# Improving my 2-channel sound - Part 2 (Yes, more help needed!)



## 480dad (Jan 22, 2015)

This is a follow-up to the thread I posted a few weeks ago seeking help to primarily improve my 2-channel sound. Although I'm still thinking about a different amp, I'm pretty much done upgrading my equipment. I added the ML ESLs as well as ML C2 center, ML LX16 rears, and a second PSA V1500 sub should arrive Friday. I'm now ready to more seriously tackle my room acoustics, which is the emphasis of this thread.

The original thread where I discuss some of the room issues is here.
http://www.hometheatershack.com/for...ing-my-set-up-especially-2-channel-sound.html

Below is the 30x30 room with 8' finished ceilings (yes, it's over 7,000 cubic feet). I don't have alot of options when it comes to moving equipment around due to having a wife. Specifics I'm looking for help on include: 1) how best to treat the front wall behind the dipole ESLs; 2) how to treat the right reflection points; 3) how to treat the left side wall or lack therof and reflection points; 4) how to attack the rear wall; and 5) is the celing really necessary? The diagram doesnt show the new speakers such as the rear surrounds.








1) front wall. I'm going to try both diffusors and some absorption behind the mains to see what sound best. I do have the ESLs 36" out from the front wall but the fireplace surround acts as a corner so I'm not sure how best to deal with this, hence my approach to try both. should i put an absorption panel between the mains below the eq shelves & tv?








2) Right Sidewall. the right sidewall is large bay-window-like seating area flanked by 3 large windows. if you look closely at the pic you can see the blue pieces of tape on the mirror marking the reflection points. the first hits squarely in the middle of the middle window. the window is covered with wooden blinds (horizontal). the second reflection point is ~2 feet to the right. I do have enought enough rom to get a GIK 12'x48" panel placed there. I'm just not sure what if any options I have for the point in the middle of the window. maybe I just have to live with what the blinds do or don't do for me?















3) Left Sidewall. Shooting across the room to the left side wall & reflection points. As you can see, I basically have no left symmetrical side wall because the room is open. the actual wall is another 15' behind the listening area and it has a large, wide staircase in the middle of it. maybe this 15' distance (which ~25 to the left main) means I won't have much relection to worry about? or does it mean the timing of what reflections there are will be hosed up? so, my question is do I leave this as is or should I look at a free standing panel to place behind the black love seat for 2-channel listening? The red pillow on the loveseat marks where the reflection points would be if there was a sidewall right behind the loveseat.








4) rear wall. intending to do corner traps and possibly a diffusor for the middle of the wall. is this diffusor needed since this wall is ~27' from the mains? 


5) Ceiling. since I have a set of speakers that don't have wide dispersion, do I need to treat the ceiling?

Thanks in advance for ANY advice...


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Wow, nice built-in cabinet!

Is there some specific (read audible) problem with the sound of your system that you’re unhappy with? The reason I ask is that in most residential situations, ordinary room furnishings are sufficient acoustical treatments – see here. You have absorption from the carpet and lots of diffusion from the blinds, brick and all the items hanging on the wall, etc. Plus the large, irregular-shaped room is always a benefit to acoustics, IMO.

But then, the MLs are a unique animal and might benefit from special acoustic treatment, I don’t know myself. You’d probably get better answers in our Acoustics Forum since this really has nothing to do with system connections and speaker placement (i.e. the focus of this section). I can move the thread for you if you like.

You mentioned room arrangement limitations, but personally I’d move the LP furniture closer to the TV, to maybe 9-10 ft. away. Acoustics aside, it would help your imaging tremendously to achieve the traditional “equilateral triangle” arrangement. I don’t see anything from your floor plan to suggest that would totally whack the room from a visual perspective, except maybe the end table at the bay window. That seems like a small obstacle. The downside would be that you might find the TV too high at that distance.

