28-Apr-2019, 21:04
@Confused:
I said it's taken a long time to get things sounding really good since I changed speakers. That's true, but it has sounded good/very good a lot of that time and a lot of that time was spent just listening and getting used to the sound a change in treatment placement made. There were times when I went a month to 2 months without making a change and times when I either changed back to the previous arrangement or moved things a bit further very quickly, sometimes after listening to just one track. In that sense it's been a bit like some of your progress with the electronics, a process of refinement over time.
You said you don't want to lose dynamics. One thing I've learnt in my room and system is that not treating the first reflection points preserves dynamics while treating them can reduce that impact. That makes sense to me in retrospect because the first reflections arrive very soon after the direct sound, often early enough to fuse with them and help boost the sense we get of dynamics whereas treating them diminishes their level and reduces the perceived dynamic impact, and also reduces the sense of spaciousness and width of the soundstage.
You can treat in stages. Since you mentioned a concern with evenness of bass, I'd start with bass traps in the corners of the room. That will help with the bass and perhaps even give you a lot of what you're looking for just by itself. After that, try treating the centre of the wall behind the speakers, just one 2x 4 foot panel there may be all you need, and the centre of the wall behind you. You may want to treat a wider space there if you're sitting close to that wall. As far as height of placement goes, place the bass traps as recommended (some are meant to sit on the floor and rise in a column if you add more, some are meant to stand midway between floor and ceiling). I'd place treatment on the front and back walls midway between floor and ceiling in an 8 foot high room. Having those panels free standing on stands so you can move them and also leave a space between them and the wall behind them makes it easy to move them in order to adjust placement if necessary and improves their effectiveness. That's a good starting point and should yield good to better results. You can fine tune at will over time as I did.
The 2 big things about keeping the sound lively which I've discovered is not to treat the first reflection points on the side walls and wall behind the speaker, and to place any treatments you add apart from the basics i mentioned above in places that don't impact on early arrival sound. The other tip I'd give is to ensure that the treatments you get are broad band and cover as wide a frequency range as possible, and to ensure that the panels are identical as far as possible.
It's not difficult to get good results right from the start. What takes time is getting better results and fine tuning the result you get to your own personal preferences when it comes to things like dynamics, soundstage and imaging which tend not to get talked about as much as solving bass and frequency response problems.
I said it's taken a long time to get things sounding really good since I changed speakers. That's true, but it has sounded good/very good a lot of that time and a lot of that time was spent just listening and getting used to the sound a change in treatment placement made. There were times when I went a month to 2 months without making a change and times when I either changed back to the previous arrangement or moved things a bit further very quickly, sometimes after listening to just one track. In that sense it's been a bit like some of your progress with the electronics, a process of refinement over time.
You said you don't want to lose dynamics. One thing I've learnt in my room and system is that not treating the first reflection points preserves dynamics while treating them can reduce that impact. That makes sense to me in retrospect because the first reflections arrive very soon after the direct sound, often early enough to fuse with them and help boost the sense we get of dynamics whereas treating them diminishes their level and reduces the perceived dynamic impact, and also reduces the sense of spaciousness and width of the soundstage.
You can treat in stages. Since you mentioned a concern with evenness of bass, I'd start with bass traps in the corners of the room. That will help with the bass and perhaps even give you a lot of what you're looking for just by itself. After that, try treating the centre of the wall behind the speakers, just one 2x 4 foot panel there may be all you need, and the centre of the wall behind you. You may want to treat a wider space there if you're sitting close to that wall. As far as height of placement goes, place the bass traps as recommended (some are meant to sit on the floor and rise in a column if you add more, some are meant to stand midway between floor and ceiling). I'd place treatment on the front and back walls midway between floor and ceiling in an 8 foot high room. Having those panels free standing on stands so you can move them and also leave a space between them and the wall behind them makes it easy to move them in order to adjust placement if necessary and improves their effectiveness. That's a good starting point and should yield good to better results. You can fine tune at will over time as I did.
The 2 big things about keeping the sound lively which I've discovered is not to treat the first reflection points on the side walls and wall behind the speaker, and to place any treatments you add apart from the basics i mentioned above in places that don't impact on early arrival sound. The other tip I'd give is to ensure that the treatments you get are broad band and cover as wide a frequency range as possible, and to ensure that the panels are identical as far as possible.
It's not difficult to get good results right from the start. What takes time is getting better results and fine tuning the result you get to your own personal preferences when it comes to things like dynamics, soundstage and imaging which tend not to get talked about as much as solving bass and frequency response problems.
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
