Lack of depth problem


Can someone please give me suggestions on how I can improve the sound depth of my system? I recently upgraded my speakers to Focal JMLabs Alto Utopia, but they still lack of depth. They have wide and tall sound stage though.

The room is about 15' wide by 9' tall, and 23' long. The speakers are 5' from their rear wall and the seating area is 17' from that wall. The room is lightly treated with sound panels.

Thanks in advance.
vett93
Vet,

Your JMLabs tend to have a dip in the upper midrange off axis - if you trust these measurements - so this region will be particularly weak from your seated position: well back where you likely get quite a lot of reflected energy of which a lot less will arrive from the upper mid range.

A vocalist (normally placed out front in a mix) may appear more distant becuase of this feature. Conversely percussion may jump out at you because your speaker is quite strong in the 5K to 10K region (where you get the "slap" as stick hits skin). Since drummers are normally placed further back in a mix then this may bring the drummer perceptively forward. Drummer forward and singer backward = might mean perceptively less soundstage depth on most mixes.

Reverb is the other aspect of depth perception - if too much side wall refelctions are interefering with you hearing the reverb off the recording then this might be a factor in reducing depth.
Vett93, You should also make sure you eliminate ground loops in your system. This is a typical reason to have less than optimum depth. Try grounding just your preamp and floating all other components.
toe in and loose the sound pannels. these are great speakers, and should give a pretty balanced presentation without much fuss.
Given the full range of the speakers, you might want to try bass traps in the corners behind the speakers. If you use ASC, point the seam kitty corner (45 degree angle). If you stack them, do NOT point the second trap in quite as far: you will kill the sense of ambience even as you tighten the bass.
First reflection points, but also floor (I have 2 half rounds on the floor in front of the speakers, reflective side TOWARDS the speakers). Also, try the "clap" test in your room. Simply walk from one end to the other and see if you have slap echo. If you do, damp it. You can put up anything, but preferably something with folds in it (this is per Alton Everst, in the Master Handbook of Acoustics: Mr. Everest posits that sound is damped better in folds than something without folds). I don't know if you can do this in your room.
I recently put a half round on the ceiling and found the effect rather...effective. I had 2" fiberglass on the ceiling (it's still there), but the shape of the half round scatters reflections considerably better. It also increases height and the sensation of the harmonics drifting upwards.
I also have Real Traps, but find the tuning of the Tube Traps easier, as you can turn a trap to absorb some bass and reflect at the same time.
The room you have sounds great, dimension-wise, but unless you've done something to it that you haven't mentioned, you'd be surprised how too much upper-bass can murk up the sense of depth. What room treatment DO you have??
Thanks all again. Let me talk about my room first, then to my electronics, and then speaker placement.

I think my room is damped just about right. The clap test shows just a tiny bit of echo. I have invited two high-end audio store owners to my house in the past. Both of them liked my room. They didn't like my TV being in the center though.

I also think my amp and preamp have sufficient power supplies. The amp has a 400VA Plitron transformer, which should be sufficient for a 100WX2 amp. Note that this Counterpoint NP100 amp is all brand new. The old one is called SA100. Basically, I sent my SA100 to Mike Elliott and he replaced everything inside. The preamp has the Superpak upgrade which doubled the capacitors.

This NP100 has 6SN7 tubes. I use a pair of Sylvania VT-231s. I do have a tube power amp, a pair of KT88 monoblocks. They are for my bedroom. Will tube power amps increase depth?

I like wide sound stage though. So it is not a good trade to me. But I moved them forward about 8" and toe in towards my ears. I would say 30 degrees toe-in. This seems improves the depth somewhat. However, I do hear vocal moved to the back and drummer to the front as Shardone pointed out. Good catch!

I also hear a hump in the upper bass. I used a Rives Test CD to do a low freq sweep and found a hump around 100Hz. The height of the room is 9', which explains it. Hanging some bass traps on the ceiling may help. But it will look real ugly!

What else is in the room? It has two 15" subwoofers and other electronics for the home theater.

Did I miss anything?