Please help me optimise my listening experience in my main room

In my BEDROOM, i have little more than $300 invested, and i've got the speakers in the only place they can be (against the front wall), and my listening position is on my bed with my head about 1ft-2ft off the rear wall. Recipe for disaster you may think, but its quite the opposite. With a little EQ I can get a PERFECTLY flat frequency response from 40hz to 16khz (or so my spectrum analyser tells me) and it sounds absolutely wonderful. No echoes or resonances, just smooth sound that I guess is what you'd get in a properly built studio.

Anyway, onto my MAIN ROOM, the room where I do 90% of my listening, the room which is a NIGHTMARE to get even sound in. I have a total of $3500 invested (between vintage and 5.1), I've spent a long time on positioning, but I'm still not happy with the sound.

The room is pretty live. Bare windows, parque flooring (with a rug-carpet covering 67% of the floor), no damping materials on the walls. The room is rectangular with 3 straight walls and a bay window. The dimensions of the room (excluding the bay window area) are: 18.5ft long x 15.5ft wide. My listening position on my sofa is 6ft from the rear wall and exactly in the center of the room in terms of width. The bay window is 4ft long at its deepest point. The backs of the speakers are 1ft off the wall (but of course the bay window extends this).

With my floorstanding speakers (Wharfedale Valdus 500) I am experiencing a peak at around 100hz which is very wallowy/echoey. Before I moved the speakers to their current positions, I had them more in the corners of the room, about 3 to 4 inches off the rear wall and toed in to my listening position. There was no 100hz peak, but there was a huge peak at 60hz. Since moving them the 60hz peak has disappeared but a 100hz peak has taken its place. Please take some time to look at the attached photos. Any advice on how to eliminate the echoey peak? I think the problem may be the bay window area, but it could also be my speakers (I don't think they have any damping material inside them).

Also, I have recently installed subwoofers (the big KEF cabinets next to the Wharfedales) to fill in the 30hz to 50hz gap missing from my system, but placing them has been a huge PITA. I ended up giving in and just placing them on the same plane as the Wharfedales. In my so-called 'sweet spot' on the sofa, I can hardly hear my subs, but move my head forward 2 feet and BANG, the subs come to life. When I walk round the room I notice similar effects . I know that waves can add and cancel, but is it really so noticeable? Apart from moving my sofa forward 2 feet, any ideas on how to improve the sweet-spot?

FWIW - The Wharfedales are run full range, and the subs are crossed over ar 50hz with a 12db/oct slope (-3db @ 50hz), but this wasn't enough of a roll off for me so I've used my 33band EQ to cut all frequencies above 50hz by a further 12db.

more pictures

more pictures .

the last pic is the view from my sweet-spot.

In regards to the subs, I set them up by placing the sub in my listening position and taking a walk around the room. Where the bass response sounds best is where the sub get placed. I know it sounds backwards, but it works.

Some nice looking gear you have there! :thmbsp:

I've got to say I love that bay window in your living room, just beautiful! Nice looking place you have. Hell, it looks like it'd be FUN trying to experiment with various set-ups in there.

Russ

Some simple drapes on your bay windows may help tame some of those high end reflections.

Good luck!

RussinOhio said:

Some nice looking gear you have there! :thmbsp:

I've got to say I love that bay window in your living room, just beautiful! Nice looking place you have. Hell, it looks like it'd be FUN trying to experiment with various set-ups in there.

Russ

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Thanks for the compliments Russ, - the room's like a sanctuary for me to escape in :thmbsp:

An idea just came to me. Do you think that reversing the polarity of both subs will have the effect of making the bass in my sweet-spot louder and making the bass 2ft forward from my sweet-spot quieter, or do you think my theory is too good to be true? I haven't tried it yet, - I'll probably try it tonight.....

Loverly room. I'll trade you. Mine is 11' x 23.5' x 8', and despite my wishes, it doesn't look like I'll be moving any time soon.

The doll of Zippy the Pinhead (or whomever) is definitely putting some bad juju into the room. That should be the first object removed.

I would definitely push the subs up against a wall or into a corner, and take them down off of the stands.

I have a couple of questions that I didn't see addressed:

• The 2 pair of Wharfedales: Are they run in parallel (same time), or is one set for music, one set for HT?

• What are those big tables on either side of the room?

• Have you considered moving your room setup either 90 degrees counterclockwise (with the bay window to your right, and the bookcases behind you), or 180 degrees (with the bay window behind you)?

Kenwood go here: www.cardas.com and look under insights,speaker placement. It works.

Thanks for the interest theodoric . It's been nice to finally decorate a room exactly how I wanted it to be decorated instead of inheriting someone elses room :yes:.

The huge table on the right is where I have my computers etc, and its also where I do my university work. Its the biggest table I've ever seen! 9ft long x 3 feet wide table top sitting on top of a SOLID filing cabinet type desk (see picture). I am aware that it can't be doing my sound any good, but it's a necessity.

The table on the left is smaller, hollow black ash, 6ft long x 2.5ft deep and is where my Tube Rig is. I figured it would help balance the room a bit better if I had a table on each side.

On the 'sunset' wall I have a solid indian wood sideboard, 8ft long x 1.5ft deep, and my vintage hifi rig is to the left of the sideboard.

