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Gear rack in between the speakers - good or bad thing?

BmWr75

BmWr75

Top octave? pfffffftttttt
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As you can see in the picture, my gear rack is in between the speakers. The system has a solid center image and pretty decent soundstage. The front baffle of the speakers is about 8" in front of the rack front.

Is the gear rack in between the speakers helping or hurting the sound quality to any significant degree? :scratch2:

If it wasn't there, am guessing I'd probably need some wall treatments to tame rear wall bounce.

Let the opinions fly!!

P.S. Yes, there is a complete tube and complete solid state preamp/amp set up in the rack. Still figuring out which sounds better with the new speakers.

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Seems good to me!
Most everyone I know sets up their rack similar between the speakers if they have the room to do so:)
 
I found that when I got rid of the rack between my speakers, my overall imaging and soundstage improved considerably.

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That pic is pretty bad but it's a really small room and it's hard to get a good pic, but you can kinda see my Eicos on bases on the floor below my feet.
Maybe it's partly because this room is so small, but getting that rack off to the side was a big improvement for me. I did, indeed, add absorption panels on the wall behind and between the speakers.
 
I do no rack. My Apogees sounded way better once I removed the rack from between the speakers. Like wes mentioned, the imaging is sharper and less muddy. This applies to my other two speakers as well (Platinum Audio and Audio Physic) but seems more apparent with the dipoles.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2
 
My imaging really tightened up when I went from a rack like the one you have to the lower type in this photo.

Scott
 

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You might gain a little more 3D, but you had better experiment to see if there is a difference. I have not heard the little Arrays, but have heard the bigger 400 Arrays . Great with a very large sound. And the finish in person is wonderful...pictures on the forum really don't show the fine wood on them. And I do see a total tube system with the Rogue and mono blocks, but in the other I see a hybrid with the SP-331....So one tube and one hybrid?
 
slippers-on said:
You might gain a little more 3D, but you had better experiment to see if there is a difference. I have not heard the little Arrays, but have heard the bigger 400 Arrays . Great with a very large sound. And the finish in person is wonderful...pictures on the forum really don't show the fine wood on them. And I do see a total tube system with the Rogue and mono blocks, but in the other I see a hybrid with the SP-331....So one tube and one hybrid?
Click to expand...

You are observant.....yes the Vincent amp is a hybrid.

My next house will allow for no rack between the speakers, or at least a very low one.
 
I have three racks with gear between the speakers, but since the speakers are placed in front of the racks I feel they won't hurt imaging to much. When your speakers are placed in line with the racks, or even slightly behind, that might interfere. But suck it and see, as they say.

BTW: Nice setup!
 
I've done it both ways. Yes, with nothing between except for my amps the imaging was better, but when I put the rack between the speakers and bought some nice Amp-PreAmp interconnects I basically got the same imaging, maybe even better.
 
if you can , IMO, you're always better without 'clutter' between your speakes, your Rogue monoblocks on the floor btween would not be an issue though. Those that state their imaging is 'ok' really aren't enjoying the full potential.
 
When I had my gear between my speakers it sounded good when I moved my gear to the side and left the center open it still sounded good. Imo it didn't make a big enough difference for me to notice. But with nothing in the middle it allows my mind to better imagine the music than when I'm looking at the gear.
 
I guess from a technical point of view, it comes down to sound radiated from your speakers (or diffracted at their edges) reaching the rack and creating supplementary sources. If that happens at frequencies where the spacing between the driver and the new source is greater than ¼-wavelength, it might start to smear up what we perceive as image. If the rack is far back enough that the offending new source-frequencies are at least 10dB down, it should not make a whole lot of difference to remove it entirely.

This is something I'd like to try, but have somewhat limited space in my listening/hobby room. Perhaps I can figure out something temporary to give it a try.

BmWr75, love your speakers! Are these originally meant for studio use or another pro application?

az
 
BmWr75 said:
As you can see in the picture, my gear rack is in between the speakers. The system has a solid center image and pretty decent soundstage. The front baffle of the speakers is about 8" in front of the rack front.

Is the gear rack in between the speakers helping or hurting the sound quality to any significant degree? :scratch2:

If it wasn't there, am guessing I'd probably need some wall treatments to tame rear wall bounce.

Let the opinions fly!!

P.S. Yes, there is a complete tube and complete solid state preamp/amp set up in the rack. Still figuring out which sounds better with the new speakers.

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Imaging may improve by not having that tall rack between the speakers. It seems like you have enough space on the sides of the room to place it there, which would be the better choice IMO.
 
I read a lot about systems and how they interact with the room. Most all agree that placing your gear between your speakers will degrade the imaging. I have the same problem myself. My main system must share space in the living room. I have a 55" flat screen sitting on a console which also have two glass doors at the bottom half. This is a lot of reflecting surface between the speakers. One night I got curious to see if I could get better imaging by covering up all that surface area between the speakers. I went though the house and gathered up all the pillows I could find. I stacked them from floor to the top of the TV in front of the console and TV. I had enough pillows left over to stack up both corners behind the speakers also. (the wife wasn't home by the way):D I proceeded to play dire striats- brothers in arms on vinyl. The imaging was way better than I had ever heard on my system. I heard things from deep behind, high above, and beside my speakers. My speakers are about four feet from the wall and about three feet from the side wall. I get pretty good imaging normally but this was a big upgrade. This convinced me to finally start addressing my room acoustics. I purchased some corner absorption foam. This took care of a bass hump that I'd been experiencing for quite some time but had just lived with it. It also helped with imaging a little. Unfortunately I cant do anything at the moment about the TV and console between the speakers, short of buying a new house. The experiment with the pillows did show me that getting rid of or addressing anything between your speakers will improve the imaging. The pillows probably only helped so much. If I were able to actually remove the TV and console and then treat the back wall with proper room panels, I think that I would have seen even better results than I achieved with my temporary test.
 
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