Any tips to improve imaging?

Sorry the drawing did not come out

 

Listen to something you're very familiar with. To check for correct phasing, I always listen to a mono recording making sure the audio is dead center. In a stereo recording, you will usually hear bass (kick drum, bass guitar, etc.) in the center and the higher frequencies spread outward. There are exceptions. For example, older recordings could have the bass hard right or left.

 

Like Dave, I also highly recommend the Cardas speaker placement formulas. I have used them in about 6 different setups, all with excellent results.

Cardas developed this formula to also take into account acoustic nodes working properly and I think that's why I like it so much.

Try it.

 

I positioned my speakers over a period of a month or two after I purchased them and was very satisfied with the sound. I then compared them with the various formulae to find I was with a cm or so of their recommendations.

As far as soundstage goes, I keep in mind that some music doesn't have a sound stage at all, just a wall of sound. I find most CDs have no soundstage at all, but those are rock CDs I have for the car, not serious listening. Soundstage testing I do, is always via LP.

Getting rid of the TV in between hockey games helps a great deal. I have a heavy rug on the wall behind my speakers and that is a huge help in soundstage depth and width.

First reflections are diminished to aid in soundstage width, such that I find very little toe-in is better for my room and speakers. Beside each speaker is LP or CD cabinets that I can cover in a blanket, thus opening the soundstage. I find opening the soundstage helps with positioning the soundstage across the whole plane.

The 1.5m my speakers are from the back wall, assist in soundstage depth and in keeping the bass from being to boomy.

These experiences are all very depenant on each and every room, no doubt.

Brian

 

Check:

http://www.acousticsciences.com/articles/iar85.htm

http://world.std.com/~griesngr/paris.pdf

 

Dollar for dollar, you can do a whole lot more with cheap acoustic tiles and foam mattress covers than you can with expensive equipment upgrades. I often wonder how many audiophiles ceaselessly improve their equipment without addressing the room, or cripple their STEREOPHILE-approved purchases by planting a fifty-inch monitor right between their speakers.

These tips come from observing the audiophile buddy I mentioned above. He has methodically maximized an unlikely living room into a very good listening room, without paying through the nose for the sort of dubiously priced room treatments you see advertised in the back pages of equipment journals. FWIW, he's a professional statistician not prone to hype or fads, and I have A/B-ed almost every change to his room listed below.

Once you've established where your speakers sound best, the near walls must be treated for soundstage width, as per 7_V's quote above. If you have an uncarpeted floor, you need a good rug between you and your speakers. Windows need winter-insulated drapes (not blinds), and a television screen must be covered, preferably with two acoustic tiles back-to-back: a beach towel thrown over the monitor doesn't cut it. Framed pictures and posters, etc., need to go in another room: sorry, honey, but your mother's portrait just looks better over the commode. And you already removed any variable light switches or adjustable halogen lamps from the room, correct?

Treating the back wall behind the speakers is crucial for soundstage depth. If the expense of professional wall treatments leaves you as shocked as I am as to how much someone will charge for articulated foam, you can treat the wall behind the speakers with the hospital mattress covers sold in discount stores, which come in a wide assortment of hideous non-neutral colors. It sounds like it would look horrible, but if you install it neatly -- keeping in mind you cannot paint acoustic treatments without greatly compromising their efficacy -- it looks almost normal when the entire wall's done. I said "almost."

After these very hot spots are addressed, the next step is to tame the corners of the room. Half an acoustic tile mounted diagonally across each corner, the long side positioned against the ceiling, has a surprising effect (assuming you've taken care of the bigger problems above). In fact, you may end up removing one or two of these corner treatments. Buy two more hospital mattress covers, and roll them each into a big pillar-- snugly, but not so tight as to squash the articulation of the foam flat -- and move those into the corners of the back wall behind the speakers. These pillars could be covered with very light fabric, and mounted on a piece of plywood should you find their effect too pronounced by simply leaning them in the corner. Again, these could be made look almost normal, depending on your HGTV skills.

Or you could say, "To hell with this," and buy an audiophile-approved headphone rig. I went with Sennheisser 600s and a dedicated Musical Fidelity amp.

 

Ron is right on the money here - or, in fact, off the money.

Last year I launched my speakers at the Frankfurt High End Show. After an evening setting up the equipment I really could have cried. The room was a box with concrete walls and sounded like a king-sized bathroom.

The next day I turned up with a duvet and a blanket (it was all I could lay my hands on) and nailed them to the walls. The improvement was astonishing.

I would however recommend only pure wool or mohair blankets and genuine eider-goose feather filled duvets.

 

Don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet, but I've had great success setting up the speakers at an angle, about 20 degrees off-axis to the square of my room. As long as the speakers aren't firing directly into the oppisite corner of the room, you can avoid lots of reflections that are almost guaranteed with a centered, evenly spaced set-up. That said however, in the past I had used the Cardas setup as well with good results.

Another tip that helps a great deal is throwing a couple of bean-bag chairs in the very corners of the room behind the speakers. Corners are a collecting spot for bass artifacts.

 

Thanks again. There is a lot of useful and helpful (and sometimes intimidating) information here.

 

Gary, the e-mail I received telling me you replied showed your diagram a little differently (probably the way it was intended). I have the exact same deal with a hallway to the right and behind my right speaker. I wonder if there are any specific ways to address this? Also, behind my chair is the kitchen, which is separated from the listening room by a 3-feet-high wall and an open doorway. Given the small size of the listening room, (13" X 13"), I assume this is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Gary,
I'm in Salt Lake City. I don't know about Tronno, but it's definitely colder here than South Carolina.

My ears are above the wall, sometimes above the chair, sometimes not (La-Z-Boy).