101.5 95
6.3 99.5 91
8 100 89
10 97 88
12.5 94 85
16 91 79
20 86 76

speaker low freq rolloff is expected, looks like the room has overemphasis in the bass and lower midrange and some attenuation in the high end.

Now to go from measurements to treatments?
rives
953 posts
 
Looks like something happened to our post. We went into some detail on what to look at and some caveats--but I returned to the thread to find that it's not there. Anyway, you do have a few frequencies giving you trouble such as 160. 40 Hz appears to be a placement issue. Mid range could probably use some diffusion and high frequency appears to be overly damped. I can't say all of this for sure without more information, but it seems most probable. Two things to do from here. One is download the SPL instructions from our site, if you haven't already. It goes into some of the caveats that you may run into from this point forward. The other thing is once you get CARA and model your room compare it to these measurements. If they are close--that is very good and you can then further use CARA to simulate changes in the room and discover what it is likely to do to the frequency response and reverberation times. As you can see, this is not the easiest part of a sound system to tackle. It's not like--well let's listen to CD player A vs CD player B. That's why the room is so often ignored as you pointed out at the beginning of your post. Everything is interconnected and very dependent on each other in the room--but you are going about it in the right way--continue, take your time, and it will pay off.
audiotomb's avatar
audiotomb OP
1,112 posts
 
Rives

I borrowed an assortment of tube traps - old not all cosmetically there, from my local dealer - he had these in a storage area. Looks like it tamed a lot of my lower freq problems - did more measurements and much less bass bloating, sounds better but I'm not quite there

Anyway, I'll print the new results and can't wait to get my hands on the CARA software

thanks

Tom
rives
953 posts
 
I probably wouldn't have recommended those traps, but since you have the traps (and they were free), work on their placement critically. The distance from the corner determines the peak frequency attenuation. Off center will broaden this band symetrical placement in the corner will narrow the band. To complicate matters the distance of the speaker to the trap and the corner also play an important role. There are actually multiple combinations that can be used for a variety of results--too lengthy to go into here. I'll be interested in your results. There is no question you can and will make improvements, but I probably would have pursued a different route if you had to pay full price for the traps.
audiotomb's avatar
audiotomb OP
1,112 posts
 
Rives

I didn't get them free, I am merely trying them out

Even though I've been a loyal customer, this dealer wants top dollar for most things, even cosmetically flawed older pieces, we will see what he offers.

I did measure the responses again with the traps in and the bass bloat is nearly all gone. Will post later.

So what type of recommendations were you leaning to?

The Cara software was on my doorstep (2day turnaround, wow, thanks!) and I've built the room (has notches) and a couch so far, slow but I'm learning

thanks

Tom
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