Regards,
Wayne


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## 480dad (Jan 22, 2015)

Hi Wayne,
I've yet to hear "hey, great room for 2-channel or multi-channel listening", its been more along the lines of you have a real challenge on your hands due to...it being 30x30 perfectly square and all the parallel reflective surfaces and standing waves/more resonance modes to deal with...good luck trying to get reasonable SPL from a 7000 cubic feet of space....location & set-up of the listening area in the "corner" will cause havoc with your timing....and so on.

Using the other Wayne's description of setting-up the electrostats, there's good, better and amazing. I'm not unhappy cause I do think what I've got sounds pretty good. I doubt I'll ever get to amazing. but, I would like to try to optimize what I have, especially if there's improvement to gain from a few bucks worth of acoustic devices. I did try some of the home solutions and did hear a diffence so I do think there's progress to be had. Getting the dipole's rear wave in sync is one key to getting there. That one is going to be a learning process for me. But I also notice alot of bass in the corners and can't help but think there's reflections coming from places that arent helping imaging and clarity.

My initial set-up with the stats was equilateral, 8x8x8. I moved things in/out/in/out and finally zoned in on 102" between mains and 13' to my LP. I set all distances as preceisly as I could. It seemed to present the widest soundstage.

As I said in the other thread, "I don't know what I don't know" if that makes any sense. I'm pretty new at all of this and treating room acoustics seem to be touted by many as having alot of bang for the buck. Which is good because my wife says UPS together with more large boxes is going to mean alot of 'date nights'.

I have a UMIK-1 coming with the other sub later this week. hopefully to some it will be interesting to see the story the room tells (as I won't be able to understand what it means...yet). I'm just curious as what some would expect to see based on the room characteristics.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

You have my sympathy, 480, because someone’s been feeding you a lot of baloney! For instance:



480dad said:


> I've yet to hear "hey, great room for 2-channel or multi-channel listening", its been more along the lines of you have a real challenge on your hands due to...it being 30x30 perfectly square and all the parallel reflective surfaces and standing waves/more resonance modes to deal with


This is probably lost on most of the audiophile set because they typically exist in small dedicated listening rooms, but the larger a room is, the less square dimensions are an issue. 

Same with standing waves and room modes. As RealTrap’s Ethan Winer explains here, “Small rooms have modes that are spaced farther apart than large rooms because the first mode in a small room starts at a higher frequency. For example, when the longest dimension of a room is only 10 feet, the modes for that dimension start at 56.5 Hz and are 56.5 Hz apart. In larger rooms the first mode is at a lower frequency so subsequent modes are closer together. Therefore, a large room has a flatter low frequency response because it has more modes spaced more closely.” In your room, assuming dimensions of 30’ x 30’ x 8’, modes start at a bit under 19 Hz, and occur at 19 Hz intervals above that point. So you’d have five closely-spaced modes below 100 Hz, which is better a single honkin’ one at 56 Hz in the example Ethan gave.

Reflections are less of an issue in a large room as well, as sound waves attenuate over distance. In your room, by the time everything hits the back or left-side wall and reflects back to you, it is attenuated so much you don’t even know it’s there: the brain is very partial to the much-louder direct signal from the speakers and tunes out the reflections.

Another big-room benefit lost on the tiny-room audiophile crowd: It’s much easier to get even bass response over the large portion of the room, which reaps real benefits in most listening seats that aren’t near a wall. This is impossible to achieve in a small room. I once tried to help a guy with a dedicated theater figure out how to EQ his subs to get something consistent from seat to seat. It was a lost cause. Measurements at every seat were so drastically different there is no way it was ever going to happen. By contrast, I’ll bet your bass doesn’t audibly change much at any TV viewing seat you sit in, does it?

And really, who goes to concerts in well-dampened 12’ x 15’ rooms? Those things in no way resemble a place you’d go to listen to music in the real world. I like the acoustics of bigger rooms because they sound more like real performance spaces. I’d take your huge room over a miserable little dedicated room any day, what with their horrendous modes, lack of seating options for optimal bass, bass “dead zone” in the center of the room, etc.




> ...good luck trying to get reasonable SPL from a 7000 cubic feet of space


This is total nonsense. All that matters in WRT to SPL is your distance from the speakers, which is about the same in your room as it would be in a small room. The only relevant room-size-penalty issue is bass level and extension. Obviously it takes potent subs, and possibly more of them, to get the same performance as a smaller room.




