How tough is your room?

[DaveyF]

In another thread ( Sonus Faber Aida vs. Magico Q5), I commented how I thought sonrock had a tough room to deal with. To some extent, many of us have "tough" rooms. In my instance, my dimensions are too small and too alike. My room is 10'X11'!! Luckily, i have a vault ceiling which goes to 13' at the peak and my room is dedicated to my system. I also do not have to deal with the likes of a fireplace or flexible floors ( on a 2nd story) or large areas of glass or ??? BUT I do have to deal with a small window.
My answer in this room is to utilize two(2) Real Traps Mondo Traps behind the speakers, a Real Trap Mini Trap behind the listening position and to listen in the near field. I also positioned my speakers firing into the vault and made sure that I pulled them away as much as possible from the back/side wall(s).
So, to those of us who are dealing with a tough room, I ask what have been your solutions? Continuing challenges?

 

[Bruce B]

I think the rooms that are too tough are very few. The problem I see is most people are using living spaces where furnishings can NOT be moved due to WAF or whatever. Most people don't have the luxury of having a dedicated listening space where orientation and fixtures can be moved at will.

 

[mep]

I think the rooms that are too tough are very few. The problem I see is most people are using living spaces where furnishings can NOT be moved due to WAF or whatever. Most people don't have the luxury of having a dedicated listening space where orientation and fixtures can be moved at will.

+1 on not having a dedicated space so that you can optimize the room without worrying about the wife/significant other screaming at you. Also, having a tiny room like Davey does presents its own problems even if the wife gives you free reign.

 

[DaveyF]

Bruce, I'm not so sure that a lot of us a'philes don't have tough rooms. Tough in the sense that the dimensions are no good, the room is too bright or reflective, the room has too much slap echo and on and on.
Even a dedicated space, which I enjoy, is not always the best solution. If one doesn't have a dedicated room and WAF is a factor ( which it might still be even in a dedicated room) it is surely more difficult. I would surmise that there must be many a'philes who are dealing with a less than perfect room and or environment. I surely felt that sonrock in the UK was having to consider the room as a factor.
BTW, do you have a room that you are completely happy with?

Am I in the minority of members who have a small dedicated room?? Would be interesting to see what the type of room that most of the members are using ..i.e.--dedicated vs. non-dediacted, and what are the dimensions of said room. I'm fairly certain that our European and maybe Asian members are used to using much smaller rooms than we are used to here in the US.

 

[mep]

How can a dedicated space not always be the best solution unless the room is just hopeless because of its dimensions? Non-dedicated rooms means that compromise is almost a certainty. If I only had a 10' x 11' foot room to put my stereo in, that would never work for me. I would either sell the house or build on to it like I did so I could have my own room with decent dimensions.

 

[DaveyF]

One other thought...As I'm sure Steve and others that live in S. Calif can attest to, the room is likely to be the most expensive component by far in your system. Many homes sell in excess of $800/SqFt . At the last audio meeting I attended, the member owned a nice ocean front home in La Jolla....I really don't want to tell you how much the space that his system took up would cost!
Same thing applies in other areas of the world that have "pricey" real estate.

 

[Roger Dressler]

My room is indeed dedicated, as in it is exclusively my theater. It is used 90% for music but had to work for movies too. It is a small room -- 11.5' wide and 17' long, 8' ceiling. Second story.

Biggest challenge, by far, was bass. The same gear (Aerial SW12 sub) that served me well in the previous open family room situation was a disaster in my new room, no matter where I put it, or me. The solution was multiple subs and signal processing (EQ, etc) to get them working. Major transformation. These pix show the new and old subs and the bass processing.

 

[Steve williams]

Gorgeous room Roger. I bet it is the source of some great audio and video

 

[cjfrbw]

My Santa Cruz system is in an 11 by 10 room much like Davey's, it has a trapezoidal cross section with the speakers toward the short wall and the high wall acting as a mixing chamber.

My big rig in Pleasanton is an a 19 by 14 room, with an additional 12 by 10 entryway/dogleg, also trapezoidal with the speakers against the short wall.

I like the trapezoidal configuration, I think it is an inherently good shape for a listening space.

My Santa Cruz system started out as an experiment in sub 5k budget system, but because I can't control myself, it is now about 20k with my old, rebuilt Apogee Stages. I was curious how small I could get the room and still have a first rate system.

It sounds wonderful, I actually look forward to listening to it. Nothing in the system is made any more, but it has an active Accuphase crossover, Yamaha C70 for phono preamp, Sony PS X70 turntable with Allnic cartridge, all tube amplifiers for the panels/foil tweeters. No special room treatments at all, equalization through the Yamaha receiver and the active crossover. The system is basically a scaled down mini clone of my main rig with some different components. There was nothing I heard at the California Audio Show a couple of years ago in the standard hotel rooms that was better, with the exception of the massive systems on the first floor of the hotel, which were definitely bigger, more dynamic and better by sheer dint of scale.

Sound is wide, deep, and gorgeous. It falls down primarily in ultimate dynamics and bass, but since I upgraded the amplifiers, it is quite good on dynamics as well. I think the main challenge of the small room is bass, because the wavelength of lower bass just does not have enough room to stretch.

However, the Santa Cruz system has demonstrated to me that you can have an only modestly compromised listening experience even in small, dedicated rooms. Of course, there is also the Stax headphone system for WAF and neighbor courtesy occasions.

