Soundstage is too wide??

Jim Smith's book also talks about brings the speakers in towards each other to test for changes in tone. He's right, if I have mine at 9.5 feet and play with no toe-in ...I get too wide of a soundstage that sounds "hollow" and lacks some harmonic richness. When you get the drivers closer to one another, it's quite a change. I don't have my mic setup handy but it would be interesting to run some plots in these setups, but I'm sure they are well documented online.

 

Thank you for posting this; I used this method last night (haven't adjusted rake yet, but my tweeters are already just slightly above ear level so I think I'm good there anyway) and it corrected an ugly issue of having a right side that seemed like it extended for days, and a left side that had a wall just outside the boundary of the speaker (speaking figuratively, of course; the actual boundary/wall is about 3' from the left speaker). I used the Chesky Jazz Sampler Vol 1, Track 10 - Soundstage and Imaging, as a reference. Balance has been restored, as they say. Most amazingly, though, is midbass clarity in the center image. I was finding it hard to discern some male vocal lyrics when there was a "bassy" instrument playing (Jack Johnson - Middle Man), nor was I able to hear and feel the bass solo on Metallica - Orion, as well as I could on far less "impressive" equipment. Apparently by cleaning up my imaging, it also had the unintended benefit of separating those similar tones from each other and now they all sound much more natural, balanced, and, frankly, intelligible.

So yea, thanks!!

 

I watched a video on YouTube of someone describing the set up method and following his verbal directions re-set my magnepan 1.7's and my jaw has been on the floor with astonishment the month or so since.

 

I have an angled door that the right speaker fires right at so I honestly felt like I was just going to be compromised no matter what I tried. Especially with the perception of a vast, open right channel and a closed-off left channel. So, I am beyond ecstatic that this does not appear to be the case, that my hope for balanced, natural audio in this room was unfounded. This is a pretty big deal to me The hours and hours I've spent in here tweaking, learning, moving, listening, trying not to be so picky... they all snapped into brilliant focus last night. I'm just coming out of two of my favorite Tool songs and the hairs on the back of my neck - they approve!

 

Paul Saldana, could please paste the link to the Sumiko YouTube video that you watched? I've read many descriptions of the method but a video may be very helpful for me understand the practical issues for the placement of the speakers.

 

This thread helps explain to me why so many couldn't hear the issues with the Audio Fidelity BS&T and Sly Stone Greatest Hits SACDs...

 

I had to hunt, but I found it! Great info here:

 

I thought about suggesting an out-of-phase condition, but decided that was too obvious. But given subsequent posts, perhaps not. The way to test for an out-of-phase condition is to switch the positions of both (two) wires at one speaker or the other (but not both), or at the other end of one speaker cable where it connects to an amp, etc., (if you can). At that point, if you were out-of-phase, you would now be in-phase, and vice versa. Out-of-phase will have a big hole in the center and sound coming from beyond your speakers on the far left & right. In-phase will have a nice center image and sounds not coming from way beyond the speakers.

 

Last night I listened to the AP 45 of Muddy Waters - Folk Singer. My room is 21' x 24' - speakers 9 feet apart well away from boundaries. The entire front half of my room, wall to wall, floor to ceiling was filled with recorded venue space. Pretty cool when you get it right.

 

I have a question about this procedure - if you start with both speakers against the wall and your listening position is at an equilateral triangle with your initial speaker location, what happens as you begin to move the one speaker out? Do you adjust the seating position accordingly?

 

Just listening to The Alan parsons Project MFSL Tales Of Mystery & Imagination Gold CD and at the end of track 4, The Cask of Amontillado, you can hear clearly where the choir singing "Oh ah, oh ah, oh ah" is occupying both center stage and is extending past the speakers on either side with multiple voices just like in a choir. If I move in too close I lose the image past the speakers and it's only centered then. Just one example of many, but not every recording sounds like this. I would imagine it's more prevalent on Vinyl. Not unusual at all Thermionic Vinyl, enjoy.

 

Thanks!