> ....location & set-up of the listening area in the "corner" will cause havoc with your timing


Don’t know what they meant by “timing.” Arrival times of reflections from the left vs. the right? It’s not like the right side of your set-up is right against the wall. That alcove with its bricks, blinds, pillows etc. are doing plenty to break up and absorb sound waves (although taking out that mirror would be a good idea). If you are unable to discern inordinate amounts of reflection from the right side,then you’re good. If you can, you could put up heavy curtains to make the right side more equal to the left, from a perceptibility standpoint. 




> But I also notice alot of bass in the corners


If you’re saying that the bass is louder when you’re physically near a corner, that’s a natural phenomenon that’s going to be present any room. Bass is always stronger near room boundaries, and especially where two of them meet. It’s acoustic physics, nothing you can reasonably do about it. Tell ya what though, it would be a _lot_ worse in a small room. Again, you have the great benefit of relatively even bass response and levels in your seating area, given the size of your room. No reason to be concerned about the way things sound in places you don’t typically critically listen, like back there at the pool table or the bar.

I think your main issue is going to be acoustical enhancements specific to getting the best from your speakers. I’ll move your post to the Acoustics Forum where you should be able to get some knowledgeable help with that.

Regards,
Wayne


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## Lumen (May 17, 2014)

Wayne A. Pflughaupt said:


> ...This is probably lost on most of the audiophile set because they typically exist in small dedicated listening rooms...
> +
> ...Another big-room benefit lost on the tiny-room audiophile crowd...
> +
> ...


I agree it's nonsense! I'm marching out of my HT-in-a-cracker-jack-box room right now to find my wife and demand a bigger one. Oh wait, I should probably move all the spare audio equipment off the living room couch first so I have somewhere to sleep. :R


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## Lumen (May 17, 2014)

BlueRockinLou said:


> I agree it's nonsense! I'm marching out of my HT-in-a-cracker-jack-box room right now to find my wife and demand a bigger one. Oh wait, I should probably move all the spare audio equipment off the living room couch first so I have somewhere to sleep. :R


...errr... A bigger room, not a bigger wife LOL!

Sent from my iPhone using HTShack


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## willis7469 (Jan 31, 2014)

BlueRockinLou said:


> ...errr... A bigger room, not a bigger wife LOL! Sent from my iPhone using HTShack


 rofl! Good catch.


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## Insearchof (Oct 21, 2014)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that some of the issues that people considered had to do with the layout of the room in regards to best single sub placement. With 2 that should be less of an issue.
IIRC, the OP had an issue with unsatisfactory 2 channel listening? And going with the ML's, changing the amount of toe in and ditching the bi-amp connections may have helped?
In regards to multi channel viewing/listening I can't begin to imagine how to resolve the sound for the multitude (window seats, bar seats, love seat) of listening positions.
When watching a movie, My MLP is my priority but I don't want it to sound terrible for everybody seated elsewhere. I try to weigh the tradeoffs in performance at the MLP when I make changes to enhance what other seats hear. I can't resolve every issue and overcome the laws of physics but it's always in the back of my head.


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## NBPk402 (Feb 21, 2012)

Years ago when i had my ML Sequels... I made some Tube Traps for the front corners, and 2 4'x4' RPG Diffusers for the rear wall and it made a nice improvement. From what I remember you want the speakers 3-5' from the front and side walls (which you have).

Have you used the REW software to measure the room?:T


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## 480dad (Jan 22, 2015)

Wayne A. Pflughaupt said:


> You have my sympathy, 480, *I get this alot!*
> 
> This is probably lost on most of the audiophile set because they typically exist in small dedicated listening rooms, _but the larger a room is, the less square dimensions are an issue_.
> 
> ...





