04-Apr-2019, 21:23
Devialet's can do what you want but getting what you want depends on a lot of things. As Jean-Marie and f1eng have said, the recording can play a big part and so can things like speaker placement which you've experimented with, but other things play a part as well.
Looking at the photo of your room I wonder how much it is contributing to your problem. I hate making judgements of room acoustics based on photos—I've seen rooms with features I thought would be sure to cause issues and they haven't caused the problems I expected and the sound has been really good—but looking at your room in your photo there are things I'd try playing with.
There are also things I can't see in the photo, room height, the listening position, the length of the room, what the back of the room and the side behind the camera are like, but based on what I can see my reactions are as follows:
- there's a lot of hard surfaces starting with the floor, the TV screen between the speakers, the walls I can see are bare. All of those things can contribute to a bright sound and even if the sound isn't obviously bright those things can contribute to a lack of a sense of warmth, especially in the mid-range which is where voices are located and if you're concerned about how vocals and instruments which use the mid-range sound, that could be a contributing factor. A floor covering such as a reasonable sized area rug between the listening position and the speakers may well help.
- there's that wall area between the speakers. Floyd Toole suggests absorption on the centre of the wall between the speakers. I accept that you'll want to keep the TV there but those grooves in the panelling of the wall surface are going to break the sound up in ways I can't predict and that surface looks hard. There's also the glass door behind the right speaker which isn't matched on the left side so there's likely to be a tonal imbalance from left to right. I think that covering the wall area above and below the screen (apart from the speaker there) and also over that panelling to the sides, with acoustic panels of some kind may well help.
- I don't like the presence of that table in the corner on the right side because it sets up separate reverberation spaces above and below it, especially below it because I suspect the floor is going to be more reflective than the ceiling. Can you move that table elsewhere? I can't see what the corner on the left side is like.
In my experience the area in front of the listening position is usually more critical than the area behind it which doesn't show in the photo, and the area from a bit forward from the speakers back to the wall behind them is the most critical part of the area in front of the listening position. Symmetry helps but isn't essential but the area in the centre behind the speakers seems to play a big role in getting great results. Toole suggests absorption there and I've found that advice helps a lot in my room.
I don't recommend you go out and start spending money on a rug and acoustic treatment without experimenting first. Try placing a woollen blanket or a quilt, folded once or twice if possible, on the floor between your listening position and the speakers, and try draping something soft on the wall either side of the TV screen and below it, plus removing that table and chair from the corner and see if that improves things for you. If it does then you can start thinking about what kind of long term changes you'd like to make in those areas that will fit in with the way you want to use the room and have it look. If those things don't help then they've cost you nothing but a bit more time trying things that haven't worked. If you get an improvement then you can start thinking about physical room treatments of various kinds and there are alternatives to acoustic panels if you don't like the look of them.
Looking at the photo of your room I wonder how much it is contributing to your problem. I hate making judgements of room acoustics based on photos—I've seen rooms with features I thought would be sure to cause issues and they haven't caused the problems I expected and the sound has been really good—but looking at your room in your photo there are things I'd try playing with.
There are also things I can't see in the photo, room height, the listening position, the length of the room, what the back of the room and the side behind the camera are like, but based on what I can see my reactions are as follows:
- there's a lot of hard surfaces starting with the floor, the TV screen between the speakers, the walls I can see are bare. All of those things can contribute to a bright sound and even if the sound isn't obviously bright those things can contribute to a lack of a sense of warmth, especially in the mid-range which is where voices are located and if you're concerned about how vocals and instruments which use the mid-range sound, that could be a contributing factor. A floor covering such as a reasonable sized area rug between the listening position and the speakers may well help.
- there's that wall area between the speakers. Floyd Toole suggests absorption on the centre of the wall between the speakers. I accept that you'll want to keep the TV there but those grooves in the panelling of the wall surface are going to break the sound up in ways I can't predict and that surface looks hard. There's also the glass door behind the right speaker which isn't matched on the left side so there's likely to be a tonal imbalance from left to right. I think that covering the wall area above and below the screen (apart from the speaker there) and also over that panelling to the sides, with acoustic panels of some kind may well help.
- I don't like the presence of that table in the corner on the right side because it sets up separate reverberation spaces above and below it, especially below it because I suspect the floor is going to be more reflective than the ceiling. Can you move that table elsewhere? I can't see what the corner on the left side is like.
In my experience the area in front of the listening position is usually more critical than the area behind it which doesn't show in the photo, and the area from a bit forward from the speakers back to the wall behind them is the most critical part of the area in front of the listening position. Symmetry helps but isn't essential but the area in the centre behind the speakers seems to play a big role in getting great results. Toole suggests absorption there and I've found that advice helps a lot in my room.
I don't recommend you go out and start spending money on a rug and acoustic treatment without experimenting first. Try placing a woollen blanket or a quilt, folded once or twice if possible, on the floor between your listening position and the speakers, and try draping something soft on the wall either side of the TV screen and below it, plus removing that table and chair from the corner and see if that improves things for you. If it does then you can start thinking about what kind of long term changes you'd like to make in those areas that will fit in with the way you want to use the room and have it look. If those things don't help then they've cost you nothing but a bit more time trying things that haven't worked. If you get an improvement then you can start thinking about physical room treatments of various kinds and there are alternatives to acoustic panels if you don't like the look of them.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
