Beautiful setup...Congrats! If I understand correctly, when the sound is panned far right or left, it sounds like it's coming from just the one speaker, as opposed to being part of the soundstage. I assume you are not talking about records like the early stereo Beatles albums, but properly mixed modern stereo recordings with real soundstages. In that case, and I know you will hate this advice , you should put the speaker grills back on. According to AS, their purpose, besides protecting the drivers from little kids' fingers, is to minimize edge diffraction, which apparently causes the ear/brain to locate them as out of the image.
Yeah … I rather see them without grilles but speakers are meant to be listened to. Got the grilled backed on and they do sound a smidge smoother. It does seem to help a wee bit with the soundstage. Thanks!
cool room. since you have a subwoofer try to bring them out into the room a bit more and then experiment with toe angle until they disappear, likely less toe in.
Room is a mere 12’W x 10’D so I can’t pull the speakers further out, unless I’m going really nearfield. Speakers are like 3.5’ from front wall. Chair is like 1.5’ to rear wall. I’ll play more with the toe-in. Hate that as it’s a parquet floor. Darn uneven and gotta level the speakers again. Hehehe …
Just from some casual listening, I think it sounds a little brighter. I didn't listen critically though, or with the tracks I would usually use for testing. Grills on or off, either way sounds great. I'm leaning to putting the grills on again though. I'm trying to dial in positioning and toe in now and I'll revisit grills on or off once that is done. Yeah, I love that album. Strong tracks all the way through. Friday Music just released a version I'm thinking of picking up to compare to my copy. We'll see though - I probably shouldn't waste my money on that. Beautiful system. Yesterday I moved my chair back a bit to get the 0.82 Jim Smith ratio that was discussed earlier in this thread. Didn't really like sitting so far back but I have to experiment a bit with toe in before I move the chair closer again. Your speakers look toed in quite a lot and I think I need to do the same. Mine are firing past my shoulders and do not cross in front of me. To be honest, I always find that I can hear sound coming from each speaker. Doesn't matter what speakers or amp I am using. I can have a nice, strong centre image with a lot of depth to the sound - so overall, imaging is great - but perhaps when one sits close to the speakers you can't help but hear sound coming from each one. I'd imagine sitting farther back in a large room it might help achieve the illusion of disappearing speakers. But then again, I need to finally buy some room treatments. I'll be getting some probably next month. I'll likely put some absorption behind me and at the first reflection points. That'll be a big change and will hopefully make the speakers disappear a bit more. Probably doesn't make sense for me to tinker much more with the system until I get that installed.
Good to know … so it’s not my hearing that’s a problem! Think my speakers are firing to roughly where my head is positioned. Based on calculations, it’s about there. My room has a 3 door wardrobe at the right wall, all the way to the back. So system is offset. I added a lot of treatment to semi-deaden the room and listen nearfield. Well … we work with what we got.
It's also a function of the recording mix and the skill and care given to soundstage by the recording engineer, which these days is close to nil for mass-market, non-audiophile recordings as far as I can tell. When I listen to those magnificent RCA Living Stereo SACDs from the early days of stereo, recorded with three microphones, one L, one C, and one R, with natural bleed-through, the soundstage is like you're in the hall, and the speakers disappear.
I was about to add how luck you are to have a level floor and no carpeting so that moving speakers would be easy.
I think Jim’s .83 ratio is a good starting place, but even he admits that it’s only a starting place, and there are many further adjustments and tweaks to be made to get everything dialed in. I did work with mine a good 2-3 hours further on Friday and I’ve been doing a lot of listening since then and I think I’ve got it dialed in. There was a point working with all of this where it was an “A-HA!” Moment that I knew I was on the right track. But then you need to go further. My final X/Y ratio is .87, I have each speaker 63” from the front wall and 48” on either side. I’m 110” from the seated position of my ears to the tweeters on both speaker and the tweeter-to-tweeter distance between the speakers is 96” … For toe-in I used my stand-in partner (pictured) against one of my acoustic panels on the back of my chair. You can’t see it in the pic (I hadn’t done it yet) but I made a grid across each side of the center brace in 1/2” intervals at tweeter height, going from 19” toward the center brace at 16”. That way when I put my Bosch laser pointers on the speaker tops I could get an exact measurement from the center point. This would mean my toe-in is crossing over my shoulders and behind my head. This image below shows what I would consider “on axis” toe-in with the lasers (tweeters) crossing right at about my ears. The final result would look like the two red dots on my shoulder being about 10” further outside on either side (17” from the center line). Also these dots are lower as I was working with the speakers on the Symposium Super Plus speaker stands… I have since moved them to my Symposium Ultra amp stands, which raise the speakers another 4” and are at optimal height now with my ears (36” from the floor). So after a ton of trial and error I ended up with 17” on either side of the head (center) for the ideal toe-in. The real struggle with that was getting the proper weight and body and tone of the center image while maintaining an expansive soundstage with the speakers disappearing. That’s where the 1/2” intervals