Insearchof said:


> IIRC, the OP had an issue with unsatisfactory 2 channel listening? And going with the ML's, changing the amount of toe in and ditching the bi-amp connections may have helped?
> 
> *Yes, definitely helped. much better. was moving to next phase, ie.e paying more attention to room characteristics now that I solved some of the simple problems (i.e. expecting great things from mediocre Polks)*
> 
> ...





ellisr63 said:


> Have you used the REW software to measure the room?:T


*not yet. getting the UMIK-1 with the 2nd Sub. I'll have to figure out what I'm doing here first!
*

*Thanks again for all the information. I know it probably gets a little frustrating trying to explain simple things to people like me. Just alot of info to absorb and frankly some of it sticks better than others!!!*


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## NBPk402 (Feb 21, 2012)

Measuring the room will help you determine what you need to do to improve the sound. :T


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## muzz (Nov 30, 2006)

I've used REW to determine SPL/FR and the like, but I admittedly don't know that much about the Impulse/Delay/Waterfall charts, although I have been trying to gain a better perspective of them by reading up.
I've looked at the boundary/Freq. chart, which is pretty clear, now I guess I need to do the string measurements.
My room has zero treatments, just a sofa and a rug......and it's small, I wish I had 7K to sort out, my current room is just over 1200!


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## NBPk402 (Feb 21, 2012)

muzz said:


> I've used REW to determine SPL/FR and the like, but I admittedly don't know that much about the Impulse/Delay/Waterfall charts, although I have been trying to gain a better perspective of them by reading up.
> I've looked at the boundary/Freq. chart, which is pretty clear, now I guess I need to do the string measurements.
> My room has zero treatments, just a sofa and a rug......and it's small, I wish I had 7K to sort out, my current room is just over 1200!


there are a lot of knowledgeable people that know how to read/interpret the measurements out there. I am not one of them, and i just post up my results in the REW thread and ask for help to get what I need.


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## chashint (Jan 12, 2011)

I have no idea how the room sounds....but WOW that is a great room, kudos to you and your family.
Thanks for sharing the photos, they paint a very different picture than the drawing.
When you started your other thread, I thought the Polk speakers were probably the biggest issue you had with your sound quality and later I even thought I was a little harsh in my assessment of those speakers.
When you replaced them I remember how happy you were with the new ones.
I know it's very easy (at least for me) to go into hyper problem solving mode....even if there is no problem to solve when it comes to almost anything I consider fun.
If you really think the sound still needs improvement I would recommend that you start out by really learning how to use REW, map your room, and then really put the effort into understanding what the plots are telling you.
I have intentionally resisted even considering using REW, I know myself, I am better off not knowing for sure what acoustic issues my room has.
Your room looks fab as is, if it were mine I would not really want to start putting up acoustic panels because even the best looking ones I have ever seen really are not all that good looking IMO.
Good luck and as long as you are having fun it's all good.


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## 480dad (Jan 22, 2015)

Thanks Charlie. It is a great room, alot of fun, awesome for entertaining. I had just gotten it in my head it was flawed or far from ideal for really good 2-channel listening. I just didn't want to waste or diminish the new electrostats with acoustic problems that could be relatively easily corrected. I thought I had an idea what a few of them may have been, but wow, I was way off! After reading Audiocraver and Savjaks experience with the MLs and seeing what people like BlueLou have done with treatment, seemed like a logical next step for some improvement. 

To be clear, I do really like the sound I have now, v-a-s-t improvement, and it has been a blast (albeit an expensive one). But where and when do you stop? I'm not good at stopping!!!

You were right on target about the Polks I had but giddy is probbaly a better word for the new speakers. 

and yes, I am having fun! this is cool stuff :T

(btw, thats the first time I've ever used one of the smiley face things)


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## chashint (Jan 12, 2011)

If you measure your room and find glaring issues that could be fixed with acoustic panels would you be willing to put 3'x6'x4" thick (maybe larger or smaller) acoustic panels on the walls?
It's one thing to incorporate something like that into the decor of a dedicated HT or private listening room.
It's something pretty different to put it in your living area.

I would take a look at the GIK site, maybe there's something that appeals to you there.
You will at least see their standard packages and get an idea of sizes.