Both the computer desk and the sideboard literally take 4 BIG men (or 2 carjacks) to move, and the TV takes 3 people to move, so rearranging the room would be a bit of a pisser :sigh: . I have thought about switching the room around front to back (i.e. my speakers on the sunset wall and my sofa in the bay window), so that the speakers have a solid wall behind them, but I'm not sure if sitting in the bay area would create a goldfish echo effect??

The inside pair of Wharfedales is hooked upto my vintage stereo rig and the outside pair is hooked upto my 5.1 rig, so I don't have them on at the same time (unless I want to impress a friend with a 'WALL' of sound .

To add to my first post, my Wharfedales are in a perfect position in terms of imaging (from my sweet-spot obviously), any closer together and the sound becomes too centralized and any further apart and it becomes too separated, so I'd like to keep the ratio of the distance between the speakers to my sweet-spot the same as it is just now if possible.

my thoughts

1. get different speakers that will allow you to run one pair and still be satisfied. Maybe some Shahinian Obelisks?
2. perhaps some thick velvet curtains to go over the back windows, they are likely a reflection point that brightens the room. Not suggesting to forever cover the windows, but something you could swing over for serious listening sessions.
3. go to audio asylum and search for DIY Acoustic Panels, there's a guy there that tells you how to make great adbsorption panels.
4. aurelex.com you can send them your pics and they will advise you on room treatments.

its funny, the closer i move the Wharfedales together, the louder the bass peaks get. is this pretty common?

wineslob said:

Kenwood go here: www.cardas.com and look under insights,speaker placement. It works.

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but the bay window area makes calculating the distance to the rear wall impossible

Ya I saw that. I have no idea how in the world you would calc that. Might try the calcs anyway and use the center window. :scratch2:

Can I move in? I'm fairly small, and wouldn't take up too much space...

I'm with thedelihaus here I would kill to have the problems that room has compared to the screwed up mess I'm dealing with.

How would you like to trade for a living room where you have to move a speaker to be able to carry a laundry basket up stairs. The left speaker blocks about a 1/3 of the entrance to our stairs. And that is just where the problems start LOL. The only windows in our living room are to the south the TV can only be on the North side so all day the shades have to be drawn or there is a reflection of the window on the screen.

I could bitch and gripe for pages but lets just say I'm jealous.

I hear you, yes my room's great, yes it's the PERFECT batchelor pad, but its just the WORST room I've ever had for sound!

Progress report regarding the subs:
No matter where I put the subs I can hardly hear them from my sofa. In fact, almost the complete central corridor of the room sucks up bass. I play a 40hz test tone and walk round the room, - its loudest in the corners, fading to completely silent in the central corridor. I've moved my subs around, I even put them either side of the sofa arms and I still couldn't here them! . The best spot for the subs is up on the sunset wall sideboard and my sofa jammed against the bay window, - for the first time I know what thunderous 40hz bass sounds like , but to do this I'd need to move the whole room around! :nono:

Just realised there that I hadn't updated this post since my latest progressions!
Not very nice of me now is it

Well, I have 'semi-optimised' my listening experience. It's not the ideal situation, but IMO its better than how it was, and it saves me from rearranging my whole room so that's a comfort in itself .

I ended up putting my Wharfedales back to where they were originally BEFORE I started moving my room about (yeah I mean like 4 months ago!). Wider apart and a lot closer to the flat walls either side of the bay. Result: my bass has improved phenomenally :yes:. Sitting in my listening position, my bass is now excellent down to 50hz, nice and tight and punchy. The kickdrum now hits you in the chest like its supposed to :yes:. The 100hz peak is still there in certain parts of the room, but thankfully there is no 100hz peak in my listening position, the bass is now nice and smooth down to 50hz.....well, not exactly smooth..... i must admit there is now a slight peak at 50hz and 60hz, but i like that . The down side is that separating the speakers leaves a bit of a 'hole' in the middle, in that the central image is not as focused and it sounds slightly more like 2 point sources, however, COMPROMISES MUST BE MADE, and to me the benefit of bass outweighs that of imaging! I may well add a center channel to fill in the hole later on down the line.....

I'll post a pic of my new positioning as soon as my camera batteries charge....

In addition, as an experiment, I hooked up my KEF Concertos behind my listening position, either side of of my sofa with toe-in, and ran them in parallel with the Wharfedales. I know I know, recipe for disater paralleling 4ohm speakers with 8ohm speakers, but I had to do it just to see how it sounded. Verdict, EXTREMELY IMPRESSED :yes:. Now when I close my eyes I can not easily pinpoint where the sound is coming from, it sounds like its coming from everywhere! The balance between the brightness of the Wharfedales and dullness of the KEFs seems to go really well.

So, as you can probably guess, my listening nights are a lot more pleasurable now .

FWIW - I still can't get sufficient 40hz without standing in a corner or against a wall, - I guess my room's just not gonna give me 40hz no matter how much I beg, but I'm happy with thunderous 50hz bass :thmbsp: (I don't listen to much classical stuff anyway so I guess I'm not missing out on that much....)

One question, is there a room (basement) under your livingroom? The sub problem almost sounds like a 1/4 wavelength problem, but placement should have fixed that......................?