come into play with working with the toe-in. It is ideal at this point, I believe with the most realistic human sounding voice and rich timbre of piano and solo brass, etc coming from the center image, but the sound field itself imaging across the entire stage of the setup. I don’t know what degree the toe-in is at 17”, it looks like maybe about 12-15º? As I mentioned, a big factor in improving the sound I was working with was getting the speakers up that additional 4” with the Ultra Plus platforms. They are spiked directly into the concrete with heavy brass spikes, and they speakers themselves are on Stillpoint Ultra’s with bases so there is no bass bloat or bloom anywhere I can hear from 200Hz on down. It’s just tight as a drum, and the tone is fantastic. I may not need to move beyond that arrangement for stands. Finally the last thing that really locked in the imaging was moving my first reflection panels in from the walls on either side of the speakers (they were up against the wall, now they are out about 1 foot from the walls). Don’t ask me why but it suddenly sorted out the sound quite a bit. My first reflection panels are not mounted so it is easy to move them around and find the best place for them. Obviously this technique isn’t going to work for everyone, all rooms are different, but I think anyone would benefit from spending a few hours with some contractor grade laser levels and laser measuring devices, they are about $15 from any home improvement big box store. This is easier if you have a separate listening space, of course. But it is astounding to me what I’ve heard over the past couple weeks of dialing these speakers in. It has literally made me question most reviews I read where reviewers talk about gear in subjective terms like an amp sounding “thin” or a speaker sounding “bloated” - it is stunning to realize how much of those subjective terms can really come down to placement of speakers and setup of the system in the room, versus actual characteristics of the gear itself. Here is the final setup - toe-in does not appear too extreme in this pic but I am seeing maybe 1/4 of the inside of each speaker from my listening seat.
One thing I've leaned from this placement exercise is that there's no free rides when placing speakers. It's so room/system dependent that even the best intentioned changes can hinder rather that help the sound. It's somewhat frustrating when you improve a bit of this, but lose a bit of that In the end it's making the best of with what you got and knowing that there's going to be compromises made along the way. I've moved the speakers back to where they were before and the bass is back to being punchy, yet still smooth and deep...but I miss that extended soundstage ! So I'm not done yet trying to find that elusive placement that'll give me the best of both worlds and still have a room that I can move around in...
I can't remember seeing your room before Dream looking great and I love the grills off look drivers are sexy!
It’s okay, we understand why. I mean we are all adults here. The SLI-80 is nice when you use NOS tubes. Stock EH ones are kinda brittle/hard sounding. But the Silbatone JL-107 is even better. Hehehe …
Just swapped out the old LFD Spiroflex for a trial with LFD Ribbon. Too early for comment but as per, impressed with the LFD match of cables, amp and 30.1s
Amen on the stock tubes. I don't much bother with stock preamp tubes. Modern power tubes are pretty good. Preamp tubes I haven't found the magic current issue ones yet (not sure if they exist...yet). When the NOS stock completely dries up, and it's getting close, I suspect/hope there will be some companies putting out quality preamp tubes.
Yeah the modern power tubes are no issue. I’ve stocked up on enough 6SN7 and 6922 NOS tubes. Phew. Some friends are using ‘premium’ China tubes and they are happy with the results. Not tried them yet.
Very true. I don't have many options in my room. It's either diagonal (which I ran for a while) or what I have now. Maybe the big issue in my room is the lack of symmetry - I have to place the speakers so that the right one is closer to the side wall than the left one. Still, it doesn't sound bad at all, though I'm sure there is a lot more improvement still to unlock. I came across some info online suggesting that, when one speaker is closer to the side wall than the other, you can compensate for that by toeing it in a little more (the two speakers will have different degrees of toe in). I'm not sure I feel about that but it doesn't cost anything to try, so I'm going to give that a shot.
The replacement LFD Ribbon speaker cable [for the much older LFD Spiroflex] seems to offer up some minor differences / improvements. While I was not expecting too much difference to begin with as the existing cabling [Spiroflex & Reference Silver]/ Amp [LFD V] / speaker [Harbeth 30.1] all worked tremendously well. All seemed very balanced to begin with. While it is difficult to A/B the cables "correctly" given they will be so close to each other, that being to switch A/B instantly there does appear to be enough of a difference between them to comment on. Still early days and limited selection of music played. One of the DSOTM Anniversary pressings [forget which 'versary!], AP's Brubeck Take Five [@45rpm] and predominately the Hoffman / Grey Moondance. Mid's are clearer and cleaner and a little more "on the bone" presentation over all. That being something more to the lower end, achieved by seemingly tightening everything up. Small changes noticed so far. I should add, I hear that Dr Bews has removed this specific cable from production [ I had to source a used set from 2019].
My right speaker is 4ft from the wall, the left speaker is 13ft from the left wall, so it's actually closer to the right side wall than the left. To counter the reflections on the right side, I placed numerous absorption panels on that wall. After treating the right wall, there's no channel imbalance. Treatments will probably help your situation.