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## 480dad (Jan 22, 2015)

I've been all over the GIK site...acoustimac and ats too. I was close yesterday to pulling the thread on a 3-4 of the 1'x4' 242 panels with the scatter plates to try behind the mains and beside the window. and, a couple of 244 traps for the rear corners, possibly one artsy diffusor for center of rear wall. but, decided to post this thread for opinions first. if there are no gains or negligible ones at best, that'd be great. I'll save the $$ for all the date nights that are now due and have to be cashed in. I've learned there is a price for WAF.


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## Lumen (May 17, 2014)

480dad said:


> ... I had just gotten it in my head it was flawed or far from ideal for really good 2-channel listening.


Apologies. I think I egged you on. Others here reminded me of the back-to-basics approach. Speakers have greater impact on sound quality than room treatment.



480dad said:


> ... After reading Audiocraver and Savjaks experience with the MLs and seeing what people like BlueLou have done with treatment, seemed like a logical next step for some improvement.


It took me a lifetime to learn about and try treatments. They were my last step in getting off the upgrade merry-go-round. But extensive or expensive treatment is not right for everyone. You do what it takes. And I would any day take a properly set up system in an untreated room over a poorly set up system regardless of treatment.

Enjoy your new toys!

Sent from my iPhone using HTShack


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## NBPk402 (Feb 21, 2012)

When we built our HT (understand yours is not a dedicated room)... The room treatments made a huge difference. The treatments allow me to hear how the speakers really sound. I am now able to pick out details that I couldn't before, bass is much cleaner and deeper without the one note bass I have heard in the past. The sound stage is actually there now. Instruments are clear, and precise. If you don't want to spend the money for store bought ones, make your own. It is very easy and you can wrap them in whatever material you want to match your decor. I know that there are places that will print your art work on fabric (I think GIK might sell complete panels with artistic designs on them too). In my opinion it was the best audio upgrade in my system. :T


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

480dad said:


> Wayne A. Pflughaupt said:
> 
> 
> > By contrast, I’ll bet your bass doesn’t audibly change much at any TV viewing seat you sit in, does it?
> > *actually I do hear differences, louder in spots, muddier in spots, definitely more in the corners. *


Are you talking about various areas all over the room? I was talking specifically about the seating someone might be watching the TV from – the couch, the “his and hers” chairs, the love seat. Sorry if I was unclear...

So again, does the bass sound fairly consistent in all the viewing seats, or is it audibly different from one location to the next? (I expect the wife’s seat would have the biggest difference from the others, if any, as it’s closer to the wall.)



> im not worried about pefect bass in all LPs. just want cleaner, tighter, more consistent bass. The 2nd sub should solve this?


That’s what I hear, that additional subs help get even bass distribution. However, AFAIK this only works in rooms that are fairly symmetrical and have symmetrical equipment layout as well. So I have my doubts that it would work well in your room.

As far as “tighter” bass goes, parametric equalization makes a big improvement there, if you aren’t using it already.

Regards, 
Wayne


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## 480dad (Jan 22, 2015)

BlueRockinLou said:


> Apologies. I think I egged you on.
> *Let's see, can you say hook, line and sinker!!!!*
> 
> Enjoy your new toys! *Oh, I am. btw, assume you are familiar with Audio Solutions? I've been wanting to drop by and check them out...*





ellisr63 said:


> I know that there are places that will print your art work on fabric (I think GIK might sell complete panels with artistic designs on them too). In my opinion it was the best audio upgrade in my system. :T


*Yes, they do sell art and custom printed panels. I had a couple files I was going to try. The prices aren't unreasonable. Thought my wife would like an 2x4 pic of me on the rear wall. *



Wayne A. Pflughaupt said:


> Are you talking about various areas all over the room? I was talking specifically about the seating someone might be watching the TV from – the couch, the “his and hers” chairs, the love seat. Sorry if I was unclear...
> 
> So again, does the bass sound fairly consistent in all the viewing seats, or is it audibly different from one location to the next? (I expect the wife’s seat would have the biggest difference from the others, if any, as it’s closer to the wall.)
> 
> ...


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