Listening room setup and traps needed?

[howiebrou]

Moving again folks....

Living room is 14 feet by 23 feet. Only obstacle is a small mantel piece about 7 feet long in the middle of one side of the 23 foot long axis.

I intend to place bookshelves on either side of the mantel. Apart from this I am open to suggestions. Should I sit wide facing the long wall with speakers in front of the bookshelves? (looks nice and books can absorb some frequencies) or the long axis (with only 14 foot wide wall to wall) and the sofa 2/3 way down the room.

Across the room;
Pros: more spacious view, speakers can be very wide apart, use books as acoustic treatment
Cons: Listening seat up against opposite wall, reflections, seat only about 9 feet from speakers at most.

Along the room;
Pros: seat to speaker distance adjustable, no wall behind chair i.e. chair in free space
Cons; narrow room, less spacious feel (can't see windows behind sofa)

I have two 13 1/2 inch ASC tube traps rounds to use as well but not sure the best place for them or what other treatments to get.

Cheers

howie

[Michael TubeTrap]

Moving again, that makes my back ache just thinking about it.

My first reaction would be to see if there is any way to include the good view and great sound. Why have to choose?

The MATT Test is a good way to judge how well each direction plays. See the neighboring thread Listening Room Test for both articulation and imaging/soundtstage evaluation. Yes, that means setting everything up both ways...get some friends to help.

If I had to pick one over the other without knowing anything else, I would go with the wide version, playing across the 14' dimension. Why? You have speakers with fantastic soundstage, and wide rooms (lacking nearby side walls) let you hear the image and soundstage better.

You can look on our website for different room layouts, plus I have attached two comparable room layouts to this post. In narrower rooms, we add a lot of smaller Tubes to try to widen the apparent room size.

Michael Adams

[howiebrou]

Thanks Michael.

My gut instinct is to agree tha the wide version will sound better with the side wall on one side quite a bit away from the speaker and the other side even more so.

Will check out the Matrix panel you suggested in your pm for covering the wall behind the sofa as well.

Would you suggest putting the two tube traps that I have between the speakers, at the far corners on teh speaker side, or on the listening chair side corners?

Thanks

howie

[Michael TubeTrap]

Howie,
When we are asked "where should I put my first acoustics?" what we think about is "what is the loudest noise we want to subdue?". With a pair of 13" TubeTraps, I would suggest using them to de-couple the speakers from the front wall. This would mean placing the speakers on the front wall, directly behind your speakers. You'll see a prioritized map attached to this post.

The biggest downside to playing across the width of a room is how close the front wall is to the speakers, and how close the rear wall is to you. One of the things acoustics does is to "move walls away". This can give you some flexibility in creating your setback from the speakers. You don't have to be afraid of getting close to the walls, so set up your speaker-to-chair distance so it sounds best, and erase the walls with acoustics. Happy listening!

[jimtranr]

Thought I would thank Michael publicly for taking the time to review my very problematic listening room layout and suggest a trap placement strategy to improve what I hear from what is by necessity a midfield listening position in a very "lived-in" environment, as pictured in this "Before" photo:



What Michael suggested is a variant on the "attack wall" approach used by some recording engineers to monitor their product. Essentially, it involves snugging up a trap to either side of a speaker. In my case, it meant taking two pairs of 36"-high 9" Tube Traps and surrounding my 34"-high Paradigm SE-3's with them, as indicated in the following diagram:



It works, with dramatic improvements in vocal and instrumental focus and articulation, the unsmearing of bass tonality, attack, and decay (with a consequential increase in the perception of foundational bass heft), the removal of a gauzy overlay in the midrange and top end, and more perceptible dimensionality of whatever's parked in the soundstage, which itself is better (and typically more "airily") defined.

A user-friendly note: I'd have expected the trap-speaker-trap configuration on the right side to mess with my ability to change source and volume settings with my remote since there's no longer a line of sight to the C-J line stage from my listening position. Didn't faze it. I can make the changes without moving from my seat.

Thanks again, Michael. It's a major improvement.

[chessman]

Too cool!

[howiebrou]

Originally Posted by Michael TubeTrap

Howie,
When we are asked "where should I put my first acoustics?" what we think about is "what is the loudest noise we want to subdue?". With a pair of 13" TubeTraps, I would suggest using them to de-couple the speakers from the front wall. This would mean placing the speakers on the front wall, directly behind your speakers. You'll see a prioritized map attached to this post.

The biggest downside to playing across the width of a room is how close the front wall is to the speakers, and how close the rear wall is to you. One of the things acoustics does is to "move walls away". This can give you some flexibility in creating your setback from the speakers. You don't have to be afraid of getting close to the walls, so set up your speaker-to-chair distance so it sounds best, and erase the walls with acoustics. Happy listening!

Thanks Michael,

I might actually be able to try and approximate your diagram although placing a trap right behind each speaker will push the speaker out into the room somewhat more than I had hoped.

Is there a minimum distance you need between the trap and the back of the speaker in this scenario?

Thanks

howie

[80B]

Howie, moving far? The pics of your home & the view there were soooo sweet.

[howiebrou]

Originally Posted by 80B

Howie, moving far? The pics of your home & the view there were soooo sweet.

Alas the landlord is tighter than a nat's arse in a sandstorm so he can take a long walk off a short pier.

[Michael TubeTrap]

Originally Posted by howiebrou

Thanks Michael,

I might actually be able to try and approximate your diagram although placing a trap right behind each speaker will push the speaker out into the room somewhat more than I had hoped.

Is there a minimum distance you need between the trap and the back of the speaker in this scenario?

Thanks

howie

Minimum distance between the backside of a speaker cabinet and a TubeTrap is 0.0". In fact, a trick I learned years ago was to brace your speakers with a cassette tape case (MANY years ago...), supposedly reduced microphonics that blurred the signal. Same idea as spikes. Maybe a similar strategy can be employed here.

I understand what you are saying about the Tube pushing the speaker further into the room than you wanted it. What happens is, the acoustics re-arrange how and where you hear sound in the room. In an untreated room I tend to sit further away from a speaker. With acoustics I tend to sit closer. You'll probably find this too.