 

[DaveyF]

Guys, don't get me wrong, I very much like my room and I think I am getting a very good sound from it. With the bass trapping, I'm even able to get a decent bass response down to about 30Hz. The SF GH's have no problem in a room of this size...although I do admit that the stage width is a little restricted due to the width of the room. However, i think that is the only minor complaint that I have. Compared to other non-dedicated rooms or to a room like sonrock has to contend with, I'm pretty happy.

 

[JackD201]

I think it is a problem that is getting bigger because systems nowadays are able to go lower and lower be they passive designs or systems employing active subs.

 

[mep]

If we are talking about the Sonus Faber Guarneri Homage speakers, how do you get 30 Hz out of a speaker that is 6 dB down at 49 Hz? In his review and measurements, Martin Colloms said you could get some bass down to 40 Hz in a room, but obviously this speaker's frequency response is not anywhere near flat at 40Hz.

 

[Steve williams]

One other thought...As I'm sure Steve and others that live in S. Calif can attest to, the room is likely to be the most expensive component by far in your system. Many homes sell in excess of $800/SqFt . At the last audio meeting I attended, the member owned a nice ocean front home in La Jolla....I really don't want to tell you how much the space that his system took up would cost!
Same thing applies in other areas of the world that have "pricey" real estate.

Indeed the build out of a new room (in SoCal at least) can become prohibitive.

 

[microstrip]

If we are talking about the Sonus Faber Guarneri Homage speakers, how do you get 30 Hz out of a speaker that is 6 dB down at 49 Hz? In his review and measurements, Martin Colloms said you could get some bass down to 40 Hz in a room, but obviously this speaker's frequency response is not anywhere near flat at 40Hz.

Two important aspects could explain it - the 6dB figure itself and the anechoic conditions of the measurement .

The -6dB is taken from an axial response usually relative to the 200 or 1000Hz level. This single figure, often used by HiFi News, who do not publish the complete frequency response in the bass, is highly misleading when taken without many grains of salt (I remember that a well known reviewer used it to criticize the TheSonusfaber bass performance, responsible for the best bass reproduction I have ever listened to.) This figure ignores the slope of the bass response and that sometimes the level of the 200 Hz is not a good indicator of the average level of the speaker.

Bass response of speakers is due to the speaker it self, but also to bass re-reinforcement by the room. Some speaker manufacturers tailor the bass response of their speakers thinking about it. The result is that the speaker will measure poorly in anechoic laboratory conditions in some very simple measurements and will measure well in in-room measurements and also sound excellent in room, with extended bass. Surely in the wrong room and with poor positioning they will sound miserable - no miracles here.

 

[microstrip]

Indeed the build out of a new room (in SoCal at least) can become prohibitive.

Specially if you have a small room and want it to sound as a big room.
Having read a lot of experiences, and using my limited experiments is my room I have fount that acoustic treatments price rises with the inverse power of the volume you can allocate to them. If you have plenty of space the well known and described classical solutions can be even built with great success by DIY people. However if you have limited space the modern technology property solutions that only take a few inches of your space are really expensive.

 

[DaveyF]

Two important aspects could explain it - the 6dB figure itself and the anechoic conditions of the measurement .

The -6dB is taken from an axial response usually relative to the 200 or 1000Hz level. This single figure, often used by HiFi News, who do not publish the complete frequency response in the bass, is highly misleading when taken without many grains of salt (I remember that a well known reviewer used it to criticize the TheSonusfaber bass performance, responsible for the best bass reproduction I have ever listened to.) This figure ignores the slope of the bass response and that sometimes the level of the 200 Hz is not a good indicator of the average level of the speaker.

Bass response of speakers is due to the speaker it self, but also to bass re-reinforcement by the room. Some speaker manufacturers tailor the bass response of their speakers thinking about it. The result is that the speaker will measure poorly in anechoic laboratory conditions in some very simple measurements and will measure well in in-room measurements and also sound excellent in room, with extended bass. Surely in the wrong room and with poor positioning they will sound miserable - no miracles here.

Micro, in my system, the bass is augmented by a REL T5 sub. The GH's cannot go much below 50Hz.( at least not in my room,LOL).

 

[mep]

Micro, in my system, the bass is augmented by a REL T5 sub. The GH's cannot go much below 50Hz.( at least not in my room,LOL).

That would explain it.

 

[flez007]

My room is also a dedicated one, decent size and uneven dimensions with high floor to ceiling height- my real "problem" are my speakers, which change from great to terrible sounding by the inch! I have almost a year fine-tunning them and can't say I have locked them in the sweet-spot yet!

 

[mep]

I have a confession to make with regards to my speakers and/or their positioning. I have great center fill and depth, but I don't have much going on outside the boundaries of the speakers. I have had a bunch of different electronics and that doesn't seem to have any affect. I don't know if that is a characteristic of bipolar speakers (mine are the Def Tech BP7000SCs). Other than that, I really do like my speakers. They are full range, the crossover is never a thought because they sound seamless from top to bottom. They will play louder than your ears could ever tolerate without compression/distortion assuming you have an amp up to the task. I just wish they would image outside of the speakers.

 

[flez007]

I have a confession to make with regards to my speakers and/or their positioning. I have great center fill and depth, but I don't have much going on outside the boundaries of the speakers. I have had a bunch of different electronics and that doesn't seem to have any affect. I don't know if that is a characteristic of bipolar speakers (mine are the Def Tech BP7000SCs). Other than that, I really do like my speakers. They are full range, the crossover is never a thought because they sound seamless from top to bottom. They will play louder than your ears could ever tolerate without compression/distortion assuming you have an amp up to the task. I just wish they would image outside of the speakers.

Placing them way into the room and closer to the side walls helped me on that regard Mark, but mines are not a bipolar design.