 

@Dave, well-executed digital frontends with high quality, well-recorded source material handle the wall to wall sound just fine

With that said, I can't fight the itch to buy my first turntable for much longer. It's going to happen.

 

Paul, thank you very much. Ran out and got myself a lazer pointer. Man, I thought I was spot on, until I moved left and right of center, and sure enough, the singer followed me. Tomorrow morning, back to the the starting point as described in the video.

 

1. Start with a fixed listening position.

2. With sound only coming out of the left speaker, pull it away from the back wall until the sound pressure in the room makes this position sound "obvious".

3. With the right speaker now "on" and against the same wall, pull it forward and stop to listen from the planned seat position. When the two speakers sound "right" together, you have it the correct distance from the back wall. You're ignoring measurements and only listening.

4. Subsequent toe-in again is done by listening and ignoring measurements and how the speakers actually look.

The Sumiko method breaks the traditional, established rules of measurement and distance, because those measurements ignore how the speakers interact with the room and objects within it.

 

Proper measurements certainly do not ignore how speakers interact with the room and objects in it!!
That is precisely the point!

 

Tim, I respectfully disagree, at least in my case - small room, angled door to the back-right, no true "ceiling" in place. So, from my listening seat it's 12' wide, 9.5' long, 9' high. My speakers are by no means equilaterally placed either relative to my listening position nor to their adjacent walls. They're at least 8" off in any given direction. But, this placement sounds far more natural and produces the "disappearing" act far more convincingly than actual, measured distances and laser-pointed toe-in attempts. Again, I think this is a YMMV situation and can only offer my singular experience as evidence contrary to what you're saying.

 

Ok we arent talking the same thing. Im referring to using a proper mic and software and looking at reflections etc etc..yeah...a laser pointer isnt going to do that. Anyway, glad its working for you thats the main thing!

 

Ahhh, I see. Yea, the measurements in this context really aren't considered, I don't think. It's more about "disappearing" the speakers in just about any room, while keeping a strong, believable center image.

I've used REW in my old config, it's a royal PITA to do it in my room given how and where my computers are, but now that I have a laptop, maybe it'll be a little easier. I should mic this thing up!

Edit - also, to add, it has been impossible in this room to not localize the center image to the "sweet spot" listening position. This works fine for my situation but would be a non-starter in a much bigger, more communal room.

 

Just spent about 5 hours over 3 days moving my speakers...lol. Wife just looks at me and hands me another drink then smiles. I had a setup that sounded good but you know how it is once the itch starts. This took so long because I had to do it solo. That means a lot of back and forth adjusting and listening. Also I am aware that my ears get tired (age does that to you). My room is anything but regular and is furnished with many non symmetrical pieces of furniture. Long story short is the speakers are now further into the room then before and toed in. Prior I had a very wide sound stage with some obvious loss of center when moving left-right at the sitting area. I was surprised by the amount of toe in I have settled on. I will fool with this a bit more. Everything is very well focused and spread across the 15 foot wall. The sound is more front to back dimensional though I am still unsure if I like the tight center focus. Old habits maybe in play here. Steely Dan-Aja sounds amazing, Lana Del Rey brought my wife from another room and Holly Cole even had the cats sitting up smiling.

 

I just listened to the Jack Johnson song Middle Man. I can hear how it could be challenging for some setups to get the vocal to be distinct from the bass and other sounds. It's somewhat challenging even on some headphones to hear the vocal as separated from the bass. This would be a good demo track for evaluating different headphones and amps, or speakers and amps. My HD650 actually separates out the vocal better than my LCD-2.

 

I have a personal technique for positioning speakers that involes the Harman room mode calculator (http://www.harman.com/EN-US/OurCompany/Innovation/Pages/Calculators.aspx?CategoryID=Calculators).

