Share your Experience and Questions on Setting Up Your Tobians Here...

[Synaxis]

OK guys -

At the suggestion of a new Tobian owner I'm starting this thread for Tobian owners from around the world to share their set up experience, and learn from other owners.

I'll post more on my expereince in a follow. up post on this thread, but wanted to at least get a place holder going.

I currently have the 12FH's and have literally run at least 15+ amps through them along with a variety of digital gear, room acoustic treatments and vibration footers.

So please feel free to contribute with your experiences or any questions you may have!

 

[Golum]

Thanks for starting this thread.
I have a feeling that more and more people are becoming aware and starting to enjoy what this wonderful speakers are offering hence it is nice to have a place where we can offer some insights and help/advice if needed.

Where to start...first I believe you do have more experiance with positioning living in the US with much bigger space in the living/listening room then I do here in CH so this is massively influencing the options of different positioning of the speakers. My experience with the FH12 Sig is that they perform exceptionally well even being placed near the back wall (my case) with tip top bass performance (no boomy BS). Secondly they need certain degree of toe in to snap in the soundstage but when you nail that one you are up for a real treat.
Under stock footers I'm using HiFiStay Stella100 footers which are beyond incredible and would not change them for anything else - they just tighten up everything.

Amps wise - well here I did not experiment too much. Why not - as Gunter advised what to use and when designer tells you something, you kind of better listen what he has to say. Anyways they have been developed (as majority of horns) to be used with SET amps not really monster SS amps. So since the get go I'm driving them with Nagra VPAs which do have DHT tubes and they do sound amazing (but monos are driven by Tobian pure single stage DHT preamp). I still want to try them with proper either 300b, 2A3 or 46 DHT amp as Gunter voiced and developed them with these tubes in his mind and consequently absolute magic is created with these amps (I listened almost all of his models with this amps in his demo room so I know what they do/contribute with).

For die hard SS guys there is an option to try them with low powered SS Class A amp with as low damping factor as possible. One ready to go variant is FirstWatt SIT4 or the option a good friend of mine is building for me (for the summer months - Nagra is just too hot) which is being developed within the similar premises as FirstWatt but with different circutry and top of the crop parts. I heard it playing on the board and it was just phenomenal - can't wait to get it (bare in mind - I'm all tube guy ). Will post pictures and observations once finished.

 

[justaute]

In.

 

[sbnx]

Posting as I am interested in comments on speaker positioning and set up.

 

[justaute]

Here are my components. Still playing with speaker placement -- getting close. Will share when I'm there.

components.
- USB Cable to Server: Pink Faun Interlink
- Streamer/server: Antipodes K21
- USB Cable to DAC: FTA Callisto
- I/C to Integrated: KCI Silkworms
- S/C: Silversmith Fidelium
- Speakers: Tobian 12FH w/Carbide Audio Base feet

 

[Glide3]

I’m interested as well

 

[justaute]

Here's a pic of my speakers/chair placement process.

 

[Lee]

Here's a pic of my speakers/chair placement process.

View attachment 145429

Get a Bosch or Leica laser meter and do it from the ear for better results.

 

[justaute]

I have a Bosch and a construction 3-dim laser. Use them for fine tuning. For initial setup, I find the string method more useful and simpler.

 

[justaute]

For fine tuning, using my laser levels.

 

[DasguteOhr]

For fine tuning, using my laser levels.

View attachment 145430

modern times, in the past, people used to do it with string. Two people, one sat down at the listening position, tied the string to the center axis of the speaker, then pulled the string tight to the tip of the nose and fixed it with their fingers. The same was done with the other speakers until the distance was the same. The listening angle was aligned with the corners of the speaker, the same procedure was followed. It took a quarter of an hour

 

[justaute]

modern times, in the past, people used to do it with string. Two people, one sat down at the listening position, tied the string to the center axis of the speaker, then pulled the string tight to the tip of the nose and fixed it with their fingers. The same was done with the other speakers until the distance was the same. The listening angle was aligned with the corners of the speaker, the same procedure was followed. It took a quarter of an hour

For sure. Two people would definitely be easier. For just one, a multi-dim laser leveler certainly makes life easier.

 

[DasguteOhr]

For sure. Two people would definitely be easier. For just one, a multi-dim laser leveler certainly makes life easier.

I agree with you, if you can't fix the thread to the speaker e.g an existing screw or weight it's difficult to do it alone.

 

[justaute]

I think I got my toe-in figured out. Now I'm playing with vertical pitch/tilt/rake of the speakers.

 

[Synaxis]

OK guys - here is a brief run down of my results of dozens of hours fiddling with these speakers:

- Minimum 500 hours burn in;

- Per Gunther - virtually NO toe in. If I recall correctly he stated no more than about an inch, max;

- Mine like to be about 1.5 feet (I don't have the exact measurement) from the rear wall;

- Using the Jim Smith method yielded by far the best sound from them. Link below to my video on that using these speakers;

- Laser level is NOT accurate enough for these speakers. You need to use the Stabila level (as shown in Justaute pics) for both left/right and rake angle;

- Agneld too far back and they are bright and nasally. Angled to low and they are dull and lifeless

- Once you have them dialed in using your method (again I used the Jim Smith method as outlined in my video) you then will reach a point where you will dial in the rake angle by 0.05 degrees and the SLIGHTEST nudge of the toe in and front to back movement will reap large changes.

It's time consuming and I've found I needed to repeat the above steps numerous times to understand and make the restyle repeatable, but the reward is magnificent.

 

[justaute]

The music room is in the basement of this circa 1968 home. The room measures 21' (~640 cm) long, 17' (~518 cm) wide, and 7'10" (~239 cm) high. About 11', measuring from the rear-wall, is open to the stairs going up and to a corridor; I use a 5'x6' (~152x183 cm) freestanding felt room-divider there. The front-wall is covered with wood/felt panels, which are mounted on 1" (~21mm) thick horizontal furring strips; the gap creates by using the furring strips has been filled with rockwool to provide additional dampening properties.

The speakers are now 102 & 3/4" (~261 cm) apart, measured center-to-center on top of the speakers. The inside edge of each speaker is approximately 30mm behind the outside edge, or 30mm toe-in. Before this round of speaker placement, I noticed the center imaging was a bit skewed to the right, which I could have fixed via balance adjusment; well, it turns out the right speaker was about 3/4" (~20mm) behind the left speaker. Using measuring tape measuring the wall-to-speaker distance did not provide an accurate measurement in that the drywall is not square. Mounting the slat wall panels that have felt backers also added an additional level of inaccuracies. This, each speaker's front baffle is approximately 59"-60" (152 cm) from the front-wall.

Seating (ear) to speaker measures 127" or 323 cm. The primary speaker placement method I used is the Modified Room Coupling method, and also used Jim Smith's thoughts as an input.

Results:

• Image: dead center.
• Soundstage: expansive. Listening to the Hungarian Rhapsody #2 on RCA shows the sound is a foot or two beyond the speaker width. Listening to A Soft Place to Fall by Allison Moorer, the string instrument is at least 2' to the left of the left speaker and felt as though the sound is halfway between me and the speaker. Also, when listening to Found by Jacob Banks, the instruments are behind and outside the speakers.