I plot out the room modes with the software, position the speakers and listening position away from room distances that correspond to the peaks and troughs of the big low modes, damp first reflections with absorption, do some corner absorption for more low frequency absorption. This, in my case, puts the speakers well out into the room off the rear wall, circa 7 feet or about 1/3rd of the way into the room (I like the rule of thirds set up too as a starting point), around 3 feet off each side wall with around 6 feet between the speakers and seaing about 9 feet back from the speakers; toed in so that the tweeter paths cross somewhere behind my head at the seating position.

Of course I have parallel reflection paths from sidewalls to listening position and no obstructions between the speakers and the listening position, I have as per the speaker manufacturer's instructions, I have a like between woofer and tweeter aiming at ear height (and tilted properly, the sloped baffle is time-aligned); and most importantly although I've got nearly 10 feet behind my listening position to the back wall of the room, there is some furniture and equipment behind my head (just below ear level) and next to my seat position and I have found damping this stuff with a heavy felt acoustic blanket helped elminated any kind of comb filtering effects I was getting as I moved my head slightly and helped float the soundstage. Also I make sure that throughout the room there's no flutter echo. I walk around clapping my hands and if there's flutter echo I break up parallel surfaces with something -- it might be an absorptive panel or material, maybe just some furnishings or shelves. I'd love to do some real diffusion to combat this, especially at the tops of the room walls. I'll get to that one of these days but that flutter echo is a killer.

I also will shoot the room with test tones and an SPL meter when I'm doing a set up. At this point I'm pretty good from 30 Hz up, but I do have a 125Hz or so suck out probably as the result of a ceiling bounce, that, if I really want to get serious, I'll have to treat one of these days with some pretty substantial acoustical panels hanging off the ceiling, and I need to do some better bass trapping to handle issues at around 70 Hz. I'll also run a calculation using a spreadsheet to approximate the absorption across critical frequencies to make sure things are balanced. Right now I'm doing a tad too much absorption above 4kHz and a tad too little between 125 and 500 Hz, but I'll tweak that this year with some difference of materials

This all might give me a slightly deader room than some folks would prefer, but since it's a multipurpose music room -- where I do listening and home demo audio recording -- I need it quiet and articulate and free from any kind of flutter echo. As such maybe it's not the best live room for acoustic instruments, but I get nice articulate balanced recordings, maybe a little dry, but better than full of fluttery echo for home demos (my kitchen, an L-shaped room with lots of wood surfaces and enormously high cathedral ceilings makes for a great live room for acoustic instruments, vs. my relatively dead downstairs room now, but even with everything turned off, it's too noisy with too many windows for quiet recording).

What I get with this kind of set up is a warm, quite, articulate sound -- great retreival of inner detail because the room is quiet with very short reverb time (when someone walks into one end of the room and starts talking even softly with no music playing its very distinctly audible across the room, that kind of great articulate speech clarity), excellent center fill, pretty level frequency response (but hardly razor flat) from the bass through the midrange, and decent but not world-beating width

 

Man, that's the way it's supposed to be! In a good system, the speakers are supposed to be like they're not there, or not call attention to themselves.

 

WoW !! Just completed the Sumiko Speaker placement, using all the info in the video. I found the toe-in, most challenging. Rake was straight forward. The biggest improvement is, I no longer need to sit in the "Sweet" spot. It's just like being in the run with the musicians. No matter were I sit, all instruments are where they are suppose to be, equal sound across the entire sound stage. Man, It took more than an hour, to complete the process.

 

I tried to do the full Sumiko treatment tonight and try as I might, in my room I cannot get past the "head in a vice" thing. Some of my adjustments were better than others, but no matter what, the sound does not "lock in" to a spot. Best I could get was for it to only move a foot or so, not the full 3-4' when I leaned over as far as I could in either direction.

I have my previous placements taped out on the floor as I know that produced a very wide stage, speakers could not be localized at all, but it has that same issue with "just don't move your head!" and I find that to be annoying, only in the sense that a proper setup shouldn't do that. So I'll keep playing. I'm just wondering if I'm dealing with a lack of air space to pressurize maybe. Room is 9.5 x 12.5 ish, so not bit at all. Speakers are situated on the long wall.